Arto Vaun
Post-Soviet countries are rough and tumble places, full of
intense paradox, humour, microaggression, and beauty. There are fifteen
former Soviet states, each with its own cultural and socioeconomic
components and struggles. They have all been grappling with the ghost of
the Soviet Union in different ways, but the one thing they've all
agreed on is this: "Capitalism good, Socialism bad". One of the first
things to go during the collapse of the Soviet Union were all the
statues of Lenin and Marx. It was a collective sigh of relief, a venting
of all the misery which that authoritarian system had inflicted on so
many lives for most of the 20th century.
Problem was, those statues, and the oppression they
represented, were quickly replaced by new figures of oppression -
oligarchs with their hyper-capitalism, buoyed (however indirectly) by
the neoliberal ideas that have been dragging the West down since the 1970s.
That has been Armenia
since its independence in 1991. But a few weeks ago, a different
Armenia woke up, as if from a 27-year coma. And the euphoria and
empowerment of that awakening have been intense and palpable, from
Yerevan to the remotest villages.
