«Փոփոխությունների շարժիչ ուժը» - Կարեն ԱՂԵԿՅԱՆ

Karen Agekyan's article "The Driving Force of Change," published in issue №5 (32) of the journal "Ani," continues the analysis of the political condition of the Armenian people begun in the article "Respectability or Struggle," and is devoted to the search for sources of genuine national mobilization under conditions of imitative political structures.

Introduction and Methodology

The author builds on the diagnosis established in the previous publication: both the authorities of the Republic of Armenia and the leadership of diaspora organizations effectively function as "curators of the Armenian millet" — structures answerable to external authorities for the "correct" behavior of Armenians, much like the leadership of the millet in the Ottoman Empire. The key difference between the current situation and the historical one is that today's elites submit voluntarily, without being hostages to force.

Critique of the Concepts of "Nation-Tribe" and "Civic Nation"

Agekyan examines two competing ideological constructs:

the representation of Armenians as an ethno-corporation or blood community rather than a full-fledged nation;
the artificial narrowing of the nation to a "civic nation" within the borders of the Republic of Armenia.

Both schemes, in the author's view, pursue the goal of "herding" the people into a manageable niche and making it easier for an external center to dispose of its resources and sovereignty.

Individual Freedom versus National Values

A separate section is devoted to critiquing the pseudo-liberal cult of individual self-realization. The author argues that genuine human freedom is realized through inclusion in a community and service to non-material, supra-personal values, while the absolutization of the individual "Self" leads to the degradation of society.

Social Media as an Ambivalent Resource

Analyzing the role of internet communications, Agekyan notes their dual nature: on the one hand, they expand opportunities for horizontal self-organization among citizens; on the other, they facilitate monitoring and manipulation of public sentiment by external "centers of power." Referring to Colin Crouch, the author points out that the strengthening of civic activism online naturally provokes a more powerful counter-strategy from traditional institutions.

Historical Parallel: The Intelligentsia and the National Liberation Struggle

Drawing on Martin Malia's study of the origins of Russian socialism, the author draws a parallel with the Armenian liberation movement: just as socialism did not express the direct interests of specific social groups but was the fruit of the intelligentsia's "ideal vision," the Armenian struggle for freedom likewise did not coincide with the immediate interests of the peasantry, the bourgeoisie, and the clergy, but embodied the idea of the nation as a unity of past, present, and future generations.

The Problem of Political Representation

The concluding thematic section is devoted to the phenomenon of political absenteeism in contemporary Armenia. The author emphasizes that the maturity of a society is measured not by the rejection of representation, but by the ability to competently delegate—and, when necessary, recall—authority from political representatives, since the direct and continuous participation of the entire people in politics is technically impossible.

The key conclusion of the article is that the genuine driving force of national change cannot be an imitative political system or the cult of individual self-realization, but rather the conscious restoration of mechanisms of responsible representation of interests, grounded in the priority of supra-personal national values and society's readiness to actively shape its own future.