COUNTRY OF PREVAILING FASCISM

Apparently, the number of people realizing that the propaganda of fascism in Armenia is elevated to the rank of state policy is increasing, for the most part in the post-Soviet space. Reaction to public indignation provoked in regional countries at the glorification of Hitler’s accomplices by Yerevan also confirms the neo-Nazi nature of Armenia.

Gratitude Armenian style

Russia has been trying to cancel out any attempts to glorify fascism for years. While historical polemics with Ukraine and the Baltic countries have a clearly pronounced geopolitical background as these states follow a Western policy against the interests of Moscow, the glorification of hitlerites in Armenia is a real surprise for Russia. After all, Armenia is Russia's well-known outpost in the South Caucasus, a country that entirely depends on Moscow and enjoys Russian security shield. Therefore, the majority of Russian public and political elite recognizes Armenian actions as nothing but a treachery.

Propaganda of fascism in Armenia has long been conducted at the state level. The authorities give a green light to naming streets in Yerevan, printing books, minting coins, and making films that praise fascist sycophants of Armenian nationality. However, a flaunty opening ceremony of the monument to Garegin Nzhdeh, the leader of Armenian SS legion, in the center of Yerevan by the president Serzh Sargsyan and the government and parliamentary officials has never sparked such a massive public resonance.

The monument to Nzhdeh in Yerevan was erected in 2016. Armenian authorities did not even bother that their action would inevitably provoke a strong denunciation from many countries that have contributed to the victory over fascism, primarily from Russia, where thousands of its citizens have suffered from the horrors of the Armenian legion during the World War II.

The first expression of this discontent was a petition on Change.org demanding the demolition of the monument in Yerevan, and signed by more than 200,000 Russian citizens.

Russian media, public and official figures are becoming increasingly alarmed in connection with the glorification of fascists in Armenia. Last month, the State Duma of the Russian Federation held a round-table discussion on legislative aspects of fighting with the glorification of fascism and the revival of neo-Nazism. It was stated that Armenia, which positions itself as Russia's strategic ally, was one of the countries building memorials to collaborators and accomplices of fascism.

A group of Russian parliamentarians and members of the Public Chamber, analysts and lawyers have set up a working group to prepare an appeal to the International Court of Justice on the facts of the glorification of fascism in Armenia and some other post-Soviet countries.

“As a matter of fact, Nzhdeh is glorified on two separate occasions. First, as the member of a criminal gang, which has fought against Russian statehood and faced a court martial before the revolution. The same Nzhdeh has later emerged as a Nazi accomplice. Now we can see a monument honoring twice-anti-Russian figure and built on a prominent location in Armenia, which declares itself as a Russian ally. It is a rare occasion indeed,” said one of the initiators of the working group, member of the Public Chamber of the Union State of Russia and Belarus, Dionis Kaptar.

The glorification of Nzhdeh causes serious indignation not only in Russia. The well-known Israeli political scientist Arye Gut writes: “The history will never forget the cruelty and barbarity of the 20,000-strong Armenian Legion of the Nazi Wehrmacht during the World War II, one of the founders of which was fascist Nzhdeh. Official records also confirm these historical facts... Thanks to the Armenian Legion, Simferopol, Eupatoria, Alushta, Kerch, Feodosia and other regions of Western Crimea were cleaned of Jews.”

Anti-Russian hysteria in Armenia

In response to Russian public and political protests over the glorification of fascism in Armenia, Armenian ruling regime prefers to further inflate the degree of anti-Russian hysteria in the country. At the same time, Armenians cannot provide any counterarguments, since there are simply no facts refuting Nzhdeh’s services rendered to Wehrmacht. Moreover, in 2004 a book titled “Garegin Nzhdeh and His Teaching” was published in Yerevan, which recognized the fact that back in 1940 Nzhdeh, in agreement with the SD and Abwehr, initiated and organized the arrival of a group of young Armenians from Bulgaria to Germany for learning reconnaissance and sabotage activities. After completion of training in 1943, this group was dispatched to Crimea to work on the rear lines of the Soviet army in the North Caucasus.

Despite these confessions, Armenian leaders continue exposing their fascist nature in nervous hysteria. The Vice-Speaker of the Armenian parliament Eduard Sharmazanov head off with the following malignant remark: “The monument to Garegin Nzhdeh in Yerevan is none of Russian business... Garegin Nzhdeh is our national hero.”

Some Armenians have opted for explicit mockery of Russia insulting the memory of the fallen in the Great Patriotic War by proposing an initiative to rename the Russian city of Vladimir to Nzhdeh “in memory of the hero of the Armenian people, who has been tortured in the prison Vladimir Central”.

It seems that this is the true price of Armenia's “loyalty” to Russia, its “reliability” as a stronghold of Russia in the South Caucasus. After all, the “Armenian show” is run by the followers of the Nazi henchman Nzhdeh, who is guilty of the death of thousands of Russians, Azerbaijanis, Turks, Jews, Crimeans and other peoples.

