The Velvet Revolution
Peaceful mass protests led by the opposition MP Nikol Pashinyan force Serzh Sargsyan to resign as he tries to stay in power, bringing a new generation to government.
- Armenia's Velvet Revolution: Authoritarian Decline and Civil Resistance in a Multipolar World — Laurence Broers and Anna Ohanyan (eds.), I.B. Tauris (2021)
- Armenia and Azerbaijan: Anatomy of a Rivalry — Laurence Broers, Edinburgh University Press (2019)
Since independence Armenia had been dominated by a small elite, many of them Karabakh war veterans, and by wealthy businessmen close to power; elections were often disputed, and in March 2008 protests after a presidential vote ended with ten people dead. In 2018 Serzh Sargsyan, president for two terms, moved to become prime minister under a new constitution that had shifted power to that post.
- Armenia's Velvet Revolution: Authoritarian Decline and Civil Resistance in a Multipolar World — Laurence Broers and Anna Ohanyan (eds.), I.B. Tauris (2021)
Nikol Pashinyan, a journalist and opposition MP, walked from Gyumri to Yerevan and launched a campaign of civil disobedience. Students, then tens of thousands of people, blocked streets with music and dancing. On 23 April 2018, after soldiers joined the protests, Sargsyan resigned with the words “Nikol Pashinyan was right, I was wrong.” Parliament elected Pashinyan prime minister on 8 May, and his alliance won a landslide in December elections. Unlike other uprisings in the region, it was not about East or West; Pashinyan promised to keep close ties with Russia while fighting corruption at home.
- Armenia's Velvet Revolution: Authoritarian Decline and Civil Resistance in a Multipolar World — Laurence Broers and Anna Ohanyan (eds.), I.B. Tauris (2021)
- Armenia and Azerbaijan: Anatomy of a Rivalry — Laurence Broers, Edinburgh University Press (2019)
Why it matters today
The revolution is a source of pride for many Armenians: a peaceful, joyful uprising that changed the government without bloodshed and left Armenia among the freer countries of the former Soviet Union. But Pashinyan, its leader, became the most divisive figure in the country after the 2020 defeat, so how people remember 2018 often tells you their politics.