Armenia after 2018

Front matter

INTERDISCIPLINARY STUDIES

VALENTINA GEVORGYAN, YULIA ANTONYAN (EDS.)

SOCIAL AND POLITICAL TRANSFORMATIONS

Contents

Preface ESE T EE EEE T E AA AEA 7

Abbreviations woe cccscscccscesessssssscscscssscscsesesesnsscacscacscseevevessssssesscavavavatansnsneneaeaes 13

Nerses Kopalyan 2. Democratic Resilience amid Instability: Transition and

Preface

The goal of this volume is to launch a discussion about Armenia and its various challenging realities today. This book addresses Armenia’ social, cultural and political environment after the shocks that the country witnessed in the period of three years from 2018 to 2020. The seven chapters assess developments and transformations in Armenian society, politics and culture. The idea for this project came from the sense of an urgent need to shed more light on Armenia's intricate realities for the benefit of the international community, scholars and policy experts. The chapters focus on changes and transformations in Armenian society, providing an understanding of the processes of democratic resilience, social protests and the effects on society of the Artsakh 44-Day War or Second Karabakh War (2020). Despite the huge losses in the war and various shocks, Armenian society has opted for peace through democratic methods. Armenians have chosen the road to peace, not confrontation; negotiation, not violence. Today, Armenia, a country with democratic potential in Europes eastern neighbourhood, is navigating very challenging dynamics on the security and social fronts.

Previously, literature has concentrated on comparative perspectives, looking at Armenia and its regional counterparts in a similar social and political context. Considering that circumstances and regional dynamics have positioned Armenia uniquely for analysis today (for reasons discussed in the introductory chapter), the value of this volume lies in its concentration on a single country. Presently, Armenia necessitates careful and considerate approaches to be able to withstand its many challenges, most importantly the challenges to its independence and statehood. Armenia today comes to the fore as a unique case study, as it has experienced a trifecta of social, political and security shocks over a period of three consecutive years, a circumstance that makes it imperative to analyse these developments and seek to understand the transformations that shocks entail.

Importantly, this volume puts a spotlight on Armenia as one of the few countries with potential for democratisation in an immediate neighbourhood of aggressive authoritarian regimes. Thematically the chapters cover the transformations in relation to the country’s democratisation and life post-war. The book brings together established

8 Preface but also new scholars, with fresh data and analysis conducted over the past years. The authors position themselves within different theoretical paradigms, but at the same time they are eager to examine the next realistic steps for Armenia’ democratic institutional progress. The book will be of interest to academic communities, political and diplomatic circles, local, regional and international civil society organisations and other actors involved in development and peacebuilding. We were glad to accept the diverse points of view, which also offer stimuli for further thinking and research. We would like to take this opportunity to thank the University of Fribourg (Switzerland), Prof. Dr. Nicolas Hayoz and Peter Lang Publishing for understanding the value of and supporting generously this publication.

About This Book

This book is a collection of seven chapters, which fall generally into two main sections: an analysis of life in Armenia since the revolution (2018) and life after the Second Karabakh War (2020). The first chapter by the editors sets the stage by inviting the reader to explore further the different realities (including the worst, but also the hopes for progress) of Armenian citizens. The introductory chapter explains the reasons for and the imperative behind developing this book. It discusses the political, social and security shocks that Armenia, a member of the EU’s Eastern Partnership, has experienced over a period of three years. It offers a discussion of basic concepts, followed by some necessary background for understanding Armenias context in the present. This chapter presents the trifecta of challenges that the country is facing today, which might be considered a combination of reasons for placing Armenia on the research and attention radar of the international community of scholars and policy experts. Firstly, the three chapters discuss Armenias Velvet Revolution and democratisation efforts, secondly the three chapters that follow offer analyses of the post-war realities in Armenia.

