Post-Soviet Armenia: The New National Elite and the New National Narrative
Abstract
Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, Armenia has struggled to establish itself, with a faltering economy, emigration of the intelligentsia and the weakening of civil society. This book explores how a new national elite has emerged and how it has constructed a new national narrative to suit Armenia's new circumstances. The book examines the importance of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict with Azerbaijan, considers the impact of fraught relations with Turkey and the impact of relations with other neighbouring states including Russia, and discusses the poorly-developed role of the very large Armenian diaspora. Overall, the book provides a key overview to understanding the forces shaping all aspects of present-day Armenia.
... As the movement leaders worked to highlight the domestic roots of the uprising, Lukashenko consistently tried to create a boogeyman, pointing to fictitious threats from NATO troops at the border (RFE/RL, 2020b). In contrast to Armenia, where the Velvet Revolution was taking place in the backdrop of protracted conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh with Azerbaijan (Broers, 2020;Ghaplanyan, 2019), Lukashenko lacked such a security factor. Instead, he worked to color the movement as a "color revolution" in an effort to discredit the movement by raising speculations of external/Western intervention in the country (RFE/RL, 2020c). ...
... However, despite their shared legacies as post-Soviet states, both countries have been through different trajectories of political mobilization and civil society engagement in the post-Soviet period. Armenia, along with Ukraine, stands out as a case of frequent mass protests, large and small, in the post-Soviet period (Ghaplanyan, 2019). This is in contrast to the overall low levels of protests in the rest of the post-Soviet space (Levitsky & Way, 2010;Broers 2020). ...
This article examines the issue of democratic breakthroughs in highly geopoliticized, fractured regions in the post-Soviet space. While recognizing the political challenges of democratic transitions in such regions, it investigates specific conditions conducive to effective democratic openings in such regions. Using a case study method, it focuses on Armenia’s Velvet Revolution in 2018, which successfully challenged the previously-entrenched authoritarian regime in the country. This was particularly significant as it occurred in Russia’s security orbit. Armenia has been firmly wedged in Russia-centric regional organizations, in parallel to the deep bilateral ties between the two countries developed since the Soviet collapse. This article argues, first, that the efficacy of nonviolent civil disobedience campaign played a key role in ushering a peaceful democratic breakthrough. This strategy is also credited for explaining Russian restraint as the events unfolded throughout the year. Second, it also highlights the specific form of Armenia’s authoritarianism and the institutionalization of the state that it had produced. It posits an autocrat’s dilemma: greater state institutionalization to defend the “soft” authoritarian system at some point becomes a liability. This dual-track approach to the study of Armenia’s Velvet Revolution, the civil society and the state, is also used to explain Russian restraint as a factor in this case. The article concludes with a brief application of this dual-track transition model to the unyielding mass protests in Belarus, also occurring in Russia’s security orbit.
... While Iran and Russia share concerns over Western influence in the region, they also compete for economic and strategic influence. Turkey's growing presence in Azerbaijan challenges Iran's influence, especially given Ankara's push for a stronger regional role through military and economic agreements [41]. ...
The South Caucasus, comprising Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia, remains a pivotal region at the crossroads of North-South and East-West corridors. The region is rich in energy resources and communication opportunities, and it is entangled in unresolved historical conflicts and external competition. The new situation that emerged in the region after the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh war presumes a remaking of the new balance of power as well as the re-sharing of new zones of influence. The purpose of the study is to explore the evolving balance of power in the South Caucasus, focusing on the interplay between local actors and external stakeholders, and to evaluate the implications for regional stability. Extra-regional strategic interests and influences, as well as relevant policies and current risks of regional destabilization, are also explored. The research paper emphasizes the role of the contemporary geopolitical environment in the region by taking into consideration the key developments, regional responses, and broader implications. Comparative methods and discourse analysis of official statements are widely used in the research. Some quantitative data were also collected and analyzed for the projection of the evolving balance of power in the region. It has been concluded that the upcoming years will reveal whether the region can transition from a history of conflict to a future of cooperation, or whether new tensions will emerge from the shifting power dynamics. The region's future stability will depend on the capacity of both local and external actors to prioritize dialogue and sustainable development over confrontation.
