Pashinyan redefines patriotism, cites soviet-era legacy

PanARMENIAN.Net - At the 7th congress of the Civil Contract party, Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan stated that the people of Nagorno-Karabakh must replace their refugee status with the proud citizenship of Armenia. He praised them for resisting anti-Armenian agendas despite enduring immense tragedy, Aysor.am reports.

“Today, when I say the people of Armenia, I equally mean our people of Karabakh. With our support, they must replace refugee status with the proud citizenship of the Republic of Armenia,” Pashinyan said. He called the Armenian people the foundation and inspiration for the country’s new era.

Addressing his views on patriotism, Pashinyan reflected on his 2019 statement, “Artsakh is Armenia, and that’s it.” He explained that it was driven by patriotism but rooted in the only available model of patriotism in Armenia at the time, shaped by the Soviet era.

“I remain a patriot today, no more and no less. But the model is different. Now it is based on the will of Armenia’s people and the mothers who nourish the nation, not on the Soviet model designed by Stalin, Khrushchev, and Brezhnev,” he said, Armenpress reports.

He argued that Armenian patriotic perceptions before the “Real Armenia” ideology were largely shaped by literature, art, and culture of the 1940s–1980s, all subject to Soviet censorship by “Glavlit.” Thus, he noted, these works inevitably reflected imperial policies and framed Armenian patriotism within that axis.