All wealthy nations of the world are not praising their failures, but are trying to work them out and develop. “What doesn’t kill me is making me stronger,” Nietzsche said. Is it good to look for positive things in tragedy (1915, October 27, 1999, March 1, 2008) and accept failures as stimulus for development? Let’s start from the moral point of view.
Is there moral failure?
Many representatives of the intelligentsia and politicians are connecting the social and political developments in the country with moral failures. Christian-democratic analyst Rafael Caldera said that moral crisis lies in the ground of any social and political crisis. Definitely he is true, but we wander what the criteria for moral failures are. We should compare our moral background not with the assignments of Holy books and not with the speeches of intelligentsia representatives and friends at parties. Probably the criteria are our past. We wander whether we are less moral than during the Soviet times or during the times of the first republic in the beginning of the 20th century. Hardly are we. If we look back we will see that our moral background has always been the same. Accordingly, the problem doesn’t concern finding our moral background or discovering it, but reconsidering it, or as Tigran Sargsyan says, making innovative revolution. We need new things.
March 1, 2008: tragedy or development impulse?
I think both. The events of March 1 were tragic from all aspects as they resulted in death of 10 people, but they made the political elite to look at things better. Due to the events of March 1 we looked at things and saw them. It is clear that due to the events of March 1 two powerful politicians (Serzh Sargsyan and Levon Ter-Petrosyan) reconsidered their past. On March 1 the authorities were given a moral and political opportunity to make change inside their regime. Now the situation is changing and they are thinking more about changing the sort of their team than about embezzling. It is hard to say who will win and where we will be taken and whether the pyramid of the government will be able to resist this pressure. However, we are sure that if the events of March 1 did not happen, such struggle would not take place.
The events of March 1 were like Rubicon that neither of the opposition leaders could pass during the past ten years (Vazgen Manukyan, Stepan Demirchyan, Artashes Geghamyan, Raffi Hovhannisyan). Ter-Petrosyan could do it. He succeeded and he stayed as the opposition leader. Unlike the other opposition leaders, he bears responsibility for political processes. During these ten years it is the first time that we have opposition, which preferred the imitation of opposition and in fact really became an influential opposition power. The society could feel this at once, as a result of which Ter-Petrosyan became the leader of the opposition and the other imitated illusionist-saviors were cleaned from the political field. They decided to stay under the umbrella of the authorities as political pensioners despite their ages, status and place in politics. Time will show.
If the events of March 1 did not happen, our opposition would not be accountable and responsible. The problem is that how it will realize that responsibility.
“Master and Margarita” or Serzh Sargsyan’s phenomenon
Bulgakov described in one of his creations how a man was trying to reform the society and said that first of all people had to change inside. Another person, who didn’t like the latter, didn’t do what he said, and the first actor was killed.
Now Serzh Sargsyan (the second actor) not only respects Tigran Sargsyan (the first actor), but also has given him a mandate and provided with political power. The ideas of the new prime minister concerning innovative economy, studying till death, network management, Christianization of behavior and reformation of the political system are as strange to the society, officials, politicians and citizens as the innovations suggested by the hero of the mentioned literature genre creation. If Tigran Sargsyan succeeds in realizing those ides, developing good relations with the opposition, he will not be treated as described above. The difference is that the heroes of Bulgakov were supporting each other only morally, but the prime minister had the political support of Serzh Sargsyan, which inspires hope. 100 days is not a very long period to wait and see what will happen.