When members of the Civil Contract party claim, “we brought peace,” I find myself briefly puzzled—maybe I’m the one misremembering what was happening just eight years ago. Could it be that in April 2018 there was a war underway, and then Pashinyan came along and everything suddenly became peaceful?
At the time of the “Velvet Revolution,” there were no large-scale military clashes (I deliberately avoid using the word “war,” because that war began in 1992 and, in a broader sense, continues to this day). Quite the opposite: it was under Pashinyan that large-scale hostilities erupted in both Artsakh and the Republic of Armenia, resulting in thousands of casualties and territorial losses. So the formula “Pashinyan brought peace” is, to put it mildly, strange.
Add to that how many times Armenia’s current prime minister used the word “Artsakh” in 2018–2020, and in what context—“Artsakh is our pride, our dignity,” and so on. So if one is looking for a provocateur, the first one to point to is Pashinyan himself, who now effectively bans even the use of the word “Artsakh.”
The same memory also reminds us what was being said in 2018 about regional administrations, speed cameras, oligarchs, corruption, kickbacks, the use of administrative resources during elections, the so-called vote-buying “brigades,” and the entire post-Soviet system that the revolutionaries supposedly opposed—but now, having come to power, they seem to use with great enthusiasm.
Read also
Let us recall how one of the main slogans is transformed in Orwell’s Animal Farm. During the revolution, the sheep would bleat: “Four legs good, two legs bad.” That meant: we animals are good, humans are bad. But when the pigs took over the farm, started sleeping in human beds, drinking alcohol, and walking on two legs, the slogan flipped 180 degrees—and the same sheep began to bleat: “Four legs good, but two legs better.”
Real memory is being replaced with slogans planted in people’s heads. And although all of this is happening within a historically short period of time—and now, in the digital age, when everything is recorded and can be retrieved, “remembered,” in two or three minutes—the “power of conviction” of brainwashed minds outweighs actual memory.
From the examples above, it is clear that Pashinyan has no consistent principles or value system. It is not at all inconceivable that, if necessary to hold on to power, he would cast aside his “hybrid” narratives and express a desire to join the Russia–Belarus Union State. And his electorate would bleat: “Hybrid was bad—but the EU is even worse.”
Aram ABRAHAMYAN