Nerses Kopalyan’s contribution addresses Armenia’ transition and democratisation processes, by providing a multi-tiered understanding of how the country consolidated the democratisation process after the democratic breakthrough in 2018. Kopalyan examines a rigid security

Preface 9 and democracy dichotomy in the country, relevant to developments in Armenia especially in the post-war period or after the security shock, as the editors frame it in the introduction. Kopalyan also reflects on the uniqueness of Armenias experience of a security crisis during the democratic transition, reflecting on the relationship between war, security and democratic consolidation. An important subject of inquiry for postwar Armenia has been the “democracy-versus-security” discourse, a dichotomous framework that has eroded democracy in countries where a cultural understanding of democracy has been highly instrumentalised. Kopalyan’s chapter fills a gap in the literature on the relationship between democracy and security, demonstrating that authoritarian reversals, based on promises of security, fail in the face of extensive empirical evidence. More so, democratising societies such as Armenia value democracy equally with security, and further qualify the enhancement of their security environment with the enhancement of their democratic safeguards.

As a different point of view, the next contribution is by Khatchik Der Ghougassian, who proposes a critical assessment of Armenias Velvet Revolution by taking sides in the debate about the ‘Velvet’ phenomenon from a leftist critical perspective. Der Ghougassian’s essay is a somewhat general inquiry into whether Armenias Velvet Revolution has contributed to democratisation or otherwise; according to his analysis, it revealed a somewhat ideological cast of neoliberalism, that has limited the democratisation pretensions that are raised as a legitimisation flag by the revolutionary regime. Der Ghougassian places Armenias Velvet Revolution in the wider context of the popular mobilisations in the aftermath of the post-Cold War transition at the end of the 1990s, taking a critical path that questions the assumption of democratisation per se, and focuses on the ideological drive that lies behind it. The author makes assumptions, including that democratisation is closely linked to economic inclusion, that populist uprisings are not ideologically impartial, and that extreme wealth concentration disables any structural reforms aimed at deepening democracy. The author's main argument is that whereas social protest at the beginning of the twenty-first century in Latin America targeted neoliberalism and aimed at the deepening of democracy through a fairer redistribution of wealth, Armenia’s Velvet phenomenon followed closely the script of the “democratic revolutions” in its abstention from any criticism of the dominant assumption of free market economics with respect to the question of wealth redistribution.

10 Preface

The chapter by Hrayr Manukyan attaches importance to viewing the country’s performance solely on the basis of international indicators, which makes it a clear and practical contribution to approaching Armenias democratisation. Manukyan argues that Armenia has substantially democratised since the revolution, and that this democratisation is partially due to the Velvet phenomenon itself, viewed in his analysis as a case of civil disobedience. The author also responds to some vocal opinions that downgrade or reject the significance of Armenia’s democratic transition after 2018. This contribution demonstrates that Armenia was a semi-authoritarian country before 2018, and became a democracy (though not a consolidated one) after 2018, despite the challenges from other shocks (discussed in the introduction), the pressure from outside authoritarian regimes and internal authoritarian tendencies. Manukyan’s chapter indirectly acknowledges the value of the empirical potential of research methodologies and measurements of democracy. By concentrating on the case of Armenia, the author’s contribution highlights the importance of international standards and indicators offered by institutions tracking the performance of countries worldwide.

The next three chapters concentrate on realities in Armenia following the Artsakh 44-Day War or the Second Karabakh War (2020). The first chapter in this section offers an analysis by Alen Shadunts, who reflects on the moment of identity dislocation or crisis for Armenians. The author argues that the war has challenged some of the most sedimented narratives regarding self-identification in Armenian society, articulated around the notions of revival and victory. Shadunts discusses the polarising environment in Armenia, the limited thinking and the lack of self-reflective practices on the part of oppositional forces, as well as the different mechanisms used for coping with this situation so as to navigate a self-certainty through different articulations of subjectivity. By reflecting on the existing fierce political competition to define what the war was and how it should fit into the broader discursive structures of national identity, Shadunts proposes a thinking about the shaping of the national “self, the use and popularity of narratives, and their influence as means of ontological security. Methodologically, the author offers a discourse analysis of contrasting narratives, discussing their attempts to provide answers and to mitigate the disorienting effects of the war.

