A person or a group of people have a tendency to define themselves through some descriptors: beliefs, physical appearance, values, etc. The totality of such descriptions is identity. What we are concerned with are social identities, that is, those that define a group of people. For the most part, we will be talking about ethnic, national and political identities.
Living with other people, we are forced to define ourselves through belonging to a certain community of people. We associate ourselves with them at first, and then we abandon this association, but at any point in our lives we tend to see ourselves as part of something greater than ourselves. For example, a person defines himself as Russian because he grew up in a family that defines itself as Russian, regards Russian culture as the closest to himself. But let’s imagine that the same person learns that his maternal grandmother is Armenian. He begins discovering his Armenian ancestor, learning the language, wondering about life in Armenia, and at some point, in the view of that person, it is the Armenian ethnic identity that begins to best describe him as part of a relatively large group of people. Especially, but not necessarily so, if that moment coincided with the crisis of original identity for external or internal reasons. In other words, our hero begins the process of categorization.
After categorization, the person as a determined member of the community compares himself with other communities and their members, evaluating himself higher, equal or lower. The comparison is based on the knowledge of oneself and the world around us. The deeper this knowledge, the more resilient to external crises is identity. Finally, the identification takes place. It was outlined earlier: once we understand who we are, we begin to evaluate others through our identity as well. The easiest way to understand it is through the “Self – Other” dichotomy, that is, there is someone else, also a person, but he is different from me, not equal to me and opposes me. The German philosopher Carl Schmitt believed that a nation is sovereign when it has an existential enemy and conceives of its place in the world within the “Friend – Foe” dichotomy.
If a nation believes it has no enemy, then such a nation is not sovereign in the complete sense of the word and its enemy will be determined by another nation.
So it’s natural for people to compare themselves with other communities and their members. In doing so, we feel sympathy for the community in which we find ourselves and with which we relate. We like to make ourselves a part of something positive, one that we feel deserves to be recognised and even praised. Taking a taxi from Zvartnots, a non-Armenian passenger might be told by the driver that George Byron himself called the Armenian language “language which the gods spoke” or that the car is moving along the avenue of Isakov, who was the Chief of Staff of the Soviet Navy during the Second World War (Eastern Front). No matter if the driver did not read any of Byron’s poems, has no direct connection to Admiral Isakov (Ter-Isahakyan), and even indicates his title inaccurately. The self-perception of being part of the Armenian community causes a desire to find some positive features of this identity and carry them to oneself.
Truth is, if had dug into own family’s history, the driver would have probably learned no less surprising heroic episodes and the basis of his identity would have been more solid. But the alien rule, which lasted for centuries and continued under the cover of “independence” under the Third Republic, has been doing everything to make Armenians’ national and political identity as vague and fragile as possible.
Incompleteness, inconsistency in assessing key historical events, preventing Armenians from sober evaluation of their strengths and weaknesses, diverting them from real reasons for proudness to imaginary or even phony ones, imposing regional sub-identities, umbrella identities (such as “South Caucasians”), or empty political poles – all this describes the manoeuvres carried out by the enemies of the development of the Armenian nation, primarily internal ones.
Their goal is, if not to exterminate Armenians completely, at least to retain them as a colonial ethnic group, a “small people”, an ethnic minority, so that the Armenian world does not acquire subjectivity, does not fulfil its higher – political – identity. The means of implementing this goal are the superficial historical education in Armenia and the Armenian communities abroad, the dominance of low-quality entertainment content in the media landscape, and the imposition of a misleading agenda in social media. The upshot is a commonality of people who find themselves unable to defend their physical, spiritual, material heritage because they are simply unfamiliar with it, which alone can make them a mockery in the eyes of outsiders. Meanwhile, the enemies do not hesitate to steal Armenians’ territories, culture and history away from under their noses, while the latter are posting quotes from Byron and ancient Roman historians, not necessarily accurate.
Social identities can be threatened, which also affects the behavior of the individual and the group in which he or she recognize themselves. As we said, it’s important for an individual to endow himself and his community with positive features. Hence, the doubt in the moral righteousness of his community compels the individual and the group to specific individual and collective deeds (action or inaction). The harsh denial of responsibility for the massacre of Armenians in Sumgait and Baku in 1990, which is part of the national identity of Azerbaijanis, led to the emergence of a conspiracy theory in the public discourse of this nation, according to which the mastermind of the ethnic clenasing was an Armenian, Grigoryan by his last name, and stating that the events in the former Azerbaijan Soviet Republic were at least “ambiguous”. This theory is strongly supported by new generations of Azerbaijanis who never participated in the massacre and did not even live at that time.
