Tuesday, 26 November 2024

E Editorial

We are all Serzh!

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Many call the regime change in 2018 a revolution, though it is an issue still to be discussed. Apparently, any revolution is called by its name. For instance, the 17th century bloodless Revolution in England is called the Glorious Revolution, the 18th century French Revolution is called the Great French Revolution, and the 21st century revolutions started to be called by romantic names, such as "Rose Revolution" of Georgia, "Arab Spring", "Tulip Revolution" of Kyrgyzstan, "Dignity Revolution" of Tunisia, etc., the list can be continued.

Revolutions in many cases get their names years later, depending on their outcomes. Big storms, tornadoes, catastrophes and other devastating natural disasters also have their names, which, like revolutions pose new challenges to humanity. Any revolution, although not always, not only destroys the old, but also gives an opportunity to create the new.

Even If we agree that there really was a revolution in Armenia in 2018, there is still no public agreement on its name. The "revolutionaries" themselves characterize it as "velvet, non-violent revolution," which is meaningless.  As we see, the "Armenian revolution" has no content, not even a romantic-emotional definition, and it is not accidental. In terms of content, perhaps the most appropriate name would be "Rejection Revolution." The main slogan was "Reject Serzh,"where "Serzh" of course, is a collective image. "Serzh" was the symbol of everything notorious accumulated during the last 25 years, such as corruption, election fraud, vote buying, widespread irresponsibility, permissiveness, attended by tens of thousands of people, including many "revolutionaries", their parents, relatives and the "leader of the revolution" himself. By rejecting "Serzh", we were rejecting ourselves, because there was a little "Serzh" living in each of us.

However, the "revolutionaries" did not offer anything to replace the rejection, they did not create anything, and April-May event in 2018 failed to become a revolution of values. By rejecting “Serzh ", that is, ourselves, we found ourselves in spiritual emptiness, and "emptiness" cannot unite people, it cannot even defend itself, which we witnessed in the Artsakh war, it cannot even have allies, which we also see. We continue to "reject Serzh" but we cannot escape from ourselves.

The rejection did not lead to anything good - today Armenia is drowning in uncertainty and despair, because it does not see a future, does not see the beginning of the New. One thing is clear, however, that the "revolutionaries" must go away, as Serzh did. Let them leave and take with them the only "value" that our society and political life has introduced in 2018 - rejection. Otherwise, the emptiness that is the most serious threat to post-war Armenia will not be filled.

The Armenian Center for National and International Studies

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Yerevan, Armenia

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The views of the authors do not necessarily reflect those of the Center.

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