Did Armenia Just Have An Orange Revolution?
By ZhannaAndreasyan and GeorgiDerluguian
Washington Post - 24/7/2015
Armenia, a small traditionally pro-Russian former Soviet republic,has just experienced a spectacular eruption of mass protests. On thesurface, it was against a fairly minor increase in electricity rates.
In Moscow, however, conservative journalists sounded alarms,alleging that America was attempting another "regime change" inRussia's underbelly.
Sociology might offer a less conspiratorial explanation. Big protestmovements often appear to be so sudden and spontaneous because theybuild upon citizens' prior "micro-mobilizations" around local issues,which took place below the mainstream media's radar screen. The eventsin Armenia followed this dynamic.
On June 17, the Armenian government approved a 16.9 percent increasein electricity prices. The next day, a few hundred young people stageda sit-in near Yerevan's opera house, the traditional site of popularprotests since the days of perestroika in the late 1980s. It waswidely rumored that the price increase was only to cover up wasteand corruption. Their slogan was as emotional as it was vague: Noto Robbery!
The original protest seemed easily ignored, so in the evening of June22, the protesters occupied Marshal Baghramyan Avenue, Yerevan's mainthoroughfare, where both the parliament and presidential palace arelocated. Monumental traffic jams ensured that Yerevan's citizens feltthis immediately. Curiously, a majority of Yerevantsis did not seem to mind the inconvenience.
Early on June 23, the Armenian police -- claiming that they wereclearing the obstacles to city traffic -- dispersed the demonstratorswith water cannons and briefly detained 237 of them.
At this news, Yerevan seemed to explode. Much as had happened inKiev's Euromaidan in November 2013, police action provoked a blowback.
Now thousands flocked into Baghramyan, including the local media andsports celebrities merrily posing for pictures and taking selfies.
Only a couple months earlier, and virtually on the same spot, theArmenian American pop personality Kim Kardashian had been picturingherself during her tour of the ancestral homeland to commemorate thevictims of the 1915 Turkish genocide.
The Armenian history of victimhood matters in the classical senseof Durkheimian theory: External conflict fosters cohesion withinsocial groups. Extraordinary conflict, like the memories of genocidalextermination, fosters extraordinary cohesion. This helps explain why,after the first clash had backfired so badly, Armenian authorities
carefully avoided using force against fellow Armenians. The protestmovement thus obtained its window of political opportunity.
In the following weeks, the protesters stayed behind the barricades ofchained trashcans while the police patiently stood in phalanx behindtheir shields a few paces away. To relieve the psychological tensionand plain boredom of protracted face-off, the crowd kept on dancing,waving Armenian flags, making impromptu speeches almost round theclock. All this was broadcast live by Web-based TV channels. For theduration, the safety and fun reigning on Baghramyan Avenue seemedto make it less a protest rally than a popular destination forYerevantsis' evening promenades.
Here the trajectory of Armenian protest diverged from the Ukrainianrevolution earlier last year. The small group that tried to unfurlEuropean Union flags, as had happened in the Ukrainian Euromaidana year earlier, was heckled and expelled from the crowd. While thegovernment sought to avoid violence, the protesters insisted thatthey had no political agenda. The authorities on their side recognizedthe protest as peaceful and purely social.
Seeking to defuse the situation, President Serge Sarkisian invitedrepresentatives from the crowd to come into his palace for adiscussion. The protesters proudly claimed to have neither leadersnor negotiators. Instead, they claimed to represent the Armenianpeople as a whole with a single demand: Rescind the price hike!
Until this protest, the "leaderless" network tactic had worked well for Armenian protesters in a variety of recent campaigns that hadfocused on local social issues: protection of endangered forests andurban public spaces, or demands to roll back draconian parking fines,increased minibus fares or the privatization of pensions.
Having developed outside regular electoral politics, thesemicro-mobilizations had been building their own mobilizationresources. The participants in protest events, mostly young andeducated men and women, formed networks of mutual support andinformation-sharing, which was helped by newly spread access to theInternet. Furthermore, activists had learned new tactics that weresimultaneously nonviolent and socially approved. Avoidance of alcoholwas recognized as a must. Spirits were maintained at the rallies withfolk songs, dances and games.