If the Armenian massacre in the former Azerbaijan Soviet Republic is ever recognized, it would be a serious blow to their national identity and have political consequences for their statehood as a whole. The genocide of Armenians, Greeks and Assyrians is a similar “original sin” for the Turkish nation.
Another threat to social identity is the feeling of insufficient recognition as a social group by surrounding groups, in other words, denial of identity. This may be due, in particular, to the rules of the coexistence established by the dominant community. The Karabakh movement started because of a sense of injustice that was fueled by anti-Armenian measures taken by the Soviet Azerbaijani leadership with encouragement from Moscow. Ethnic Azerbaijanis began to be massively injected into the Nagorno Karabakh Autonomous Region (NKAO) under Heydar Aliyev; state-sponsored pogroms led to the mass exodus of Armenians; Azerbaijani ultra-nationalists of the pan-Turkist type, who were not going to resolve the issue of Nagorno-Karabakh’s possession within the framework of a peaceful political process, as Armenian activists sought to do. The realisation of insecurity to the national identity and physical safety of Armenians led to political demands for the unification of the NKAO and the Armenian Soviet Republic – “Miatsum” (“Unification”).
Regrettably, many Armenians in Armenia and elsewhere do not seem to be familiar with this simple historical truth. Moreover, parts of the Armenian society as a result of related propaganda and lack of proper education by the state and “civil society” have no idea and therefore easily believe in myths about the life back in Artsakh, therefore, they deem Artsakh Armenians as a pretty much different, privileged social-economic class rather than compatriots, ignoring their colossal humanitarian losses, which results in being unaware of the similar threat for mainland Armenia.
For almost three decades, every Armenian who at least came to Armenia could and should have visited Artsakh (as the rest of Armenia).
The intermediate result of such a banal ignorance is the fragmentation of Armenian identity, the loss of one of its pillars (the liberation of Artsakh was a symbol of its revival after a long series of losses and defeats), and the successive demolition of the remaining pillars. After all, if we separate the identity of the Yerevan, Gyumri, Ijevan Armenians from that of Artsakh ones, it is it’s all too easy to let their guard down, claiming that the genocidal intentions of Azerbaijan and Turkey applied only to Artsakh. Moreover, if we are obedient, unlike the Armenians of Artsakh, and do not “provoke” the enemy, then we can even coexist peacefully with Azerbaijan and to make money out of it.
Of course, there is plethora of threats to national identity in the modern world. First, there are many much more “trendy” identities, and the more vulnerable they are, the more attractive. Gender identity, hobbies and interests, food preferences compete with national identity. The manifold opia for the people – from foreign debt and other budgetary injections to the promotion of online casinos and drug consumption – naturally cloud the thinking about higher matters, people begin to associate themselves with their physiological needs, at best – with the closest family circle, but definitely not even with neighbours across the courtyard. The more superficial national identity, the more vulnerable it is to these threats: what does a man stuck in debt care what Byron said about Armenia? And now we’re looking at another citizen of “Real Armenia”, because he was torn from the deep Armenian identity, perhaps even before his birth, and the superficial one is naturally not interesting to him.
Thus, identity is a set of beliefs, values, a person’s physical features, and other attributes that separate a person or group of people from everyone else. The identity of a person or a union of people inevitably opposes the identities of other people, which forces comparisons to be made in ways that are advantageous to the comparator. Others are assigned negative characteristics and are downgraded because of some historical, social, cultural or other peculiarities. Identities are fluid: they can change over a lifetime an unlimited number of times, but every time, a person needs to feel satisfied with themselves and their perception of themselves in society. The main threat to identity is dissatisfaction with one’s own moral condition due to some shameful events in the past, as well as denial of identity itself. All of this leads to socially significant acts, morally elevated and unacceptable actions and inaction.
Needless to say that the actors who are gradually dismantling the Armenian identity and, as a consequence, statehood, are well aware of all this. The distortion of the histories of victories, then their depreciation, the distortion of the tragedies, the superficial teaching of history in Armenia and Armenian communities abroad, ultimately the defeats and the persistent work to convince Armenians of their infirmity, intellectual and material incapacity, the alienation of the Armenian world from its core – Armenia – both by Armenian leaders starting with Levon Ter-Petrosyan and by Armenia’s external enemies through the imposition of an inferiority complex and post-traumatic disorder – all of these are deliberate steps aimed at the final solution of the Armenian Question. This is not rocket science and neither are the countermeasures, if there were political will and desire to tie one’s fate with the Armenia’s destiny. Yet, for such a willingness and its fulfilment, the most important part is to be aware of what it means to be an Armenian and to do all it takes to remain one. The “Armenian Republic” will be with the Armenian world on all steps of this journey.
