Abstract

Karen Agekyan's article "Large Scales" continues the problematic outlined by the author in the earlier work "The Jug Man" ("Aniv" No. 19, 2008), and is devoted to a critical analysis of the widespread thesis about a specific Armenian national inclination toward "large scales" — imperial spaces and structures exceeding the framework of one's own national state.

Introduction and Methodology

Starting from the judgments of outside observers (H.F.B. Lynch, S. Lurie), who claimed that Armenians are "uninterested" in the scale of a small state, the author poses a methodological question: who is actually being discussed — the ethnos as a sum of private individuals, or the nation as a subject of self-organization? This distinction becomes the key analytical tool.

Key Proposition

The article's main thesis: the attraction of a portion of Armenians to large centers (Constantinople, Tiflis, Moscow, Los Angeles) is explained not by "imperial scale" but by the ordinary logic of migration — the search for work, a better life, and opportunities characteristic of any diaspora (Russian, Chinese, Jewish, Turkish). The problem lies not in the vector of migration but in its relation to the state of affairs at the Homeland.

Mobile and Patriarchal Elements

The author introduces a distinction between two historical types of Armenian society:

• the patriarchal peasant majority, rooted in the land;
• the mobile element (clergy, merchants, intelligentsia), which set the tone of public life even before the Genocide.

After the Genocide and Soviet modernization, the share of the mobile element sharply increased, which creates the illusion of a special "imperial" nature of the Armenian people.

Service to Empires as a False Argument

Examining the phenomenon of Armenian service to various empires (Russian, Ottoman, French, and others), the author shows that this is not a unique national trait: Germans served Russia, Greeks served the Ottoman Empire, and Poles served Napoleon in similar ways. Collective service was always based on the convergence of the practical interests of the parties involved, not on a mystical attraction to "scale."

Diagnosis of the Current Condition

The central line of the article is the assertion that Armenia's current difficulties are generated not by external forces but by society's internal unreadiness to take responsibility for state-building. The author notes:

• the reduction of Armenian self-awareness to a domestic, family level;
• an aversion to collective social activity inherited from the Soviet experience;
• a convenient "belief in one's own smallness," which relieves personal responsibility toward the Fatherland.

Conclusion

The article's key conclusion: the mythology of a "pull toward large scales" is not a reflection of national character but a rationalization of the practice of individual evasion of national responsibility. The genuine task of Armenian society lies not in seeking new "large-scale" patrons but in the transition from ethnic psychology to national psychology — that is, in the conscious transformation of emotional attachment to the Homeland into a form of civic responsibility and real participation in state-building.