This work will take you deeper into psychology and nature of human beings; especially the ones who lived in Ex-Soviet Union Republics – the Republic of Armenia. Two of the words in the title of my work need to be defined in order to form a complete picture of my viewpoint. You will be taken through the history of Armenia and Armenians. The work will define what corruption is and how Armenians perceive the meaning of corruption, and, of course, we will reach the idea – what to do next?

This is one of my unpublished papers and I hope it will be useful for anybody interested in strange phenomenon of Armenians.

HISTORY OF ARMENIA

According to “Wikipedia” - modern and widely used On-line Encyclopaedia - Armenia, officially the Republic of Armenia, is a landlocked mountainous country in the Southern Caucasus (Transcaucasus), bordered by Turkey to the west, Georgia to the north, Azerbaijan to the east, and Iran to the south. Armenia is one of the oldest and most historic civilizations in the world, as well as the first nation to adopt Christianity as its official religion.
According to me the word Armenia must be defined from the following two points: history and mentality.

History of Armenia is as old as the history of human civilization. Between 1200 and 800 BC, much of Armenia was united to a confederation of kingdoms, which was called Nairi (”Land of Rivers” in Assyrian”). Nairi was later absorbed into kingdom of Urartu which was one of the first centres of civilization with big cites, roads, canals, own language and even star observatories. Actually, all the greatness and main cultural values Armenians inherited from Urartu.
The first notice about Armenia and Armenians was in 512 BC in cuneiform of Persian king Daria I. It was the period when Herodotus (Greek author of the first great narrative history produced in the ancient world) visited Armenia. He describes big and strong state with huge army and big population. Later, Armenian Highland was divided into another two really big and strong countries: Great Armenia and Small Armenia. After Tigran the Great - the king of Great Armenia in 52 BC, combined both of them Armenia became one of the biggest countries of the world at that time.
After Tigran the Great’s kingdom there were lot of wars and sufferings. At first there was Persians and Byzantium who conquered Armenia. Then there were Arabs, Seljuks and Crusaders who conquered the country one after another sharing the land hundred times. The only thing that kept Armenian nation was their language and religion – the Christianity. As Armenia was the only nation in Asia that accepted Christianity as an official religion, all the other conqueror countries attempted to change it but they failed.
In 19th century Russians came to the Transcaucasia region. The first time in the history, Armenians rouse against Ottoman and Persian Empires. We had lots of really glorious victories. After so many centuries we finally managed to establish the first Republic of Armenia in 1918, which unfortunately remained for 2 years. After debates in US congress, Americans did not agree to get mandate of Armenia and Armenia became one of the roots of already formed great Soviet Union in 1920.
And the next 70 years of Armenian history is smoothly converted into the history the totalitarian Soviet Union.

MENTALITY OF ARMENIANS

To understand something in contemporary Armenians, one needs to understand their history of last 70 years. The transition to communism was more difficult for Armenia than for most of the other republics in the Soviet Union.
As long as Armenians were under pressure of other countries or Empires they were humble and submissive, but their originality was that they were not involved in labor: they made others work for them and made business. They were traveling a lot, trading in Europe, England, India and Asia. If a place was full of rich natural recourses - Armenians were there; and this is the originality of not only Armenians, but of all old civilizations: once they understand the rules of the game and become the owners of the world, they degrade and loose power. But what they gain is strong logic, psychology and physiology. They understand that backbreaking work is not for them. That’s the difference between old and young civilizations.
To make Armenians work the Soviet Union brought to life a really huge strategic plan: mentality of Armenians was broken. They took away the religion, they took away the originality; business was prohibited. Being traders and people of art, Armenians were completely broken down. Eventually they were made to work very hard. The Soviet authorities placed Armenians under strict surveillance. There was almost no freedom of speech, even less so under Joseph Stalin. Any individual who was suspected of using or introducing nationalist rhetoric or elements in their works were labeled as traitors or propagandists, and were sent to Siberia.
21 of September, 1991 is the independence day of Armenian second republic. After 70 years of being under Soviet Union supervision, the biggest dream of all Armenians comes true. But the sufferings continued. From 1991 to 1995 Armenians faced four years of black blockade lasting with war, then difficult years of reforms and transaction into new era, era of commerce.
Well, speaking about nowadays Armenians I must mention their FAMILIES. Actually, after what this entire nation experienced, the most important part of life still is the Family. Armenians do not recognize the nation anymore. Suffering for many centuries they eventually lost the soul of nation. They are not interested in anything which is out of the families interests or is out of theirs houses. This is the only mentality which my nation was brought to.

