Most of us can no longer recall the primary slogan of the “velvet” government from 2018: “New Armenia.” To this day, the tenets of New Armenia remain unclear, leaving us to ponder the implications of Old Armenia. The current authorities distort the democratic promise of the revolution.
Consequently, the reality is that the Civil Contract Party has “constructed” a New Armenia, causing us to reminisce about Old Armenia as a lost dream. Its borders, role, and standing in the international arena were distinct. Moreover, during that era, citizens of the Republic of Armenia didn’t hang their heads in shame while abroad; they weren’t representatives of a defeated nation, nor did they plead for safety from the world.
But let’s leave this sad picture aside and try to understand where the “New Armenia” thesis comes from and what it means to “destroy the old world.”
At the beginning of the 20th century, the slogan of the Bolsheviks was: “Let’s destroy the old world and build a new world.” Before that, the old world was destroyed by the French revolutionaries. As it sounds in “La Marseillaise”: “If they fall, our young heroes will be produced anew from the ground ready to fight against you.” However, about 25,000 people were beheaded, and during the civil wars, about a million people died, not counting the war casualties of the revolutionaries. The victims and losses of the Russian Revolution were even more. In general, revolutionaries are characterized by the obsession of demolishing the old and building the new. However, not all revolutionaries make a real revolution. The real thing is that it brings a change in values and state order.
Read also
The French Revolution, for example, brought new values and a new state order, which the modern world followed. It was a bloody but real revolution that had its motto: “Liberty, Fraternity, Equality.” The same can be said about the Russian Revolution, whose ideas were born in Europe and which can be considered a continuation of the French Revolution, emphasizing the “equality” component of the slogan of the French Revolution.
The French Revolution had a slogan, ideologues, literature, and legal thought, which can also be said about the Russian Revolution: “The land to the peasant, the factory to the worker.” In addition, Bolshevik literature and press were consistent, regardless of their acceptability. And finally, the Soviet Union was a modernist state that had great success and an inglorious end. Before it fell, it changed the face of the entire world.
And what was, so to speak, the slogan of the “Armenian Revolution?” Perhaps it is the most unique and vulgar slogan in the world. “Return the stolen assets: every kebab looted at a time.” As we can see, there is a complete absence of ideology, revolutionary theses, ideologues, and orators. It can be said that revolutions used to bring tragedies, but now they turn into farces.
The “revolution” of 2018 was a game of farce, unfortunately with a tragic outcome. The attempt can be considered a failure, and the alternative, perhaps, is the government of the counter-revolutionaries, which is also in the logic of the classical period. However, there is a great danger that, just as the revolutionaries were false and unreal, the counter-revolutionaries can also be so.
ACNIS – Armenian Center for National and International Studies