Culture of protest: the symbols of Armenia’s Velvet Revolution

Tigran Amiryan

The elevation of protest leader Nikol Pashinyan to the post of prime minister last month was the dramatic culmination of Armenia’s peaceful revolution. Immediately after the deputies in parliament voted for Pashinyan, a truckload of snow was brought from the slopes of Mount Aragats to Yerevan’s central square and dumped in the middle of the jubilant crowd. In the warm light of a sunny spring evening, the joyful protestors staged a celebratory snowball fight. 

This hail of snow was not just a bizarre coda to the weeks of protests that swept the country and brought the streets of Yerevan to a standstill, but reflected the culture of the demonstrations themselves and the beliefs of the young people who drove them.

Recap: Anthony Bourdain's 'Parts Unknown' Visits Armenia

Bridget Hallinan

 

Every Sunday, we live vicariously through Anthony Bourdain's globe-hopping, face-stuffing adventures on CNN's Parts Unknown. This week, he takes us to Armenia: a true "part unknown" for the TV host, as it's his first time in the country. With the accompaniment of Serj Tankian—lead singer of System of a Down, and an Armenian-American—Bourdain dives deep into Armenia's history. There are painful discussions (the Armenian genocide in 1915, when an estimated 1.5 million Armenians were killed by the Ottoman government; the diaspora; the earthquake in 1988), as well as optimistic glimpses into the country's future, bolstered by a booming IT industry and impressive after school programs. “Armenia remains a dream, a subject of stories; it is still, against all odds, a place,” Bourdain said during the show.

The Armenian Velvet Revolution is over: Pashinian voted in as prime minister

Monica Ellena

 

The honking started early. Around Grigor Lusavorich (“The Illuminator”) Church, vehicles of all shapes and ages set out hours before Armenia’s National Assembly was due to convene to appoint the country’s new prime minister. Ancient Soviet Ladas and shiny SUVs alike were driven down the central Tigran Mets, all flapping the Armenian orange-blue-red flag, and all beeping, hard. It was the summons to the square.

Not that people needed it. After weeks of protests that have transformed Armenia’s politics from a sluggish Soviet Lada to a speedy Lamborghini in a matter of three weeks, Republic Square has become the pulsing heart of a whole country called to wake up from its lethargic post-Soviet stillness.

Can Armenia's new PM address locals' frustration?

It almost doesn't look like a market anymore: Firdaus bazaar is hidden on a side street just a few minutes walk from the central square in the Armenian capital. Towards the beginning of the road, a few vendors sit quietly, selling patterned aprons, women's underwear and neatly arranged rows of children's shoes in pastel colors. But the selection of stalls thins as the road continues. Most of the improvised stores are shuttered.
Just under a year ago the government officially closed the market which sprang up in Yerevan in the 1990s, after the fall of the Soviet Union. The authorities plan to build a whole new neighborhood here in the city center, a modern architectural complex which will reportedly include apartments, offices, and an underground parking lot.

Armenia's 'Velvet Revolution': A masterclass in socialism

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.

Armenia crisis: Opposition leader suspends nationwide protests

Armenian opposition leader Nikol Pashinyan has suspended nationwide protests after the governing Republican Party indicated it would support his bid to be interim prime minister.

The demonstrations brought much of Armenia to a standstill on Wednesday.

Mr Pashinyan told supporters that the party's position needed clarifying but protests would be suspended for a day.

Republicans blocked Mr Pashinyan's bid to become prime minister in a parliamentary vote on Tuesday.

In a statement on Wednesday, the party did not mention Mr Pashinyan by name but said they would back a candidate nominated by a third of MPs at next week's vote in parliament. It said it would not put forward its own candidate, leaving Mr Pashinyan as the only nominee.

Is 2018 the New 1988? Some Thoughts on the Karabakh Movement and the “Velvet Revolution”

The Second Armenian Revolution?

There is a famous saying attributed to Chinese Communist Chzhou Enlai, that it is too early to judge the results of the French Revolution. Unfortunately, in reality this famous quote is a result of a misunderstanding: Enlai was referring to the French protests of 1968, but the conversation was taking place in 1972; indeed, it was too early to tell. In any case, it is obviously too early to judge the “Velvet Revolution.” First of all, it is far from over. Regardless of who becomes interim prime minister and whoever wins the elections, the revolution cannot be considered accomplished until the corrupt system, which I would call  “feudal-oligarchic,” is dismantled. However, already one of the most commonly discussed topics in Armenia is the comparison between the events of the recent weeks and another great movement that took place in Armenia exactly 30 years ago – the Karabakh Movement (I am using the term “Karabakh Movement” rather than “Artsakh Movement,” as this was the commonly used term at the time; the historical term “Artsakh” was rediscovered later, during the course of the movement.)