The next chapter by Aghasi Tadevosyan raises an extremely important issue, which seems to have attracted less attention than it deserves in

Preface 11 the post-war period, due to a multiplicity of everyday societal problems. Tadevosyan’s contribution reflects on social transformation, in particular the issue of the different traumas experienced by the forcibly displaced population as a result of the war. This chapter points to indifference as the biggest societal problem, also building on the imperative for policymaking that would prioritise the issues that have clearly impacted the forcibly displaced population. This chapter focuses on the need to “rehabilitate lives” amid the new security and other challenges in the country. By uncovering the losses and traumas suffered by the displaced population, Tadevosyan raises priorities that demand the attention of the policymaking community, namely, to focus on issues related to the displaced population: their integration into society, rebuilding lives anew, and providing material and other assistance on their way to becoming full members of Armenian society.

The last chapter focuses on public perceptions of the future. Arpy Manusyan, Mariam Khalatyan and Nvard Margaryan offer an analysis of the ways that the different crises in Armenia have impacted public perceptions regarding the social and political future of the country. Methodologically, the trajectory towards potential peaceful coexistence with Armenia's aggressive neighbour is the focal point for the conversations conducted for the purpose of this chapter. The authors’ analysis focuses on the social changes that have affected the public, the characteristics of the peace narratives before and after the war, and how the expert community in Armenia imagines the future of the country and peaceful coexistence with Azerbaijan within the broader perspective of regional transformations. By discussing social and political theories regarding the future, agency and the liquidity of modern times, the authors offer an analysis of how the ambiguity of the future affects peace narratives. The chapter also analyses what role political agency experts have in terms of developing regional relations and influencing the country’s future. The authors frame local perceptions within the definition of agency as temporal-relational contexts of social and political action that can both reproduce and transform structures in changing historical situations.

Abbreviations

BTI CSO ECHR EIU IDEA IDI IMF IR

IRI LDI NK NKAO NGO OSCE PM RA RWB US V-Dem WB

Bartelsmann Transformation Index

Civil Society Organisation

European Court of Human Rights

Economist Intelligence Unit

International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance In-depth Interviews

International Monetary Fund

International Relations

International Republican Institute

Liberal Democracy Index

Nagorno-Karabakh

Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast

Non-Governmental Organisation

Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe

Prime Minister

Republic of Armenia

Reporters Without Borders International Non-Profit Organisation United States

Varieties of Democracy Institute

World Bank

Abstract: This introductory chapter explains the reasons for developing this book. It offers reflections on the ideas and concepts used in this book, based on the case of Armenia. This chapter also provides some necessary background for understanding Armenia’s social and political context. It then presents a discussion of three shocks that the country experienced, followed by the trifecta of challenges ensuing from these.

Keywords: Armenia, revolution, democracy, war, political shock, social shock, transformation, transition

From both academic and policy perspectives, Armenia comes to the fore as a unique case with respect to three events over the period of the past several years that have shaken the country to its core: the 2018 revolution, the Covid-19 pandemic and Azerbaijan's war imposed on Armenians in 2020. From 2018 to 2020, these three events shook its social, cultural, security and political foundations. Inevitably, such shocks have consequences. These consequences and the possible transformations of Armenian society constitute the main focus of this book. We intend to provide an understanding of loss, death, trauma and other categories that dispose societies to change. At the same time, we admit that our intention to reflect on transformations in a society after such a short period of time may well be considered ambitious. But we attempt this in view of Armenia's egregious problems due to its positioning in a hellhole of neighbours, and the treacherous road ahead filled with challenges that make analytical contributions urgent. The idea for this book came out of the need to provide an understanding of the situation today, after this trilogy of shocks. These shocks, as evidenced, do not seem to be going away. Instead, they snowball into a chorus of challenges, with the potential of blotting out the rationale for moving forward. Presently, Armenia finds itself in a villainous alliance, as a state entity, forced into the position of a victim in a continual web of internal problems, external complications, betrayal and despair, trauma and anger, and other characteristics discussed in this book.

