RULES OF THE GAME MUST BE CHANGED
Siranuysh Papyan
Lragir.am News
17:13:01 – 02/09/2011
Anush, this year a great deal of events are organized to mark the 20th
anniversary of independence. In your thoughts, are we independent
and freed from the powerful Russian empire? Is there any progress
towards this?
To begin with, the Russian empire is not a strong empire any more,
and there are states which are able to place a watershed politically
and historically between Russia and their economies, moral posture,
culture. However, we were always left here, at the crossroads of
history, where time doesn’t flow. Recently I’ve read an article which
ran that Russia has powerful leverages on Armenia but no leverage on
Georgia and Azerbaijan. Let’s discuss it: the territory is the same,
the terrain is the same, Georgia has disputable areas which are areas
of conflict. So what is the problem that so far Armenia has been an
area of such powerful influence? Look, everyone charges a fee for
the deployment of military bases. As soon as we bring up this issue,
everyone says Turkey will come and exterminate Armenia. I would like
to inform everyone, and let someone try to deny it: with all those
military bases there, it will take ten minutes to invade Armenia. All
the troops, sentries, missiles will last for no more than 10 minutes.
I understand why the government depends on Russia because Armenia
and Russia have been in the same security and information system,
which means that everyone knows everything about everyone else, and
it makes our officials vulnerable, independent from their will. This
vulnerability determines the logic of all the other actions.
WiliLeaks, however, showed that everyone in the world can learn
everything about everyone, whether they are in the same information
and security system or not.
WikiLeaks is the counteraction that said no need to fear because
one way or another, information will leak, and there is no need to
depend on one superpower. Even if you depend on two superpowers,
it is already complementarism, and if you try to create a watershed
between you and the modern world, establish other relationships,
sign agreements with different parts of the world, it is the first
step toward an independent state identity which we have always lacked.
What prevented us from having it?
If someone tries to state as a reason that we have been historically
weak, I tend to think that we have been historically weak and
geopolitical vulnerable because of our mentality.
So, you don’t explain the Russophilia by the Soviet past of 70 days?
No, not at all. I would like to discuss the historical role of Russia
in the Genocide. This was the result of the wrong understanding of
the situation by our political personalities, they were implementing
their own colonial policy, they didn’t know. When we speak about
the genocide, we speak about everything but we don’t speak about the
political short-sightedness of the contemporaneous and the double,
hypocritical game of our ally.
I will mention another component. Yes, we have a powerful nation
preservation instinct, yes, we make all our efforts following our
instinct but we have never thought that our nation state would be
based on such an important attribute which we have always ignored.
This attribute is the national pride, the survival of the nation
and the national unit rather than the national boasting, which
are different things. It is national boasting when we claim that
our grapes, our wine, our pomegranates are unique, we all write the
Armenian alphabet, we dance the kocharee, this is the appearance only,
whereas real self-establishment of the nation would be when people
did not tolerate humiliation, an illegitimate government, historical
foreign rule, the cultural distortion of one’s own personality.
Armenia has repeatedly undergone cultural distortion, in the
period of Mongol-Tatars, in the period of Persians, in the period
of Turks. With our national boasting, we are not only Russophiles
but also xenophiles. There is not a phenomenon of self-sufficiency
of our nation. Now everyone is talking about progress and great
success of Georgia, and everyone ascribes it to Sahakashvili. But on
what did Sahakashvili rely when he came to government. In fact, he
is an eccentric leader, he does not do everything in a correctly and
esthetically motivated manner. But he allied with the Georgian national
pride which was always there. In the years of the Soviet Union, Russian
would have been the official language of Transcaucasia, had Georgia
not rebelled. We owe to Georgia for avoiding final assimilation. The
fact that we are doing everything to return schools where the language
of teaching is Russian, and people’s attitude to it is positive is
evidence to lack of pride. If you ask someone in such a globalist
country like France, France will burst into a wave of revolutions
because the French people also have that national pride.
To sum up, what do we have and what do we lack in these twenty
centuries?
>>From our first government till the most recent one, I would like to
ask you what steps have been taken to ensure the “public cement”. We
established a language inspectorate, brought up the issue of signs,
but it was the beginning of the Republic of Armenia, the euphoria
with which we laid the foundation of our independence. Afterwards,
other leverages were put to use. In the late third year the backward
movement toward the worship of imperialism became evident. As a result,
behind the screen of alliance with Russia, we “russified” our entire
state, our economy, forgetting that in case a share of the economy
belongs to the economy of another country, in any unstable situation
we may face the military presence of this country. Problem No 1 is
to know how to handle public moods and the absence of national pride.
How can we restore national pride?
It is totally rooted in the mass psychology and sub-consciousness. For
years on we destroy our public projects, the state, public
organization, integration projects, cultural expansion, and amid
failure projects we suddenly ask the question if it is worthwhile to
respect this nation, protect this nation. Here is what they are doing
(especially the example of Diaspora Armenians illustrates it): they
take a couple of ethnic components and move them into their Russian
project, their American project, because they realize the Armenian
state project must require national pride and public professionalism.
Meanwhile, public professionalism is the professional skills required
for life in the society, beginning from how you cross the street and
finishing with your attitude to corruption. The Georgians criticize
themselves, say they are not inspired but they stress that they have
eliminated corruption, therefore they stay here, it is a topic of
national pride for them. They never say like the Armenians that they
stay to live here out of their love for the Lake Sevan, for Mount
Ararat, for their aunt, etc. They point to a public phenomenon.
Anush, do you consider Russia as an obstacle to our democratic
transition?
I am sure that Armenia is the country where democratic transition
will be the easiest, given the rules of the game change, which is
determined by several factors. Why am I confident that in Armenia
the democratic transition will be most productive and most effective?
Because we haven’t had an alternative model of the state, we will
accept the very first model that will be taught to us, because we
haven’t had a dictatorship or a theocracy. As soon as we step in
the game with new rules, Armenia will have the most active and easy
transformation.
Do we need change of the rules of the game?
The rules of the game must be changed downwards. This is the second
reason for democratic transition. The top government must wake up at
night and change the rules of the game. As a nation, we don’t accept
change of the rules of the game. They switched off electricity and
gas, we accepted it. Whatever comes from above, we accept. Whenever
the democratic model is introduced, we will accept it. The third
reason is that everyone in Armenia needs democracy, both superpowers,
Karabakh (at last the prime minister also confessed that there is
a better environment for business and economy in Karabakh than in
Armenia). Everyone needs it. The United States, Russia would like to
have a predictable country.
Anush, waking up one night seems difficult.
People call it political will, I call it there is no other way out,
otherwise the country will be ruined. The national pride of the
Armenian people has been replaced by national skepticism.
Maybe it is too young, still a youth?
What youth? We plunged into the tornado of our state building without
a public policy, this is the first problem of Armenia. An experienced
old man can’t be ingenuous and romantic. In 1988-1991 people took
into account that politics is done for people and with people. In
1991 the factor of people was removed from the agenda. And an entire
policy is implemented by several groups but such policy cannot enable
state building.
From: Baghdasarian
http://www.lragir.am/engsrc/interview23203.html