![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2024/12/11/17.jpg\")
\nOn the one-hundred-year anniversary of the uprising in Georgia against Soviet annexation, the struggle for independence from Russian rule remains the chief force driving the popular mobilization that has been growing over the past several months. Yet today’s movement points to a horizon beyond the choice between Europe and Russia, two of the imperial powers contending for influence in the region. It expresses a growing social anger at both the local authoritarian regime and the grip of foreign economic powers upon the Caucasus in general.
\n\nContrary to the dominant media discourse, this popular mobilization is not simply a demand for Georgia to be integrated into the European Union. From a distance, it may seem reminiscent of the 2014 Maidan revolution in Ukraine, but to grasp the deep tumult that this particular struggle represents, we need to look closer.
\n\nThis article was prepared by a Georgian anti-authoritarian in exile in communication with local collectives in Tbilisi, Kutaisi, and Zugdidi. The photos are courtesy of მაუწყებელი / Mautskebeli. Georgians themselves refer to the country by the name Sakartvelo.
\n\n\nIn order to understand what is taking place in the streets of Georgia without falling into nostalgia or insurrectionary romanticism, we need to listen to the expression of social anger. This article is aimed at readers in the West, particularly in Western Europe, where many people are trapped in a reductive campism, which presents the movement in Georgia—as well as other struggles in the post-Soviet context, such as in Ukraine or Chechnya—as simply aligned with the interests of the Euro-Atlantic bloc, omitting the geopolitical stakes vis-à-vis Russian imperialism and internal authoritarian policies.
\n\nOthers looking on from a distance are swept up in a confused exhilaration. The sudden burst of media attention—on a scale we apparently did not deserve even during the 2008 war—tells only part of the story, focusing on the insurrectionary aesthetic of gold stars and European flags waved bravely in the face of water cannon jets.
\n\nTo attract the attention of the West, you need either tragedy or spectacle. We’ve experienced plenty of tragedy throughout the last few decades. But the recent history of the post-Soviet territories remains a gloomy stain in the backdrop of wars and conflicts, not close enough to really grip the media consumer, not far enough away to inspire guilt.
\n\nIn our country, the spectacular is more in the mountains than in the street. This time, however, the images of protesters with fireworks, the scenes of direct confrontation with the police, faces covered in blood, have had an effect, both on the corporate media and on the insurrectionists.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2024/12/11/20.gif\")
\nThe French news network BFMTV reports on the riots live from Rustaveli Avenue in Tbilisi, while the Georgian Prime Minister, Irakli Kobakhidze, employs a discourse that we had already heard from the same channel during the Yellow Vest movement in France, speaking of “violent rioters” and “assailants of the forces of law and order.” European politicians are expressing shock at the police violence and denouncing the disproportionate use of the repressive apparatus, while Georgia’s ruling party, “Georgian Dream,” broadcasts scenes of police charges and raids on demonstrations in Europe in its own anti-Western propaganda.
\n\nSo why all the attention now? What geopolitical and economic stakes underpin these events? We see pro-Western and pro-Russian forces, a local authoritarian regime rubbing shoulders with BRICS [the transnational alliance involving Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa] and the Euro-Atlantic far right, neoliberal progressivism employing murderous methods. But what is the Georgian population’s own struggle, what are the reasons for their anger at the government and its increasingly authoritarian policies?
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2024/12/11/15.jpg\")
\nFor a deeper understanding than can be gleaned from the images that reach Western Europe, we need to situate the events in their immediate local context, and at the same time, frame them in the post-Soviet period in general.
\n\nAlthough protesters have been taking to the streets all night long for the past week and are gaining momentum in several cities, they are part of a social movement that began last spring against the “foreign agent” law.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2024/12/11/5.jpg\")
\nAgainst this backdrop, the parliamentary elections were clearly rigged to keep the ruling party in power: Georgian Dream, led by the oligarch Bidzina Ivanishvili.
\n\nEven before the Prime Minister’s declaration suspending discussions about integrating Georgia into the European Union until 2028, people were organizing demonstrations to contest the election results and call for new elections. Police violently dispersed those demonstrations, brutally attacking and arresting people; demonstrators faced ununiformed assailants alongside the police, as well as imprisonment and other forms of legal repression. Yet strikes, resignations from the state bureaucracy, and student mobilizations in regional schools have only gained momentum, going beyond the issue of the election. People have occupied the Georgian Public Broadcaster, First Channel. Already-existing collectives are participating in these protests, including residents of peripheral regions who were already resisting environmentally destructive projects, student movements fighting for access to housing, queer and feminist collectives, and people mobilizing against evictions.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2024/12/11/11.jpg\")
\nToday, the threat of authoritarianism hangs over everyone, heralding the establishment of a state of emergency and a curfew to stifle the possibility of protest, as well as the reform of the state bureaucracy—a maneuver intended to inflict mass layoffs of opponents and anyone deemed critical of the regime.
\n\nAt the same time, police repression is intensifying: hundreds of people have been arrested, including minors and young adults; police have sent people many people to the hospital, leaving one young man in intensive care, while carrying out mass searches and beating and humiliating people in the streets. Officers in the riot police who seek to resign are themselves repressed by their colleagues, as revealed by an officer who left the country. For several nights, it has been the “zonderebi,” the “titushkebi”—the armed plainclothes “strongmen” employed for the “dirty work”—who have been prowling the streets to brutalize demonstrators and journalists. The government has also announced a reform of the police, facilitating access to services without going through competitive examinations, in order to speed the recruitment of new personnel in order to achieve the capacity to stifle a movement that is now taking on national proportions.
\n\nIf the Georgian Dream party came to power in 2012 by opposing the neoliberal government of Mikheil Saakashvili and its bloody police state, it has since come to represent the same police system. It uses police and judicial violence in a tripartite form: French-style street repression (anti-riot weapons, kettling, beatings, and the like), Russian-style judicial repression (arrests and prison sentences for activists and opponents), and mafia violence (beatings by the “thugs,” violence targeting people at their homes, threats to relatives and family members) reminiscent of the methods of the regime of Mikheil Saakashvili, who left office in 2013.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2024/12/11/1.jpg\")
Images of people wounded during the demonstrations.
\nThe generalized rage against the “Kotsi” and the “Natsi”—derogatory terms designating respectively the party in power and the opposition, the United National Movement (UNM), as well as their allies—is evident in the tirade of insults launched against both camps during the rallies. There is too much anger for people to use refined rhetoric; the insults fly in outbursts on television and during public speeches. For the same reason, the politicians of the UNM are driven out by demonstrators, some of whom suffered under their regime before Georgian Dream came to power. “The resistance to the police regime that allowed this government to take power will also mark its end,” activists declare during their speeches, particularly during the rallies organized for the release of all detainees.
\n\nThis rejection of both parties reflects a profound defiance of the authorities and a refusal to submit to the caricatured dualisms that they promote: the Western civilizational project versus the Russian war project, progressivism versus obscurantism, subservience to Western hegemony versus subservience to territorial imperialism, ultra-liberal nationalism versus ultra-conservative nationalism. The point where these dualisms converge is also their breaking point: unbridled policing, policies that make it impossible to live, exploitation of natural resources as part of the global imperial market, the impoverishment of the population in exchange for economic and geostrategic alliances with foreign powers.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2024/12/11/16.jpg\")
\nTo delegitimize the movement, the government uses rhetoric to revive the divisions associated with “polarization,” putting UNM politicians in the spotlight. The government presents itself as the guarantor of national sovereignty in the face of the threat of war from the north and the danger of a coup d’état by Western forces, constantly manipulating the example of Ukraine to sow fear. They compare the current movement to the Maidan uprising in order to argue that it is not self-managed but controlled by partisans of the Maidan and the UNM, insisting that the Ukrainian revolution led to hundreds of deaths and then, to war.
\n\nThis anti-Ukrainian rhetoric minimizes both the social dimension and the form of agency specific to the Maidan movement, which cannot be reduced to neo-Nazi forces alone. It is consistent with the anti-war rhetoric deployed throughout the electoral campaign. The way that the government displayed images of the wars as election advertising proves that, behind the illusion of maintaining peace, we find the most despicable methods of maintaining power. They are exploiting the traumas of our collective memory, which remain raw—not only from the war that occurred in 2008, but also from the tumultuous years of the 1990s, which saw an independence movement accompanied by a putsch, a civil war, and inter-ethnic conflicts.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2024/12/11/14.jpg\")
\nThe current use of police brutality and legal repression was facilitated by new legislation passed last spring, which also serves as the foundation for ideological rhetoric based on anti-Western authoritarianism.
\n\nThe law regarding “transparency of the influence of foreign forces” reintroduces a project that was dropped a year and a half ago after mass protests. The law was adopted last spring, a year later, after two months of demonstrations and the circumvention of a presidential veto.
\n\nModeled on a Russian original, this law requires any nonprofit organization receiving 20% of its annual income from foreign sources—whether those are grants or individual funding—to register as an “entity representing the interests of a foreign force.” In a local economy marked by the absence of public subsidies and alternative sources of income, contrary to the official rhetoric, this law does not endanger the large NGOs as much as small associations, unions, and independent media, as well as local and self-managed collectives.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2024/12/11/13.jpg\")
\nPrime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze openly stated that this law is primarily aimed at silencing the centers of resistance and struggle during his briefing on December 3: “We will build the Namakhvani Dam.”1 The implication was that with this law in place, nothing will prevent the implementation of hydroelectric mega-projects, considered the pinnacle of economic development. Kobakhidze was referring to the Rioni Valley movement, which is now labeled pro-Western, despite being labeled pro-Russian three years ago. This movement, a self-managed environmental struggle led by locals which managed to force a Turkish company to back down from building a mega-hydroelectric dam, has become one of the main targets in the government’s rhetoric; they frame it as a threat to so-called energy sovereignty and independence. In response to the prime minister’s statement, residents of the valley held a banner at a rally in Tbilisi: “The Namakhvani Dam will not be built.”
