“Why did Robert Kocharyan not win in 2021 and will not win in 2026?” Michael Mina

Mikael Minasyan writes: “Why did Robert Kocharyan not win in 2021 and will not win in 2026?”

This is not an omen at all, but a reality that has a very clear and solid explanation and background.

Let’s start with the background.

Robert Kocharyan’s biggest political defeat was not losing power and not being re-elected, but the fact that he never became “ours”.

Robert Kocharyan was a stranger. That alienation was felt from the very beginning of his Armenian political career, from the moment he was appointed the Prime Minister of Armenia. And that feeling did not disappear even when he became the president. Moreover, that estrangement was mutual. he felt like a stranger among the Armenians, and the Armenians accepted him with marked distance as a foreigner.

This phenomenon has several explanations. First of all, you have to be honest. we Armenians are often xenophobic, xenophobic, but at the same time we suffer from domestic racism. That racism was especially manifested against the people of Artsakh and Baku. It is interesting that the same attitude was much milder towards Armenians from Vira, Armenians from Russia or Diaspora Armenians. But tolerance towards the Armenians of Baku and Artsakh was almost zero.

What is more painful is that almost 35 years later, a significant part of the Armenian society repeats the same aggressive attitude towards refugees. At that time, they were intolerant towards the Armenians who came from Baku, today, towards the forcibly displaced people from Artsakh. Times, wars, authorities have changed, but the deep social reflex has remained the same. “they are not ours.”

Starting from 1998, Robert Kocharyan had a historic chance to alleviate mutual alienation. But he missed that opportunity. He let go because of his temperament, rudeness, rudeness, not fully knowing Armenia and Armenians, and not fully mastering his native language. He mocked those who mocked him. He responded not with integration, but with reverse contempt.

Today it is difficult to say what was the real source of his internal aggression. The rejection of the people, the contempt of the elites, or the complex of own alienation? But the fact is that the second president not only could not overcome this alienation, but also became its embodiment. The people did not see their sin, did not recognize their prejudices, but instead alienated themselves not only from the head of the country, but also from the entire political heritage associated with him: the Karabakh movement, the Artsakh victory, the symbols of victory.

Kocharyan’s personnel policy played a big role here. It seems that he deliberately appointed people who did not speak Armenian, or who spoke in a dialect, to the key positions of the government, and with their behavior and language they deepened the impression of a “foreign government”. From customs to power structures, from ministers to bodyguard chiefs, a government environment was formed, which for a significant part of the society became not a state system, but an imported group.

The same thing happened with the oligarchy. A significant part of the business elite of newly independent Armenia was originally from Artsakh, Russian-speaking or speaking the Artsakh dialect. This made it easier for the deep people to identify them as “foreigners”. Social injustice got a regional face. Monopoly became not only an economic but also a psychological category. People began to think not “we are being robbed”, but “foreigners are robbing us”.

Levon Ter-Petrosyan became one of the godfathers of that political and cultural alienation. Years later, in an archival video posted on the Internet, the first president humorously asked Kocharyan. “Boy, are you Armenian or Albanian, and do you know the Our Father?” What may have been said as a joke, the public took literally. Today it is difficult to say whether the historian president was consciously putting Kocharyan into a stereotypical trap or not, but the second president could not, and by and large did not want to, get out of that trap.

As a result, Robert Kocharyan was branded as a foreigner, alienating with him everything that Artsakh represented. The Karabakh movement, which was the dream of the Armenian golden generation of the 1980s, which was supposed to end with national unity and the dignity of victory, gradually began to be perceived as the property of a narrow group during the years of Kocharyan’s rule.

Victory no longer belonged to the people. The results of the victory did not belong to the people either.

The deep people saw that the real beneficiaries of the victory are specific people: those who received positions, business, monopoly and immunity. And at that moment, the Karabakh movement, which was born as a national awakening, began to be renamed “Karabakh clan” in public consciousness.

Levon Ter-Petrosyan gave political language to that formulation in 2008, when in his pre-election rallies he defined the current regime as a “Tatar-Mongolian yoke”. It was not just a rhetorical blow. He formulated politically what had been brewing in the subconscious of society for years. the power is not ours, the power is foreign, the power has come upon us.

And it was against this background that Nikol Pashinyan was perceived as his own. He can be “our” idiot, “our” hypocrite, “our” liar, “our” traitor, “our” revolutionary, “our” savior, “our” disaster or “our” saint, but he is ours. Here is the biggest pain and the biggest political tragedy. Because the society often forgives the disaster of its own more easily than the victory of a stranger.

When Nikol Pashinyan announces that he is closing the page of the Karabakh movement, it is not necessary to blame only the deep people for not understanding the scale of that historical tragedy. You should try to understand what those people actually hear. He does not hear “the Artsakh page is closing”. He hears something he has been waiting for for many years. “the page of the Karabakh clan is closing.”

And if the price of that closure is Artsakh, a part of the society is ready to pay that price because they have been convinced for years, or they themselves have convinced themselves, that Artsakh is a symbol of victory taken from them, foreign power and injustice. This is the most terrible thing. Not that the people do not like Artsakh. Other than that, in his mind, Artsakh has been separated from himself over the years, has become someone else’s history, someone else’s victory, someone else’s property.

And this is the heaviest legacy of Robert Kocharyan. He didn’t just lose the political battle. He lost in history because he could not keep the victory as national capital. He turned it into a government asset. And when victory becomes group ownership, defeat inevitably becomes nationwide.

Today we are facing that very tragedy. A nation that did not feel the victory as its own, does not feel the defeat as its own until the end. And until we understand this mechanism, we will continue to wonder how it was possible to close an entire national era without a nationwide upheaval.

The answer is harsh, but simple. that era was alienated from the people a long time ago. It required a scoundrel without values ​​to come and close a page which, in the eyes of a large part of the people, was already someone else’s book. And Pashinyan appeared. He did it with particular cruelty and hatred.
And despite the defeat and the war, he stayed because the Armenian people faced the Pashinyan-Kocharian dilemma.

Kocharyan promised to “carry”, and Nikol asked for protection from his people. And Kocharyan lost.

Today, five years after the defeat, he and his teammates insist that the “Armenia” alliance will overcome the 8 percent threshold with the same persistence as “we will carry” in 2021. In fact, it is not important whether they will get the coveted 8-10 percent or not. what is important is that there is no question of winning anymore, their main task today is simply not to lose.

Kocharyan cannot win, but with his image and presence, he revives public collective traumas, thereby preparing fertile ground for the reproduction of Nikol’s power.”

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