ARMENIA ONLY POST-SOVIET REPUBLIC WITH SERIOUS ARMY: US SOCIOLOGIST
YEREVAN, MARCH 22. ARMINFO. No post-Soviet republic except Armenia
has managed to form a serious army, says Georgy Derlugyan, professor
of sociology of North-Western University, Chicago, US.
Derlugyan notes that on May 9 (the day of the return of Sushi) the
army of the Nagorno Karabakh Republic holds Soviet-like parades with
the soldiers holding the images of Soviet marshall Hovhannes Bagramyan
rather than of middle age Armenian heros. This is a conscious imitation
of the Soviet times.
In Abkhazia they are raising monuments to Abkhazians killed in the
Great Patriotic War (1941-1945). In NKR they are holding parades with
slogans “Fathers Reached Berlin – Sons Will Reach Baku!”
These people had a state that they still have in their memory. They
believe it was good and are trying to restore it. That’s why there
are so many Soviet patriots among old people in the Caucasus. They in
Georgia even say they will raise a gold monument to he who restarts
the Moscow-Tbilisi N14 train.
This is not empire consciousness this is remembering the times when
people got a chance to go beyond their traditional communities –
the times of a well-organized social system that was ruined with the
collapse of the Soviet Union. But only force can take people back
into the past. This happens when, say, Armenians are displaced from
Baku to Karabakh. Former teachers, doctors, engineers they are forced
to milk a cow, to chop wood and to take water from a well.-