"ARMENIAN-STYLE" INDEPENDENCE

There are quite interesting examples of sarcasm and humour in the Soviet political anecdotes that one comes across from time to time. According to one of them, the USSR stops sending aid to one of the poor African countries. Its president enters the government's assembly room, casts his eye over his comrades-in-arms and speaks solemnly: "Comrades, there's no food left in the country. What do you propose?" The defence minister suggests: "Let's declare war on America!" The president is shocked, "But we shall lose, won't we?" "We shall lose," the minister agrees. "Therefore we declare war and immediately surrender. They are obliged to feed prisoners-of-war!" This is naturally an anecdote whose very nature is intended to be grotesque. A similar topic, but quite a realistic one, is unfolding in today's Armenia.

According to a survey conducted among the Armenian population in September this year by staff of the "Gallup International Association" company, 54.4 per cent of respondents would like the republic to be annexed by Russia. Only 29 per cent of those questioned stated that Armenia should not join up with any other country while only 11.1 per cent of respondents wanted Armenia to join the European Union.

In the view of many experts, whether this sensational outcome was to be expected is a matter of dispute. The figures obtained reveal an extremely typical similarity with those of another survey conducted by Gallup International a year ago. In the autumn of 2014 approximately 57 per cent of the residents of Armenia stated that they welcomed the progress towards joining the Customs Union, while only 27 per cent were opposed to it.

Finally, back in December 2013, "Asia-Plus", which was quoted by many news agencies, and in particular by the "Rosbalt" agency, circulated the results of a public opinion poll, according to which 66 per cent of those citizens of Armenia questioned stated that the republic's exit from the Soviet Union had been more damaging than beneficial. This is a unique record of the nostalgia for former times, common throughout the former Soviet republics, something like the "Beatles'" hit record "Back in the USSR".

This nostalgia for the USSR which is gathering strength is one thing, but the readiness to sacrifice the independence acquired by your country "here and now" and to dissolve it in another state is something quite different. Naturally, it would be interesting to see what the results of a survey would be, if respondents were asked to say what they would believe Armenia's prospects were, if it was proposed that Armenia should become France's sixth overseas department or the USA's 51st state. Something else is important here, namely the frighteningly high percentage of citizens of Armenia who are prepared to give up their country's independence. 

The reaction of the Armenian establishment has turned out to be highly indicative. Officials and pro-government media have simply tried to ignore the shocking results of the survey. The opposition forces cried out that this was a betrayal, a "stab in the back", and that the results of the survey had been falsified on the orders of some kind of "dark forces". True, it is not so easy to refute the sociologists' data. The survey which exposed such sad results was conducted according to the "face to face" method, in which 1,105 citizens of different professions, sex, age and abode took part. There are no grounds for disbelieving the results of the poll, especially as it was conducted by the respectable "Gallup International Association" and not by yet another "resource-centre".

It is understandable that such unpatriotic moods are being fuelled by economic upheavals to a considerable extent. So, according to a report from the Armenian media, official data puts the poverty level in the country at more than 32 per cent, but unofficial data makes it as much as 40 per cent. Unemployment is as high as 20 per cent of the able-bodied population. In the Armenian countryside unemployment is as low as 6 per cent, but in the towns and cities it is 25 per cent. In a country where, during the last census the size of the population was beefed up to the desired three million by blatantly stretching points and falsifying the figures, no less than 300,000 children do in fact live without their fathers, because the men from these families are working abroad to earn a living, mainly in Russia.

It is not just a matter of social upheavals or so much about that. In Armenia unemployment, poverty and "the labour drain" which destroy the family come on top of the lack of any hope of a change for the better. Naturally, today the situation in the country is better than it was in the 1990s when power cuts radiated across the country. But in Yerevan it is hardly likely that they have forgotten how on the eve of the "energy-Maydan" which frightened everyone, representatives of Armenia's power grid warned that, without serious capital investment in the energy sector, these radiating power cuts might become a reality once again in the near future. The situation in the country is systematically deteriorating, and joining the Eurasian Economic Union has not resulted in any positive changes. Moreover, an ever increasing number of citizens no longer see their future in this country.