Our intention to provide an understanding of the country’s various transformations, or otherwise, calls immediately for an assessment of conditions. This book addresses the social, cultural and political transformations ofa country that is enduring amid old and new challenges. A post-war environment is a challenge to democracy per se. At this time, there are too many latent and manifest difficulties preventing Armenia from establishing an environment in which a democratic transformation might be possible. We hold on to the idea that Armenia requires a thoughtful strategy to maintain its statehood, sovereignty and security, by inviting interdisciplinary thinking and research.

We should like to place the larger idea for this book within the contours of the centre and periphery model, which serves to provide an understanding of the meanings of former peripheries based on the case of Armenia (Filippov, Hayoz, and Herlth, 2020). As a priority conceptual umbrella, we have also chosen an approach that allows us to view countries mainly through their regime type classifications (as opposed to, for example, rivalries among states or economic advantages), which places Armenia (categorised as a transitional government or a hybrid regime) in a better position than its neighbouring consolidated authoritarian regimes, including Azerbaijan and Russia (Freedom House, 2023). We believe that this shall remain an overarching frame of reference, if we are to expect a democratic transformation in former peripheries trying to break the chain of post-Sovietism.

Armenia resides on a crossroads of shifting geopolitical alliances and strategies, as well as the aspirations of autocrats taking advantage of and impeding peacemaking efforts on the part of former peripheries. Former centres aim to reinstate their power, regardless of the costs, either human, territorial or financial. This is no surprise. We might consider Russia’s war in Ukraine having an undeniable resemblance to Azerbaijani aggression in Nagorno Karabakh just previously. Since 2020, Armenias neighbourhood has become a region of war, drama and loss due to the warmongering of bloody dictators nurtured by an “all you can eat” policy of their own making and arbitrary approval. Such is the result of a region being abandoned by civilised and democratic powers to the appetite of oil-rich autocracies seeking solely to reinstate their illegitimate power and reap the benefits for as long as they can, by reimposing an Orwellian disorder on the post- Soviet space.

The types and means of transformation appear across disciplines and theories, with the aim of understanding cultural, political, social, economic and other changes in societies throughout the world. We admit that it might be too soon to address academically the various transformations in Armenia over such a short period. However, the task we set forth is inevitable, judging the scale of the challenges that exist in Armenia. We started to prepare this book in 2021, and it is being published in 2023. We put this timeline into the title to give an idea to the reader, who might be seeking to learn what happened, of how Armenia is coping amid the wide array of problems today. We are interested in the transformations that result in the aftermath of cultural, security and other shocks, in the context of a country which moved towards democratisation, but ended up in a web of thorns meticulously prepared by small and big autocrats in its hostile neighbourhood. Hence, considering Armenia as a separate case even after such a short period is a task worth following. The discussions we offer in this book, within its larger intention, are conceptual contributions in terms of providing an understanding of shocking processes or events having impacts on society.

An Explanation of Concepts

Generally, when describing revolutionary changes in a society, two main concepts are used: transformation and transition. Transformation is an abstract concept, and can mean many things. Inquiries regarding the transformation of societies have varied and been viewed in the context of critical theory (Delanty, 2020; Habermas, 1989), cultural changes (Marwick, 2011) or economic perspectives (Polanyi, 1957). Transformation has also been viewed in the context of particular research areas, for example as a development of society towards democracy and the vibrancy of critical public forces (Almond and Verba, 1989; Tocqueville, 2002), or in historical legacy and memory policy (Walkowitz and Knauer, 2004). The notions of transformation and transition have also been approached in different contexts to describe social change (for example, Adloff and Neckel, 2019;

Castles, 2001; Hdlscher, Wittmayer, and Loorbach, 2018). In this book, we are concerned with the ways in which major shocks have impact. Shocks transform societies. The chapters in this book attempt to address what such transformations might look like, and in what ways they can be framed in a post-shock environment.