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2024/12/11/21.jpg\")
Protesters carry a banner opposing the Namakhvani Dam.
\nIn addition to the Rioni Valley movement, many local resistance movements are fighting against the social and environmental injustices caused by large-scale economic projects, including the exploitation and extraction of natural resources.
\n\nIn Mingrelia, in western Georgia, residents of the village of Balda are mobilizing to prevent the beginning of construction work on an ecotourism development project involving the privatization of the river, land, and living spaces, as well as significant damage to mountain slopes.
\n\nIn Shukruti, residents are fighting against the exploitation of the soil for manganese extraction by the Georgian Manganese company, a British holding company of Stemcor. Due to the explosions, the village is sinking into the ground, taking the houses of its inhabitants with it. The usual vigils occupying the construction site were moved this autumn to the Parliament in Tbilisi, with more radical forms of protest: hunger strikes and lips sewn shut.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2024/12/11/12.jpg\")
\nBut behind these small popular struggles are the stakes of the big economic players: China, Russia, Turkey, Azerbaijan, Iran and, of course, the European Union. Their power struggles are translated into inter-imperialist alliances, conflicts, and wars in which energy is a weapon par excellence.
\n\nThe war in Ukraine and the sanctions against Russia have strengthened Georgia’s geostrategic position within economic infrastructure projects like the gas and oil corridor, hydroelectric resources, and maritime and land transit routes. The law on foreign agents presents itself as a guarantor of the realization of such projects. At the same time, the government has adopted the offshore law, the anti-LGBT law, and amendments to the law on pensions, as well as signing energy and economic memoranda with Turkey and China.
\n\nAll of this seems to be part of a strategy of rapprochement with BRICS, particularly with China and Azerbaijan, to strengthen trade by expanding its role as a transit corridor. Georgia plays a strategic role in the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), China’s initiative to create a “new silk road” by integrating the China-Central Asia-West Asia economic corridor. Georgia’s involvement is based on two key projects: the construction of a new port in Anaklia, which is intended to become a major hub, and the Baku-Tbilisi-Kars railway line, intended to strengthen logistical connections between Asia and Europe.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2024/12/11/10.jpg\")
\nThis strategic position enables the Georgian government to exert pressure on the European Union, in particular because of its involvement in the colossal project to build an extensive undersea electricity cable, which would transport electricity supplied by Azerbaijan to the European Union, passing through the Black Sea in Georgia. A significant amount of energy transit already takes place through pipelines crossing Georgia, including the BTC (Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan) oil pipeline and the SCP (South Caucasus Pipeline) gas pipeline, which connect the Caspian Sea to Turkey via Georgian territory.2
\n\nConsidering these geostrategic alliances for the conquest of resources, we can see that the simplistic division of the world into two major blocs—on one side, the Euro-Atlantic bloc and on the other, Russia—no longer makes sense. Now, we must understand the geopolitical chessboard as a multipolar space. Similarly, geopolitically speaking, the Georgian Dream party allies itself as much with the governments of the Euro-Atlantic extreme right (Donald Trump, Viktor Orbán) as with regional powers on the basis of a populist, sovereignist, and conservative discourse. Economically speaking—in terms of its rapacious extraction policies and intent to dispossess and impoverish populations—it is fully in line with the globalized capitalist market alongside the progressive camp.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2024/12/11/9.jpg\")
\nIn order to reinforce the social conflict already initiated by the establishment of Western hegemony in this country, in particular through the interference of institutions and NGOs in the economic and cultural spheres, the government has skillfully appropriated an anti-Western discourse, arousing the sympathy of a part of the population despised by the “pro-Western” part. This rhetorical masquerade allows it to set up certain “social groups” as scapegoats in order to justify the establishment of an authoritarian regime for the defense of “peace, tradition, and economic sovereignty.” In addition to those “blocking” energy independence, it is “the LGBT group” that supposedly represents one of the chief threats to our cultural and religious identity.
\n\nThis is the context in which the new anti-LGBT law, called the “Law on family values and the protection of minors,” came into force on December 2. The law, which equates homosexual relations and gender identity with incest, criminalizes queer people themselves as well as access to healthcare that the law deems “medical manipulation.” In addition to the queer community, the law also criminalizes any form of support, demonstration, public gathering, or public stance that could be labeled as “pro-queer propaganda.” The collective Queer Resistance wrote about the law’s application in its “anti-fascist manifesto”:
\n\n\n\n\n“In Georgia, where nearly a million people have left the country to migrate in search of work over the past five years, one in three children lives in extreme poverty, while the education and healthcare systems are in ruins, the greedy oligarch has based his election campaign on false promises of peace and the propagation of artificial hatred.
\n\n“By criminalizing a part of the population—queer people—and legalizing hatred and censorship to establish totalitarian control, the law also designates as criminals all those and everything that opposes the legislation of this evil.”
\n
![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2024/12/11/3.jpg\")
\nConfronting the impoverishment and widespread indebtedness of the population, a situation in which banks and private services hold absolute power while the question of national identity still remains to be defined, it became necessary to create a new image of the enemy. This enemy is not far away in Russia or Turkey, but right before our eyes, forcibly imported by the West: the enemy whose very life itself, as well as appearance in public, threatens our morals and traditions and contributes to demographic problems. This is part of an operation to redirect anger over social problems, aiming to replace an old archetype of the enemy with a new one as a catalyst for the construction of identity.
\n\nHowever, if the responsibility for criminalizing queer people lies with the government, Western sexual imperialism bears some responsibility for instrumentalizing the queer question. While the missionaries of “human rights” were supposed to protect oppressed minorities, the ultraconservative response made them one of its first targets, using the anti-Western argument. Queer-washing only reinforced the social and cultural divide, separating “religious obscurantists” from liberal progressives. The government exploits the LGBTQ issue with such vigor because it knows how to provoke a strong cultural and existential tension by reproducing this opposition and defending the anti-progressive camp that is scorned by “civilizational” policies.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2024/12/11/8.jpg\")
\nThis massive protest movement, which has been represented merely as pro-European rallies, has its own specific forms of organization, sociality, and mutual aid.
\n\nThis is something you would never find on the streets of Europe. During the rallies on Rustaveli Avenue, traditional dances, folk songs, and religious songs take center stage; the cool kids of Gen Z shout slogans—the “Gaumarojos Sakartvelos”—that could just as easily be heard from the mouths of the “obscurantists” as a toast to the fatherland, freedom, and the church; mothers accompany their children.
\n\nMothers accompany their children—in the vain hope of protecting them from police abuse. A mother’s cry—“Let go of her, she is my child”—has become the watchword of the protest, now inscribed in graffiti. Grandmothers, when they still have the strength to move, are surrounded and protected by demonstrators against water cannon fire; priests come out of the Kashveti church to shelter persecuted demonstrators.
\n\nBehind the gas masks, the shields painted with the numbers “1312,” there is also the idea of the common, which expresses itself first and foremost as a sense of collective belonging, crushed throughout the history of its existence, and adds a strong cultural, even existential dimension to political resistance.
\n\nRustaveli Avenue has seen many police, military and paramilitary raids since the independence movement of the 1990s. Protesters from the “parents’ generation” evoke the memory of April 9, 1989, the date that marks the tragic beginning of the independence movement with the deaths of young protesters crushed beneath Russian tanks. The use of ununiformed forces and the manipulation around the question of war invoke collective memory: the war crimes of the Mkhedrioni paramilitary group, particularly in the regions of Mingrelia and Abkhazia, a collective trauma arising from the destruction of both bodies and souls following the massacres of Ossetians and Abkhazians, the ethnic cleansing of Georgians and forced displacements, as well as the rupture of inter-ethnic and family ties.
\n\nTo understand what is at stake behind what can be interpreted as the desire for the West, we must bear this history in mind. First the Tsarist empire, then the Soviet empire made Russia one of the chief colonial powers ruling Georgia, following the Ottoman empire.
\n\nTo recall the course of the recent history of liberation, Georgia and then Chechnya proclaimed their independence in 1991, before the fall of the USSR. All this took place in a landscape marked by the intensification of both nationalist and ethno-nationalist struggles, calling for the secession of minority ethnic groups under the protection of the USSR (Nagorno-Karabakh, Abkhazia, Ossetia).
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2024/12/11/6.jpg\")
\nFollowing a coup d’état, civil war broke out in the capital between Georgian separatists, led by Zviad Gamsakhurdia, and the putschist opposition, which became the State Council led by former communist leader Eduard Shevardnadze. This war degenerated into a so-called inter-ethnic conflict from 1991 to 1993 in Abkhazia.
\n\nThe 2008 war with Russia, although it took place in a different context than in the 1990s, revived the same wounds related to ethnic and territorial conflicts. This time, it was South Ossetia, another region mostly populated by ethnic minorities, that ended up being occupied by the Russian Federation.
