Armenia’s Working Class Is Missing from Election Coverage
Armenia's elections are framed as a geopolitical contest, but the real fault line is class. The ruling party's resilience reflects the legacies of postsocialist transition and the absence of a left.
Today, Armenians go to the polls to cast their votes in consequential parliamentary elections, which, according to most English-language media, will define the country’s foreign policy vector.
Most recently, Russia has begun putting economic pressure on Armenia following the deepening of diplomatic ties between the latter and the West. The EU, for its part, locally has pushed an aggressively anti-Russian agenda through its increasingly jingoistic foreign policy. Meanwhile, US President Trump has been unabashedly intervening in Armenia’s elections, dispensing with the pretense of nonintervention that his counterparts in Moscow and Brussels usually maintain. As a result, the English-language media coverage has largely subordinated Armenia’s domestic politics to the spectacle of regional geopolitics, viewing the country only through the prism of great-power competition.
The popular story about Armenian voters is that they care about two issues: the return to the ethnically cleansed Nagorno Karabakh (NK) and choosing between Russia and the EU as their civilizational destination. But credible survey data show that neither the issue of NK nor Armenia’s foreign policy vector dominates the electorate’s preferences. When it comes to foreign policy, preferences remain relatively balanced, tempered by fears of ‘turning Armenia into another Ukraine’ (a warning Russian officials continue to repeat with condescension). Meanwhile, the issue of NK, which defined post-Soviet Armenia’s identity through right-wing nationalism and militarism, is going through a transformation where anti-war sentiments are dominant in the Armenian political imaginary and discourse.
So, what issues actually sit at the top of the electorate’s priorities? Economic inequality and a peace agreement with Azerbaijan. By framing Armenia’s elections as a struggle between Russia and the West, foreign observers dismiss the issues that actually animate the electorate. The decisive questions for most Armenians are not geopolitical allegiance or civilizational destinations, but welfare reforms and provision at home, and the prospect of ending decades-long insecurity with regard to the conflict with Azerbaijan. These priorities only become more salient when the alternatives dismiss social protections and appear more willing to embrace the politics of war.
Nikol, the False Prophet
Nikol Pashinyan and his party, Civil Contract, came to power after the 2018 regime change. While some have characterized this regime change as a color revolution, thus linking it with earlier regime changes in post-Soviet countries, the driving factors behind it were largely domestic. In Spring 2018, a mass movement against Armenia’s oligarchic government began. By then, this government had realized that a war between Armenia and Azerbaijan over NK was inevitable, as the decades-long negotiations had reached a stalemate. Moreover, after the Four-Day war in 2016, they understood that the mere size difference between the two militaries indicated Armenia would lose the war. Then, the president-turned-PM Serzh Sargsyan resigned, leaving the responsibility for that war and its consequences to his successor government: Pashinyan. For two years, the oligarch-funded media claimed Pashinyan was preparing ‘to give our lands away,’ poisoning public discourse with hardline ethnonationalist rhetoric. The populist Pashinyan, in 2020, went to war with hawkish and bellicose rhetoric, which he has since admitted would have been avoided had Armenia at least negotiated the peaceful return of the Azerbaijani territories Armenian forces occupied around NK.
The 2020 war weakened Armenia, and its negotiating standing collapsed, which only led to more concessions being forced on Armenia by Azerbaijan and the mediators in Moscow and Brussels (and currently Washington). The ruling party, however, has spun this loss into a win, arguing that exiting the conflict has given Armenia freedom from the need to constantly seek a great power mediator, often openly saying that Russia has used the conflict for its own benefit. This has historically been true; most recently, the ceasefire agreement of November 9, 2020, had a provision on an extraterritorial corridor that would connect Azerbaijan to Nakhchivan, which would be overseen by the Russian FSB. This became the only point from that agreement that did not become defunct after the ethnic cleansing of NK as both Baku and Moscow were pushing for the corridor, with Iran and the EU playing different roles in the last three years in stopping them. Now, this corridor has been repackaged into the Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity (TRIPP). Out of the frying pan and into the fire.
