From Past to Future
Summary
Gevorg S. Khoudinyan
Each epoch in Armenian history had, relatively speaking, its own perception of “United” beginning from the nevertheless imperfect wish of uniting Armenia Major and Armenia Minor up to the unification of Eastern and Western Armenia, as well as, today’s political task of enclosing the Republic of Armenia and Artsakh in one state-political vessel. Alongside with this our persistent struggle for “Unity” in the diachronic scope of Armenian history has up to now shown only one result, i.e. the successive fall of Armenian kingdoms, the expulsion of Armenians from Western Armenia, the fall of the First Republic of Armenia. Here a question rises whether the reason of such downfalls was our wish of restoring unity or there have been other, rather objective reasons.
The loss of “Unity” as an expression of ontological crisis that has crept up the Armenians has been the result and consequence of permanent change in the civilized environment surrounding Armenia. By acknowledging our own powerlessness against such objective challenge we started to look for new paradigms of our unity instead of physical-geographical standards, that is, trying to compensate the loss of political basis of self-organization by means of spiritual, cultural, economic and other arguments.
Our great thinkers of the medieval period considered the primary basis for defining “nation” not as much the area, language and kinship but rather the faith and church tradition, that is doctrine, rituals and ceremonies. In new times the scientific basis for restoring the political Armenia as an entity was founded by the Mkhitarist fathers in Venice while the value-civilization pillars for that new unity of Armenia and Armenians were created on the basis of ideas of the European Enlightenment. By encountering the resistance, which was contrasting in form but united in its essence, of powers that have conquered Armenia this new perception of unity finally came up to the strategy of exercising asylum land collection through the restoration of independent statehood on the certain part of national land.
Thus it went on up to nowadays when the hopeful realities of the restoration of the West-Russia common civilization area began to emerge. Therefore the 100th anniversary of the adoption of the state act of United and Independent Armenia must bring our political consciousness which is deep in sand of routine closer to the height of new interstate and international priorities that correspond to the circumstantial changes of civilized environment that surrounds us.
Armenia is unable to be compared with its main rivals in terms of its economic, demographic and quantity standards of military capability deriving from them and because of scarcity of natural resources and low rates of demographic growth will continue to lag behind them. Hence a nationwide consensus must be formed in its political leadership and among main political forces for the creation of technological society with its needful political, economic and cultural priorities.
Only due to the usage of quality resources accumulated by the Armenian people through centuries and the formation of technological society in Armenia it is possible to secure the proper scientific-technological dominance in the region which will allow us also to compete in the battlefield with our neighbours that outnumber us and bring to life the idea of United and Independent Armenia.