\n\nBut let there be no mistake: although the question of the autonomy of ethnic minorities in a territory where a multiplicity of languages, religions, and traditions coexist is a crucial issue, Russia remains an external superpower that uses ethnic tensions as leverage in a power struggle with the sole aim of expanding its territorial reign. Just as in Ukraine, Russia has always known how to associate the violence of its imperial regime with the conflicts over ethnic identity in the Caucasus, setting itself up as the “savior of oppressed ethnic minorities.”
\n\nThis is why, behind the European flags, we find the hope for a better world, and behind the desire for the West—the desire for independence. But the idea of Europe as a horizon does not only arise in opposition to Russia. It also emerges from the propaganda and soft power of Euro-Atlantic neoliberal hegemony, which has continued to extend its zone of influence over post-Soviet territories since the collapse of the USSR.
\n\nFor us, the generation of the 1990s, who grew up in the post-war period following the decline of the independence movement, the promise of the pro-Western path represented the dream of a better world that had been on the other side of the Iron Curtain: peace, bread, electricity, hot water, education, and health. Today, even if Europe continues to embody some kind of promise for a part of the population, no one is fooled.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2024/12/11/4.jpg\")
\nSince the liberalization of visas in 2017, Georgia remains on the list of countries with high asylum demand, alongside Afghanistan and Bangladesh. This statistic shows that, in a population of 3.5 million inhabitants, each family has at least one member in exile and migration, seeking protection and subsistence conditions, in order to gain access to free health care or sufficient financial resources to support the relatives who have remained in the country, or else to repay the loans of a family that is deep in debt. Labeled as “bad exiles” because they are “economic migrants” or migrating “for health reasons,” not only are they denied the right to travel freely, but, in addition, they are subjected to all kinds of institutional and police violence, ranging from hundreds of illegal expulsions to the deaths of detainees in detention centers following police violence.3
\n\nWhile Europe would like to map Georgia under its sphere of influence, its treatment of the Georgian population in exile and economic migration has revealed its deception and duplicity.
\n\nConsequently, for the emigrant population, particularly in the context of growing racism and the rise of the extreme right, Europe no longer represents a mythical power that could save us from warlike imperialism and guarantee better social policies in a country prey to private predation. For the population of Georgia, insofar as geopolitical issues are mixed with questions of identity, if turning towards Europe represents a survival strategy for some, the chief concern, now even more so than before, remains the authoritarianism of the local government.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2024/12/11/7.jpg\")
\nTo conclude, I’d like to share the message of support sent to comrades in Georgia from Paris:
\n\n\n\n\n“From the gathering of Syrian comrades celebrating the fall of dictator Bashar Al-Assad’s regime, and of Georgian comrades organizing in support of the current protest movement, we want to bring the message of internationalist solidarity to peoples in struggle against imperialism, local authoritarian regimes, and social injustice.
\n\n“At a time of genocide in Palestine, wars in Ukraine, Lebanon and Sudan, the rise of authoritarian regimes in Georgia, Iran, and Russia and the extreme right in Europe, the only hope lies in building alliances and solidarity between oppressed peoples. Only the people can save the people!
\n\n“From Syria to Georgia, may the regimes fall everywhere!
\n\n“Freedom to all the prisoners in Georgia!
\n\n“Love and rage,
\n\n“Internationalist comrades from Paris”
\n
![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2024/12/11/2.jpg\")
A solidarity demonstration in Paris. “From Syria to Georgia, may the regimes fall everywhere!”
\nThe construction of the Namakhvani Hydroelectric Cascade, the largest hydroelectric facility on Georgian territory since the end of the USSR, by the Turkish company ENKA. ↩
\nAlready in 2006, the construction of the pipeline had aroused much opposition from locals. It goes without saying that the local economy has not received any financial benefit from these pipelines owned by the multinational consortiums BTC Co. and South Caucasus Pipeline Company. Their management is shared between European companies like British Petroleum and those of Azerbaijan and Turkey alongside Russia and Iran. ↩
\nVakhtang Enukidze in 2020 at the CPR Gradisca d’Isonzo, Italy; Tamaz Rasoian, a Georgian-Kurdish national, at the Merkplas detention center, Belgium, in 2023. ↩
\nThis week, a new round of violence broke out over the contested zone of Nagorno-Karabakh, also known as Artsakh, an Armenian enclave in Azerbaijan. Anarchists in Armenia and Azerbaijan offer their analysis of the situation.
\n\nThe Armenian genocide casts a long shadow over the region between the Aegean and Caspian Seas. A century ago, the government of the Ottoman Empire oversaw the murder of over a million Armenians, paving the way for the emergence of Turkey as an ethnonationalist state.
\n\nAfter a pogrom against Armenians in the Azerbaijani town of Sumgait in February 1988, the Armenian independence movement gained momentum in the Soviet Union, especially in Nagorno-Karabakh, a majority-Armenian region surrounded by majority-Azeri regions. In December 1991, shortly after the governments of Armenia and Azerbaijan had declared independence, Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh declared independence from Azerbaijan. The two governments went to war over the region. The conflict remained unresolved, with hostilities breaking out again in 2020.
\n\nUntil now, the government of Russia has played mediator, brokering peace between Armenia and Azerbaijan and installing “peacekeeping” troops. But now that Russia is bogged down in Ukraine and increasingly dependent on the Turkish government, the government of Azerbaijan has taken advantage of support from Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and wealth from increasing oil revenues to resume hostilities. First, they blockaded Nagorno-Karabakh, cutting off resources to it; then, this week, they attacked the region, killing at least dozens of people. Although the self-proclaimed government of Nagorno-Karabakh has capitulated, the latest chapter of this tragedy has only begun. There is reason to anticipate ongoing state violence, ethnic cleansing, and mass displacement, worsening the refugee crisis in Armenia and the surrounding area.
\n\nAs we anticipated, war is continuing to spread around the region, from Yemen and Syria to Ukraine and Armenia:
\n\n\n\n\nThe invasion of Ukraine is likely an indication of things to come. Over the past several decades, governments worldwide have invested billions of dollars in crowd control technology and military equipment while taking precious few steps to address mounting inequalities or the destruction of the natural world. As economic and ecological crises intensify, more governments will seek to solve their domestic problems by initiating hostilities with their neighbors.
\n
If anything, this analysis underemphasizes the role of state-sponsored ethnic strife as a pressure valve to manage the failures of capitalism and the state—not only in Palestine, former Yugoslavia, and Kurdistan but also in the United States under Donald Trump.
\n\nThe violence in Artsakh shows how little people can rely on state structures to protect them. Facing a centuries-long campaign of ethnic violence, the residents are trapped between the government of Azerbaijan, which aims to seize their land and resources, and the Armenian government, which has abandoned any pretense of ensuring their safety. Neither the Russian government nor the governments of Europe or the United States are interested in intervening. All of these governments are effectively running protection rackets that leave ordinary people at the mercy of ethno-nationalism and state militarism.
\n\nThis is not an argument to support the Armenian military. Over the years, the Armenian government and its military forces and supporters have also committed the sort of atrocities that usually occur in conflicts over territories and resources. Rather, it is urgent to organize against ethnic strife, state violence, and colonial conquest in all their forms. To be effective, this must take place on both sides of every border, on both sides of every conflict.
\n\nHere, we present an excerpt from an anti-war statement from Azerbaijan and three texts from anarchists in Armenia.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2023/09/23/5.jpg\")
\nIt has been difficult to maintain contact with anarchists and other anti-authoritarian groups in Azerbaijan, owing in part to the repressive political situation. As usual, internal repression is an essential part of creating the conditions for a mobilization against an outside enemy, which then serves to distract from domestic problems. Just as the government of Azerbaijan has been using spyware to target people in Armenia, it has just carried out a wave of arrests targeting elements of Azerbaijani society who oppose the war.
\n\nFor an anti-war perspective from Azerbaijan, witness the following excerpt from an anti-war manifesto published by anarchists and “leftist youth” in 2020:
\n\n\n\n\nThe recent round of escalations between Azerbaijan and Armenia in Nagorno-Karabakh once again demonstrates how outdated the framework of a nation-state is for present realities. Inability to transcend the line of thought that divides people into humans and non-humans solely based on their place of birth and then proceeds to establish superiority of the “humans” over their dehumanized “others” as the sole possible scenario for a life within certain territorial boundaries is the only occupier that we have to struggle with. It is the occupier of our minds and abilities to think beyond the narratives and ways of imagining life, imposed upon us by our predatory nationalist governments.
\n\nIt is this line of thought that makes us oblivious to the exploitative conditions of our bare survival in our respective countries as soon as the “nation” issues its call to protect it from the “enemy.” Our enemy is not a random Armenian whom we have never met in our lives and possibly never will. Our enemy is the very people in power, those with specific names, who have been impoverishing and exploiting the ordinary people as well as our country’s resources for their benefit for more than two decades.
\n\nThey have been intolerant of any political dissent, severely oppressing dissidents through their massive security apparatus. They have occupied natural sites, seasides, mineral resources for their own pleasure and use, restricting the access of ordinary citizens to these sites. They have been destroying our environment, cutting down trees, contaminating water, and doing the full-scale “accumulation through dispossession.” They are complicit in the disappearance of historical and cultural sites and artifacts across the country. They have been diverting resources from essential sectors, such as education, healthcare, and social welfare, into the military, making profits for our capitalist neighbors with imperialist aspirations—Russia and Turkey.
