George Orwell on Today’s Armenia

· February 5, 2025

Vahan ZanoyanBy Vahan Zanoyan

“Erase a people’s past, and you control their future.” – George Orwell

The collective understanding of its history has always been central to the survival of the Armenian nation. The past matters. History forges and strengthens identity. It not only sheds light on present realities but also forms the foundation on which a future compatible with its sense of national identity can be built. Tampering with “the past,” the way a nation collectively understands, remembers, and identifies with it, is not just an inconsequential exercise in academic historical revisionism. It derails that nation’s aspirations and corrupts its vision of the future.

“Erase a people’s past, and you control their future,” rings true today as we pay attention to what is going on in Armenia, even though that sentence, while widely attributed to George Orwell, is in fact an interpretation and rewording of a different statement made by him. The original Orwell phrase is: “Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.” 1984, Book 1, Chapter 3, page 34.

If the political power that controls the present wants, or needs, or is forced to change the aspirations of a nation regarding its future, it must first revise how that nation perceives and understands its past. This can work in either direction — either over-glorify the past and raise the bar of national aspirations to unrealistic levels, or question the very foundations of national historical rights and lower that bar to equally unrealistic and untenable levels. Armenia’s neighbors have displayed an insatiable appetite for the former, whether in the form of Turkey’s compulsion to return to the glory of the Ottoman Empire, or Azerbaijan’s aggressive and expansionist “Western Azerbaijan” rhetoric. There have also been some “maximalist” Armenians in this category who dream to reclaim Tigran the Great’s empire.

Today’s official Yerevan squarely falls in the second category. It questions and denies the nation’s own understanding of its history, in order to render palatable a much more degraded vision of the future than the nation would have accepted had it maintained its true sense of identity.

There is a long chain of examples of how the government in Yerevan has tried to reshape the past in order to draw a new map for the future. Those who live in Armenia or follow the interviews and pronouncements of government officials in the Armenian language are probably aware of each loop in that chain (and those who don’t will probably not fully understand the context in which the points of this article are made and may even question what the whole fuss is about).The latest in these series of blows to the collective national understanding came on January 24, during the prime minister’s meeting with members of the Swiss-Armenian community in Zurich, when he questioned (minutes 19:20-20:20) the historic circumstances of the Genocide, stating bluntly that “we have to return to our truths, [ask] whether that which we consider truth is in fact the truth. [As] The most important part of our identity, we need to return to the history of the Armenian Genocide and we should understand what happened, why it happened, and how did we form our understanding of what happened, through whom did we form our understanding, and how did it happen that in 1939 there was no Armenian Genocide agenda, and how then in 1950 the Armenian Genocide agenda appeared.”

Forget for a moment that the term “genocide” was coined in 1944 by Raphael Lemkin, and that it could not have been on any agenda in 1939, even though the significance of that date escapes me. Forget also that the Armenian Genocide is one of the best documented historic events considering the means available at the time. Both foreign (including Turkish) and Armenian historians and legal experts, diplomatic eyewitnesses and missionaries, Turkish archives and trials, as well as countless pages of survivor accounts leave no doubt about “what happened and why it happened.” The prime minister could easily have found the answers to all his questions in the Tsitsernakaberd Armenian Genocide Museum-Institute right there in Yerevan.The more significant point here is the fact that questioning the Genocide by the head of state of the Republic of Armenia, when 32 countries officially recognize it, cannot be explained in any way other than to push a future agenda on the Republic of Armenia which would be anathema to one of the most central Armenian national causes.

The prime minister has since retracted/explained his comments on the Genocide, but that does not change the arguments, analyses and conclusions of this article. The Zurich pronouncement was just one loop in a long chain of public statements which challenge the nation’s collective understanding of its history and sense of identity. These are publicly available, and some of them are referred to below.

The most common justification given (and often accepted by many) for this policy is national security — do not provoke the enemy, do not take the bait when the enemy tries to provoke you, do not proclaim any territorial claims from any of your neighbors, declare that you will not attempt to recover the over 200 sq. kms. of sovereign Armenian territory occupied by Azerbaijan by military force, do not demand the release of your prisoners in Baku nor put the issue of their release on any negotiating agenda, do not talk about the right of Artsakh’s population to return to their homes, deny the existence of a historic Western Armenia, even discard Mount Ararat from the national emblem lest it be misconstrued as a territorial demand from Turkey.

Given the current balance of military power in the region, some of these policies, such as not provoking a premature unequal war, are wise. Armenia is surrounded by aggressive and hostile neighbors, who are now more than ever used to conducting military aggression with impunity. Avoiding war is also politically prudent because it is popular within a war-fatigued, demoralized and depoliticized public.

But much more is being conceded under the banner of national security than is necessary to avoid provoking another war. These concessions have disastrous immediate and long-term implications for both the population of Armenia and the Armenian nation at large. Questioning the Genocide cannot possibly be a national security tool. Granted, the Republic of Armenia does not have the power today to exact a recognition of the Genocide from Turkey, nor was the meeting with the Swiss Armenian community the place to make such a demand. But, listening to the entire video of the event, it is clear that there was no reason to even bring up the subject in the first place. It was brought up because it afforded an opportunity to question the validity of the Genocide.

