What is Armenia famous in the world for? Genocide and Karabakh conflict. Very few people know that the Armenian language is a separate branch in the Indo-European family of language and that Armenians were the first ones to officially adopt Christianity. It is hard to figure out those peculiarities when speaking to us, Armenians. All the Armenians have problems with the native language, including the President of the country, who represents Armenia worldwide. And the sounds of the Arabic music that are being heard in all corners of the country as well as the outfit of the Armenian women, create an impression that they have left the harems half an hour ago. All this creates an impression that Armenia is a country with deep Islamic roots. Therefore the wealthy cultural past of our country is not enough to justify the current lifestyle and traditions of Armenians and doesn’t enable to withstand the challenges of the external world. Especially one of the priorities of the political science of Armenia is to maintain the image of the Armenian as a carrier of civilized history. The thing is that the current level of consciousness of the society, the values, which are dominant and geopolitical developments and the challenges, give us signals of emergency. One of the people occupied by self-determination issues of the Armenian nation is the director of “Noravank” scientific-academic foundation, Gagik Harutyunyan.
– Mr. Harutyunyan, in your articles you very often refer to the issues of keeping Armenia as a country with unique traditions. But don’t you think that civilizations, nations and languages maintain in the principle of natural choice. There were many developed civilizations, which don’t exist any more. Besides, does our nation realize the importance of being unique in the civilization system?
– Social polls, which have been conducted by various organizations, show that our society quite clearly realizes its unique role in the civilization system of the world. 60-70% of the pollsters are sure that Armenia is a unit of a unique civilization. It means that we don’t guide with only dead historic categories. By the way, according to certain classifications there are civilizations, which are dead. For example, the civilization of the Incas. It is civilization but doesn’t exist. But we are not Incas. We exist and have the feeling that our civilization still exists and is unique.
– Does this mean that only realizing this fact is a sufficient resource to maintain our uniqueness?
– Realization is also a category and sufficient ground if we consider the opulent historical resources that we have. We are facing serious issues right now because we can attain a status of a fragmented society because various public groups and parties have different ideas about our political orientation. Some have European orientation, others American, Russian or none. This is full of risks and jeopardizes the national security of our country. Such an approach is contradictive and inefficient. The uniqueness of the Armenian civilization is that it doesn’t deny other civilizations. It offers to debate with them. We can be maximal but should meanwhile maintain our uniqueness.
– What is our mission in the world? What are we offering to world civilizations?
– Our mission is perhaps in the mental and spiritual product of our people. There are many people among Armenians, who have crated great values and handed it over to the whole world. Shortly said, we are the society, which has given Charents, Aram Khachatryan, scientists, etc. And these are not just words. This means that by being separate with our civilization we can meanwhile offer something to the world. We have our small and worthy position in the world civilization. In the middle age our architecture was a high technology and Armenians were busy with that expansion. We have offered wide literature. Why not to continue? We shouldn’t be mere consumers of the cultural products of others but should ourselves create products to make others consume and accept.
– What are values created during the newest history of our nation, which are appreciated by other countries and spread the necessary and the Armenian unique culture is still needed for the world?
– You are asking a very hard question. During the past 15 years we really don’t have anything to be proud of. But these are the years of adaptation with the new world. We still need to recover what we had. There was a system in the Soviet Union, which conduced to the creation of values. Today we also have certain things to brag about. Our chess players are occupying high ranks in world championships. We have created a quite individual state. We are the leader of the region in a number of things, such as real sovereignty, criteria for human development, etc.
– How productive the efforts of recovering the old stuff and creating new values can be if the external challenges are isolating the internal values and the state doesn’t do anything about that? The spiritual and cultural values are being ignored and forgotten. Do you think the small society of Armenia is able to struggle against this process especially if the majority includes the ignorant mass?
– I think yes. Because only those nations, who have the political and cultural elite reach success. Armenians were always able to create this elite. During the transition period of 88-93 they were once again able to create the new national elite. The elite didn’t include the former Soviet statesmen or KGB agents. During those difficult years we were able to both maintain our independence and have victory in Karabakh war. And this was first of all a result of mental and intellectual work.
– Where is the elite that you have just mentioned? In the NA, government, cultural institutions?
– You are asking a difficult question. We are in the phase of formation. And everything is not visible now. We have the elite, which I would advise the society not to follow because it is still in the formation stage.