'Syrian refugees improve Armenia's social fabric'

Tamila Varshalomidze

 

The presence of Syrian refugees in Armenia's mono-ethnic society has been celebrated in the capital Yerevan through the personal initiative of an art curator and three photographers who have been documenting the migration since the eruption of the war in Syria in 2011.

A documentary photo exhibition that opened on Friday [December 15, 2017] was called Home to Home, to highlight the fact that the 20,000 new arrivals were descendants of Armenians who fled from Turkey to Syria during another war more than 100 years ago.

The Intimate Past and Uncertain Future of Soviet Concrete Architecture

Elena Goukassian

A few months ago, news broke in Russia that the government planned to raze almost 8,000 apartment buildings in Moscow and relocate their residents into newer structures. Although the plan sounds like both a logistical and a social disaster, not to mention a mass infringement on the individual rights of the city’s residents, I must admit that my first reaction was (almost embarrassingly) to take the side of the authorities.

The apartment buildings in question are those hideous concrete structures that sprang up like mushrooms in the postwar period across the whole of communist Eastern Europe. I thought people might be happy to see these eyesores — and the memories of the Khrushchev era and the dystopian realities of communism that went with them — finally meet their demise. I grew up in a family from Sofia, Bulgaria and Yerevan, Armenia; I’ve heard my fair share of complaints about these behemoths. Having lived my early childhood and several extended stays in Sofia inside a one-room apartment in one of these buildings, I’ve also experienced them first-hand.

Armenia’s rising tech scene: The new Silicon Valley of the former Soviet Union

Gev Balyan

 

Armenia was once the center of IT innovation for the USSR. A turbulent history has stifled the economy, but things are starting to look up for the Caucasus republic. A highly-skilled, post-soviet engineering workforce and a diaspora of advocates, combined with new government initiatives, are igniting renewed growth in Armenia’s IT sector. These businesses are creating new technologies — from award-winning mobile apps to world-first presentation tools — recognized across the globe and many startups are making their way to the US.

The Armenian tech industry is growing at an annual rate of 20 percent, greatly exceeding the country’s two percent economic growth. Annual tech revenues from some 400 IT companies make up $475 million and by 2018, it is estimated this industry will be the dominant sector driving new wealth for the economy.

Armenia Today

Knarik O. Meneshian

Two things should fill a person’s soul with wonder and reverence—a starry sky above and morality in one’s heart.
—Karekin Nejdeh*

After 13 years, my husband and I finally returned to Armenia at the end of April 2016 for a two-month visit – this time not as volunteer teachers, but as tourists.

Our first impression of the capital was that of amazement and delight. Zvartnots Airport was modern and efficient and the uniformed staff was professional and welcoming. Yerevan appeared new, fresh, and vibrant. New buildings stood tall and gleaming; flowers adorned select areas of the city, where before there were none.

There was an array of new hotels, restaurants, cafes, eateries, stores, and other businesses, all with neatly groomed and uniformed staff. There were new traffic lights, and both pedestrians and motorists alike obeyed them – a remarkable and much welcomed change from years past.

There were more public restrooms, even in the outlying regions. A standard fee of 100 drams or 21 cents was charged, which helped pay the women who collected the fees and maintained the restrooms–again, a remarkable and much welcomed change from years past.

Regime Change from the Ground Up

Serouj Aprahamian

 

Following a tense, 14-day renegade takeover of a Yerevan police station, Armenians throughout the world have increasingly been discussing conditions in their fragile republic. While virtually everyone, including the president of the country himself, agrees that radical change is needed, the jury is still out on how to achieve it.

Another Armenian Summer of Discontent

 Raffi Elliot

The Armenian capital has been rocked by two weeks of continued civil disobedience which began on July 17, as 30 armed veterans, calling themselves “Sasna Dzrer” after the Armenian epic of the same name, crashed a dump-truck through the gates of a police depot in the Yerevan district of Erebuni. A brief gunfight led to the death of Police Colonel Artur Vanoyan and the capture of eight hostages (including the infamous deputy-chief of police, Valery Osipyan) as well as the capture of the facility by the gunmen. The gunmen, most of which are celebrated veterans of the 1990-1994 Karabagh War, have called for the liberation of Jirair Sefilian, a fellow Karabagh War commander-turned-activist, who heads a fringe political faction known as the Founding Parliament. The hostage-takers initially also called for the immediate resignation of President Serzh Sargsyan and Prime Minister Hovik Abrahamian as a precondition for further negotiations, before dropping this condition entirely.

