Armenia: Why mononational state still always loses

According to the United Nations Population Fund, Armenia has approached the threshold of aging societies: as early as 2050, almost a quarter of the population of the republic will be people over 65, due to decline in fertility and high emigration. Just over the past 10 years Armenia has lost half a million of its population.

It's very likely that absurdity of the Armenian leadership's policy, which created a mononational state through national cleansing in Karabakh, at the same time calling in the "war for liberation", probably led to such situation. Meanwhile, it still remains unclear from who did they "liberate" Karabakh, if during Soviet times the Karabakh autonomy was already controlled by them. Ultimately, "liberation" of Karabakh resulted in the replacement of legitimate authority - Boris Kevorkov - by an unrecognized separatist regime. The first Secretary of the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast lost his post in February of 1988 after extraordinary session of People's Deputies of this region appealed to the Supreme Soviets of the Armenian SSR, Azerbaijani SSR and the USSR with a request to consider and agree to transfer the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast from Azerbaijan to Armenia.

He was succeeded by Henry Poghosyan, who supported annexation, carried out by the Armenian SSR, which, in particular, led to the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. After that, there was a series of puppet regimes Karabakh. It was headed by Robert Kocharyan, Arkady Ghukasyan, and, finally, Bako Sahakyan. All of them acted as "liberators", but this "liberation" turned million Azerbaijanis into refugees and internally displaced persons, expelled by force from occupied Nagorno-Karabakh and other Azerbaijani regions, as well as from the territory of now mononational Armenia, where Azerbaijanis lived together with Armenians for centuries. Similarly, "liberation" of Karabakh forced many Armenians to leave Baku, Kirovabad, and other towns and villages of Azerbaijan forever.

Karabakh became a territory free of peace, life and future. Due to this conflict, all Azerbaijanis who were once considered the second largest ethnic group in the country left Armenia. In the end, Armenia became the most monoethnic and the least populated country in the post-Soviet space. Monoethnicity can't be explained by anything other than nationalism, and problems with population are the result of ongoing processes, including those happening in the economic sphere. Armenians that settled abroad, whether in the US or in Russia, just like magnet, attract their compatriots because of higher standard of living. Millions of Armenians live today outside the country, most of them assimilated easily, and there's no hope for their return to historical homeland. Russian businessman, head of the Sberbank CIB, former president of the Skolkovo business school, Ruben Vardanyan, was repeatedly asked about presidential ambitions. Every time he answered that he has none, citing the fact that Armenia "has its own problems, its difficulties as mononational state with very strickt clan-like management principles."

Armenia looks bleak on the background of multinational map of the Caucasus. Experts believe that it can be explained by expulsion of other peoples and creation of an area with one hundred percent monoethnic Armenian population.