Historian and sociologist Georgi Derlugian brings the origin of media from far away and connects it with today, with many parallels and correlations. He offers to look at ourselves from a broader perspective: the center and the suburbs, the individual and the public, technology and hope, gender and freedoms.

Georgi Derlugian, a professor at New York University in Abu Dhabi, considers Armenians a fearless society. And he is sure that first of all, we need a pan-Armenian sabbatical to build, repair, clean…

And without nostalgia, when it seems that it was better before. “It was not good before, but it was different,” he said. And gives a reminder that before there were the Beatles, Gagarin and Che Guevara. There are no such idols today. Now one can ask, what makes you happier?

Can we expect that after the snap elections there will be more tension than now?

It is always impossible to predict the stock of popular anger. But when you come across a public opinion poll, always look at who does it, who pays for it, and then draw conclusions.

The question of where the money comes from is also important in the case of the media. And we can say that there can be no independent and influential media.

Lenin has a good article in the literature on party affiliation. Lenin was really a genius of politics, who won where it seemed to be an absolutely losing situation.

Let’s look at where the media came from.

About 400 years ago, merchants, accustomed to exchanging news, first went to taverns in Venice and later in other cities. It is the same now, I have friends who meet regularly and call it practical binge drinking. During that time they are informed and come to an agreement.

And when merchant ships arrived at the port, active contacts began. Then someone had a great idea to create what we would call a newsletter today. That is, the main news started to be published.

If we look at the front page of the extremely conservative London Times, until the 1950s, it was not political news that was published, but news about what ship came to port and what cargo it had.

Then the political newspapers appeared. They usually appeared during revolutions – English, French, etc. There were special people who read those newspapers aloud to illiterate people.

American journalist John Markoff made a map (with days, places) of how the villagers burned the estates of French aristocrats. There is a huge amount of letters left in history, written by French aristocrats, talking about how people gathered near their homes, shouting, throwing dead cats, rats, burning property and so on.

And what is left of those who did it? Nothing, because the villagers were illiterate.

And when you create a map of events and post the events for days, suddenly something very interesting happens: the fires and riots started in the days when the mail came from Paris.

What is the connection?

That’s what’s interesting. A newspaper was brought from the center, the villagers gathered in the tavern and the innkeeper, who was usually the main subscriber of the newspapers, began to read it aloud. (By the way, the fresh issue of the newspaper was hung on a stick, like a flag, and put on the table, people drank coffee, read and discussed in parallel. It is an old German tradition from the 18th century).

And when they read that the National Assembly in Paris is going to give up feudal taxes, fires start.

That is more or less what happened in Armenia as well.

The village heads (chevaliers) realized that they could no longer demand money to grind wheat in their flour mill or use the road. So what to do? At first, of course, they did not want to take the blame and kill, they started with dead cats and rats. In other words, they tried to hint: leave here, or it is better to emigrate.

And when they were setting things on fire, it was, first of all, the owner’s office, destroying the documents, the archive, the evidence of the debt.

Were they nullifying the situation?

Yes, and then it is more interesting. The radius of the fires was growing day by day. When they burned the house 10 km away and saw that there was no response and no troops were sent from Paris, they then started burning the houses 50 km away.

In other words, the people looked, saw that what they did remained unpunished, and continued.

These people died 200 years ago, and it is impossible to conduct a sociological survey. But we can see how many of the inhabitants of those burned villages enlisted in the army three years later and in 1793 went to defend, for example, Les Mars, singing, we will anoint our lands with the blood of our enemies. Or how many will take part in the resistance against the fascists in 1942?

Finding such correlations over the centuries is very interesting.

The paper, which is accepted in the center, does not mean anything yet, as the situation on the ground is different.

A revolution took place in Armenia, but it does not mean anything yet.

The fact that the revolution was defeated in the war denies all our ideas about revolutions because revolutions always fight well.

They can fail in everything, but not in war.

Look at the Bolsheviks, Fidel Castro, the Jacobins, the Robespierre, they can all organize terror in their homes (special services, famine, etc.), but they never lose the war.

Wasn’t what happened in 2018 a revolution?

A revolution is a change of government by force and by involving the masses. Thank God, there was no violence in Armenia, but what happened was in fact a revolution: the ruling class was overthrown and lost a lot.

That is why the bets are very high now.

Are the high stakes the reason why the political forces are waging such an aggressive, almost deadly struggle full of curses?

People do not like deadly things at all. And swearing is one of the ways to avoid real aggression. (Boys’ games start, oh, I’ll show you now … No, I’ll show you now…).

Sociologists have a huge amount of data on violence.

Nowadays, people like to take photos of the fights, street clashes, fights in the stadium or cafe, police clashes with demonstrators, etc.

And it is actually a database and a wonderful material for sociologists, thanks to which we see whose eyes are looking in which direction.

And as a rule, the impression is created that a large number of people are involved in the fights, while they may in fact be three or four people. People do not sincerely remember what happened in the future, it seems to everyone that they were fighting too. And they definitely won.

From a human point of view, if there is swearing, it rarely reaches a hand-to-hand fight. Violence is used when the victim apparently runs away, in which case they are brought to an end.

For example, what happened in Sumgait has a very simple explanation. The victims were fleeing.

Are scary things expected after the elections?

No. By and large, it will be the same no matter who comes to power, because there are not many steps in this game.

The important thing is who will regulate the state administration. And in any case, it will be regulated, that is what’s demanded by the West, Moscow and the Armenian society.

Much will depend on those who participate in the elections and hope to get positions. Moreover, some may even end up in prison.

