Armenia’s creeping revolution: between the #RejectSerzh movement and previous civic initiatives

Abstrakt: Mass protests which erupted in Armenia in April 2018 were the biggest demonstrations in this country since the nineties of the XX century. With the dismissal of prime minister Serzh Sargsyan and appointment of the “temporary” government, the so called #RejectSerzh movement has been quickly proclaimed as another velvet revolution. The 2018 protests led to such an unexpected outcome because of the number of factors: their well-thought organization based on the civil disobedience methods, simultaneous decentralization of the protesters and clearly defined aim – ousting the incumbent prime minister embodying corrupted, oligarchic political system. At the same time it seems that the #RejectSerzh movement would not achieve such a success without the “legacy” of the civic, grassroots initiatives taking place in Armenia since 2008 and especially since 2013. All of these movements were highly interlinked and constituted continuous (however still incomplete) creeping revolution leading to the change of the oligarchic political system in Armenia.

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