This is not only, or to be more correct, not so much caused by an absence of patriotism, but is the direct outcome of fundamental errors made during the building of Armenian statehood itself. In Armenia they secretly recognise that the country has simply not existed as an independent state. In Yerevan of course it is customary to ignore it when this state of affairs is established beyond the bounds of Armenia, but now, against the backdrop of the shocking results of the public opinion poll, the situation is different. Having hopelessly marred its relations with Azerbaijan and Turkey, Armenia has found itself "chucked out" of the region's economic life. It could not even exist theoretically without building a viable economy. No-one has abolished the rules governing the development of society.

At the same time, it does however look like the crisis of statehood in Armenia began much earlier than it is customary to believe, back on the eve of the First World War, when they were committed in Armenian circles to sweet dreams of "a Western Armenia" on Turkish lands. At that time, mutinies occurred in the rear-guard of the Turkish army, and the Turkish civilian population was brutally massacred, the Treaty of Sevres envisaged the setting up of an Armenian state in six vilayets [first-level administrative divisions] of Turkey, but then it all came to nothing.

Naturally, after Turkey won in the war of independence and the Treaty of Sevres was replaced by the Lausanne Agreements, many Ar-menian leaders did actually feel that they had been tricked. Sensible politicians however understood that, after the conclusion of the Lausanne Agreements on "the return of Mount Ararat", they needed to forget about the six vilayets and "Western Armenia". But by that time, the Armenian political smart operators had begun to actively earn good money out of the yearning for virtual "Western Armenia", the dreams of returning Agri Dag, Van [province] and so forth. In Europe and the USA, various types of "national committees" and "federations" were set up, which were extremely active in collecting donations, sponsoring "scientific studies" and they founded their own newspapers and donated to electoral funds.

In the diaspora they assiduously commemorated the "victims of the genocide", hung maps of a "Greater Armenia" and pictures of "Mount Ararat" on the wall, and the main thing is that they learnt off by heart which lands should belong to Armenia according to the Treaty of Sevres. All this political activity by the diaspora naturally created a situation whereby independent Armenian "political thinking" did sort of develop, but no independent Armenia existed. "The professional Armenian patriots" in the countries of Europe and America did not have to resolve specific and pressing problems. They could allow themselves not to think about how much a pension was in Armenia, how much bread cost and how all these figures change after the next political step ensuing from the "Armenian cause".

In Soviet Armenia they also greedily picked up "news from the diaspora". They sat around the kitchen tables discussing where the frontier should be, travelled to the barbed wire to admire the ruins of Ani, but did not ask themselves what impact all this has on real life. As part of the USSR, Armenia was able to meticulously get its own share of Baku's oil and Yakut diamonds, irrespective of whether a memorial to the "genocide victims" stood on Tsitsernakaberd Hill or not.

But in 1991, with the collapse of the USSR and the appearance of an independent Armenia on the map of the world the situation radically changed. Now Armenia had to survive by itself. It may seem trite, but the Armenian leaders at that time did not have sufficient wisdom and political will to give up the claims to the occupied Azerbaijani territories and recognise the frontier with Turkey. The outcome of this turned out to be totally predictable.

In Armenia they could of course shout about a "blockade" on the part of Azerbaijan and Turkey, but these moans and groans had hardly any effect. Today, it can already be understood that the country finds itself in a hopeless dead-end. The most important thing is that it is not clear what is going to happen next: they can either reject the customary Armenian policy directions and attract accusations of "betrayal of the Armenian cause" or… Against this backdrop, 54 per cent of Armenian citizens proposed the following solution: in general to reject Armenian statehood which actually does not exist in this country anyway.