To those outside of Armenia, it may be puzzling why Pashinyan continues to be in power despite losing a war in 2020 and being in office when NK was ethnically cleansed in 2023. The issue of NK, however, is not as simple as some on the Armenian right – who dominate the diaspora and local media– will have everyone believe. Pashinyan has been campaigning on the premise that the previous governments, under the guise of national security, have continuously plundered the state budgets and left the military unable to fight the war, which they knew was brewing. According to him, the NK conflict has been used as an ideological smokescreen while the criminal-oligarchic regimes divided the Soviet-era wealth and infrastructure between themselves.
But Pashinyan could not popularize these narratives about the conflict and the wars if they were not already latent in Armenian public discourse. The defeat in 2020, as well as the ethnic cleansing of NK, has served as an opening for the working class to finally have critical conversations about the NK movement. As a postsocialist state, Armenia’s transition from state socialism to market liberalism has left large sections of the working class disenfranchised and marginalized. The country’s excessive militarization and securitization following the First Nagorno Karabakh War (1991–1994) facilitated state capture and shock-therapy market reforms, justifying the economic dispossession, political abandonment, and cultural erasure of the working class. For decades, this working class has harbored animosity toward what was colloquially known as the Karabakh clan, blaming these ruling elites for the demise of the welfare state and disorderly deindustrialization. To be fair, these critical conversations have been full of overcorrections that sometimes spill into hatred towards ordinary NK Armenians. Also, unfortunately, these conversations often happen in the framework of the ruling party’s liberal nationalism.
In the last month, the ruling party’s campaign would put a K-pop group’s promotional activities to shame. It featured excessive aegyo with hand heart signs and showed Pashinyan and the Speaker of the Parliament constantly doing a mukbang—on the campaign bus, at campaign events, and at ordinary people’s homes. Pashinyan has proven that he has immense virality as well. His social media clips, in which he eerily stares down at the camera with a Hitchcockian stare, listening to the most random songs —from mainstream pop to Armenian rabiz to Russian chanson —have gone viral across the post-Soviet social media. It is unquestionable that while his opposition has the resources, Pashinyan dominates the attention economy so indispensable to elections. However, the campaign has not been without its faults and scandals. Pashinyan’s emotional outbursts at rallies towards voters with critiques or opposite views have drawn criticism over his self-righteous behavior, which often does not differentiate between good and bad faith criticism.
The common theme of the ruling party’s campaign events is that Armenians cannot grieve forever. We witness state-sanctioned toxic positivity, where the grief and the traumas of the Armenian people are being processed through extreme compartmentalization and unapologetic consumerism. Out of numerous festivities organized by the state (and their generous private donors’ illegal funding) in the last two months, the best example is the botched and appropriated May Day celebrations, where they even changed the name of the holiday from Workers’ Day to Day of Work. The most sickening scene was the spectacle of Yandex delivery drivers, predominantly Indian migrant workers, being paraded through Republic Square on their mopeds, turning some of the city’s most precarious workers into props for appalling merriment. A few days later, 130 km away from Yerevan, Indian migrant workers at a Russian-owned garment factory went on a strike, protesting against inhumane working conditions and months of unpaid wages, only to be brutalized by the local police and go back to India without proper compensation.
Pashinyan knows the cornerstone of his rule is economic populism, which is why public sector spending, especially in the regions, has been increased. Over the years, the government has prided itself on investing in building and renovating roads, schools, kindergartens, and hospitals. Their biggest reform has been the healthcare reform, which, since January of this year, has ensured that minors and retired citizens can receive healthcare at significantly lower costs. According to the data provided by the Healthcare Ministry, as of March 31st, 614,000 citizens had benefited from the reform (for comparison, Pashinyan won the 2021 elections with 688,761 votes). One of the main reasons Pashinyan’s base often brings up for their support for him is the complete reduction of out-of-pocket healthcare expenses.