The other term, transition, has a more complicated history of use. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the period of the 1990s and early 2000s has often been addressed as a “transitional” one, from totalitarian, socialist regimes to democracy and market economy systems (Burawoy and Verdery, 1999; Herrschel, 2007). The editors of the volume Uncertain Transitions, Michel Burawoy and Katherine Verdery, address the concept of transition anthropologically and sociologically (1999: 4). According to them, the transitional period is a process connecting the past to the future. In political terms, the process of transition has been perceived as a revolutionary transformation of totalitarian societies until another order of things (neoliberal, capitalist, democratic) is established. However, while political science operates with a general term of transition, anthropologists and sociologists prefer to speak more of transitions, that is, different ethnographic realities, which make the process multidimensional, heterogenic and socially/culturally determined (Burawoy and Verdery, 1999, Herrschel, 2007). As such, and in different contexts, the term has been applied to the Armenian situation as well (Ishkanian, 2003; Tadevosyan, 2016). Variations of political mechanisms (shock therapies, restoration of socialist legacies, post-colonial developments, revolutions, etc.), local forms of market realities and social structures, wars and national ideologies all make the process of transition rather uncertain and vague as a concept. And this seems to be the reason why social scientists prefer either totally to reject transition in favour of rather neutral concepts (e.g. transformation), or to reduce its meaning to a revolutionary process of social and political rupture and the subsequent re-establishment of relative institutional and social order. In this sense, revolutionary ruptures are viewed as a “radical form of discontinuity” (Holbraad, Kapferer and Sauma, 2019: 2), which, taken anthropologically, cannot be judged positively or negatively, or conceptualised as successes or failures; they may be only multiplied ethnographically to discover different ways of conceiving and experiencing them (Holbraad, Kapferer and Sauma, 2019: 9). The Bartelsmann Transformation Index (BTI) views countries according to their political, economic and governance variables, offering sub-indicators for each. According to its political transformation’ Armenia scores 6.75 (on a scale of 10; the higher the figure, the closer to democracy in consolidation) (BTI, 2022).

A few words are warranted here about Armenia's revolution in 2018 and the reasons why this book treats this event as a starting point for the analytical and empirical enquiries collected here. A number of valuable texts on both successful and unsuccessful cases of revolutions in the post-socialist space contain interdisciplinary insights into the patterns and mechanics of these revolutions, their main actors and beneficiaries, their strategies and post-revolutionary developments. One of the earlier insights defines these “colour revolutions” as “a number of non-violent protests that succeeded in overthrowing authoritarian regimes” (Beachain and Polese, 2010: 1), offering five variables for the analysis of such a phenomenon: (1) the character of the state and elites on the eve of the protests; (2) the character of the opposition; (3) external influences; (4) civil society; and (5) people (Beachain and Polese, 2010: 7-9). With these variables, the authors try to understand why in some cases (Georgia, Ukraine, Kyrgyzstan) revolutions have been successful, while in others (Armenia in 2008, Russia, Belarus) they failed. In Gerlach’s study, the risk of regime cycles, meaning the cyclic comebacks of nepotism, corruption and coercion under revolutionary governments, is discussed, without a deep analysis of the reasons for this (Gerlach, 2014: 48). In these and other studies attempts were made to understand the internal social/cultural/religious factors influencing the character of these revolutions and their general geopolitical and historical contexts.

The Armenian experience of both failed (2003-2004, 2008)? and successful (2018) revolutions demonstrates the importance of conjunctures. It also shows how even minor oscillations in such contextual factors as post-colonial relationships with a previous coloniser, dormant

1 An aggregate concept based on the following sub-indicators: stateness, political participation, rule of law, stability of institutions, and political and social integration (each offering detailed conceptualisation) (BTI, 2022); <https://bti-project.org/en/repo rts/country-report/ARM#pos3>.

