Where are the roots of nihilism?
On November 10, 2020, an elderly woman who worked as a cleaner in the park approached me, complained about the injustice of the world and the fate of our nation, and at the end, added: “They destroyed the country and then burned everything on that poor man,” naturally referring to Nikol Pashinyan, Prime Minister and Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces during the war.
Recently, I listened to the father of the war victim in Yerablur, who said: “Nicole doesn’t know anything about a lot of things; or else how can he keep everything under his control”.
You will say that it is a result of propaganda, that for years people’s brains have been filled with formulas to “loot the country and the army,” and of course, it is. Moreover, the thesis spread by the government after 2020 that the claims about the power of our army turned out to be a “bluff” is as convenient for our government from the point of view of justifying the defeat as it is harmful to the army because to some extent it contributes to further failures.
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But to explain everything with propaganda alone would be a mistake. Otherwise, the official “hurrah-patriotic” propaganda of 1998-2018 would have achieved its goal. Meanwhile, that propaganda caused only resistance, anger, and disgust among most citizens. The preaching seed must therefore fall on fertile soil. And when it falls on rocky ground, it gives exactly the opposite result.
Another memory. The summer of 1996 was the height of the presidential election campaign. I went to the polyclinic on some business, and several doctors (highly educated people, not cleaners) gathered around me and, knowing well about my political views, informed me in rather loud, passionate tones that they would not “vote for Levon” under any circumstances.
They asked me. “What has Levon done for this country?” “What did he do?” I wondered. “Karabakh was liberated under his rule. It was a brilliant victory for our nation.” The response of the doctors was characteristic. “And what does that have to do with our lives?”
Maybe the “Orthodox Levonians” will tell me that it was the opinion of a group of doctors, and the people thought otherwise. But how the people feel can be checked first of all through voting. In 1996, if not the majority (let’s not get into that argument, it’s not today’s topic), then a significant majority voted for Vazgen Manukyan, who had no ideological differences with the current president at that time. People voted against Ter-Petrosyan.
It is clear to me that the underlying problem is not in the personality of the current Prime Minister; he is simply the extreme embodiment of national nihilism and is loved by the majority for it. As for where that nihilism comes from, it can be challenging to give an unequivocal answer.
I have a preliminary hypothesis, which may later be disproved. Until 1988, our nation had accumulated a particular potential, expressed in the Karabakh movement. That potential was exhausted, captured during the war of 1992-94.
After that, under the influence of the state, and political elite, people decided that the meaning of their life was “just to live well.”
If my hypothesis is correct, it is clear that sooner or later, the accumulation of that potential will happen again: let it not be too late.
ARAM ABRAHAMYAN
“Aravot” daily newspaper