Pashinyan’s base is often referred to as jekh by his opponents and their media satellites. Jekh means trash or human waste in Armenian. Most recently, an opposition MP described them as toothless pensioners ‘who, from the looks of it, did not lead good lives.’ According to a recent IRI poll, Pashiyan’s main support base is the 56+ age group. Pashinyan’s screwball, sometimes vulgar, personality resonates with the old Soviet generation, who do not see his emotional outbursts about jailing his oligarch opponents as unbecoming for a head of state but as rightful frustration and anger. His base is channeling its economic rage through him. For them, it is an outlet for their own grievances, which have been made culturally invisible for a long time. And this working-class unrest is unfortunately being neutralized through Pashinyan’s liberal democratization promotion.
Political capitalists, an astroturfed opposition
The main and most resourceful opposition to Pashinyan are three oligarchs he has since nicknamed the three-headed party of war. The one polling the best is Russian-Armenian oligarch Samvel Karapetyan, whose campaign has flooded public discourse with AI-generated attack ads fearmongering about the future settlement of 300,000 Azerbaijanis in Armenia. The second one is Armenia’s second president, Robert Kocharyan, who is back after a humiliating defeat in 2021 and whose rule from 1998 to 2008 was notorious for political assassinations, repression of anti-regime voices, media and protests, and most importantly, the auction of Armenia’s strategic assets to foreign capital. Finally, in third place is another oligarch, Gagik Tsarukyan, who is on a quest to build the world’s highest statue of Jesus Christ, apparently testing God’s patience with the first Christian nation. So, what do these political actors have in common despite their obscene wealth built on state capture and their inability to form a cohesive sentence in Armenian? Hardline ethnonationalism, strongman appeal, and a zest for another war.
Pashinyan’s base might be delusional when it comes to their views about him (from ‘You’re our king’ to ‘Jesus sent you to save us’), but their analysis and understanding of Pashinyan’s main opposition is quite astute. Most of Armenia’s older generation’s interactions with Pashinyan on the campaign trail included demands for reining in the oligarchs—barring them from participating in elections, returning to the state its privatized assets, throwing them in prison for corruption and state-sanctioned violence— while some even demand their executions on the campaign live streams. Liberal interpretation of these demands is, of course, that this generation is simply unable to let go of their Soviet nostalgia and has regretfully not overcome their authoritarian mentality. Often, both from the liberal left and the nationalist right, these people are condemned for being Stalinists who yearn for the terror of the 1930s.
While vote buying has been a feature of Armenian elections since at least the mid-90s, it is the first time that law enforcement is cracking down on this practice on a large scale and in an aggressive manner. Almost every day in the past month, there have been intercepted recordings released by the Anti-Corruption Committee that paint the saddest picture. Organized crime wannabes are engaged in mobilizing their communities, with promises of 100-200 thousand Armenian drams (around $300-400) if they vote for one of the three opposition parties, mostly the Kremlin-backed Karapetyan. The recordings reveal young and middle-aged men, high on their own hubris, speaking to each other in criminal slang. In one of the recordings, one man informs another that a respected crime boss has issued a progon (Rus: прогон), forbidding people to vote for Pashinyan. Organized crime has long participated in the plunder of Soviet Armenia’s social and economic assets, acting as an insurance mechanism for those who captured state infrastructure and resources during the transition period. These recordings reveal a deeply entrenched classist contempt for the very people whose votes they seek to buy. In postsocialist states, vote-selling is often a survival strategy, an unfortunate response to material insecurity among those who struggle to imagine a future beyond their immediate needs.
In the context of political oppositions, the Armenian Church has to be mentioned. Pashinyan had a public fallout with the Catholicos after the latter got involved in Armenia’s domestic and foreign policies. While the liberal side will paint a picture of the state intervening in the affairs of the church, it is no secret in Armenia that the Church has been thoroughly integrated into the capitalist class structures of Armenia, and what Pashinyan is currently doing is simply co-opting its institutional power for his own benefit.
The less talked-about aspect of this campaign is how the political patriarchy is reinforcing itself. The narratives dominating the campaign construct an Armenian identity around strong men and masculine power. Most major parties refer to the electorate as male and make promises that are often directed to men – tgherk (men) is the default political subject. Right-wing parties promote aggressive pro-natalist policies as a way to increase the birth rates. Criminal slang is usually used to describe Armenia’s military defeats and weak negotiating standing; the usual undertones are sexual violence and humiliation. In fact, one of the major oligarch opponents is a convicted rapist. Male-dominated political parties that position themselves as being against everyone will proudly claim they are apolitical while calling for militarism and the nation-army doctrine, without a shred of irony.
