THE END OF ILLUSIONS

Just two years passed since the streets of Yerevan witnessed the coming of the ‘season of great hopes’ when the people joining the protest rallies began destroying the corrupt dictatorship of the Garabagh Clan. The new leader of the country, Nikol Pashinyan, promised everyone mountains of gold, rivers of milk, democracy, the fight against corruption, investments, an unprecedented rise in Armenia's international prestige, etc. But most importantly, Armenians placed high hopes on the internal political shifts for the political settlement of the Garabagh conflict. Today, one recalls these events of the past only with bitter irony.

The failure of the ‘revolutionary show’

As the saying goes, ‘victory has thousand fathers but defeat is always an orphan.’ Armenia is now doomed to realise and accept the outcome of this unpleasant truth. After the defeat in Garabagh, the country is going through the deepest internal political crisis, including the resignation of ministers and military leaders, internal political shifts, the search for ‘traitors’ using the most fantastic versions of events.

“I think we lost not only the war on the battlefield, but also the information war. Not in Armenia but at the international level. In recent years, not only in the last two years, instead of creating the so called national information that would oppose Turkish or Azerbaijani propaganda abroad, we have been scolding each other. This defeat is an information defeat. We also lost the war in international public diplomacy. Back in 1994, various international institutions, structures, and countries demonstrated a pro-Armenian position, no matter how unbalanced that position was. I cannot say the same today. Turkey and Azerbaijan have put serious efforts and funds during these years to achieve this. We also suffered a heavy defeat in diplomacy," President Armen Sarkissian complained in his interview to Aravot.

It is possible that Nikol Pashinyan is not responsible for all of these failures. Nevertheless, it was Nikol Pashinyan who undermined the current negotiation process and dragged Armenia into the war, which ended in its defeat in all directions. He also lost to Azerbaijan in the ‘fields’ where Armenia had more advantageous positions after the ‘revolution’.

Pashinyan does not say goodbye. Will he resign?

Once the idol of the Yerevan streets, Pashinyan has already admitted responsibility for the defeat. Yet he did not answer the question why Armenia repeatedly refused peace proposals when the future defeat was already obvious. What did prevent him from agreeing to the peace proposals of Azerbaijan? Did he simply lack determination? Was he afraid of the reaction of his own citizens? Has he relied on external support that would help turn the tide of the war?

Nevertheless, Pashinyan is in no hurry to leave his post, at least for now. He enthusiastically changes the government and publishes a new roadmap in his favourite Facebook, where he promises stunning results in six months in all areas from the army to investments in demography. He clearly does not want to leave his post, which causes understandable indignation of his opponents. The latter, however, are in no hurry to blame Pashinyan too actively because they understand that no one has a magic plan to ‘play back’ the military-political catastrophe. So, they let Pashinyan play the role of culprit of the historical failure to the end. Moreover, there is no longer any doubt about his status as a ‘lame duck’.

Moreover, the ongoing events in Armenia are not just the personal drama of Pashinyan but also the collapse of what has been called ‘orange technologies’ in recent years.

"Orange sky, orange sea"...

This children's song was very popular during the first Maidan in Kiev, which coined the expression ‘orange revolution’ and widely popularised it: orange sky, orange sea, orange mother, orange camel and so on. A wave of almost bloodless revolutions swept through the post-socialist space, sweeping away governments in Belgrade and Tbilisi, Kiev and Bishkek. Komsomolskaya Pravda responded with mocking rhymes: "We slumbered Kiev, Bishkek and Georgia away... When will you, Russia, wake up again?" Yet it did not specify how the country should come to its senses. In fact, experts had  warned about the dangers of ‘orange technologies’ that could plunge the country into chaos, hoping that the events would not lead to a full-scale civil war.

On the other side of the border, they enthusiastically talked about the ‘democratic impulse of the masses’ in the post-Soviet area. They believed that such a scenario opens doors to heaven for respective countries and promises a solution to all problems, including the fight against corruption, the triumph of democracy, guarantees of human rights, and the building of civil society...

Finally, there was also a group of those who seriously believed that they could demonstrate external effects of the Orange Revolution and get access to miraculous ‘orange technologies’ from their foreign patrons that would help them come to power and solve all problems in a blink of an eye. However, the thinking politicians knew very well that there was no political technologies that would guarantee the overthrow of a popular and legitimate government, even on external orders. One can make some noise, make his or her name to the headlines, give a couple of interviews but nothing more. Any revolution–proletarian, Islamic or ‘colored’–must mature from within, when the number of the discontented people reaches a critical level, while the authorities are unable to adequately respond to their discontent.

Now the world community received a convincing evidence, which shows that there is no guarantee that any one who comes to power using all the revolutionary bells and whistles and special effects can actually become at least a suitable leader.

Indeed, Nikol Pashinyan has tried to do a classical revolution in Armenia. He promised his supporters a lot of things, including Armenia’s reorientation to the West, investments, the fight against corruption and poverty...

Today, after the military defeat of Armenia, much of those promises fade into shadows but Nikol Pashinyan began to openly do everything to aggravate the situation in Garabagh after he failed in all other areas. Suddenly it turned out that reorienting the country to the West is too expensive while Russia supplies Armenia with oil, gas and diamonds at domestic prices. Therefore, he had to think about strengthening the Armenian economy first. It was even more expensive to protect own borders and buy weapons at world prices. On the other hand, the declared ‘fight against corruption’ turned into the arrests of Pashinyan’s political opponents, and the ‘the triumph of democracy’ – to the establishment of the regime of personal dictatorship. Also, Pashinyan’s attempts to demonstrate an economic growth by manipulating data was a shame. Nikol Pashinyan thought that Garabagh, drunken dances in Shusha and stupid statements like ‘Garabagh is Armenia, period’ are exactly where he could score points to his political portfolio. But that is where Azerbaijan put an end to Pashinyan’s political career and his illusions about ‘orange technologies’.