Most importantly, shaming authorities in such boisterous yet seemingly
innocuous ways began producing small victories that surprised andencouraged the mass of ordinary citizens. Perhaps most significantly,in August 2013 a diffuse network of Internet-connected activists hadmanaged to prevent a big increase in minibus fares, the main means ofpublic transportation in Yerevan, which would have hurt the majorityof its residents. A week of dancing and yelling in protests at thebus stops became highly visible and elicited still more citizensolidarity. For instance, it became common practice for privatemotorists to offer shared rides to the people refusing to pay thenew higher fares on minibuses.
The authorities found it very difficult to deal with such campaignsoutside the familiar, largely corrupt and managed landscape ofpost-communist democracies. Their diffuse nature and high emotionalcharge put the protest networks beyond the commonly practicedmanipulations.
Successful popular mobilizations tend to open space for other issues.
The festive and safe atmosphere helped to foster inordinate genderequality in the Armenian rallies. Armenia remains fairly patriarchaland socially conservative. But the widely supported protest gaveyoung educated women a great opportunity to claim public prominence,which translated into the slogans more reminiscent of Western 1968: Noto robbery, yes to short hairs! Or even yes to [woman's] choice! Theofficials sought to stigmatize the protesting young females, citingtraditional standards of modesty. Once again, official attacks provokedfurther radicalization, and the young men at Baghramyan Avenue beganchanting that the real girls worth marrying were those protestingand staying for nights in the barricades.
The very success of a leaderless movement, however, at a certainpoint threatened to become its own undoing. Who or what wouldinstitutionalize the protest's achievements? More simply, who woulddeclare victory and end the rally? And so the protest dragged on andon, gradually losing its emotional energy.
The big complicating problem is that the electrical grid in Armeniabelongs to the Russian company, RAO United Energy Systems. In recentyears, Russian corporations came to own whole sectors of Armenia'seconomy in the swaps of debts for assets. Armenian authorities'hands were tied.
Yet Armenia remains important to Russia as bridgehead in the SouthernCaucasus and a member of the Russia-led Eurasian Economic Union. Andso intense negotiations ensued between Moscow and Yerevan.
On June 27, Sarkisian announced a face-saving compromise: the Armenianstate budget would absorb the price increase while an independentcommission involving representatives from the protesters could audit
the economic reasoning behind the new energy tariffs.
The protesters, already strained by the long rally, split into thetwo factions familiar in many social movements. In the German GreenParty, these are called the "Fundies" and the "Realos." The "realos,"a minority of protesters, accepted the presidential invitation toparticipate in the public audit and moved away from Baghramyan Avenue.
The Armenian police chief promised to join the celebration danceas soon as normal traffic resumed in downtown Yerevan. Most, the"fundies," decided to stay behind the barricades and press theirdemands to the end.
The denouement took another week. Police regularly issued warnings thatthey could no longer tolerate the disruption to traffic but did notmove. They calculated that the movement would exhaust itself -- whichproved correct. Dancing notwithstanding, it is not possible to maintainemotional energy during protracted rallies with uncertain goals. In theend, police almost tenderly (of course, before the national TV cameras)removed the last protesters and easily dismantled their barricades.
It often happens in contentious politics that both sides win somethingand lose something. It may take a while before the score becomesreally known.
The Armenian government's incumbents won, at least in the short run.
They survived the challenge and showed their backers in Moscow thatthey could stay in charge without any violence.
The protesters, despite their short-lived glory followed by the split,might have won in the longer run. It remains to be seen what politicalforms this movement might assume. Much will depend on further learningamong the young Armenian activists. This is not going to be easy. Themovement grew to a scale at which it will have to figure out itsown politics.
However, it is now quite certain that a new political generation hascome of age. That movement makes the next elections in Armenia seemless predictable than only a month ago.
ZhannaAndreasyan, Ph.D., is lecturer in sociology at Yerevan StateUniversity. GeorgiDerluguian is a professor of sociology at New YorkUniversity Abu Dhabi.