Armenian Studies as `Critical Infrastructure’

ARMENIAN STUDIES AS `CRITICAL INFRASTRUCTURE’

26.12.2013

Based on the address made at the Second Conference on Armenian Studies
and the Contemporary Challenges of (October 17-19, 2013, Yerevan)

Gagik Harutyunyan
Executive Director, Noravank Scientific Educational Foundation, Yerevan

Armenian studies are certainly not a purely academic/fundamental
science. Branches of Armenian studies ` history, literature,
architecture, etc., are manifestations of our civilizational identity,
which in turn had brought new content to our identity and system of
values (and continue doing so). The modern thinking suggests that
these concepts are the basis of the national security system. Thus,
Armenian studies are essentially a nation-forming and state-building
discipline.

Admittedly, such interpration of Armenian studies is not adequately
perceived by our society and the discipline’s concepts and results of
applied nature are rarely used in practical/political affairs1. There
are many reasons for this, among which is the circumstance that
Armenian studies are a part of our scientific/educational system that
currently is not in its best shape. It is obvious that such situation
inevitably impacts on development of the national political thought.
This cause-and-effect relationship explains the fact that to date
there are only few interdisciplinary researches juxtaposing and
combining the fields of Armenian studies (or for that matter, any
other scientific disciplines) and politics. Yet this would have
allowed not only uncovering the commonalities between the fields, but
also developing their complementation mechanisms and application
formats.

Given the challenges that our society has to face (both of our states
are in no war, no peace situation; our communities in the Middle East
are at the verge of extinction due to geopolitical developments; there
are many problems in diaspora, because the tactics of identity
preservation based solely on Genocide recognition by the international
community is no longer effective and does not guarantee national
development), such statement of problem appears quite critical. With
the mentioned realities in mind some observations of the said problems
are presented here below, with a prior brief deliberation on some of
the modern and significantly expanded views on national security.

In the area of security the highest priority is currently assigned to
the safety, effective setup and development of the society’s
spiritual/intellectual resources. In this context the traditional
approaches to and definitions of warfare have changed: presently the
politics and strategies are carried out mainly through the so-called
`soft power’ and `information warfare’ which is part of the former. It
has to be noted in this regard that spiritual/cultural issues are
encompassed in the information security, which in turn is a component
of the national security. In our society the information security is
often interpreted somewhat simplistically and sometimes is presented
as political/historical disputes in Armenian and Turkish/Azeri mass
media and social media, or reciprocal hacker attacks. Undoubtedly,
these activities are elements of the information warfare and are also
necessary, but they have limited tactical significance and impacts.

Meanwhile, it is known that the theory of information warfare and
methods employed in it have qualitatively evolved in the recent
period. The so-called `second generation’ network information warfare
is worth mentioning, which pursues the following main objectives.

to disintegrate the adversary’s social/moral bases and the system of values,
to impose own cultural code in the consciousness of the adversary’s
(or sometimes even the ally’s) society through manipulative
technologies.

Armenia and the Armeniancy are involved in such warfare for some
well-known reasons, and in these terms are in the risk zone. In such
conditions our intellectual and political elite must develop a
strategy adequate to the existing challenges, which should take into
account the following circumstances.

Security doctrines usually assign key importance to the protection of
so-called `critical infrastructures,’ construed as the most essential
military/political, socio-economic and information structures,
incapacitation of which leads to a failure of the whole security
system. We contend that the status of `critical infrastructure’ must
be assigned to the systems and structures that safeguard
spiritual/intellectual development, as their failure may lead to
demoralization of the society. Such approach is currently gaining
ground in the world, and for instance, in a relatively recently
published military doctrine of Israel, within the critical security
infrastructure top priorities were given to structures deemed as
national symbols, such as Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum, religious
temples, etc.2 It appears, similar approach must be used in Armenia as
well, but without limiting it to physical structures. An attempt will
be made here to examine several problems from this perspective, in
particular those related to our system of values3 and public
interpretations of the modern history.

The system of values in the society is not a static category, since it
changes depending on the historical, military/political developments,
as well as evolutionary or revolutionary ones. Today the system of
values is substantially influenced by printed and electronic mass
media through widely spread, targeted and/or supposedly chaotic
information flows, which to a considerable extent form the global
community’s way of thinking, mindset and hence, also the system of
values.

Naturally, these realities are characteristic to the Armenian society.
Obviously, the Armenian system of values with its civilizational
traits is one of the cornerstones that ensured our national/historical
continuity. At the same time, it has to be noted that study of the
problems in this area requires consideration of certain peculiarities
of our history of the last hundred years.

The Genocide and loss of the Western Armenia have deeply impacted the
psychology and worldview of our society, especially the diaspora. The
diaspora part of the Armeniancy is also characterized by the fact that
they undergo not only intra-ethnic or global influences, but also
national/civilizational ones specific to their countries of residence.
Armenia’s society has its peculiarities, too. As a result of
geopolitical and revolutionary processes of the last two centuries `
the Persian rule, Russian Empire, the First, Second and finally the
Third republic to mention a few ` this part of the Armeniancy has
changed the socio-ideological environment of its social being several
times. This has led to considerable, sometimes controversial,
substantive transformations in the society’s system of values.