Abandoning Armenian citizens held in Baku jails also cannot be part of a national security strategy; quite the contrary, it further emboldens the enemy and confirms that its illegal actions will continue to go unpunished. Declaring that Armenia has no territorial claims from its neighbors is one thing, equating the historical reality of a “Western Armenia” with Aliyev’s fallacy of “Western Azerbaijan” an entirely different thing. A millennia-old national symbol is not a territorial claim. Removing the word “national” from various national cultural institutions, such as the National Library and the National Opera, has nothing to do with avoiding war.

The national security argument simply does not hold water. We are in an Orwellian world of downgrading our past, national identity and history, with the aim of lowering national aspirations to a level where a sanitized and degraded future would seem normal and become acceptable.

One of the most profound and dangerous implications (in fact, aims) of this policy is to drive a wedge between the nation and the state. Official Yerevan makes no qualms about the separation of the two. The public pronouncements, both in Zurich and in other interviews, are very clear: The Armenian Motherland is only the [current] state; The Armenian people/population (ժողովուրդ) are the citizens of Armenia. The Armenian nation is all ethnic Armenians who are not citizens of the Republic of Armenia, and the state has nothing to do with them. National history and aspirations are not the history and aspirations of the Republic of Armenia. Armenian history is irrelevant to the history of Armenia. In short, the Republic of Armenia is just a state, not a nation-state.

Aside from not advancing national security, these policies cannot in any way be considered to be part of an Armenian political agenda, whether at the national level or the state level. The Lemkin Institute issued a detailed statement on January 30 calling the prime minister’s pronouncement a further echo of “Turkish denialist narratives.” Aside from denial of the Genocide, sterilizing the Armenian state from its national and historical content has been on the Turkish regional political agenda since the First Republic and continues today.

As I have argued elsewhere, the Armenian people do not need just a state; they need a nation-state. Most of the current citizens of Armenia and members of the diaspora have much better options than the Republic of Armenia if all it had to offer was a non-national state where they could live in peace and earn a living. If the Armenian state decides to rid itself of its national content, it will no longer have anything to offer to the Armenian population either in Armenia or in the rest of the world. In this sense, abandoning the nation is the first step toward the demise of the state itself, even if somehow it managed to secure its physical borders.

By the same token, the Republic of Armenia cannot be defended without the resources of the entire nation that gave birth to it. This should be obvious to anyone who takes a careful look at the map and the Armenian nation’s history. National interests and state interests are not mutually exclusive. Quite the contrary; one cannot be served without serving the other.

Even though today’s government outright rejects that obvious premise, it has become abundantly clear that it is unproductive to keep arguing the point. At the cost of being somewhat repetitive, I will paraphrase some of the arguments I made in another article on the Armenian diaspora. The “nation,” in its broadest sense, encompassing elements and resources of the Armenian nation both in Armenia and around the globe, must reorganize itself to pursue both national and state interests in a parallel universe to that of the government in Yerevan. This would not be a competitive effort, even though it would require going around some of the policies and pronouncements of official Yerevan. It would be a complementary effort, because the nation can no longer rely on the state to defend its own state interests, let alone those of the broader nation, and because the Armenian nation is a legitimate stakeholder in the Armenian state, whether today’s government admits it or not.

Reorganizing the nation without the direct participation and collaboration of the state is a very tall order indeed, especially when many continue to harbor unfounded hopes that relying on the state will eventually achieve the same result. It requires uncharacteristic cooperation and a dispassionate national vision. The traditional diaspora structures are not equipped to handle this task. A new initiative must emerge which includes and incorporates the traditional structures but goes beyond them with a pragmatic vision and an equally pragmatic action plan, whereby the resources of the global Armenian nation are harnessed to a clear, unified goal.

The goals of such an initiative would be 1) to enhance the economic development and security infrastructure of Armenia; 2) to establish global political leverage on par with the challenges of the Armenian state; 3) to ensure that Armenia develops and prospers as a nation-state, in the most comprehensive sense of the word. Pursuing these objectives entails several interrelated activities, which the state alone either cannot or is unwilling to accomplish, but the nation can. These include (revisiting the concluding thoughts from here):

— Restore and reinforce a sense of national identity and common history, by reviving and invigorating the Armenian educational institutions throughout the world, where ideally a “common” national Armenian education is imparted, in addition to a competitive modern education.

— Have a seat at the table of global economic interests by creating an effective and globally connected Armenian business network.

— Have a say in shaping the policy-making mindset around the world by cultivating entrenched professional and diplomatic relations with key international NGOs and think tanks.

— Keep up with and have a presence in the technological and AI developments around the world.

— Project the soft power of Armenian history and culture worldwide, by launching a professional and consistent information campaign.

— In order to facilitate the above, establish an elaborate global information gathering and analyzing system, covering both Armenian communities and non-Armenian entities that impact Armenia.

Ideally, it should be the state that assumes responsibility of coordinating an effort of this magnitude, acting as the magnet to draw all the resources of the nation and harnessing them to a common vision. But all four governments of the Third Republic have proved to be incapable of that task, with the current one refuting even the premise of such a mission, let alone accepting the responsibility for it.

Daunting as the task outlined above may seem in light of present realities, the Armenian nation has all the necessary resources, capabilities and global reach to accomplish it. It remains to muster the political will, the vision and the organizational acumen to initiate the effort.

(Vahan Zanoyan is a global energy and security specialist. Over a span of 35 years, he has advised 15 different governments on economic development policy, energy sector strategy, national security, and global competitiveness. He has also served as a consultant to numerous international and national oil companies, banks, and other public and private organizations.)