Manvel Sargsyan's Article "'To Realize the Right'"

Manvel Sargsyan's article "'To Realize the Right'," structured as an interview with the director of the Armenian Center for National and Strategic Studies, is devoted to analyzing the transformation of power in the post-Soviet space and comprehending the nature of the oligarchic system in Armenia.

Introduction and Methodology

The material is constructed as an extended interview in which the author consistently examines the role of personality in historical processes, the mechanisms of oligarchy formation, and its distinction from authoritarian regimes. The editorial introduction emphasizes biographical context: the interlocutor is a participant in the Karabakh Movement from the very first days of the national liberation struggle, which shapes his analytical optics.

The Role of Personality in the Political Process

The author draws a distinction between two types of historical situations:

• periods when society clearly recognizes its task (the example being the Karabakh Movement), in which case the role of personality is minimal, since any deviation of a leader from the collective goal "throws him overboard from the processes";
• periods of societal uncertainty regarding its tasks, when the personal qualities of leaders acquire decisive significance and are capable of turning the process in any direction.

It is precisely in this second state, in the author's view, that the gradual devaluation of the intellectual and moral quality of the ruling elite occurs.

The Formation of Oligarchy

The central thesis of the article is the concept of "dealers in power": in conditions where state institutions are absent, it is precisely predatory self-interest that ensures the seizure of power by a narrow group. The author defines the oligarch not as a holder of capital, but as a "dealer in power" who subjugates society through control over financial and information flows. The key features of the oligarchic system are:

• unipolarity and a fundamental hostility toward society as such;
• the concentration of finance and information in a single center;
• dependence on external forces as a structural feature of small post-Soviet states.

Comparing Oligarchy and Authoritarianism

A separate section is devoted to the fundamental difference between two types of non-democratic power. The oligarchic system is described as "criminal law legalized by the constitution" — an agreement on the division of spheres of influence between "families," analogous to the structure of organized crime, where the supreme principle is the inequality of rights. Authoritarianism, by contrast, is built on the personal will of a "tsar," under which property exists only as an act of recognition granted by power. The author paradoxically characterizes oligarchy as a certain step forward compared to the complete lawlessness of authoritarianism, since it forms at least a minimal, if "bad," degree of protection for property and status.

De-ideologization as a Condition for Oligarchization

In the concluding part, the author links the emergence of oligarchy to the degree of society's de-ideologization, noting that it was precisely Armenia that turned out to be the country where mobilizing national ideas had exhausted themselves most completely among the post-Soviet states, which created the ground for the formation of a "pure" oligarchic model.

Conclusion

The article's key conclusion is that the degradation of Armenian power is not a matter of chance, but a natural result of society's self-removal from the processes of state-building, whereby the vacuum of responsibility is inevitably filled by criminalized structures of interest that reproduce themselves through control over finance and information.