\n\nStrangely enough, every single person is aware of this fact, but a sudden wave of amnesia hits everyone as soon as the first bullet gets shot on the contact line between Armenia and Azerbaijan.
\n
We also recommend this statement from the Feminist Peace Collective in Azerbaijan:
\n\n\n\n\nWe vehemently oppose being ensnared by this indoctrination and reject the enslavement of people in the name of the nation, built upon hate and othering. We call on Azerbaijan to halt its terror against the Armenian population in Karabakh. Our plea extends to the people of Azerbaijan, urging them to recognize their own rationality and empathy, not allow their grievances to be instrumentalized for the regime’s nationalist desires, and not allow their bodies to be exploited for the capitalist greed of their state and ruling elite.
\n
![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2023/09/23/4.jpg\")
\nThis is the perspective of a Russian anarchist living in exile in Yerevan.
\n\nOn September 19, Azerbaijan launched its “anti-terrorist” operation against Artsakh [i.e., Nagorno-Karabakh]. There are already reports of civilian casualties.
\n\nDespite the capitulation of the authorities of the self-proclaimed republic and the recently launched negotiations between the military and political leadership, Azerbaijan continues to shell Stepanakert and other populated areas of Artsakh. Spontaneous resistance also continues from the local population. There are reports that residents of some villages refused to evacuate and said they would rather die than leave. Desperate battles continue, pitting Yugoslav rifles against drones.
\n\nWe have already expressed our support for the victims of Azerbaijan’s aggression, as have our comrades in the Russian anarchist diaspora in Tbilisi, who also organize in their community there. Our comrades here in Yerevan have been collecting humanitarian aid for refugees. The “Mama-jan” café is working together with the Jewish diaspora of this city, opening their doors to collect assistance for those who are suffering.
\n\nAs we see it, the Azerbaijani government is trying to implement the “final solution to the Armenian question” on the territory of Nagorno-Karabakh.
\n\nThis conflict began in the late 1980s. Against a backdrop of liberalization, the Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh took to the streets in tens of thousands, protesting against the infringement of their rights in Soviet Azerbaijan and demanding reunification with their historic homeland, Armenia, which had been divided at the beginning of the 20th century between Bolsheviks and Turkish Kemalists. The Armenian population in the city of Sumgait faced both repression and pogroms. A war began accompanied by ethnic cleansing, displacing hundreds of thousands of refugees on both sides. Azerbaijan lost the war, but did not reconcile.
\n\nIt is important to understand the war in the context of the political and social situation that prevails in Azerbaijan. The Aliyev family has ruled Azerbaijan for decades. According to Bashir Kitchaev, an anti-war journalist with whom I had the pleasure of personally communicating in Tbilisi, they have done little for the population, which experiences widespread conditions of poverty; instead, they have focused on expanding the Azerbaijani military and fomenting ethnic hatred.
\n\nAlongside the government of Turkey, the government of Azerbaijan is participating in an international campaign to deny the Armenian genocide, which claimed the lives of over a million people, as well as an economic blockade of Armenia from both sides. Azerbaijani children are taught in school that “Armenians are enemies.” The Aliyevs have systematically engaged in the destruction of Armenian monuments—for example, in the region of Nakhichevan, destroying the khachkar cemetery in the town of Julfa and turning it into a military training ground. All of this is intended to erase the Armenian cultural heritage of these lands.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2023/09/23/1.jpg\")
Erdoğan and Aliyev.
\nIn 2020, the Azerbaijani military resumed operations in the midst of the pandemic, employing Islamist groups that had previously participated in attacks on Kurdish people in Afrin and utilizing Turkish weapons including cluster munitions. Afterwards, president Ilham Aliyev established the so-called “Museum of Victory,” publicly displaying representations of Armenians and helmets taken from Armenian soldiers who had been killed.
\n\nProvocations continued despite the ceasefire agreements. The Azerbaijani military has repeatedly opened fire, kidnapped people, shelled and occupied the internationally recognized territory of the Republic of Armenia itself, and then, starting on December 12, 2022, blockaded the region of Artsakh, blocking the only highway connecting the Armenians there with the outside world.
\n\nThis rendered 120,000 Armenians hostages—including 30,000 children—as the Azerbaijani government cut off gas and electricity to the region during the harsh Caucasian winter. Thousands of schools and kindergartens were closed. Food began to disappear from the shelves, famine broke out, and hospitals began to run out of medicine.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2023/09/23/3.jpg\")
The “Museum of Victory” in Azerbaijan.
\nOn April 23, 2023—a date dedicated to the memory of the victims of the 1915 genocide—Aliyev established a military checkpoint and presented the Armenians in Artsakh with an ultimatum: accept Azerbaijani citizenship or face expulsion.
\n\nNow, after starving more than a hundred thousand people for several months, the regime, taking advantage of the distraction of public attention to the war in Ukraine, seeks to complete its ethnic cleansing.
\n\nAn Azerbaijani victory will intensify ethnic violence in the region, endangering the lives of thousands. It will strengthen the regime that persecuted and tortured Azerbaijani anarchists and anti-war leftists and consolidate the position of Turkish imperialism. It could also call into question the independence of Armenia.
\n\nAliyev has repeatedly spoken about the so-called “Zangezur corridor,” another swath of Armenia that he seeks to incorporate into Azerbaijan; he once stated that “Irevan [Yerevan] is our historical land, and we Azerbaijanis must return to these historic lands.” In the context of the shelling of Sotk, Jermuk, and other territories of Armenia, this gives rise to concerns.
\n\nAre these statements simply intended to put the Azerbaijani government in a stronger position to negotiate, or do they reflect a serious intent? It’s hard to say. But it is indisputable that any victory for Azerbaijani militarism or Turkish imperialism will represent a setback for anarchists and other social movements, because it will establish a military regime in the conquered territories that will intensify and expand both outward and inward. All of this will become scorched earth for anti-authoritarians.
\n\nI am the last one who will defend the Armenian state with its plutocracy and police brutality, but the Azerbaijani government does not represent a better alternative. A variety of organizations including Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, Reporters Without Borders, and many others criticize the Azerbaijani government, classifying the country as authoritarian. In Freedom House’s Freedom Acceptance Index, Armenia and the unrecognized Nagorno-Karabakh Republic are ranked much higher in terms of human rights and democracy than Azerbaijan.
\n\nAccording to human rights activists, there are roughly 100 political prisoners in Azerbaijani prisons. Journalists are imprisoned, blackmailed, and forced into exile. The country recently adopted a “media law” with which the authorities intend to suppress independent journalism. Journalists who have fled the country face the threat of kidnapping; one has reportedly experienced three assassination attempts.
\n\nThe government of Azerbaijan maintains a personality cult around Heydar Aliyev, the father of the current president. In 2016, during one of the holidays dedicated to the late dictator, two Azerbaijani anarchists were detained—Giyas Ibrahimov and Bayram Mamedov.
\n\nThey had painted anarchist graffiti on a monument to the dictator in the capital city of Baku. Police captured, tortured, and imprisoned them on trumped-up drug charges, claiming to have found precisely one kilogram of heroin in each of their homes. Mamedov later died in an accident in Istanbul. Human rights organizations recognized Giyas Ibrahimov as a prisoner of conscience. During the outbreak of the Second Karabakh War, Giyas signed the statement of the left-wing anti-war Azerbaijani youth and once again faced repression for his opposition to the war.
\n\nBayram Mammadov and Giyas Ibrahimov facing sentencing. In the footage, the lawyer Elchin Sadigov says that Bayram Mammadov declared in his testimony in court that the drug charges against the two of them were retribution for the graffiti on the statue; Bayram’s relatives said that he didn’t so much as even smoke. The lawyer also says that Giyas Ibrahimov refused to testify under torture during the investigation.
\nIndigenous national minorities also face discrimination under the government of Azerbaijan. Some peoples, such as the Tats, cannot study their language in educational institutions at all. In areas densely populated by small peoples, most of the political and economic power is concentrated in their hands of ethnic Azerbaijanis. Talysh people living in the south of the country face a ban on using the word “Talysh,” for example, on signs in restaurants or in local history books. Representatives of minority groups that speak out face repression and accusations of “extremism” and “separatism.” For example, one leader of the Sadval movement, which advocated for the autonomy of Lezgins in Russia and Azerbaijan, was imprisoned and killed.
\n\nAliyev was one of Erdoğan’s chief allies when the Turkish military invaded Rojava. Aliyev’s victory in Artsakh will embolden those who seek a Pan-Turkist empire, intensifying the pressure on anti-colonial and anti-authoritarian movements throughout the region.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2023/09/23/2.jpg\")
Azerbaijani anarchist Giyas Ibrahimov faced repression again for an anti-war statement in 2020.
\nFor thousands of years, the people of Artsakh lived on these lands, building schools, houses and temples. The Armenian anarchist Alexander Atabekyan was born in Artsakh, going on to become a friend of Peter Kropotkin. We remember his words:
\n\n\n\n\n“The natural connection with one’s home, with the homeland in the literal sense of the word, should be called territoriality, in contrast to statehood, which is a forced unification within arbitrary boundaries.
\n\nAnarchism, while rejecting statehood, cannot deny territoriality.
\n\nLove for homeland and tribe is not only not alien, but is also characteristic of an anarchist no less than any other person.”
\n
Following the anarchists in Rojava, we call for support for the Artsakh people.
\n\nFreedom for peoples—death for empires!
\n\nArtsakh, we stand with you!
