ARMENIA Pasinyan and the new Armenia of the “clean face”

For the first time since the ‘velvet revolution’ of 2018, the Armenian prime minister showed his face shaved with a beard. A gesture to wink at the need to ‘set the country to zero’, an expression he increasingly used to ask ‘to look at the real Armenia and not the country of dreams’.

Yerevan () – The Prime Minister of Armenia, Nikol Pašinyan, made the symbolic gesture of shaving his beard, for the first time since the “velvet revolution” of 2018, also publishing a very TikTok-style video, with the trick of the towel uncovered on his beard and then on his clean face, to indicate the “need to start from scratch in the construction of the statehood of Armenia.” Everyone was quite surprised, since the image of the “bearded Pašinyan” was closely linked to the path he had taken throughout the country, rallying his followers to finally reach power with his Civil Agreement movement, and later confirming it in subsequent contests. electoral.

Some think that Pašinyan also wanted to make a difference with the current face of the opposition to him, Bishop Bagrat Galstanyan, with his characteristic monastic beard, who from his peripheral diocese of Tavowš, on the border with hostile Azerbaijan, made in turn a popular pilgrimage to Yerevan, to gather the “patriots” who were calling for the resignation of the prime minister. As some observers have commented, beard cutting (with a final wink) in the Armenian male custom is done after a tough defeat at cards, or after being outplayed in some other type of competition.

Without adding any explanatory words to the video, Pašinyan winked at the need to “return Armenia to zero”, an expression that he increasingly uses to say that “we must look at the real Armenia, not at the country of dreams that escapes their territories. The debate refers directly to relations with Azerbaijan and the occupation of Nagorno Karabakh, the latest trauma experienced as a consequence of a 30-year conflict, but Pašinyan’s vision addresses the entire historical consciousness of Armenia, which remains too tied to the ancestral past of a people that filled the territories of Roman Asia, before the arrival of the Ottoman Turks.

The morning before shaving his face, the prime minister had described the 1990 declaration of independence as a “great tragedy”, listing the territories that make up the territorial integrity of former Soviet Armenia, including the parties in dispute with Azerbaijan, which is today the main obstacle to the conclusion of peace talks with Baku. In Soviet times, the republic of Armenia was separated from the “Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous District”, which was forcibly recovered in 1992.

To explain his position, Pašinyan added in his speech to the Yerevan Parliament that “our collective social mentality, our social psychology, today is in fact contrary to an authentic conception of statehood, unconsciously each of us positions himself against the State.” ». The problem is that in the last 600 years, Armenia has only enjoyed independence for the last 35, and the “anti-state mentality” was formed when there was no State and “we were just a colony”, while today the head of the Government, 49 years, proposes to “cleanse” not only the face, but one’s own conscience.

Armenia, in his opinion, needs a new Constitution, not only to eliminate expressions unwanted by Azerbaijanis, but so that the country is “truly capable of presenting itself and competing in the new geopolitical conditions.” In addition to the definitive conclusion of negotiations with Azerbaijan, the Armenian government is in fact trying to forge relations with numerous countries in Asia (starting with India) and Europe, with a privileged relationship with France, and above all with Turkey, overcoming old hostilities and leaving in the background the historical diatribe about the Armenian genocide of more than a century ago.