People are splashing each other with water and celebrating Vardavar. Look how happy they are! People are heading to Sevan on the weekends. See how well they’ve started to live? When you call the hotline of the Electric Networks of Armenia (ENA), the operator actually answers. Do you see how Romanos Petrosyan, after being appointed manager, managed to improve the work of ENA in just a few days?
Right after the change of power in 2018, the mantra of official propaganda became: “a smile has finally returned to people’s faces.” That smile—apparently due to Armenia finally becoming a “sovereign” country after October 2022—has since turned into a storm of joy and delight.
“Life has become better, life has become happier”—this was Stalin’s famous pronouncement in 1935, while addressing the pioneers of the Stakhanov movement. The milkmaids and steelworkers didn’t argue with him. On the contrary, they danced cheerfully around the “great leader.” There were, of course, some who had doubts — members of the so-called pseudo-elite, the “rotten intelligentsia.” In other words, actual intellectuals, many of whom were quickly sent to the gulags or simply eliminated as “anti-state elements.”
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The PR of Armenia’s current authorities, seemingly tailored for a completely brainwashed audience, suggests that just a year ago—or ten—Vardavar wasn’t celebrated, people didn’t go to Sevan, and ENA operators ignored phone calls. What does this kind of propaganda say? First and foremost, that the general intellectual level of our society has declined.
But even with that decline, it’s clear the Civil Contract party has a serious ratings problem. And with these clumsy, almost childlike statements, the authorities are just trying to cheer themselves up. A kind of “consolation for a black heart.”
Let’s imagine, for the sake of argument, that CP’s rating really is 100 percent, and that Armenia is populated by 3 million blissfully deluded citizens. Would that change a single fact? Would any lie, manipulation, or trick erase the reality that Artsakh is now in Azerbaijan’s hands, that our neighbor has occupied part of Armenia’s sovereign territory, that 120,000 of our compatriots are de facto refugees, and that Armenians continue to be tortured in Baku’s prisons?
Aram ABRAHAMYAN
