YEREVAN—On the occasion of the First Republic Day, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, together with President Vahagn Khachaturyan, Chairman of the National Assembly Alen Simonyan, and other representatives of the country’s top leadership, visited the Sardarapat Memorial Complex.
In his congratulatory address on May 28, Nikol Pashinyan called the creation of the first republic in the history of the Armenian people with a democratic system of government, where power belongs to the people, an “epoch-making event.”
He noted that this happened “in the context of the collapse of empires, the formation of a new empire and a new world order, when in the battles of Sardarapat, Bash-Aparan, and Karakilis, our people were able to prove their right to life.”
“However, the First Republic lasted only two and a half years, partly because, having won the battle for existence, proclaiming the state, we did not have time to formulate our vision of life in an independent state, failed to make life in the first republic comfortable and beneficial for ourselves.
The First Republic never managed to position itself as a means of security, well-being, and happiness for its own citizens, since, in fact, during its entire existence, it did not have a single day of peace. Famine, emigrants who escaped the genocide, internal strife, the centuries-old absence of economic institutions, state institutions, the culture of statehood, foreign influence, and war caused the fall of the First Republic.
This, however, in no way detracts from the role of the First Republic. After more than 540 years of interruption, the Armenian people found a state and for the first time found a Republic, and the lessons of this Republic are on our table today.
Today, I want to highlight just one of these many lessons: life in the Republic of Armenia should be comfortable and beneficial for a citizen, well-being and happiness should be today, and not in some distant future, and the time for unraveling historical knots is now, not later.
The First Republic did not have enough time; we still have it. The First Republic could not survive after the war of 1920; we are standing after the war of 2020 and building the Motherland-state that exists here and now, and we will no longer look for a new Motherland because our Motherland is our state.
This state is both an end and a means. It is the goal because only the state can best express the interests of its founder, the people; and it is a means because only the state can best express the interests of its founder, the people. And these interests dictate to us that security, well-being, and happiness be ensured for our long-suffering people, and this is possible under the conditions of regulated relations with neighbors, only and only under the conditions of peace, which the First Republic did not have, and which, unfortunately, the Third Republic does not have yet.
That is why we have adopted and are consistently implementing the peace agenda because all our martyrs fell for the sake of happiness, not the suffering of their people, and it is a prosperous, living, developed, and secure Armenia, the Republic of Armenia, the state of Armenia that should bring eternal peace to the souls of all our martyrs,” Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan said in his address.