CORRUPTION IN OUR CONCEPTION

a. Main idea
Defining the word “corruption” for Armenia is a very difficult task. Generally there are three viewpoints on “corruption”:
a) defined by the official laws,
b) as it affects on general public from Public Officials,
c) defined by the public opinion.
The definition of corruption which is most often used in social literature has been provided by Harvard political scientist Joseph S. Nye. Nye says corruption is “behaviour which deviates from the normal duties of a public role because of private-regarding (family, close private clique), pecuniary or status gains; or violates rules against the exercise of certain type of private-regarding influence. This includes such behaviour as bribery, nepotism and misappropriation, illegal appropriation of public resources for private-regarding uses.” (Nye, 1967:966) The most important limitations of Nye’s requirements are that the behaviour deviate from normal duties or violate rule is the leads definition to major variants in what the different nations see as corruption. And this is the real definition of “corruption” in the official law of Republic of Armenia. But if you look though our first paragraph it covers only first two definitions. And here I will tell you the terrible truth – in Armenia nobody accepts this definition as one’s due. Corruption in our mentality is an inseparable part of our life.
b. Causes of corruption in Armenia
Is corruption a cause that our nation is degraded? Or maybe we simply do not understand the importance of all laws and legislations? There were times when Armenians did not wish to obey to the laws of foreign empires who conquered us and the hero for the society was the one who could avoid all the laws. And now we have the laws that were established and accepted by us. Why are we not law-abiding?
One again a flashback to Soviet Union times will bring forward the reason: the life of an Armenian from childhood. An interesting and proven fact - Armenians can survive everywhere.
From childhood all Armenian children are taught an interesting rule – to be strong. Imagine a situation of a little child in a kindergarten. Another child beats him and he tells his mother about that. Mother will never suggest his child to tell the teacher about what had happened; she will advice “Go and beat him back”.
From small years when the child’s conscious is not shaped, he starts to understand the reality of being “alone”. He must not go and sneak on somebody, because it is not right. When he or she understands that there is no law or a stronger body, like the state, to protect him, he starts to shift. In childhood, in school or even in work place, he should only rely on his resources. And this is apogee of the Armenian mentality. No law can protect anybody.
The same problem can be found in contemporary Armenian society. Each person in society finds that it is much easier to rely on his own force than to use the force of the law. Thus, the force of each person is the money he owns or personal relations.

HOW TO IMPROVE THE SITUATION

I strongly believe that the situation in Armenia can be changed. Scientists insist that there are two ways of improving the situation in case of corruption:
1. System of Public Administration
2. Methods of electronic governance
The first method refers to the improvement of Public Administration law and legislation. For example, in US a public officer does not have a right to accept any gift that costs more than 11 US dollar. Moreover, structure of public administration bodies is divided into many logically connected parts. This implies that one body separately can not make a decision, moreover, it must be approved by a group of commissions. But this method has a very big disadvantage – bureaucracy in government becomes very complicated.
The other way is to establish the same procedures virtually. This new way of public administration development is based on new information technologies. The obvious advantage of this method is that citizens and public officers do not know each other. The system is planned to exclude the situation when the officer can contact the person who is applying for service. Also the system excludes any bureaucracy connected with sending letters and applying personally. The only disadvantage of this system is that computer literacy and Internet usability in the country should be very high.

CONCLUSION
The history of Armenian people has shown that this country can adapt to any situation, political weather, intervention and any newly-accepted law can be avoided easier than the previous one. However, the only way to establish reforms is to change the public opinion and behaviour to the corruption in the government. This can be done by establishing a huge institute of Public Relations that will work on the new system to create a new logically connected system of public administration. This is the only way to change the stagnation and redirect the country into independent and democratic state.

Albert Poghosyan