'Armenia is not a new Maidan. Please don't make it one'

Protests against electricity price hikes in Yerevan have little in common with Ukraine’s uprising – but Russian geopolitical rhetoric has a habit of making self-fulfilling prophecies, says Paul Goble.

Many Russian analysts are hurrying to suggest that this week’s protests in Yerevan and their suppression by the Armenian government are the opening round of a new Maidan – an anti-Moscow action promoted and exploited by the west as part of a broader geopolitical struggle.

But such an interpretation of events, if it comes to guide policy, could prove to be the worst form of a self-fulfilling prophecy, transforming what are protests by Armenians about domestic conditions into something more. Should Moscow choose to defend the existing authorities in Yerevan no matter what, it would alienate the country against Russia.

That is the conclusion Sergey Markedonov of the Russian State Humanities University offers in his latest commentary, one that constitutes a clear warning to the Kremlin, as well as analysts inside Russia and abroad, about misreading the situation on the ground by trying to make everything fit a pre-existing framework.

Those who read every case of popular discontent in the post-Soviet space as a Maidan or proto-Maidan are falling victim to a kind of geopolitical determinism, as Markedonov puts it, according to which “practically any [protest movement] is only an expression of ‘a proxy war’ between the United States and Russia.”

Such people are taking the lazy way out, and forgetting that “a political crisis is not a virus” which spreads from one place to another, but rather reflects specific problems, however much some of those who are participating in it – both the regimes andthose who oppose them – draw on past cases in their vocabulary.

What is happening in Armenia is decidedly not like what happened in Ukraine. For one thing, Russia considers Armenia its strategic partner. For another, the government and the people are not divided in their attitude toward Moscow. Some in the government question Yerevan’s ties with Russia; and many in the streets would like to see those ties deeper.

In short, the Moscow analyst says, the issue of Russia is not the defining element in their struggle and it is critically important that “in Moscow people do not fall victim to emotions and look for signs of a Maidan where they are hard to find”. Rather, Russia must recognise that the protesters are not unhappy with the Kremlin but with Yerevan’s own power structure.

“If Russian politicians and diplomats draw incorrect conclusions and link the opposition to the actions of the [US] State Department”, Markedonov says, they will create a situation in which Moscow will have to support the Armenian government no matter what, something that could have the effect of alienating Armenians from it.

In that event, what is a domestic Armenian problem today could become a Maidan tomorrow, and thus something larger and more dangerous for Russia. Instead, the analyst urges that Russia keep its lines open to both the government and people of Armenia and encourage a settlement rather than backing only one horse.

Markedonov concludes with the observation that he “has no illusions relative to the good intentions of the Americans or Europeans with regard to Russian interests on the post-Soviet space. But to reduce everything to the ill intentions of the US, NATO or the EU is an enormous mistake.”

A version of this article originally appeared on The Interpreter, part of the New East network.