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2023/09/23/6.jpg\")
The graffiti painted by Bayram Mammadov and Giyas Ibrahimov: “Fuck the system.”
\nSona, an Armenian anarcha-feminist, speaks on the protests in Yerevan, the machinations of Armenian politicians, and the uncertain future of the region.
\n\nThe protests began on the evening of September 19. Protesters began gathering at two locations in Yerevan—the government building on Republic Square and the Russian Embassy. Russian expatriates also held a small rally at the Myasnikyan monument.
\n\nOn September 19, protesters began to gather spontaneously on Republic Square, but on the afternoon of September 20, the political forces of Robert Kocharyan had already organized there to monopolize the space. They represent something even worse than the government that currently rules Armenia. Kocharyan was the second president of this country; a good friend of Putin, he represents a pro-Kremlin policy. For Kocharyan’s supporters, the rallies offer an opportunity to improve their position and seek power, but this will not help the people in Artsakh or the refugees that will be arriving from there.
\n\nKocharyan’s supporters demand the resignation of Nikol Pashinyan, the current Prime Minister of Armenia, and say that they are ready to go to war, although in fact it is already too late to fight—Artsakh has already surrendered. The police attacked the demonstrators with stun grenades.
\n\nFewer people gathered at the Russian Embassy; the rally that took place there involved forces that support the current government. Although one telegram channel said that representatives of the intelligentsia and the leftist movement were gathering at the embassy, this is not correct, if only because there is no leftist movement in Armenia.
\n\nThe pro-government telegram channel Bagramyan 26 called for blocking the Russian Embassy, but at the same time being polite to the police. The police did not do anything at that rally, although it too was unpermitted, just like the protest at Republic Square.
\n\nThis is the hypocrisy of our government—they break up one rally and allow another. But responsibility for the abandonment of Artsakh lies not only with the Kremlin, but also with Pashinyan’s government, as well as the previous political forces that have ruled Armenia. The problems that led to the war in 2020 and the current situation did not arise yesterday; a whole series of political forces in Armenia and other countries is implicated.
\n\nPashinyan’s resignation would not bring back those who died in this war, nor in the war of 2020, nor in the preceding wars; it would not help the residents of Artsakh in any way. It will not help the people who were deprived of their homes, land, or health, who were starved for several months. Artsakh no longer exists—that’s it. If pro-Kremlin forces come to power, Armenia will become an enclave of Russia.
\n\nThe position of the Pashinyan government today is that they will not interfere in the conflict between Artsakh and Azerbaijan. This is hypocritical, to say the least, considering that all the residents of Artsakh have Armenian passports, they use Armenian currency. Artsakh is an Armenian quasi-state. Armenians like us live there.
\n\nPashinyan is a pro-Western politician. He began to criticize the Kremlin, threatening to leave the CSTO [Collective Security Treaty Organization, involving Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, and Tajikistan]. In the last few months, he has declared that Armenia is not an ally of Russia in the war with Ukraine and has begun sending humanitarian aid to Ukraine. If Pashinyan’s government remains in power, Armenia will become a more European-oriented country while surrendering territories one after another.
\n\nThere is a third option, but it is unlikely. A military junta could come to power. But that scenario would also be also bad.
\n\nThe surrender of Artsakh is Azerbaijan’s latest frontier in seizing Armenian territories. If Armenia surrendered Artsakh without even firing a single shot in response, this means that other provinces will surrender just as easily—the next one will be Syunik, then Sevan. It is an open question whether the country of Armenia will remain on the map in fifty years.
\n\nThere are different positions within our anarchist circle in Yerevan, but everyone agrees that the aggression in Artsakh on the part of Azerbaijan is an act of genocide. We see the influence of the Kremlin here, the result of Russian geopolitics.
\n\nYesterday, I was in Republic Square before it was taken over by pro-Kocharyan forces. I thought that it was my duty to stand beside the parents of the dead soldiers, beside the people of Artsakh who evacuated in 2020, beside my compatriots who express their protest against the inaction of the Armenian army and the Armenian authorities.
\n\nPersonally, I experience this situation very emotionally. I cannot demand Pashinyan’s resignation, because there is no better alternative now, but I realize that the government has made a mess of this situation. I feel great solidarity with my fellow countrymen and I feel sorry for everyone who died in this war and in the war in the 1990s.
\n\nThe realization comes that all these sacrifices were in vain. Everything is lost.\nI myself am participating today in collecting humanitarian aid. This is especially important, given the experience of 2020, when the state did not take care of refugees. They were simply settled in an abandoned factory building, in which there was absolutely nothing—just bare walls. Volunteers installed toilets in the building themselves.
\n\nI do not encourage people to go to rallies. On the first day of the protests, many people participated in the demonstrations and what occurred was largely spontaneous. But since then, every public gathering point has been seized by some politician and his supporters.
\n\nInstead, I suggest you come to our humanitarian aid collection point, the Letters and Numbers co-working space on Tumanyan Street. Bring humanitarian aid and participate in sorting it so that when the refugees arrive, we will be ready to give them something. This is now very important to help thousands of people from Artsakh, but we don’t have enough hands.
\n\nAfter the publication of the preceding texts, we received the following analysis from Garren, an anarchist librarian based in Yerevan.
\n\nOn September 19, 2023, the Armed Forces of Azerbaijan began an “anti-terrorist” operation against the Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh—an attempt to finally exterminate the indigenous Armenian population of Karabakh.
\n\nFor the people of Armenia, the issue of Karabakh has a dual meaning. The first war in the 1990s, the initial victory over Azerbaijan, and the subsequent diplomatic failures on the part of the political leadership of Armenia at that time have defined Armenian life across the ensuing decades. At the same time, the Karabakh crisis has been used to quell dissent and discourage criticism of Armenian nationalism and, up until 2018, as a device to blackmail Armenians with the threat of war (a favorite strategy of the Kocharyan regime).
\n\nKocharyan and his allies did not exactly fail in their attempts to negotiate for peace in 1997-98. Rather, they consciously sabotaged any attempt at peace out of arrogance and an assumed superiority over Azerbaijan, then utilized the social capital they had acquired as victorious combatants in Artsakh to transform Armenia into a personal fiefdom in which they could amass fortunes. The previous regime capitalized on the misery of war to enrich themselves and sold Armenia to the highest bidder—in this case, Russian and Armenian capitalists.
\n\nIn short, they robbed Armenians of their future in exchange for capital and the control of an entire nation. And now, following yet another assault on the rights of Armenians in Karabakh, these same shadowy forces are calling for a coup in Armenia to upend the democratically-elected administration of Nikol Pashinyan.
\n\nPashinyan’s lack of political qualifications was exemplified in a visit to Stepanakert in 2019, during which he provocatively claimed that “Artsakh is Armenia.” Had the Republic of Armenia taken steps to recognize Artsakh officially, perhaps his words would not have been so careless. But the fact that every single international entity recognized the opposite meant that this sentence could be nothing more than a reckless and pointless provocation. Careless and parochial tend to be defining characteristics of nationalists; besides the populist character of Pashinyan’s administration, it seems to be no exception to this rule.
\n\nAnyone could tell you that life in Armenia since 2018 has been markedly different than previous years. Whatever social progress had been made was brought to a screeching halt as a result of the war in 2020. The events of the past week correspond to the Republic of Armenia’s strategic pivot towards the West, a move clearly despised by the Russian political leadership, as we can see from the recent statements of Marie Zakharova and Dmitry Peskov. The Pashinyan administration has no choice but to turn to an indifferent West that is not really interested in the well-being of Armenians but in capitalizing on the faltering Russian presence in the South Caucasus for its own geopolitical and economic reasons. The so-called “opposition” had two opportunities to vote the current administration out, but their incompetence combined with the lingering stench of decades of authoritarian rule made that impossible. Now their benefactors are attempting to implement the preferred strategy of conservative nationalists: the coup d’etat.
\n\nWhen Armenians took steps to free themselves from economic dependency and the servile colonial mentality imposed upon them by Russia’s increasingly frail imperialism, the Russian government (which cannot risk damaging its relationship with Turkey) allowed Azerbaijan to exert pressure on Armenians by means of an economic blockade, torturing military combatants and civilians alike, and acts of war. By the same token, they encourage political turmoil within Armenia by means of their intelligence apparati and Putinist-Kocharyanite supporters.
\n\nIn our increasingly polarized, interdependent, and volatile political era, a trend has poisoned popular political discourse. People tend to focus solely on the words and actions of a prime minister, a president, or some other leader. This kind of myopia conceals the wider political, economic, and social apparatus that holds power over social reproduction and the historical processes which led to this moment. In the case of Armenia, Nikol Pashinyan is just one politician, and an extremely weak one at that. We have become so obsessed with the actions of individuals that we neglect the power of collective action. The strategy of mass political organizing has been all but abandoned by even the basically nonexistent left in Armenia. Mind you, the Karabakh movement of the late 1980s and early ’90s was a popular movement, as was the “revolution” of 2018.
\n\nThe yoke of Stalinist bureaucracy and a traditional parochialism weigh heavily on Armenian social and political life. A reactive politic has taken hold, a politic that calls to destabilize a government facing down a refugee crisis and potential invasion. Until a movement materializes that can reproduce daily life and defend Armenian territoriality, the call to remove Pashinyan from power is nothing more than a futile call to arms by opportunists and adventurists.