2 Public protests and political movements in 2003-2004 and 2008 used to be interpreted as attempted but failed revolutions (Gerlach, 2014; Zolyan, 2010). The events of 2008 were led by, among others, Nikol Pashinyan, who would later lead the successful Velvet Revolution of 2018.

ethnic and territorial conflicts, the presence/absence of natural resources, natural friends and natural enemies, or global religious and civilisational identities can crucially affect revolutionary and post-revolutionary processes, affecting their successful development or failure. The Armenian situation is also a good example of how local specificities of informal and moral economies, the formation of elites, socialist legacies and traditions of civic movements may define revolutionary changes and developments. The fusion of different disciplinary approaches might become a basis for a new situational analysis opening new horizons towards understanding the colour revolutions and the tectonic shifts in global geopolitics produced by them.

However, was Armenias April 2018 uprising a revolution, or was it a simple shift of power? Was it aimed at democratisation or for the sake of a change of power? These questions remain a subject of discussion in Armenian public discourse to date, and warrant attention. We hereby respond with certainty that Armenias Velvet Revolution of 2018 was a revolution, as it retained some vital functions, attributes and realities of such an event, following similar developments in the post-Soviet space. The literature on colour revolutions in the post-Soviet space is wealthy (for example, Beachain and Polese, 2010; Mitchell, 2012; Polese, 2010). Even the revolution’s immediate aftermath points to consequences that display similarities with other events and processes in the region, for example former civic actors moving into the government, and the lack of public policy experience and expertise (Gevorgyan, 2021). In short, the effort to portray Armenias nationwide uprising in 2018 as a non-revolution but simply a seizure of power seems to be merely an attempt to discredit the government, which might fairly be blamed for malpractices and lack of expertise, but not for failing to bring about a revolution according to its selected factual manifestations. It was undeniably a revolution because it also had one of the most important revolutionary indicators, a conflict of elites (Lachmann, 1997), that of old oligarchic and nationalistic ruling groups with new liberal intellectuals, which resulted in the complete transformation of the elite structures. Did Armenias Velvet Revolution intend to produce democratisation? It surely did. Did the revolution meet its initial expectations? We might not want to be equally confident here, and some of the discussion in the chapters that follow addresses this issue.

Revolutions do not simply end with the change of a political regime. Sometimes they slide into civil wars, and severe economic and value crises, which result in another autocracy. From this perspective, Armenia's ‘Velvet’ resembled technically an ideal revolutionary event, worthy of examination in textbooks and potentially surprising to experts, who call it an “Armenian anomaly” (see, for example, Derluguian and Hovhannisyan, 2018; Iskandaryan, 2018). It was a non-violent, ideologically and technically well-organised process, strongly supported by the masses, a true political upheaval which was long dreamed of by civil society (Abrahamyan and Shagoyan, 2018; Ishkanian, 2019); and a manifestation of the developing ecosystem of Armenian civil society (Paturyan and Gevorgyan, 2020).

At the same time, it became a source of external and internal threats that were not long in coming. Armenia was not an exception in terms of the geopolitical turbulence and wars that follow revolutions; a similar condition of fatal developments was shared by Georgia and Ukraine as well. Wars following revolutions (both civil and external ones) might be seen as part of post-revolutionary transition. Such appears to be the case, as they usually involve a number of (risky and dangerous, exposed to potential failure, but sometimes necessary) existential passages from (re)-colonisation to decolonisation, from economic dependency and monopolies to free and (relatively) competitive markets, from colonial and patriarchal elites to self-sustained and self-made rulers, from obsolete status-based hierarchical structures to a modernised, meritocratic and technological society. Armenia of 2020 and 2022 and, to a greater extent, Ukraine of 2022 are vivid examples of such post-revolutionary wars, with promising global consequences similar to those following the French (1789) or the Bolshevik (1917) revolutions.