Modern Armenian authorities continue the bloody traditions of the founder of Tseghakronism (Armenian youth movement, ). Hence, the implementation of the longstanding dream of the Armenian fascists, including Nzhdeh, about “Armenia for the Armenians”. After all, this country is the only monoethnic state in the polyethnic region. In the late 1980s, after the expulsion of the last 200,000 Azerbaijanis, the indigenous population of historical Azerbaijani provinces of Irevan, Goycha, and Zangezur currently occupied by Armenia, and later the representatives of other ethnic minorities, including Russians, only the “titular Armenian nation” resides in this country.

In fact, official Yerevan has been trying to obscure by all possible means the fact that the state ideology of Armenia and the ruling Republican Party (RPA) is based on the racial teaching called Tseghakronism founded by Nzhdeh.

Tseghakronism or racism?

“In Armenian, the term Tseghakron means tribe, race. By adding the suffix -ism, Armenian authorities get Tseghakronism. But when they speak or write in other languages, in particular in Russian, they do not add this suffix to the exact translation of tseghakron to avoid any connections with racism due to the ambiguity of the term and replace it with the Armenian tseghakronism,” told political analyst Fuad Akhundov to Interfax-Azerbaijan.

Akhundov also draws attention to the symbolism of the ruling RPA, which is very similar to the symbolism of the Third Reich. “The RPA logo depicts an eagle with stretched wings, which is almost an exact replica of the coat of arms of the Nazi Germany. There is nothing wrong with an eagle symbolizing a party or a country, but there is a good reason that the symbols of both the RPA and the Third Reich match exactly… Even if the symbolism of RPA may be disputed, the translation of the term tseghakronism verbally means racism and Nazism in all the languages, including the Russian and English. But the ruling RPA does not intentionally translate the term to deceive the Russian and world public, as the true meaning of words Nazism and racism are widely known throughout the world,” said F. Akhundov.

According to Akhundov, the State Archives of the Russian Federation preserves the testimonies of Peter Kamsarakan, a hereditary Armenian who has served in various intelligence agencies of the Nazi Germany.

“It was Kamsarakan who drew the attention of the Nazi leadership to Garegin Nzhdeh, claiming that he was ‘a staunch supporter of Germany, whom, I believe, one could absolutely trust.’ Nzhdeh himself told Kamsarakan that during his stay in the U.S. he had founded a fascist organization titled “Racists”. “Racists”, not “Tseghakronists”! In other words, in the 1940s, the Armenian Kamsarakan called the teaching of Nzhde as racism in Russian,” said F. Akhundov.

Akhundov also noted that this fascist ideology had been banned since the creation, for almost hundred years, in tsarist Russia, in the USSR, and even during the first years of independent Armenia under the presidency of Levon Ter-Petrosian. His successor, President Robert Kocharian, has actively promoted Tseghakronism to the rank of state policy. “Nothing else would be expected from a person who had proclaimed the thesis about the genetic incompatibility of Armenians and Azerbaijanis speaking at the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe. This statement is very similar to fascist declarations about the purity of Aryan blood and incompatibility with the Slavs and Jews. Both theses, however, fail to withstand scrutiny as Armenians have long been getting with their Azerbaijani neighbors in Iran, Russia, Turkey, and even in Azerbaijan. This is not true only in Armenia, which the modern fascists such as Kocharian and Serzh Sargsyan have turned into a monoethnic state in a multi-ethnic and very diverse region. This criminal fascist group has expelled absolutely all the peoples from Armenia. Even Hitler could only dream of a state for only one nation,” said the political scientist.

Sargsyan has never concealed his bloodthirsty and fascist character. “In fact, Sargsyan is one of the culprits of the Khojaly genocide, when Armenian fascists brutally killed over 600 civilians of the Azerbaijani city of Khojaly, mostly women, children and the elders. Later, talking about the bloody night of February 26, 1992 to journalist Thomas de Waal, Serzh Sargsyan said: ‘Before Khojaly, the Azerbaijanis thought that they could joke with us, they thought that Armenians cannot abuse the civilian population. We have managed to break this (stereotype).’ Finally, it is Sargsyan, who has decided to build a memorial of the fascist Garegin Nzhdeh in the most prominent place in Yerevan. Earlier, Armenian authorities would limit themselves to only renaming the streets and stations of the Yerevan metro to Nzhdeh but in 2016, they finally exposed their fascist nature by turning the Nzhdeh memorial into a place of worship. President Sargsyan has personally laid flowers to the monument of his ideological guru. If his guru was a fascist, then the student is obviously a fascist too. The entire civilized world should consider the actions of official Yerevan in the region, as well as the possible consequences of the neo-fascist political clique ruling Armenia very seriously,” concluded F. Akhundov.

It is no wonder that the true essence of the Armenian state is exposed even to the countries friendly with Armenia, particularly Russia, which declares itself as Armenia's main ally and the guarantor of Armenian security.