\n\n" }, { "id": "https://crimethinc.com/2023/09/19/solidarity-among-the-displaced-how-russian-anarchists-in-exile-supported-armenian-refugee-squatters", "url": "https://crimethinc.com/2023/09/19/solidarity-among-the-displaced-how-russian-anarchists-in-exile-supported-armenian-refugee-squatters", "title": "Solidarity among the Displaced : How Russian Anarchists in Exile Supported Armenian Refugee Squatters", "summary": "In Armenia, Russian anarchists in exile set an example of solidarity, supporting Armenian refugees who had squatted the abandoned Ministry of Defense.", "image": "https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2023/09/19/header.jpg", "banner_image": "https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2023/09/19/header.jpg", "date_published": "2023-09-19T03:49:29Z", "date_modified": "2024-09-10T03:55:57Z", "tags": [ "Russia", "Armenia", "squatting", "solidarity" ], "content_html": "Throughout the world, mass displacement is accelerating as climate catastrophe, economic crisis, and war drive millions into exile, both within their own countries and across borders. These mass migrations are exacerbating gentrification, driving up housing costs just as real estate speculation is rendering more and more people homeless. How can displaced people continue to take political action in their new homes, establishing solidarity across ethnic lines in unfamiliar settings? In Armenia, Russian anarchists living in exile set one example, supporting Armenian refugees who had squatted the abandoned Ministry of Defense.
\n\nFor background on recent social movements in Armenia, you could start here. For another example of displaced people doing powerful political organizing in a new context, read this.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2023/09/19/7.jpg\")
The empty windows of the evicted former Ministry of Defense building in Yerevan.
\nThe territories that were once designated by global superpowers as the “Eastern Bloc” all have their own distinct historical, social, and political trajectories. For centuries, the orientalist line between “civilized” West and “barbarous” East has been disputed here. In these territories, empires have conquered and crumbled, war and genocide have drawn and redrawn the borders.
\n\nIn the late 19th and early 20th centuries, anarchism was at the forefront of some of the fiercest struggles in these regions. Since then, the consequences of decades of socialist rule, state repression, and brutal capitalist economic privatization in the 1990s have created a challenging political landscape. Maintaining anarchist organizing in this context has ranged from difficult (as in Poland) to extremely dangerous (as in Russia or Belarus).
\n\nWe can trace the history of anarchism in Armenia back to the late 19th century. One of the most famous Armenian anarchists was Alexander Movsesi Atabekian, who was inspired by the writings of Peter Kropotkin. He was one of the early critics of the October revolution in Russia, a stance that cost him his freedom, as the Soviet authorities arrested him several times. His work remains influential, as he created one of that era’s few anarchist periodicals in Armenian.
\n\nAfter decades of authoritarian rule, Armenia gained independence in 1991 when the Soviet Union dissolved. The first years of independence were wracked by war, as Armenia fought Azerbaijan over the still unresolved territory of Nagorno-Karabakh.
\n\nThe two decades since then have seen repeated bouts of social unrest. In 2013, a massive decentralized movement emerged in the capital city of Yerevan against the increasing cost of public transportation. A year later, self-organized protests broke out against the reform of pension system. Anarchists participated in both of these movements, and in protests against the demolition of the historic Afrikyan Club house in Yerevan. In 2015, the rising costs of electricity drew more people to the streets, once again including anarchists.
\n\nIn Armenia, as in many other post-socialist countries in the region, it is difficult to make a clear distinction between protests triggered by social and economic pressures and movements seeking regime change. Nonetheless, the years leading up to 2016 saw the rise of affinity groups and small anarchist organizations, including feminist and queer initiatives.
\n\nYet in 2016, reflecting shifts taking place around the world, the political terrain began to change, as right-wing militias snatched the initiative from anarchists. That July, they seized the largest police station in Yerevan, unsuccessfully trying to precipitate an armed insurrection. At the same time, emigration was eroding the gains that anarchists had made. As one Armenian anarchist told us then, “Leaving Armenia and joining the ranks of immigrants is currently the most widespread form of radicalization.”
\n\nIn 2020, war resumed with Azerbaijan. Over the preceding years, Russia had raked in profits by selling weapons to both countries. Vladimir Putin eventually brokered a ceasefire between the two nations, but military conflict continued over the following years, escalating again after Russia became bogged down in its invasion of Ukraine. War often fosters the development of reactionary politics and far-right groups while tearing apart the social fabric that previously facilitated grassroots organizing.
\n\nIn this context, it is especially important to find examples of how refugees who have been displaced from their homes and homelands can organize together, even as the previous social movements collapsed.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2023/09/19/10.jpg\")
The former Ministry of Defense building in Yerevan.
\nThe following answers were provided by a Russian anarchist living in Yerevan.
\n\nTell us about the housing crisis in Armenia.
\n\nAlready, before the invasion of Ukraine, the city authorities of Yerevan were redeveloping the city, dismantling old buildings, including historic sites, and replacing them with the new structures, shops, and restaurants that are the engines of the city’s growing gentrification crisis.
\n\nAfter Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, 2022, over 100,000 Russians migrated to Armenia—including anarchists. But as it turned out, there was also a war going on in Armenia itself. While Putin is officially recognized as a war criminal in The Hague, Ilham Aliyev and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, the presidents of Azerbaijan and Turkey, are killing and bombing Armenians, destroying Armenian cultural monuments, and blockading Artsakh, depriving a population of 120,000 of food and medicine without any resistance from the world community.
\n\nAs a consequence, in addition to Russian expatriates, Armenia has been flooded with a massive number of internal refugees, and the state has done precious little to assist them.
\n\nLandlords and real estate agents took advantage of the situation to increase rent dramatically. There were stories in the Armenian media about how refugees from Artsakh were forced to pay one and a half times more rent as a family of five in an apartment. The landlords called them and threatened to install Russians in their place, despite the fact that the terms of the lease had been discussed in advance. Sometimes, when moving in Russians, they did not remove the advertisement announcing that the space was available, but raised the price on it, threatening to evict the new tenants if they received a better offer. This contributed to the spiral of rising prices.
\n\nFor the most part, landlords do not sign formal contracts with tenants, in order to be able to change the terms of rental at any time, set a new price, or kick the tenants out. This also enables them to avoid paying taxes to the government. As a result, tenants are left to fend for themselves. They have to struggle on their own, on the one hand, with landlords trying to extract the maximum profit from them, and on the other, with the economic consequences of the recent war i.
\n\nThe housing crisis has affected many different demographics: students, workers from other regions of Armenia who moved to the capital, refugees from Nagorno-Karabakh, and Armenians from various other social strata.
\n\nWhen the partial military mobilization was announced in Russia in September 2022, a second wave of Russian migrants arrived in Armenia. This time, it included not only ethnic Russians, but also ethnic Armenians with Russian passports. As a result, even garages and basements are being hastily converted into apartments and rented out on the Yerevan market, and real estate prices in large regional cities of Armenia (such as Gyumri, Vanadzor, Kapan or Dilijan) have reached the level that prices in Yerevan reached the preceding February.
\n\nIn my own experience, the problem of housing is acute for many relocated people. There are a few computer programmers who can afford an expensive apartment, but most immigrants cannot.
\n\nThere is only one homeless shelter in Yerevan; it is capable of housing 100 people, whereas something like four times that many people are sleeping on the streets. Some of them have had to have their limbs amputated on account of frostbite. Yet officially, there are no homeless people in Armenia!
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2023/09/19/8.jpg\")
A fire built by evicted squatters outside the former Ministry of Defense building in Yerevan. Photo by Samson Martirosyan.
\nHow does this relate to the eviction of the housing occupation at the old Defense Ministry?
\n\nIn 2018, hundreds of people squatted a 13-story former Defense Ministry building located close to the Yerevan’s highway. It had been empty since 2008. Many of the participants were families with children, war veterans, elderly and poor people. Some of them were veterans of three or four wars. They repaired the building, planted trees, and ran a farm.
\n\nThe authorities decided to renovate the space and give it to the state tax agency, which is supposed to relocate there in 2027. The idea was to create a “Foreign Economic Center” in place of the evicted squat.
\n\nWeeks before they evicted the occupation, they cut off the electricity, creating very difficult living conditions for the residents. On February 16, 2023, Armenian police came to the building and forced all the tenants out. By that time, there were at least 150 families living there. Many of the squatters fought back; 26 people were arrested on the spot. Having brought in thousands of police officers, the authorities began looting, destroying the farm and stealing things from the evictees, including military uniforms.
\n\nTwenty families have been allowed by the authorities to live in a dormitory, while others are living with relatives. But many refused to leave their home, setting up a camp on the land near the building and demanding to be allowed to continue living there.
\n\nWe, the representatives of an anarchist circle that meets periodically in an anarchist bar, decided not to stand aside.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2023/09/19/9.jpg\")
A fire built by evicted squatters outside the former Ministry of Defense building in Yerevan. Photo by Samson Martirosyan.
\nWhat was the response to the eviction and your solidarity efforts?
\n\nThe eviction and our activities in solidarity with the squatters have provoked some discussion among the émigré community. Someone in one of the emigrant chat rooms wrote that these refugees and veterans were “bums who seized state property,” and he, as a taxpayer, was extremely indignant about it. In response, others made arguments about human rights. Some liberals began to argue that “in Germany or Sweden, preserving the right to housing and a decent life is a duty on the part of an official.”
\n\nFor me, as an anarchist, the story of the occupation is a vivid illustration of how the people themselves, with their own labor and ingenuity, can solve social problems at the grassroots level. By ensuring social rights via non-state means, this social project avoids bureaucracy and paternalism, the chief drawbacks of the welfare system.