... Rather, the post-Soviet ruling parties, by their nature, perform unique functions of controlling state power through CSOs, thereby ensuring the representation of the interests of their interests, and not public groups. In doing so, they can limit the mechanism of political responsibility and accountability of the authorities, recruit the political elite and institutions of political mobilization, and structure the political space according to their own considerations (Payaslian 2011;Ghaplanyan 2018;Csehi 2021). With the change in the functions of the ruling parties and the organizations controlled by them, they are transformed according to their group capabilities, which directly depend on the type of political regime they operate within. ...
While the surge of populism in the West has attracted considerable public attention, countries often considered to be on Europe’s ‘periphery’ have largely escaped both scholarly and general interest. Political developments in Armenia, Albania, Bosnia, Georgia, Northern Macedonia, Montenegro and Serbia are poorly understood politically and often opaque to non-specialists. Yet the societies, economies, politics and the aspirations of the people in these countries remain closely intertwined with the rest of Europe and its development. From the perspectives of scholars from the region, this book offers an informed assessment of the role, causes and political consequences of populism in areas that are important but often ignored parts of the European political landscape. With contributions by Ashot Aleksanyan | Nane Aleksanyan | Aneta Cekikj | Simon Clarke | Ruben Elamiryan | Reinhard Heinisch | Despot Kovačević | Klaudia Koxha | David Matsaberidze | Slaviša Orlović | Maja Savić-Bojanić | Avdi Smajljaj | Daniel Smilov | Ruzha Smilova | Nemanja Stankov
... In terms of its organizational implications, state weakness translates into weak institutions of state governance, paucity of civil society organizations, instability of party politics, lack of professional and community organizations, and business groups, to name a few. Institutional weakness was partly reflected in high levels of political mobilization and protest activity in both countries (Altstadt 2017;Ghaplanyan 2017;Levitsky & Way 2010). Born into conflict and war, both countries and their societies moved towards complete isolation from one another. ...
With growing multipolarity and geopolitical polarization, the role of international organizations as third-party actors within the framework of liberal peace, has been steadily declining over the past two decades. The most recent spike in armed conflict since 2014 has not been accompanied by an associated increase in peace agreements and negotiated settlements, as was the case in the 1990s. Considering the undersupply of conflict management by international organizations, the role of state actors in third-party roles has grown, often with weak normative support and commitment to nonviolent conflict management. This has often legitimized the use of violence as a strategy of coercive kinetic diplomacy. Drawing from historical analyses of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, this article examines the question as to whether the current period of growing illiberalism in peacebuilding is historically anachronistic. It introduces a framework of analysis and engages in concept development to understand and operationalize “illiberality of peacebuilding.”
... The ruling party, firmly entrenched in the modern post-Soviet political system, is not the key means of aggregation, articulation and representation of the interests of citizens in power structures, both on a national scale and in the regional, and even in the local segment of politics. The post-Soviet ruling parties, by their nature, perform unique functions of controlling state power from CSOs, ensuring the representation of the interests of their interests, and not public groups, limiting the mechanism of political responsibility and accountability of the authorities, recruiting the political elite and institutions of political mobilization, structuring the political space according to their own considerations (Csehi 2021;Ghaplanyan 2018;Payaslian 2011). With the change in the functions of the ruling parties and organizations controlled by them, they are transformed according to their group capabilities, which directly depend on the type of political regime. ...
This article comparatively analyzes the manifestations and various factors of political populism in the European post-transitional periphery. The main difficulty in mapping political populism in the European post-transitional periphery and defining populist parties most accurately is that, unlike most political forces in developed democracies, such parties do not belong to traditional parties. Moreover, their ideology combines the positions of both right and left parties, which makes it extremely difficult to place them on the classical right-left scale of the party spectrum.
The political agenda of the populist parties of the European post-transition peripheral countries has a different content, but it usually comes down to updating issues that are hushed up by the political establishment: protecting national and cultural identity, taking tough measures aimed at combating corruption and crime, protecting traditional family values, and even harsh criticism of the Council of Europe, the OSCE and the EU and their institutions. A distinctive feature of the populist forces was also that in their majority they called for the protection of the rights and interests of ordinary people and the wider use of the instruments of direct democracy, and thus directly opposed one of the fundamental principles of liberal democracy, taking into account the opinion of the minority.
