We have learnt on August 6 that some student organizations at Yerevan State University have set up the Armenian movement For Eurasian Integration Initiative. The news was shared by the National Youth Council of Armenia board member Tsolak Akopyan.
The Council is adjunct to the prime minister of Armenia Tigran Sargsyan, the same prime minister who published an article in the Russian press in June stating that Armenia chooses the European Union as more opportunities of development will open up.
By the way, there is one more interesting circumstance. This article was published when Serzh Sargsyan was in Moscow to attend the CIS anniversary where he was not granted a private meeting with Putin.
It is also interesting that one of the prime minister’s sources releases this information when Serzh Sargsyan is going to meet with Putin in Moscow.
Apparently, one of the key issues to be discussed at the meeting will be the prime minister’s issue, and this fact has made Tigran Sargsyan take that step to indicate that the Eurasian Union is not a rival. Perhaps, Tigran Sargsyan is trying to prevent nomination of a candidate for PM by the Prosperous Armenia Party who would be inaugurated in September during Putin’s travel to Armenia.
Otherwise, Russia may put forth the issue of the PM sharply and the West which has been supporting Tigran Sargsyan for such a long time may decide not to make its relations with Russia tenser just for the sake of the PM’s post.
Although, it is also possible that Tigran Sargsyan’s gesture has been permitted by the West in order to take his time and not tease Russia. Moreover, Russia that retreats in all the fields of the world, is becoming very irritable about Armenia.
Here, the other side of the issue is also important. It is the role of Yerevan State University in this situation. It is not news that the students and especially YSU have become one of the tools of the authorities. Now YSU and its students are also becoming a foreign political weapon. But the word weapon is exaggerated here.
Students in a civilized, mature country with strategic planning are one of the main resources supporting sovereignty. This resource is especially valuable when internal resistance to a geopolitical center or justification of the refusal to accept the decisions of that center or to approve them is necessary.
In this sense, students are a more valuable resource than the political opposition, especially the Armenian opposition and especially Russia, the students are more independent and difficult to control to organize resistance.
But in Armenia the picture is different. In the result of long use of students as a tool, the ruling system has devaluated it as a resource capable of resisting to the foreign policy. Instead, the ruling system is opening a new field of service for the students the main “polygon” of which is certainly Yerevan State University, whereas it should be turned into a “laboratory” of modernity, competitiveness and new ideas.
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