\n\nIn many ways, social experiments like squatting can also put the existence of landlords into question. Just like medieval feudal lords, landlords do not create anything of value for society, but they are still permitted to profit on others’ labor. As one of the squatters said, “If the state can’t help us, then God help us, at least let it stop interfering and stop stealing and destroying what we’ve built.”
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2023/09/19/4.jpg\")
Laundry belonging to evicted squatters camping outside the former Ministry of Defense building in Yerevan.
\nIn the last decade, Yerevan saw several waves of protests. Do you see people building historical knowledge and experience from one struggle to the next?
\n\nWith regards to the movement of the 2010s in Yerevan, there really was a street movement in which Armenian anarchists participated. There were protests against the increase in electricity prices, an anarchist bloc participated in a demonstration on human rights day, there was an action against the gentrification of Yerevan, and an action of anarcho-feminists. But unfortunately, all of the people from that generation have either left politics, joined political parties, or gone abroad to Russia or Europe.
\n\nToday, the anarchists in Armenia are mostly emigrants from the Russian Federation. In fact, I only know two Armenian anarchists: N—, a punk musician (who became an anarchist in the early 2020s), and S—, an anarcho-feminist who lectures in our space and occasionally publishes in left-wing and anarchist magazines (who also became anarchist around that time). Neither them, alas, was connected to the movements and affinity groups of the 2010s.
\n\nThere is also an anarchist from Israel: Y—, a Jewish woman who gave birth in the Crimea, repatriated to Israel, lived there for 18 years in kibbutzim and participated in the anarchist movement there (including contact with “Anarchists Against the Wall”), married an Armenian and moved to Yerevan, and decided to establish a café here with anarchist and feminist themes. The café became a gathering place for the local Jewish community (for example, at Shabbat celebrations every Saturday), as well as for the creative intelligentsia, who held public readings there.
\n\nAll this continued until Russia invaded Ukraine, after which the Russian authorities began to persecute their citizens even more, and hundreds of thousands of anti-war Russians (including anarchists) fled the country.
\n\nAs a result, Armenia, which was mono-ethnic for almost all the years of its independence, is now more diverse.
\n\nSubsequently, many representatives of leftist and anti-authoritarian views became regular visitors at the Mama-jan café. This offered fertile ground for the formation, on the initiative of Y—, S— (of whom I spoke above), and the Russian anarchist S—, of what was called the Emma Goldman Public School. In practice, this was a weekly meeting of anarchists and sympathizers in a small room of the café to discuss new articles as they appeared in anarchist magazines.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2023/09/19/2.jpg\")
The door of the Mama-jan café. The second sticker says “No war” in Russian.
\nThat is how our small circle was formed, which now represents the entire anarchist movement in Armenia.
\n\nThere are many different people among us. One is actively involved in veganism and even founded his own vegan cooperative (which I also joined). Others, like one friend who is a Christian anarchist, collect humanitarian aid for the victims of the war. There is a queer anarchist group that continues to engage in street activism.
\n\nThe café became a social space where we began to actively hold public lectures on various topics, such as the legacy of the Armenian anarchist Alexander Atabekian (a lecture that I presented), anarchism and ecology, the Zapatistas, and more.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2023/09/19/11.jpg\")
A presentation in Yerevan about Alexander Atabekian.
\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2023/09/19/1.jpg\")
An event in Yerevan for March 8, International Women’s Day.
\nHow did you go about supporting the squatters?
\n\nAs soon as we learned that they had been forcibly evicted, we decided to go and help them. We went to them several times and, despite some initial distrust, my friends managed to find a common language with them.
\n\nAs a result, at the next weekly meeting, we discussed how to go about supporting them. One of the sympathizers of anarchist ideas, a visitor to our circle, arranged to supply firewood for using potbelly stoves to heat their tents. Also, as an anti-war activist with certain connections, I managed to invite a journalist friend there. During a subsequent visit, they met us very hospitably. We helped to unload the firewood and they fed us and taught us to play backgammon.
\n\nWe made a report about the situation for emigrant Russian-language media, which later played a very important role. We also established contact with the charitable organization “Ethos,” which was founded by relocators in Yerevan and is engaged in helping both Ukrainian and Armenian refugees.
\n\nThanks to the fact that news coverage appeared about the eviction and was reposted on our initiative via various publishing houses (for example, in “Doxa,” which actively covered the persecution of anarchists and anti-war protesters), we were able to initiate a collection for food, medicine, and fuel in Ethos. In the end, we collected 60,000 drams more than planned! [The equivalent of approximately $157, still a significant amount of money for some refugees in Armenia.]
\n\nAlso, the squatters began to actively invite us to their protests: they held these every Thursday and every Monday near the government building and the State Expenditure Committee. My friends and I held a poster reading “State, why did you take away people’s housing” with anarchist symbols.
\n\nThe squatters were very pleased with our support, and even invited us to barbecues—which was especially ironic in the case of our vegan friend.
\n\nNow their struggle continues, and we maintain contact with them.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2023/09/19/5.jpg\")
Camping conditions outside the former Ministry of Defense building in Yerevan.
\nWhat do anarchists have to offer to struggles for housing?
\n\nAnarchism, in principle, throughout its history, has been very interested in the housing issue. It is not for nothing that during the Paris Commune, one of the revolutionary decisions of the council was to settle homeless Parisians in the apartments of bourgeois emigrants who had fled to Versailles, and to establish a ban on evicting tenants for non-payment of rent. Housing insecurity is a significant aspect of modern society, a challenge to which anarchists must respond.
\n\nThe example of this eviction is particularly striking. It shines a light on all the absurdity and immorality of a civilization based on private property.
\n\nIt is necessary here to draw parallels between how Azerbaijan is trying to force out the Armenians and carry out ethnic cleansing in Artsakh, using tactics such as setting up a blockade and cutting off the electricity—and how the same thing happened in Yerevan, with the Armenian government cutting off the electricity to the squatters and creating unbearable conditions for them.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2023/09/19/6.jpg\")
Squatters camping outside the former Ministry of Defense building in Yerevan.
\n\n\n\nThe house was not built by its owner. It was erected, decorated, and furnished by innumerable workers—in the timber yard, the brick field, and the workshop, toiling for dear life at a minimum wage…
\n\nWho, then, can appropriate to himself the tiniest plot of ground, or the meanest building, without committing a flagrant injustice? Who, then, has the right to sell to any bidder the smallest portion of the common heritage?
\n\nOn that point, as we have said, the workers are agreed. The idea of free dwellings showed its existence very plainly during the siege of Paris, when the cry was for an abatement pure and simple of the terms demanded by the landlords. It appeared again during the Commune of 1871, when the Paris workmen expected the Communal Council to decide boldly on the abolition of rent. And when the New Revolution comes, it will be the first question with which the poor will concern themselves.
\n\nWhether in time of revolution or in time of peace, the worker must be housed somehow or other; he must have some sort of roof over his head. But, however tumble-down and squalid your dwelling may be, there is always a landlord who can evict you…
\n\nRefusing uniforms and badges–those outward signs of authority and servitude–and remaining people among the people, the earnest revolutionists will work side by side with the masses, that the abolition of rent, the expropriation of houses, may become an accomplished fact. They will prepare the ground and encourage ideas to grow in this direction; and when the fruit of their labours is ripe, the people will proceed to expropriate the houses without giving heed to the theories which will certainly be thrust in their way–theories about paying compensation to landlords, and finding first the necessary funds.
\n\nOn the day that the expropriation of houses takes place, on that day, the exploited workers will have realized that the new times have come, that Labour will no longer have to bear the yoke of the rich and powerful, that Equality has been openly proclaimed, that this Revolution is a real fact, and not a theatrical make-believe, like so many others preceding it.
\n\n-Peter Kropotkin, The Conquest of Bread
\n
![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2023/09/19/3.jpg\")
Squatters camping outside the former Ministry of Defense building in Yerevan.
\nAs massive anti-corruption protests shake former socialist countries and NATO and Russia mass their troops along the border between East and West, anarchists are asking how best to intervene in the upheavals ahead in this contested region. Seeking a case study in resistance along the Eastern European rim, we talked with anarchists in Armenia about their experiences in recent demonstrations against corruption, the cost of living, and the current government. The lessons they pass on are instructive for participants in social movements all around the world.
\n\nArmenia gained independence in 1991 when the Soviet Union dissolved. Its first years as a country were marked by war, as it fought Azerbaijan over the still unresolved territory of Nagorno-Karabakh. The last two decades have seen repeated bouts of social unrest in this country torn by the consequences of war and economic hardship, but only in the last four years has the Western media paid the protests much attention.
\n\n“Leaving Armenia and joining the ranks of immigrants is currently the most widespread form of radicalization,” one comrade from this small nation in the Southern Caucasus tells us. And yet a small but committed community of anarchists has stayed, demonstrating what it means to fight against capitalism and the state in four consecutive years of protests in this post-socialist country.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2017/02/12/armenia-4.jpg\")
Clashes during the Electric Yerevan protests of 2015.
\nIn 2013, the city government of Yerevan, Armenia’s capital, tried to increase the cost of public transportation from 100 to 150 drams. This provoked unprecedented anger. It only took a week for a thirty-person campaign to snowball into a massive decentralized movement attracting mostly high school and university students. Most of the participants were taking the streets for the first time. Simple and effective direct actions helped the movement to grow quickly. “You just went to the nearest bus stop, handed out fliers, paid the same amount you paid before, and urged people to do the same. Everybody knew why we were protesting. The task at hand was very specific and real,” our comrades remember.
