Russian political scientist presents five theses on political  heritage of Levon Ter-Petrosyan, Armenia and Karabakh issue

ArmInfo. Russian political scientist, Leading Researcher at the MGIMO Institute of International Studies of the Russian Foreign Ministry Sergey Markedonov presented  five theses on the political legacy of the first President of the  Republic of Armenia Levon Ter- Petrosyan, Armenia and the  Nagorno-Karabakh issue.

Markedonov began his first thesis by recalling that today, January 9,  2023, the first President of Armenia Levon Ter-Petrosyan turns 78  years old.

"Like any other major political figure, it is impossible to assess  him in a two-tone scale. However, in the context of Armenian  post-Soviet history, the figure of Ter-Petrosyan has a special  significance. It was he who came to power, riding the Karabakh wave,  defeating both the national communist nomenklatura and the national  radicals in the struggle for it. But none other than the first  president of Armenia, broke the taboo on the topic of political  concessions to Azerbaijan. In November 1997, he stated that following  the maximalist guidelines (attempts to build statehood through the de  facto integration of Armenia, Karabakh and seven adjacent areas with  the former NKAO) can bring the Armenian national state project to the  brink of disaster," the expert noted. However, according to him, his  warning did not become a subject of serious reflection both among the  elites and in the society of Armenia.

According to Markedonov, on the contrary, this led to the resignation  of Levon Ter-Petrosyan. "And his attempts in 2008-2012 to return to  power either as the head of the republic, or the mayor of Yerevan, or  a MP were unsuccessful. The first president remained a high-ranking  retired commentator on current political processes," the Russian  expert noted.

Secondly, the political scientist believes that the discussion about  the price of keeping Nagorno-Karabakh, supporting its  self-determination, the limits of concessions to Baku resumed with  renewed vigor after the defeat of Yerevan in the 2020 war.

"However, now it was no longer a format for discussing the text  (statement) of the head of state. The whole society was involved in  it. The concessions on Karabakh became not a matter of negotiations  between Armenians and Azerbaijanis, but an intra-Armenian dialogue,  filled and overflowing with emotions and accusations of betrayal. But  in this chore it is important to note one fundamentally significant  thing. The defeat of Armenia in the "autumn war" was the trigger for  this reflection, but not its cause. There were fundamental reasons  for breaking the Karabakh determinant of Armenian politics," the  Russian expert is convinced.

As the third, most important thesis, Markedonov pointed out the  victory over Azerbaijan in 1994, won with burdenes. The expert  acknowledged that Baku had indeed lost control lost control over  almost 14% of the territories that were considered Azerbaijani in the  formal legal sense. "But Armenia also received two of the four  borders closed, and two filled with a heap of geopolitical problems  (Russia-Georgia-West, USA-Iran). Let's add to this the oil factor for  Baku and the Azerbaijani-Turkish alliance, which precisely (!) thanks  to the Armenian success of the 1990s strengthened to previously  unimaginable heights. All this made the Armenian state project as  dependent on external forces as possible," the political scientist  believes.

Fourth, he continued, if we talk about the internal contour, then for  thirty post-Soviet years within Armenia, democratic and nationalist  discourse fought and mutually complemented each other. The expert  believes that at the stage of the struggle for "Miatsum" they were a  whole, but later they were alternately and simultaneously discredited  (disputing the election results, using the street in the political  process, delegitimization of state institutions).

"At the same time, several years of personnel "Karabakhization" were  enough for the mass consciousness to perceive the "fight for Artsakh"  as a synonym for nepotism, corruption, and negative social trends  (the most important of which is mass exodus from the country) began  to form an idea of Karabakh, as a source of internal problems for  Armenia itself. Ter-Petrosyan and his followers (Robert Kocharyan,  Serzh Sargsyan, Nikol Pashinyan) are responsible for all this. Each  of them individually and all together," the political scientist is  convinced.

As a fifth thesis, Markedonov noted that the abovementioned gives  reason to believe that it was not Pashinyan (to whom there are a lot  of well-founded claims, both from the citizens of Armenia themselves  and from foreign partners, including Yerevan's main allies) and not  the military defeat of 2020 that opened " de-Karabaghization".  "It  was largely predetermined by the internal and external political  development of both the Armenian national-state project itself and  geopolitical trajectories in the Transcaucasus," the expert summed  up.