Pashinyan also has his very own controlled opposition. Among his critics in other parties are liberal nationalists, who believe not enough is being done to sever ties with Russia and head towards Europeanization. These parties have been essential in promoting civilizational myths and illusions about the West in Armenia and enjoy a sizable audience on YouTube. Another group that promotes these Western interests is the NGO professional class, which has greatly benefited from the increased democratization funding coming to Armenia since 2018. The NGO professional class, which periodically offers token criticisms of the government to sustain the façade of being independent watchdogs, ultimately supports it because its alternative is an Orbán-style crackdown on foreign funding. This development funding is instrumental in shaping discussions around political processes. Political questions become less about class interests and material relations and more about liberal moralizing centered on civility and respectability. The role of NGO intellectuals—who call themselves ‘civil society’ and clutch their pearls whenever their very real dependence on foreign donors is scrutinized—is to serve as agents of Western soft power in Armenia.
The West vs Russia question
In this high-pressure geopolitical environment, both Russia and the West instrumentalize their local actors to ensure Armenia makes mistakes. Russia has used its leverage on Armenian political capitalists and significantly increased anti-Pashinyan misinformation. The West’s local actors have been pushing for partisan anti-Russian pivots and policies, gleefully – and prematurely– declaring the end of Russian influence in Armenia. While both the West and Russia demand quick answers from Armenia as to where its political future is, historically, this region and the conflict mediation between Armenia and Azerbaijan go through geopolitical cycles. The outcome in this region largely depends on the outcomes of the Russia-Ukraine and Iran-US wars. The longer these wars continue, the more tensions intensify and uncompromising militarism is pushed, the less likely it is that this region will finally achieve peace. The sad reality being that the people here will become collateral and an afterthought to great power clashes, as much as they try to balance their vector and stay neutral.
At the beginning of May, the EU leaders held a historic first summit in Armenia, with empty promises of European integration for its host. This summit brought the Ukrainian President Zelenskyy to Armenia, obviously touching a nerve in Moscow. In the wake of the EU summit in Yerevan, Putin has suggested a conscious uncoupling between Armenia and Russia. At the same time, Russian state media and Kremlin-affiliated political circles have pushed the Armenian nationalist framing of the loss of NK, blaming Pashinyan and his government, despite Putin and Lavrov’s earlier assessments in the wake of the 2020 war that Armenian maximalism was to blame for the failures of the negotiations from 1994 to 2020.
On May 26, Secretary of State Marco Rubio visited Armenia, widely believed to boost Pashinyan’s ratings two weeks before the election. The proponents of the West and Euro-integration have been ecstatic about this blatant intervention into Armenia’s elections, while hailing the TRIPP and additional agreements between Armenia and the US as diplomatic and economic achievements. Meanwhile, the actual face of American investments in Armenia is the $500 million to build a data center for NVIDIA in the deindustrialized city of Hrazdan, the environmental assessments for which have been suspiciously passed over. When asked by journalists to comment on this, a local government official’s response reads like a two-sentence horror story: “It’s a big international company. I’m sure they know what they are doing.”
In conclusion, Armenia’s ruling party, with its peculiar leader, dominates Armenian politics despite all the legitimate reasons it should not be. Yet, their puzzling popularity is driven by the lack of real alternatives on the left and the oligarch boogeyman on the right. Pashinyan speaks to the economic anxieties and security concerns of his base, offering them selective welfare and commitment to peaceful negotiations. In the absence of a political project capable of addressing the structural problems produced by postsocialist transformation, many voters continue to place their hopes in the least undesirable option. Whether this arrangement can survive the passing of the Soviet generation remains a bitter question, one that may determine the future trajectory of the postsocialist state.
The author has requested anonymity due to concerns about potential repercussions for critical political commentary.
 |
|
Great article.