Yerevan uprooting Russian language as it strives to cajole West

ANALYTICS  05 April 2023 - 16:54

The campaign to oust the Russian language from the country has renewed with the dramatic cooling down of Armenian-Russian relations. But this trend stems from the period of Serzh Sargsyan's presidency when they first spoke about the need to change the Eurasian model of development of the country for the European one.

And now, when controversies between Armenian and Russian authorities are escalating, the Russian language is no longer treated with respect. A few days ago it was reported that since June the activity of the only state Russian-language newspaper in the country - Respublika Armenia - will be suspended. According to the official statement, the newspaper is unprofitable. It is noted that the finances used to publish this and another closed newspaper will be redirected to the preparation and publication of news on the Armenpress website in Georgian, Chinese, and Persian. In other words, Yerevan makes no secret that these languages, and the news in them, are much more important for Armenia than the Russian language and information from Russia.

One would think that closing a non-state-language newspaper is not surprising, but in this case, it is the language of the country which sponsors all the Armenian undertakings, both good and bad, the country which guarantees the security of Armenia, indeed, the country which has fed all Armenians for decades, not letting them die of hunger, as it has practically no food resources. On the official level, Russia, which Yerevan wants to erase from the memory of Armenians, is an ally in several alliances and blocs, and a business partner in all areas of the barely breathing Armenian economy.

Naturally, Moscow has long been dissatisfied with Yerevan's decreasingly pro-Russian, but increasingly pro-Western policy, and the crowding out of the Russian language can cause serious damage to inter-state relations. In fact, this is nothing but an open demonstration of disrespect for Russia and the Russians. It is no coincidence that the campaign to stop using the Russian language in the press, culture, and education has intensified against the background of a sharp decline in Russia's rating in regional and international politics due to the war in Ukraine.

It is an undeniable fact that the image of the Russian state has been badly tarnished, especially among the countries of the former Soviet Union. However, Armenia is a special case, since until very recently it was considered to be Russia's closest ally and devoted friend (despite occasional glances at the West), so its current anti-Russian attitude irritates Moscow the most.

Some discontent in Moscow is also linked to the minimisation of the Russian language in Armenian schools and, more precisely, due to the lack of educational institutions with Russian language teaching in this South Caucasian country, there are only classes with Russian as the language of instruction. And the Armenians are in no hurry to correct this "omission" in favour of their Russian ally. On the contrary, at the end of 2021, Education Minister Vahagn Dumanyan stated that the Armenian government has no plans to open Russian-language schools in the country. Although it is clear that they could not appear if the country still has a language law adopted in 1993, thanks to which the state secondary schools in Armenia with the Russian language of teaching have disappeared, although this normative act gives that language a special status. But like everything else with Armenians - the main thing is to show their "peacefulness", "tolerance", and "commitment to justice and democracy", it is not necessary to comply with the proclamation at all.

In short, the real strengthening of the position of the Russian language is not envisaged in Armenia's state policy. To a certain extent, this is also due to the fact that after the collapse of the USSR, the status of the Russian language in the republic was in fact politicised, although in the Soviet period, there were Russian schools in the Armenian SSR alongside the Armenian ones. However, immediately after independence there was a tendency for the gradual eradication of the Russian language not only in secondary and higher education but also in the media. For example, back in December 2018, the then-acting Minister of Education and Science Harutyunyan announced that the intellectual television game "What? Where? When?" would be broadcast exclusively in Armenian.

"The government will allocate 17 million drams (about $35,000) for the programme. I have repeatedly criticised the organisers for running the game in Russian," Harutyunyan wrote on his Facebook page, which must have come as a bit of a surprise to the Russian community, which is still favourable to Armenians.

Curiously, the toxic attitude towards the Russian language in Armenia itself for some reason does not in any way hinder the dominance of citizens of Armenian nationality in the leading Russian media even to this day. Moreover, the Armenian agitprop is very firmly entrenched on the Russian expert platform and freely broadcasts exclusively Armenian interests to the masses, often bypassing Russian ones. For many years, efforts have been made on Russian TV, kindled by Armenian commentators, to discredit Azerbaijan and Türkiye, to drive a wedge into their relations with Russia, to focus the attention of the Russian target audience on the events of 1915, and to distort the essence of the Karabakh conflict.

It is well known that the influential Armenian diaspora allocates huge financial resources to cajole the European Parliament, the French Senate, and even the US Congress, as well as to bribe Russian politicians, who we see on TV in Russian TV programs, listening to their nonsense about "cruel Turks and bloodthirsty Azerbaijanis".

Of course, Armenians in Russia are not limited to pushing the interests of their homeland in the media and on TV. For example, the local settlement of the Armenian ethnos in certain Russian territories has become a very widespread and very dangerous trend for Russia. This inevitably leads to increased Armenian separatism and open territorial claims by Armenia and such lawlessness as appropriation or buying up land for pennies, squeezing out the autochthonous population, for example in the Krasnodar, Stavropol, and Rostov region. They are dreaming of appropriating such warm and rich areas. By the way, this is nothing new. Armenians used the same policy in Azerbaijan (now it has come to an end), and are now pushing it in Georgia's Javakheti, Abkhazia, and Adjara. So there is also nothing strange in the fact that the Armenians of the world tacitly claim to Russian territories, following the precepts and instructions of the "father" of world Armenianism - the Catholicos of All Armenians Vazgen I - to settle in other lands, taking a foothold there, multiply and gradually declare them their own.

"Our lands are not all ours yet, but the time will come to conquer and settle them. Over the last 40 years, Armenians have occupied their ancestral lands. They are 60% of them there. The lands in Krasnodar and Stavropol are gradually being liberated from Russian influence," the Catholicos enlightened world Armenians.

And indeed, as recent decades have shown, the precepts of "the father of Armenian expansionism" were taken as a rule, they were guided by them and declared everything they could as their property. Armenians settled on foreign territories and appropriated them and they plan to continue this policy in the future. Getting back to the issue of the Russian language in Armenia, we can conclude that getting rid of the Russian language indicates not only the aversion to everything Russian but also should be a red flag to Moscow that the integration of Armenians into Russian society is not in its interests. And it's time for Russians to think about it...

Caliber.Az