Although we do not include chapters on the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on Armenian society in this volume, it should still be stressed as a shocking event, supporting the regime of political uncertainty and ultimately becoming a convenient cover-up for the Karabakh (Artsakh) 44-Day War of 2020. Generally considered and interpreted in the context of major shifts of the geopolitical world-system, the discussed cluster of events have generated large-scale changes in both the internal and external politics of Armenia. The pandemic and the war in aggregate constituted a serious challenge for the nascent revolutionary government in Armenia.

Naturally, for a time it seemed that the government was doomed to fail, and that the previous oligarchic elites were close to registering a comeback. In an article published in 2022 (though obviously written earlier), two scholars foresaw the potential for political death for the ruling party and

Nikol Pashinyan, whose reputation was severely damaged by the military defeat of 2020 (see Derluguian and Hovhannisyan, 2022: 919). However, not even a year after the devastating war that involved critical losses for Armenia and Artsakh, the Armenian citizens surprisingly elected the same, revolutionary government in the June 2021 parliamentary elections. The government was given a second chance, a vote of confidence, which came also as a response to consistent damage brought by the anti-revolutionary opposition, calling on society to revert to its former rulers and using any means to achieve this. The Armenian citizens, notwithstanding the loss, trauma, disappointment and other post-war realities discussed in this book, rejected any desire to return to the past decades of mismanagement, as well as an even higher reliance on its former centre Russia. This development appears unusual, and such an unexpected turn requires interpretation in different fields. This might range from external political influences to internal political culture, which has more resources for democratic development than many might think due to the fully fledged civil society, the educated and politically literate middle class, and the local tradition of protest shaped since the late Soviet times (see the chapter by Kopalyan in this volume; see also Andreasyan and Derluguian, 2015).

Supported from the inside, democracy in Armenia is still being challenged from the outside, primarily by the political alliance of previous Soviet republics, headed by Russia. Considering Russias behaviour since the 1990s in general, and the regional dynamics post-2014 (Ukraine) in particular, much less post-2019 (Armenia), the region seems to have witnessed continual efforts to keep former peripheries under control; the effort being most destructive and desperate in Ukraine. Such behaviour makes it urgent for former peripheries to get away from, to use Medvedev’s framing, “the crazy cocktail of monarchism, Stalinism and ‘Orthodox civilisation ” (Medvedev, 2019). This seems to increase the urgency for the small states in the post-Soviet space to find new partners and solutions among the civilised, democratic powers, aimed at a successful escape from the “post-Soviet camp”. Presently, the geopolitical map of former centres and peripheries seems to be making rapid shifts, and Armenia (still positioning itself as a periphery) might consider steering towards

3 ‘The author refers to the separatists of eastern Ukraine.

new and powerful centres in an attempt to escape the complete loss of its sovereignty.

Three decades ago, a de facto independent Armenia embarked on a new course. Armenia is located in a bad neighbourhood, or rather a very bad neighbourhood, surrounded by aggressor countries with regimes that prioritise strong authoritarian beliefs and the abrogation of human rights. The years preceding Armenias independence were characterised by the Soviet system and post-Soviet values. Embarking on a new path towards independence has naturally been marked by extreme challenges, including economic hardship and political problems. The Karabakh movement, a movement for democracy and human rights led to the eventual disintegration of nationalities from a process that students of the Eastern European Road to freedom know well. During the period 1991-2018 Armenia experienced three consecutive regimes in power, bedevilled by informality, partisanship and corruption, and consistent with distinctive qualities of weak civil societies throughout the post-Soviet region of Eurasia (Ishkanian, 2008; Stefes, 2006; Stefes and Weingartner, 2015). For decades now, the post-Soviet societies in the Eurasian space have been searching for ways to shift their policymaking cultures, which have been continuously damaged from within; weak civil society and policies of informality emerged as a continuation of the Soviet legacy (Hayoz, Jesien and Koleva, 2011; Hayoz, 2015; Stefes, 2006; Stefes and Weingartner, 2015).