In Armenia, a democratic revolution that no one noticed

Young people drove Armenia’s “Velvet Revolution” – that’s the common narrative. Last Sunday’s election proved this as only half the truth.

“I’m 73 years old. This is the first time we are having free and fair elections,” says Siransush Abovyan. She lives in the capital Yerevan and came to the polling station, located in a kindergarten, with her daughter. “For the first time I feel like a citizen and not a slave,” she says.

Something has shifted in the conscience of the Armenian society in the last seven months. Young and old; rural and urban; the whole country buzzes with excited political chatter.

In the perhaps most inspiring political story of 2018, the small country in the southern Caucasus has shown

‘The world's merriest apocalypse’A new sense of self-determination