The article analyzes the emergence of a populist environment, where the responsibility, trust and dignity of politicians are distorted, which in turn leads to a crisis of understanding and civiliarchic culture. The influence of populist parties has grown and most European post-transitional peripheral countries have at least one successful populist party, and populists are among the most influential parties. It is noteworthy that civil society organizations have identified the activities of populist leaders and their parties as the main threat facing the Eastern Partnership countries. Using populist technologies, mainly in the context of an election campaign, leaders and their political groups seek to manipulate public opinion and change the alignment of political parties in the European post-transitional periphery.
... It moves beyond the overly elite-centric approaches which have characterized several works on Armenian-Turkish relations (Giragosian, 2009;Ghaplanyan, 2017). It gives a broader view of how Turkey is 'Othered', which is important in furthering our understanding of Armenia, where foreign policy decision making increasingly has to consider broader popular sentiments of the large and influential Armenian Diaspora -largely comprised of Genocide survivor bloodlines. ...
Students of Armenia's foreign policy have broadly treated the troubled relations with neighboring Azerbaijan and Turkey as an unsurprising consequence of the long-standing Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. It is taken for granted that the volatile geopolitics of the South Caucasus region is the core rationale behind the perpetual confrontations and hostilities (Melander, 2001; Shaffer, 2009). However, this line of thinking tends to overlook the ideational landscape of the turbulence. This article argues that modern Armenia's political identity has been characterized by an acute sense of 'victimhood' arising from the memory of the Armenian Genocide, and that Turkey plays an important role as an 'Other', which enhances Armenia's self-image as a 'victim'. It suggests that negative images of Turkey and its ally Azerbaijan are deeply embedded, rather than being a product of manipulation. Yet the ruling elite has consistently appealed to the enemy images in attempts to assert Armenia's 'victimhood', divert attention from complex problems and legitimate its power by presenting country's plight as 'structurally inevitable' in its 'dog-eat-dog' neighborhood. Furthermore, it argues that Armenia's self-image of a 'victim' has significantly affected the treatment of Russia as an indispensable security ally.
The general provisions for the formulation and implementation of social policy,
which we have considered above, need regional adaptation. This is explained by
the existing socio-economic differences for objective reasons. These differences
are reflected in the different levels of administrative-territorial division of the
country. Only the registration of regional differences will allow to fully preserve
and develop human potential, and in this case it will not matter in which region
the object of social policy. In this regard, the socio-economic typology of the
regions on the factors influencing the formation of regional social policy is
important.
The 2018 “Velvet Revolution” in Armenia has renewed scholarly interest in post-Soviet revolution studies. This paper explores the core narratives underlying post-Rose Revolution and post-Velvet Revolution identity construction in Georgian and Armenian political discourses. More specifically, it examines the core narratives employed by the Georgian and Armenian revolution leaders Mikheil Saakashvili and Nikol Pashinyan in constructing the political identities of “New Georgia” and “New Armenia.” The findings suggest that the core narratives dominating Saakashvili’s discourse on post-revolution Georgia are as follows: “democratic Georgia” and “laboratory of democratic reforms,” “stereotype breaker,” “European Georgia,” “peaceful Georgia,” “powerful Georgia” and “security contributor,” determined to homecoming to Europe. Pashinyan’s discourse has revolved around the notion of “proud Armenians,” who established “people’s government” capable of carrying out an “economic revolution.” In contrast to Saakashvili’s emphasis on escaping post-Soviet geopolitical space and gaining centrality in the EU-driven socio-political order, Pashinyan’s discourse does not suggest foreign policy U-turns. It concludes that while the 2003 “Rose Revolution” marked fundamental shifts in self-other conceptions within the Georgian political discourse, the post-revolution Armenian discourse has not experienced dramatic identity-driven transformations.
The series Eurasiatica. Quaderni di Studi su Balcani, Anatolia, Iran, Caucaso e Asia Centrale was born to deal specifically with a wide area, composite but interrelated that, in addition to the traditional historical and cultural significance, is taking on an increasing political and economic value. The placement of this series within Edizioni Ca’ Foscari originates at the same time from a strong tradition of studies on the Balkans, Caucasus and Central Asia in our University, where the main languages of these regions are taught - Albanian, Bulgarian, modern Greek, Romanian, Serbian-Croatian, Russian, Persian, Turkish, Armenian and Georgian. The studies published in this series are intended to provide a tool for high scientific and multidisciplinary research in different fields (archaeology, art, anthropology, ethnology and ethnomusicology, linguistics, philology, folklore, religion, history, geopolitics).