There is one very interesting thing in this election in Armenia: the two main candidates kept each other in prison during their rule. And they were released …

It gives us a reason to think.

And what is the role of society?

Society is divided into categories. Who do you mean: a woman, a man, an Armenian today, an Armenian of the past?

A person living in the digital age has access to various information and is bombarded with that information. And regardless of gender and age, they enter Facebook to see what has happened in the world.

Facebook is the market in the classical sense. Grandmothers sitting on the benches in the yard or men drinking coffee and playing backgammon have a wonderful view of who went where, with whom and for what, and they tell everyone about it.

Facebook is the same thing, plus, of course, malicious gossip.

There are moments when society is politicized too much. But Armenians are a fearless society, they are not afraid of anything.

I have been to countries where there is a lot to fear. People are disappearing there. I will not give names now, but many Arab countries are among them, Azerbaijan has gotten very close to that border, you know very well what is happening with journalists in Turkey.

Is fearlessness a sign of freedom?

One of the signs. Thank God, the authorities are weak here, and the question arises, who should we be afraid of?

Armenian society tolerates the rich as long as they share the wealth with the people. After the 2016 war, for example, the main question was, where did the generals get the money for the new Mercedes? In many lands, no one would ask such a question out loud. For example, in Pakistan.

And this slightly stupid and simple question is a sign of freedom. In that sense, Armenia is in principle a very free country and quite provincial. It seems that Armenia and Georgia are similar countries, but in reality, they have no similarities. Look at the women of those countries. Look at how many drive and how many smoke, or how many women there are with purple hair.

Freedom is a more sincere conflict.

But in reality, I do not know what freedom is, because it is not a scientific concept, but one that came from philosophy, art. People can think about it and think very prettily about it, but they cannot measure it.

I can say that it is safe in Armenia, even abnormally safe. And women are not afraid of anything here.

It is interesting that you measure everything by women.

Actually, it is a very important unit of measurement, gender issues also apply to men, which is often not understood by activists of feminist movements.

I wrote an article about the image of Islamic terrorists as a gender role. And it was about the fact that if a man does not have a decent job and cannot be considered a real jigit by playing his role in the family, terrorism remains.

In Armenia, of course, women rule and the lifestyle is much more pro-family, rather rural.

Armenians became a nation of peasants, shoemakers and priests. The intellectuals simply replaced the priests.

A question, what to do in Armenia now?

To live. Improve life, start a family, teach children.

It is clear what should be done in the economy. It is absolutely unclear who will do it.

To start, we are announcing a pan-Armenian Saturday.

Have you ever wondered why there are so many taxis and minibuses? Because the factories collapsed. And men, who are always accustomed to dealing with ironwork, lost their jobs. All they can do now is serve in the professional army or drive a taxi. In either case, they are dealing with iron.

Now it is necessary to gather everyone, distribute shovels and say, dear ones, now we will build cities, villages, roads. Or we will repair entrances, streets. Of course, money is needed for all that. One can take Nubar Afeyan as a hostage and tell him to give at least ten billion. And other Armenians like him.

And if we’re being serious, then we should work gently with the Diaspora, follow everyone’s success and flatter everyone.

It should be similar to the style of American universities when every successful graduate deserves special attention: they write them a letter, reminding them of their student years and wait for them to send money.

The next step is the dissolution of the universities and the Academy of Sciences.

Schools should be set up to prepare students who can be admitted to Harvard or higher technical colleges. And only for the sake of those schools many people will come to Armenia to live. It will be attractive and happy.

We are now in the Parajanov Museum, and I assure you that the museum’s founder Zaven Sargsyan has done much more for Armenia than all the ministries. I would say that Zaven “robbed” Georgia and brought it to Armenia.

The fact that a physicist can be educated in Armenian is considered utopian. After all, the language of science is English, we must accept that.

War was a trauma that reopened the discourse of trauma, as well as genocide. Does it interfere or can it be useful?

It is simply not needed by anyone except those who are defending dissertations on the subject. They do not even need it, because it is a dead-end.

Trauma discourse is important only for those who have nothing else.

Maybe it can be important for a creative elite that needs audience feedback.

Parajanov, for example, felt the conjuncture of the moment very well, he was generally a master of conjuncture, in the highest sense of the word. In the 1960s, there was an ideological dictatorship in the Soviet Union, which promised a bright future and so on.

And when you have a church (then it was the state), you can also have heretics. And if there is no church, there is no heresy. You can preach whatever you want.

Now the changes have stopped. Why? Because there are no villages, even in China, they invaded cities. And in the last 30-40 years the social changes stopped.

By the way, one of its indicators is the noise that arises around technologies. Technological changes no longer make anyone’s life easier.

When the toilet or kerosene lamp appeared, serious changes took place, the working day was extended, the attitude was changed. Then came the age of cars: roads, gas stations, shops were built, sales specialists appeared, the chemical and oil industry started working for cars.

Smartphones have changed our lives, destroying many professions and cutting jobs: you no longer go to the bank, you buy tickets online, and so on.

There even are no journalists anymore because bloggers are free journalists.

If in the past being a journalist was a responsible job (there were editors, proofreaders, fact-checkers, of course, also censors), now it is the most permissive.

People are fed up with rumors. Sometimes my eyes bulge out from surprise when I read the Armenian press and see what sources they refer to.

In other words, do technological changes no longer lead to development?

They do not give hope. And the light bulb was hope.

The smartphone also gives hope, at least the illusion that the information of the world is in your pocket.

And as a result, you read rumors or small news. Does that make you happy?

For example, if they ask now, which do you prefer more, the smartphone or the toilet that you will choose? What will you give up sooner?

Interview by Nune Hakhverdyan