No one doubts that the most democratic, free elections took place in 1990, the Supreme Council elections. The 1995 National Assembly elections were already half rigged. The 1996 elections were completely rigged. All subsequent elections were rigged from beginning to end, not to mention the various rigging mechanisms. This led to the fact that the people became indifferent.
Well, it doesn't matter, they do whatever they want, isn't it better to take five or ten thousand drams and go and vote for the person they say? Fraud also became the reason why the people were disappointed with democracy. And that brutal overthrow of democracy, which took place during these thirty years, at least during the last twenty-five years, led to the fact that now the people are really indifferent, even semi-indifferent, to the events related to Artsakh.
The state and state institutions are created with completely different goals, depending on the underlying idea. Is it based on democracy or autocracy, totalitarianism? The basis of the Soviet system was one party, one person's rule, everything was done, created in such a way that the state became a tool in the hands of one person. Many people still do not grasp that mechanism of becoming a tool in the hands of one person.
Armenia completely inherited it from the Soviet Union, because the USSR had its branches in the colonies called republics, and the colonial authorities worked on the same principle, because it was much easier to subjugate one or two individuals to the Kremlin and collect the entire local government in his hands, than to deal with those formed by an elective or truly democratic mechanism.
It is natural that Armenia was also fully equipped with the principle of autocracy. For example, if I ask you who was the Prime Minister of Armenia, you may not know the Prime Minister of that time, but if I ask you who Demirchyan was, naturally, you will know because the secretary of the party or the representative of the Central Committee was the central figure. The system placed the helm of the state in the hands of that one person. The helm of the state placed in the hands of one person is fraught with terrible consequences
I can describe Armenia in the 1990s as follows: the first Supreme Council, which at the time was not yet called the National Assembly, and which was formed in the active atmosphere of the nationwide movement, was quite interesting in its composition. They were people who became MPs without money, without using positions, thanks to their individual abilities and their devotion to national issues.
The first Supreme Council was an incomparably higher-level institution, so was the then formed government, initially under the leadership of Vazgen Manukyan, and later also others. At that time, until 1992-1993, political activity in Armenia was still on the rise. And it was because of that rise that we finally managed to solve the Karabakh issue in favor of the Armenian people.
The sad thing was that even the dedicated forces that were able to come to power in the nineties, failed the test of power. And it is very unfortunate that due to the inability to withstand the test of that power, the tradition of putting personal interest first began already in 1993-1994. And little by little, we began to roll into building a so-called personalized or totalitarian state, especially since the Soviet legacy strongly contributed to it.
Even before the 1988 movement, during 1968-1969, when I was a graduate student in Moscow, I founded an Armenian club dealing with national issues. After the demonstrations in Yerevan in 1965, the political atmosphere in Armenia was better. There was a young man named Vrezh Hambardzumyan, I founded the club based on his suggestion. We tried to work through soft power. Since then, I knew both Vazgen Manukyan and Davit Vardanyan [Ed: politician, member of the Karabakh Committee, former deputy], and others. In one word, we have started our semi-political activities since the 1970s.
Arshak Sadoyan was born on February 22, 1940 in Yerevan. His father was killed in action during World War II. Sadoyan studied at Yerevan Polytechnic Institute, then graduated from Yerevan State University. He is a mathematician. In 1968-1970, he studied at the postgraduate course of Moscow State University. It was during these years that he indirectly started to engage in politics, becoming a member of a group dealing with national issues. Sadoyan has taught at Yerevan State University for about twenty years.
Sadoyan was a member of the National Democratic Union (NDU) party for many years. The head of the party was Vazgen Manukyan, the first Prime Minister of Armenia, former Minister of Defense and co-founder of the Karabakh Committee. After the independence of Armenia, Arshak Sadoyan became a deputy of the Supreme Council (now the National Assembly). He was a deputy for 17 years. Until 2003, he was a member of parliament from the National Democratic Union faction. In 2001, he founded the National Democratic Alliance party, which was part of the Justice parliamentary alliance formed in 2003 (together with the People’s Party of Armenia, the Republic, the Constitutional Law Union, the National Democratic Union, the Democratic Party of Armenia). He was also a member of the Public Council of Armenia.