Armenia Revolts: Forget Social Protest, This Time It’s Serious

Grigor Atanesian

That thousands of Yerevan residents should take to the streets, as they have done every day this past week, is no real surprise. It is, after all, the fourth summer in a row that mass protests have gripped the Armenian capital.

In 2013, demonstrators protested price hikes for public transportation. In 2014 it was pension reform. In 2015, what started as a protest against higher electricity bills became the so-called Electric Yerevan movement that Russian state-controlled media hyperbolically compared to Ukraine’s Maidan.

But this summer’s protest is different – not so much in form, but in character. No longer are the demands social and economic; now the ultimatum is regime change. Yerevan residents are rallying to voice their support for an armed militant group that seized a police station in the Erebuni district on July 17.

The militants are demanding the release of all political prisoners and the resignation of the president, Serzh Sargsyan. They call themselves “the Sassoun daredevils” after the title of a medieval Armenian epic about the strongmen of Sassoun – a historic region of the country – and their struggle against Arab invaders.

Among these latter-day daredevils are two heroes of the 1992-1994 Karabakh war between Armenia and Azerbaijan – Pavlik Manukyan and Araik Khandoyan. Both are renowned throughout Armenia and the international Armenian diaspora.

Most daredevils members support The Founding Parliament movement, the main opposition force in the country. One of their first demands was the release of Jirair Sefilian, leader of The Founding Parliament, who was arrested in June.

The daredevils released all their hostages on 23 July on the condition that a press centre be erected in the compound they control. But the authorities responded in the usual way for a former Soviet republic.

State-controlled television made no mention of the takeover of the police station for the first two days. Police dispersed supporters with excessive force. Video cameras captured riot police kicking demonstrators who had fallen to the ground.

Road workers suddenly decided to lay new asphalt in front of the presidential palace and all official government spokespeople seemingly disappeared. Only on 22 July, five days after the armed conflict began, did a notice appear on the president’s website condemning the militants.

Two days ago it was reported that the militants had once again taken in hostages, though this information is disputed and difficult to verify.

The national security service has called the takeover a terrorist attack, but the number of Armenians who disagree with that assessment is growing daily.

There is a deep aversion to violence in the country. The bloody ethnic conflict with neighboring Azerbaijan and the terrorist attack against the parliament in 1999, when masked gunmen killed eight deputies, is still fresh in people’s minds. Yet many Armenians have come round to supporting the daredevils.

Armenia is also too small for corruption and crime to remain hidden. A consensus has formed that the authorities use their monopoly on violence for personal gain. People remember how President Serzh Sargsyan came to power by suppressing mass protests that followed presidential elections in 2008. They remember how police used force to disperse the protesters, causing the deaths of eight demonstrators and one soldier.

The Founding Parliament movement has never advocated the use of force to achieve a regime change, and the seizure of the police station seems to be a gesture of despair from some of their veteran members.

For years, Jirair Sefilian and his supporters took to the streets with placards, recorded video messages, traveled around the country in caravans and used every possible peaceful means of protest available. As a result, they were arrested, given hefty prison sentences and beaten by people in civilian clothes.

Armenia celebrates 25 years of independence in 2016, although it is difficult to find a single citizen who would characterise the country as free and independent. According to official statistics, more than 600,000 people emigrated from Armenia during those years; unofficially, it may have been as many as a million.

Like Ukraine, Armenia was slated to sign an association agreement creating a free-trade zone with Europe in November 2013, but after a closed meeting with Vladimir Putin in Moscow, Sargsyan announced that he was rejecting integration with Europe in favor of joining the Russian-led Eurasian Economic Union.

Over the past decade, Armenia has handed Russia control over many of its strategic facilities, including the Armenian nuclear power plant, Armsberbank (the state bank that later became a branch of Russia’s VTB bank), the Hrazdan thermal power plant, and many other assets.

And yet, over the past five years, Russia has sold Azerbaijan, Armenia’s main foreign enemy, weapons worth more than $4bn. Azerbaijan used those Russian weapons during a four-day clash with Armenia in April that resulted in the deaths of more than 100 Armenian soldiers.

