Since 1995, when public confidence in the elections has diminished, so has the confidence in the parties. Deprived of the right to free choice, the latter engaged in shady arrangements with the incumbent government, and as a result, the public was subjected to political manipulation, which distorted the political landscape. It is clear that if there is no trust in the electoral system, the parties must become participants in imitating political life.
Political parties have in fact ceded issues of human rights, social justice, and environmental protection to civil society structures, whose authority at the expense of the parties has begun to grow. Civic initiatives have increased the rating of civil society. The issue of religious freedom has also become a priority area of interest for NGOs. The parties avoided referring to this issue, believing that protecting the interests of the Armenian Apostolic Church was a patriotic affair, and that state thinking meant defending the “official” church. In fact, the issue of religious freedoms was excluded from political life, finding its place in the domain of civil society initiatives. In this respect it is important to understand what was the ideological basis of civil society in general and, as a consequence, the attitude towards the issue.
In Soviet times religion was excluded from public life, but traditional religious structures in Soviet republics symbolized national traditions and the pre-Soviet past, which is why nationalist circles, in the face of traditional religious organizations, saw national institutions that did not fit within the official ideology of the Soviet Union (internationalism and atheism) being persecuted by the authorities. Faith was sometimes perceived as one of the forms of dissident movement, a form of opposition to Soviet rule, and this was also true of the Armenian Church.
The Soviet Union was an ideological empire that violated basic human rights. But then there was a unique “civil society”: there were professional unions, such as unions of painters, writers, filmmakers, and the like. These organizations were generating a state where the cells of the only legitimate Communist party were operating. Naturally, these organizations were also ideological and operated under the watchful eye of party officials.
Human rights protection was considered a form of anti-state political activity, for which they were severely punished. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, many human rights activists continued to attempt to present human rights advocacy as an ideological movement. But in the new unprincipled countries the problem was different, the authorities of those countries no longer had official ideologies, and the main purpose of civil society was to protect human rights. “Old-school” human rights advocates, however, find it difficult to adapt to the new situation and want to remain in ideological positions that are already transforming into a geopolitical struggle. The struggle for human rights is, of course, a fight against the arbitrariness of the state, but these violations can no longer have an ideological basis, which creates an ambiguous situation.
In Armenia and other post-Soviet countries, the notion of civil society was introduced from the West and is perceived as an organized form of society. It has its own adversary — the power that violates human rights and has to be fought against. There are two classic definitions of civil society:
1. Free will of free citizens to unite into non-profit organizations free from state interference and improper regulation of their work by the government, as well as from other outside influences;
2. One of the guarantors of human rights protection, which is outside the direct influence of the state and government, but as such is not outside the state.
As a matter of fact, in countries like Armenia, the second version of the definition of civil society is mainly functioning. Other forms — trade unions, religious communities, independent professional and creative unions — are unable to form and become important components of society. In addition to geopolitical preferences, influential players in civil society also have a preference for political ideology — liberalism.
After the proclamation of independence, the rating of Catholicos Vazgen I, who became a symbol of the church and the nation, was extremely high. Expectations were also high, but the church faced a serious challenge of turning from a national symbol into a functioning public structure and finding a new position in state and public life for itself. For the Church, this transformation required new ideological, functional approaches that, in essence, the church could not organize. At the beginning of the century, the Armenian Church announced that it was going to develop a social concept for the church, for which they had opened an office to deal with it. About 20 years have passed, but the promised social concept is not yet ready. The change of government in 2018 has shown that the church has lost in connection with the public, and relying solely on the government is wrong policy. But we’ll talk about that a little later.
Since 1991 the Armenian Apostolic Church has deliberately expanded its presence in public and state life, but two decades after independence, the issue of its place and role has become a topic of heated debate. If before that no one questioned the unique role of the church not only historically but also in the identity of the Armenian people, today public expectations from the church are not being justified. As a result, a rift has arisen between the public and the church, sometimes expressed in harsh criticism of the church and its servants in the media. Since 1991, the official position of the church has been to fight against other religious organizations for which it has been involved in power structures.
During the 1991-1995 war, there were attacks on the sites of religious organizations by participants of the war; their members were beaten and property was looted or destroyed. In such cases, the police assumed the role of observer, demonstrating that this was a state policy. Interestingly, no party supported them. The issue of protecting religious freedom remained on the shoulders of NGOs.
Religious organizations, including the Armenian Church, failed to become one of the key segments of civil society and, as a result, had no impact on the public as a socially and morally important factor, while non-governmental organizations, mainly human rights units, based on the mission of human rights protection, have become the main factor in creating public sentiment in this regard.