In particular, after the Bolshevik `terror’ in 1920-30s, the communist
concepts imposed on the society of the Second republic gradually
transformed over time and became as much coherent as it was possible
to the ideas of the national system of values. Yet currently, a
significant part of the society is at odds with the liberal ideology
concepts that were imposed this time through socio-economic terror
during the period, which can be called `an era of vulgar liberalism’,
still continuing today to a greater or lesser degree. This last period
left extremely negative effects on the national ideological worldviews
that were formed during the 1965 events related to the Armenian
Genocide commemoration and ensuing Karabakh movement. The combination
of these processes has introduced significant uncertainties in the
ideas that the society has about its values.

Interestingly, the study of the public’s system of values is currently
viewed as a crucial matter, and for example, World Values Survey
(WVS)4, an international organization, conducts extensive studies
around the world. The research outcomes are used in making both
economic and political decisions and particularly, the so-called
`color revolution’ technologies are anchored on knowledge of
socio-psychological characteristics of a given society. The research
conducted by the mentioned organization suggests that the population
of Armenia is in the cultural domain of the South Asian and
ex-Communist countries, where traditional and survival values prevail.

Currently studies of values system in Armenia are conducted by the
Chair of Psychology at the Yerevan State University (led by Narine
Khachatryan). Also, impacts of the information environment on the
system of values are studied at the Noravank Foundation5. However, it
is evident that the activities implemented in this area are not
sufficient and furthermore, are far from gaining applied significance.
It can be safely stated that any perceptions about the system of
values prevailing in Armenia, let alone in Armenian diaspora, are
general and emotional, and are far from being scientifically
substantiated. It is even more difficult, if not impossible to answer
the question what value direction the Armenian society has taken and
what transformations could be expected in future. Such situation often
causes controversial comments in the political-information arena,
which in no way contributes to the establishment of an effective
national security system and implementation of relevant political
strategies6.

It must be especially emphasized that a closer relationship between
Armenian studies and the policies, as well as their practical use seem
impossible without an appropriate information policy, and this is
applicable also to other problems unrelated to the system of values.

In particular, if the information coverage of our history’s Soviet
period were to be examined, it would become clear that there are
serious problems directly related to one of the fundamental laws of
the information security ` preservation of an unbroken history and
national memory. Societies that lose their historical base are most
prone to information/psychological influences, and in this regard it
is pertinent to quote a Chinese proverb: `Forgetting history means
betrayal.’

The views on the Second republic voiced in the information space bear
mainly `tragic’ or `sarcastic’ overtones and remind the Bolshevik
style, when anything related to the First republic had to be
condemned. Perhaps Carl Schmitt was right, contending that
`philosophical paradigms of Marxism and liberal ideological/economic
demonism are the same.’

As far as assessment of the Second republic is concerned, the
mentioned approaches constitute distortion of the objective history,
because in addition to its negative and tragic aspects, Soviet Armenia
created a powerful scientific, technological and industrial system,
experienced demographic growth, formed a creative society with high
educational and moral levels. For instance, in late 1980s there were
30,000 scientific personnel in Armenia, whereas now their number is
about 6000. In 1984 total 200 inventions were introduced for
application in economy7.

It has to be clearly realized that history of any country is not just
that of its political regime, but also the history of its society and
people. In this context it must be admitted that the Armenian society
took its share of political, military and revolutionary calamities
with high dignity. Boris Kagarlitsky, a prominent intellectual and
political scientist, who, incidentally, is a former prisoner of
Mordovian labor camps, has noticed felicitously that disparaging the
Soviet history is first of all a betrayal of the memory of the Soviet
regime’s victims.

No attempt is made here to idealize our not so distant past, as it
makes no sense to idealize or demonize any historical period. At the
same time it has to be understood that the First republic was the
basis of the Second one, which in its turn paved the way to the Third
republic, and this must be interpreted and dealt with accordingly. Any
other approaches only obstruct the system of national security,
inappropriately discredit our state/political institutions and make
them appear younger than they actually are. For example, some time ago
billboards appeared that read: `Armenian Army is 20 years old’, while
in fact our army has a history of many thousands of years.

The presented and numerous other issues, perhaps, require
establishment of joint political/governmental and academic/expert
commissions that would discuss and find solutions for these types of
problems.

3 Recently this problem is much speculated about in the context of
Armenia’s integration preferences

4See

October 2013

«21-ÖÕ¤ Ô´Ô±Õ?» No. 6, 2013

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From: Baghdasarian

http://www.noravank.am/eng/

http://www.csef.ru/index.php/ru/component/csef/project/-/-/-?id=3229.

http://worldvaluessurvey.org