Nikol Pashinyan’s Dark Woods

Yesterday, the Armenian Prime Minister was exposed once again to what he hates most of all: Armenian culture and history. The Dilijan Geological Museum-Gallery was finally noticed by the chief journalist, janitor, art expert and tax inspector of the entire Armenia, and nearly faced closure on the same day. This time the only thing that spared the museum was the presence of an Ivan Aivazovsky canvas that had been restored with the support of a private donor.

In a creative ardor, art critic Pashinyan expressed that “the museum business is a dark woods for Armenia”, and museums are merely warehouses, since only a few dozens of people visit them daily. Is he that troubled about how few people (particularly Armenians) are engaging with Armenian culture and history? As before, the Prime Minister did not conceal his genuine intentions: he stated that Armenian cultural institutions should earn twice as much as they are allocated from the state budget, otherwise they should be simply shut down. Given that many of them have been deprived of funding as part of his grand “optimisation”, zero multiplied by 2 is the income to which museums should aspire in a country that many call an open-air museum.

Arguably, the warehouse analogy is utterly candid. This is how Pashinyan perceives Armenia, its history and culture: as obsolete items that should be either thrown away if they do not yield excess profits or reassigned to storage facilities in neighbouring countries, as Armenian “elites” have been dealing with them for centuries. Let the neighbours polish up the “dusty” things themselves and tell the world about them in their own name, while Armenia will make room for more motels, eateries, and malls. The lower classes don’t want anything, and the upper classes are only happy with it – here is the secret to harmonious “Real Armenia”.