Today, as eyewitnesses to the birth of the Third Republic of Armenia, we still have our own perceptions of those events. Like everything else in our society, those perceptions are polarized. It is difficult to predict which version of history will prevail once we are gone. However, I have some assumptions.
How will the first half of the 1990s be remembered in Armenia? Were they the “years of cold and darkness,” as Kocharyan’s propaganda instilled in people’s minds after 1998? Or were they years of victories, as I and a minority of our citizens believe? Even if I were to write every day that the liberation of Artsakh was more important than everyday hardships, neither I nor anyone else today can fully determine which version of history will dominate the textbooks of 2050.
So far, in my view, the scales are tilting towards the “cold and dark” narrative. This version is far more beneficial to the current authorities, whose failures led to the nullification of those victories. After all, if those years were simply defined by hardship, plunder, and despair—if the cities of that era were nothing but unfortunate and dismal places—then the value of those victories is greatly diminished.
Some, unable to deny the victories but unwilling to contradict government propaganda, have settled on “intermediate” narratives:
Read also
“Yes, we liberated Artsakh, but the 2018 revolution was more important.”
“Yes, good people fought for liberation, but bad people stole everything afterward.”
As if the liberators could not possibly have been corrupt—yet history around the world proves otherwise.
To make matters worse, today’s government is promoting the concept of the “real” Armenia—29,000 square kilometers, with no Artsakh included. By this logic, the 1988 movement and the war that followed were ultimately meaningless.
It is not unlikely, then, that in 25 years, a history textbook might contain something like this:
“In 1988, a group of adventurers, instigated by the USSR Central Committee and the KGB, began making territorial claims against Azerbaijan. They later launched an attack on a neighboring country, occupying 20 percent of its sovereign territory.
Twenty-six years later, Azerbaijan successfully liberated its land, and a new leadership in Armenia put an end to Armenian fascism and revanchism.”
What remains unclear is whether such a narrative will appear in an Armenian textbook or a Turkish one. If the ideology of the “real Armenia” prevails, then by 2050, there may no longer be an Armenian state at all.
Aram ABRAHAMYAN