A consensus is forming in Armenian society that corruption and the authoritarian regime are the main problems facing the country, and that they are destroying the economy and threatening Armenia’s sovereignty. The groundswell of support for the Sassoun daredevils, taking in everyone from retirees to youth carrying smartphones, is an indication that the ruling elites are not in for an easy ride.

"The Moscow Times," July 27, 2016
"The Guardian," July 30, 2016

Arsinee Khanjian: “The entire diaspora should stand on its feet and stop this ridiculous situation in our homeland”

Armenian-Canadian actress and producer Arsinee Khanjian was among hundreds of people detained in Yerevan, Armenia, on Wednesday, July 27, near a police station that has been occupied by gunmen for 10 days.

The gunmen seized the police post in the Armenian capital on July 17, killing one officer, wounding several others and taking those remaining hostage to demand freedom for Jirayr Sefilyan, a jailed opposition figure. The hostages have been gradually released since then.

Political Violence Through a Different Lens

Aram Ghoogasian

The 20th century, violent as it was, saw the rise of nonviolence as a prominent strategy. Consequently, it also changed the public perception of violent uprisings.

Erebuni, a district in the Armenian capital, is currently the site of such an uprising, one that comes on the heels of the Armenian government’s overreaction to a hostage standoff at a Yerevan police station.

The motives of the hostage takers and the protesters who are responding to the detention of civilians without charge have been commented on extensively enough in the press. But many professional and amateur commentators alike have attempted to moralize the use of violence, often prefacing their columns with the disclaimer that they in no way condone violence committed by either the state or the populace.

Three Questions and Two Observations on the Stand-off in Yerevan

Nareg Seferian

What is the plan for an endgame?

Getting into a situation without knowing how to get out is a desperate act. The group calling itself Sasna Tsrer must have had some idea as to how this whole scenario would play out. It does not seem too clear, however. The demands are quite clear. But they are also very extreme. Do the members of Sasna Tsrerhonestly expect their demands to be fully met? If not, then how do they imagine this stand-off ending? Do they imagine that ending to be of some benefit to the country, to the people of Armenia?

Maybe I am physically and figuratively at a distance from Erebouni, but it simply does not make full sense to me.

I Am an Accomplice

Patrick Azadian

 

Every nation suffers from certain illnesses and insecurities. The Armenian people are no different. While we are not a homogeneous bunch by any means, the absence of genuine self-criticism and loyalty to absolutism in our society are plagues that have sapped our potential as a nation and have bred victimhood and helplessness at every juncture of our recent history. They also hinder our progress as a people on our ancestral lands.

The recent events in Armenia, the taking of hostages in the Erebuni district of Yerevan by a group of war veterans and the killing of an Armenian citizen, has brought to fore some of the worst features in our people. While some politicians and self-proclaimed leaders are busy labeling the armed takeover of the police station in a negative light, others are outspoken in blindly throwing their support behind the armed activists, justifying the act based on the fact that some government officials have done worse things to our people. And they have. But once again, we have forgotten our collective responsibility of how we have arrived at this unpleasant crossroad. Many of us are satisfying our desire (not a hunger, because if we all had an insatiable hunger, we wouldn’t be where we are today) for positive change by proclaiming symbolic statements in support of the armed group and looking for saviors. Others are using the opportunity to strike a more ‘moderate’ note by claiming that acts of violence are not a solution to the ills of our society and implying that we are slowly and diligently making progress.

From civil disobedience to armed violence: political developments in Armenia

Armine Ishkanian

 

On Sunday 17 July, a group of armed men, calling themselves the Sasna Dzrer (Daredevils of Sassoon) seized the Erebuni police station in Yerevan and took several policemen hostage. As of today, 19 July, the siege continues, but there has been little proper analysis of why this event occurred.

According to the statement released by Sasna Dzrer on Sunday, their “primary demand” is the resignation of Armenia’s president Serzh Sargsyan and the establishment of a new government. Additional demands include the release of their friend and comrade in arms Jirair Sefilyan, along with other political prisoners.

Use of Brutal Force Against Citizens Will Not Solve Armenia’s Problems

Ara Khachatourian

As a standoff continues after a group calling itself the “Daredevils of Sasoun” seized a police station in Yerevan on Sunday, July 17, 2016, an appalling reality is taking shape across the city, which warrants addressing because it goes counter to any resolution that might be on the horizon for the crisis at hand. It can be said that the situation stems from the public’s desperation and exacerbation of the current socio-economic situation in Armenia.