Voltaire and the Armenian Revolutionary Federation
Well, the title might be a bit misleading as Voltaire was not a contemporary of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (ARF-Dashnaktsutyun) but in recent weeks Diasporan and Armenia’s media is full of irate Dashanks demanding.
What they are demanding is as unclear for them as it is for the rest of us, but I can’t help but to remember Voltaire who while talking about the Holy Roman Empire, supposedly said “The Holy Roman Empire is neither Holy, nor Roman, nor an Empire.“
Paraphrasing Voltaire I couldn’t but help to think that the Armenian Revolutionary Federation is neither revolutionary, nor federated and sometimes I even question what aspect of “Armenianness” it professes.
More often than not, it feels that the ARF is out to find enemies where there are none (sort of like Don Quixote fighting windmills thinking they are giants) or acting and feeling like victims (as that’s the mode they are able to best operate in).
Having lived in various communities I had the chance to intimately familiarize myself with various Armenian organization (both in the Diaspora and in Armenia) among which: the ARF (in both Armenian and Diasporan contexts); AGBU; the Republican Party of Armenia; Civil Contract and others (no I’m not name-dropping, I just have worked with the organizations and the people). If these multi-temporal and multi-local experiences taught me one thing, it’s that the goals, operations and management of Armenian organizations are rarely what they seem by the outside world and that they have more things in common with each other than people think.
maybe a post or two or three or four on those issues at some future point!!!