\n\nThe movement stayed autonomous, free from the influence of political parties. Highly focused on everyday issues, it inspired people to fight and organize in various ways. Young people drove unofficial buses all day long and encouraged passengers to boycott the new fare, while others supported the riders financially. A self-organized car pool initiative spread across the city, with people sharing cars and even offering free rides to strangers. Things got serious when even some bus drivers joined the protests by skipping work or refusing to take money from passengers. Total chaos was right around the corner.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2017/02/12/armenia-2.jpg\")
\n“It was a truly exciting experience, until the government did what it always does; it quickly agreed to the minimal requirements, thus preventing the expansion and radicalization of the movement,” comrades observe with disappointment. The movement’s focus on everyday issues and avoidance of a more radical agenda were initially seen as strengths, as the movement drew a wide variety of people. Yet they ultimately proved to be weaknesses as well.
\n\nAs soon as the government caved in to demands, the movement dissolved. Some blamed the inexperience of protesters, while others pointed to skewed media coverage or to the lack of assemblies. In any case, the cancellation of the fare hike drew a massive amount of people to the streets in celebration. People had demanded lower costs of living, and once the government met their demand, they thought they had won. “Any argument with a more experienced activist was perceived as an unnecessary politicization of the issue. It was clear one should abandon any hope of a bigger change,” our comrades report, describing the moment they realized their movement had reached its own inborn limits.
\n\nThe dust of the transportation fare protests had not yet settled on Yerevan’s wide avenues when the turbulent year of 2014 began. The next big wave of protests, addressing the controversial reform of Armenia’s national pension system, were dubbed the “Dem Em” (I am against) movement. The new pension system targeted young professionals born after 1973, forcing them to contribute at least 5% of their gross wages to private pension funds of a highly suspect nature until they retire. “There are examples of similar reforms, both successful and unsuccessful, in other countries. However, in Armenia the main trigger for the resistance was not economic feasibility, but distrust towards the government, both current and future,” comrades explain. “Would you lend money to a racketeer who is moving to Panama? Of course not.”
\n\nThe reform particularly angered young people in the IT industry, who earn much more than the average income in Armenia. On average, an Armenian making minimum wage will earn $115 in US currency a month, whereas the starting salary for an IT specialist in Armenia is around $650 per month. “The first public discussions of the anti-reform campaign resembled a gathering of a non-existent trade union for computer programmers; the discussions were spontaneously horizontal, but at the same time they were distrustful towards outsiders, especially towards those who had participated in other campaigns.”
\n\nProgrammers weren’t the only ones organizing, though. Politicians had learned the strength of the street movement from previous protests. The “I am against” initiative was soon backed by the opposition parliamentary party. The movement didn’t just gain the support of politicians, it also brought thousands of people to the streets, got a fancy sound system, and soon started to resemble trade unions in the worst possible way. “There were appointed leaders recognized by the media and police, the language of the protest became populist, and the decisions were made behind closed doors,” our comrades report. The moment when the discourse about reform was taken over by political parties was the beginning of the end.
\n\nIf in 2013, the city government actually had to completely back down on a fare hike, this time the government only had to promise to postpone the pension reform. Once again, people believed they had won, and the movement dissolved. Several months later, the government went back on their word, but the movement never came back to life. Our comrades did not consider this to be their struggle: “Leftists and anarchists did not participate in the movement at the beginning, when it was narrowly focused on professionals and therefore closed [to their participation], and refused to participate when it was led by the political parties and therefore, indirectly, by the authorities.”
\n\nIn the summer of 2015, a completely new stream of energy drew people together on the streets of Yerevan. Things started out a lot like the previous protests: the government tried to raise electricity prices 17 percent. As before, people took the streets to march and hold discussions. But what truly got the movement going was unprecedented police violence. This opened up a completely new set of opportunities.
\n\nOn a warm June day, hundreds of people gathered in Yerevan to march towards the presidential palace. They soon stopped before a scene no social movement in Armenia had ever witnessed. The police had closed down the road with water cannons, cordons of officers, and barbed wire. Yet people refused to leave, transforming the march into a sit-in—successfully occupying and blockading main avenues in downtown Yerevan.
\n\nThat night, things got out of control. First, people delegitimized the self-proclaimed leaders of the protests, who tried to reduce the tension and even to get people to return to Freedom Square where the rally had started. The protesters had different kind of freedom in mind this time.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2017/02/12/armenia-5.jpg\")
Electric Yerevan protesters behind a banner reading “High Voltage.”
\n“Nobody wanted to return, so the suggestion was rejected,” comrades remember. It is worth noting that the discussion was not an assembly, and people did not try to vote or reach consensus. As the night was getting late, however, more and more people left the occupation.
\n\nPolice struck early in the morning, using water cannons to brutally attack and disperse the remaining few hundred protesters. The police detained about 240 protesters; 25 were injured and three hospitalized. Officers targeted people covering the protests as well, destroying their cameras and memory cards.
\n\nThis attempt to crush the movement by brute force produced the opposite effect. In less than 12 hours, about 8000 people returned to the streets under the banners of Electric Yerevan. Solidarity protests took place in many other cities and towns. It seemed that another clash was inevitable.
\n\nBut the police were learning fast; they did not make any further attacks. Instead, the protest turned into a standoff, with a barricade of trash bins separating police and the protesters. That was when space for radical ideas started to close down. “The barricade quickly became a stage for people with loudspeakers. In addition, artists and politicians formed a “human shield” to guarantee the security of people. Media were live-streaming 24 hours a day, and soon the protest took a more familiar and stable form.” By providing the protesters an opportunity to express a peaceful and inert disobedience, the authorities ensured that the protests would die down themselves.
\n\nAt the same time, our Armenian comrades report that those who wanted to radicalize the protest or expand the range of tactics—mostly anarchists and other radicals—faced different challenges. On the one hand, police were detaining people for wearing anarchist symbols or just for spreading leaflets. That spread fear inside the movement, and the protesters themselves started to label any attempt to distribute radical material or introduce new slogans as a provocation.
\n\nBut, as comrades recollect, anarchists were facing additional challenges. “Starting from the very first meetings, any attempt at public debate was immediately suppressed by the organizational group. As soon as there was any talk of expanding the protest agenda and the need to radicalize, the organizers would put on loud music, shady characters would appear to disrupt a conversation, so people were forced to leave the protest area, where police might detain them.”
\n\nAs the government once again used a cheap trick, claiming they would subsidize the difference between the old electricity price and the new one, some organizers started to encourage people to stop occupying the streets of Yerevan. Although they failed to convince the majority of the people, the number of protesters was dropping day by day.
\n\nThis was when the remaining participants started to organize assemblies. Yet the number of people in the streets remained small. “Media quickly dubbed the remaining protesters as alcoholics, drug addicts, and radicals.” The Electric Yerevan movement was dead. A year later, the government announced the end of subsidies as well.
\n\n![](\"https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/articles/2017/02/12/armenia-3.jpg\")
\nOn an early morning in July 2016, the people of Yerevan woke up to an odd series of events. An armed conservative nationalist group had seized the largest police station in the capital, containing most of the specialized equipment, ammunition, and weapons, demanding the resignation of the president of Armenia. This armed group was affiliated with the political prisoner Zhirayr Sefilyan, a leader of the opposition movement Founding Parliament. Their aim was to force regime change and to build a new type of state. Some were veterans of the Karabakh war. “They have experienced political oppression, but their conservative and nationalistic agenda was not much different from the government in power,” our comrades explain.
\n\nThey encouraged people to break through the police cordon with Molotov cocktails and arm themselves. On the other side of a police cordon reinforced by several military vehicles, more people gathered every hour, reaching over 5000 in the evening. However, people refused to attempt an armed uprising. Their main demand was that bloodshed be avoided. The members of Founding Parliament, who joined the protest, were detained and arrested. The most violent clashes took place between police and the residents of the surrounding area. The authorities once again adopted the strategy of wearing the armed group out, and the group eventually surrendered.
\n\nIn Armenia, as in most other post-socialist countries of the Eastern bloc, it is not easy to draw a clear distinction between protests seeking regime change and demonstrations triggered by more social and economic reasons. For now, people still believe that regime change will bring about a better life. “Power is personalized, while violence is systematic,” our comrades from Armenia conclude. “Social protests that have specific, concrete, and visible demands and results are perceived as ‘small victories.’ No wonder that success in those protests practically always motivates people to strive for more, but people only return to demand the president’s resignation.”
\n\n“Is there a visible large-scale anti-capitalist agenda in Armenia? Definitely not. There are, however, a few affinity groups, small organizations that share anti-capitalist ideas, implement some projects, try to organize small-scale interventions,” our comrades explain. Anti-election sentiments are more widespread, speaking to widespread disappointment with representative democracy. There is also a small but fierce feminist and queer community with radical views.
\n\nAlthough our comrades conclude that, for the majority of people, growing despair over their inability to change their lives appears to be the only thing transferred from one year’s protests to the next, the situation in Armenia remains volatile and unpredictable. Remember, anarchism has been a force in Armenia since the 19th century. Anarchists have never been numerous, but even today they remain determined to fight for a better world.
\n\nTo make contact with anarchists in Armenia, try this Facebook page.
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