Recently, the third President of Armenia Serzh Sargsyan delivered a speech titled “Global Challenges of the XXI Century: Inter-party Dimensions” in a video conference. I will not touch upon the whole speech where there were also appropriate emphases. I would like to single out an idea that I should oppose, not to criticize and justify someone, but to show a methodological mistake, a mistake that, in my opinion, many people make at the domestic, academic, and practical political levels. The last level is directly related to the mentality of the Armenian “former regime.”
In his speech, Sargsyan noted that “external forces” “helped them (that is, the “current regime”) to come to power three years ago through well-known technologies.” It is probably about the technology of “color revolutions” developed by the American political scientist Gene Sharp in the 1970s. There is no doubt that such technologies have been used. I am also sure that the movement led by Pashinyan had such advisers (who, by the way, could be citizens of any country, including Russian). I first felt it during the days of the “capture of the police regiment” when Pashinyan was holding “open arms” rallies. But the impact of all this on the events, in my opinion, is 2-3%. Let us make an intellectual experiment and assume that now the Republican Party will hire such or even better specialists and try to start a revolution. Will it work?
First of all, when we talk about “external forces” and “certain goals,” it should be clarified what forces we are talking about – the United States, EU countries, Russia, Turkey, Azerbaijan? It needs serious evidence that can be proven only by stating facts, and not by “reducing” the current situation to the probable causes. In other words, the question “who won?” cannot be replaced by the question “what was the reason?”
However, even if there are such facts, history still shows that in any country, even a small and poor one like ours, important events take place predominantly INTERNALLY, not for external reasons. Due to lack of space, let me bring an example. There is a thesis accepted in today’s Russian political discourse. The Masons (led by Kerensky), as well as the Bolsheviks, were German spies, and during World War I, Russia’s enemy, Germany, sent them to destroy the country. This means abandoning serious analysis and not trying to understand the much more important internal impulses of events, in particular the gravitational pull of the Bolshevik slogans “peace to the peoples” and “land to the peasants.” It is the same to explain the revolution of 2018 with some “external dark forces.” Although this approach benefits the “former.”
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Aram Abrahamyan
