«Ազատագրական պայքարի քաղաքականությունը» - Կարեն ԱՂԵԿՅԱՆ

Karen Aghekyan's article "The Politics of the Liberation Struggle" is an extended commentary on Rachya Arzumanyan's "Political Notes" and is devoted to analyzing the nature of the political space of contemporary Armenia in the context of the unfinished national liberation struggle.

Introduction and Methodology

The author starts from a methodological distinction between the general idea and concrete reality: with regard to the triad Republic of Armenia – Artsakh – spyurk, it is always necessary to clarify whether one is speaking of what ought to be or of what actually exists. The existing state of all three parts of Armenianhood is characterized through the metaphor of "a patient who is more alive than dead."

The Key Thesis on the Triad

Aghekyan insists that the very tripartite nature of Armenian space is a symptom of the illness of the whole, not grounds for positive strategic interpretations:

the division of a nation into two states has nowhere in history been established out of strategic considerations;
Yerevan, for all its problems, remains the unrivaled center of gravity for Armenianhood;
the task of the moment is not to seek functional roles for the "sick" parts of the nation, but to jointly build a single, fully-fledged center of governance.

The Nature of the Absence of Political Space

The article's central thesis is a rethinking of Arzumanyan's observation about the absence of politics in Armenia despite the appearance of policy. The author links this not only to the self-interest of the elites and the problem of generations ("zombies"), but also to objective historical peculiarities of Armenian statehood:

it was born amid a national liberation struggle, unlike the other post-Soviet states;
this struggle was not directed against the metropole (Moscow), with which a paradoxical alliance persists;
the struggle remains unfinished 25 years on — the military victory has not been consolidated politically and legally.

The Liberation Struggle as the Dominant Factor

The author cites a number of facts (visits by Azerbaijani "cultural figures" to Artsakh, the handover of a saboteur's body, the Safarov case, the deaths of soldiers on the border, the impossibility of either recognition or integration of Artsakh) confirming that the confrontation remains at its previous, national-liberation stage rather than transitioning into the format of an interstate conflict. The key conclusion: as long as a legitimate and self-sufficient space of existence has not been won back, a fully-fledged political field cannot take shape — neither figures nor parties are political in the full sense of the word.

The Second Front of the Struggle

Separately highlighted is the task of achieving Armenia's potential self-sufficiency — economic and military — as a condition for freeing the country from forced compromises and blackmail, without which it has no possibility of any agenda other than an emergency one.

Conclusion

The article's key conclusion: the current Armenian political field functions only in an imitative manner — like a ready but non-functioning airport in Artsakh — since the country's own force guaranteeing security has not been secured. A turning point in the situation is possible not through traditional mechanisms (elections, coalitions, protests), but through society's recognition of the exceptional nature of its situation and the resolution of the tasks of the national liberation struggle by political means. The gravity of external challenges is, in this light, regarded by the author not as bad luck, but as a potential source of mobilizing energy.