Hayk Petrosyan

Some Aspects On Traditionalism In Armenian Society

After the collapse of Soviet Union Armenia like other Soviet States proclaimed it’s independence and course on building new society. the hard economic conditions, the polarization of the society, the social and internal political tension, the complications in the foreign policy connected with the basic problem of Karabakh are the hindering realities under which the ideals of civil society are being propagated. It is in this context that the construction of democratic institutions is being undertaken in Armenia. There are a series of realities, the influence of which on Armenian life is no less important but which are usually not acknowledged or are simply ignored. These realities are formations of national mentality, identity and traditional features of Armenian society. They are much slower to change than social-economic and political realities. And it is through them that the society "examines", accepts, declines or transforms any new ideology. Many traditional formations receive new life due to the social economic regress.
In nowadays Armenian society traditionalism and traditional features play prietty important role nearly in every part of Armenia’s life. These features have its implications in Armenian community, family different parts of the society, different kind of relations including such areas as politics, economy and other parts of Armenian life.  

I tried to divide the report to three main parts: 

•	Traditionalism in family: hierarchy and strong function-dividing
•	Traditionalism in Armenian community
•	Traditionalism as part of Armenian national identity and mentality

•	Traditionalism in family: hierarchy and strong function-dividing

Hierarchy and the traditions of strong patriarchy always were important cultural and moral value in Armenian family and kinship complex. It is important to mention that this hierarchy is the result of clear function dividing. In traditional Armenian family the man is responsible for family’s external-economic-financial area, woman is responsible for inner-social-up bringing area. Even today the hierarchical complex, obedience stays as an important and stable value in light of behavior and mode of action. This stability is in danger in light of family-street opposition.  Many parents have to give two-faced education to their children: the child has to be polite and tolerable at home and aggressive and intolerable in street. Its natural that in these circumstances the school of Soviet period perceived as traditional-positive value, but nowadays school, where rule the relationship imported from street, is perceived as new and negative value. I’m not trying to estimate as positive or negative the traditional complexes, it would be more correct to discuss them in concrete action. For example, if we’ll continue the school theme, we can state that the fact that in patriarchal traditional societies, where as I already mentioned, the bringing up the children is the responsibility of women, brought to absence of male teachers in general. 
The strong influence of father, sometimes power, still exists in nowadays-Armenian traditional families. One of the traditional aspects of Armenian family is the protectionism of children, often despite on their age. The unique reflect of this is the care of children for their old parents: it is considered immoral in Armenia sending to nursing houses. It is interesting that in Armenian families living in Western democratic countries one of the important values considered to be the family up bringing which consists care for parents. The strong ties inside the family promote the existence of more broad kinship ties; mutual help in different hard situations become norm of behavior and mode of action.

•	Traditionalism in community

Today Armenian village (in some way also the town and hall country) lives by kinship-clan ties and the strategies of existence often are choused from this system. By the functioning of the law of local self-government in Armenia, according to which the head of the community administration and the administration itself has to be elected by the community members, the role of this traditional complex became stronger. During these elections often the role of main political parties’ play the kinship ties in the community. After privatization of land in villages and after the emergence of private property disappeared the “collective” of the Soviet times and the area of self-assertion of the individual and the family became the area of kinship and neighborhood. The one, who has more relatives, more kinship ties will hold the position. In fact this system on one hand helps to overcome the poverty of the people of one particular part of the community, and on the other hand by asserting a clan structure and by centralizing in it’s hands main resources and the levers to govern them restricts the opportunity to come out from poverty for hall the community in general. 
Thus we can state that today under term community life we can understand first of all kinship and neighboring communities where the civil society attributes: different NGOs, unions are very week or are absent in villages.

•	Traditionalism as part of national identity and mentality

One of the important complexes of Armenian national identity considered to be the self-perception on being first and native. Armenians have special attitude to their history. The historical past is considered as a “Holy book” for many people, and by the help of this “book” often are described nowadays events and actions. The history also is important because it starts from ancient times, Armenia considered to be a country of ancient civilization and people are eager to think that here started everything and that Armenians were at the beginning. Along the centuries Armenian community that was weak by its military power was creating a philosophy of their right to live in Armenian Highland, one of the main cornerstone of which was the concept of being the first, natives in this territory. The ones who came to this territory later are not the second, they are foreigners, thus people who don’t have the right to be the first. Of course this concept had been created during struggle against enemies, but the absolutization of this concept in the end brought to the thing that it had been used for the different parts of the same nation, especially during last ten years towards Armenian refugees from Azerbaijan. This is a complex, which is one of the brightest examples of monotonically Armenia.  

•	Conclusion

According to a number of researchers, sociologists, social-anthropologists and political-scientists, of paramount importance in building a civil society in post-Soviet states is the role played by traditional complexes of national mentality and identity. These formations point towards a principle of variation in different areas. For example, in Central European states, these formations enable the success of civil society. On the contrary, in the Eastern states these formations give rise to a sense of pessimism about the development of civil society in the near future. Despite of this pessimism, there is an ongoing search for strategies, which aim towards a more flexible combination of traditional perceptions and contemporary ideals of civil society. In some cases, some researchers have shown viable ways and working of achieving a successful civil society.
I think that this is the truest way and that the traditionalism and other national features have to be tied with the concepts of democratization and civil society, otherwise there is a danger of failure of any kind of imported value and ideology.