Armine Ishkanian
In 1978. Vaclav Havel wrote The Power of the Powerless, in
which he argued against the communist regime, maintaining that it
forced people to “live in a lie”. For Havel, the resistance against the
lie was to begin living in the truth and to challenge one’s own
powerlessness through recognising one’s agency. Fast forward 40 years,
and we are now witnessing a new velvet revolution in post-socialist
Armenia, a country which proclaimed its independence from Soviet rule in
1991, but which has long struggled to create a democracy. More than
anything else, this is a revolution about values. It is about the values
of Armenian society and its domestic, socio-economic and political
realities. The revolution is not about geopolitics or foreign relations.
