The cultural policy in Armenia was seriously changed after the Velvet revolution of 2018. The appearance of new political elites has strongly influenced new public perceptions of culture and development of a new system of cultural policy and management. Significant transformations first started in the institutional sphere. In 2019, the government’s new optimized organizational structure was introduced, where respective ministries of education and science, culture, sports and youth had been reorganized into a Ministry of Education, Science, Culture and Sports[1]. The newly created Ministry defined its main functions as follows: “The Ministry …. is a central body of executive authority that elaborates and implements the policy of the Government of the Republic of Armenia in the spheres of education, science, culture and sport”.[2] Such a transformation was ambiguously accepted by public circles and many critics emphasized that it would not be going to effectively resolve accumulated problems in the mentioned spheres, but would lead to more centralization of power and, generally, wouldn’t be effective in institutional and financial terms. [3]
The new Charter of the Ministry (2019) defines the goals, objectives, functions and methodologies of institutional and financial management of the Ministry.
- The main goals and objectives of the cultural policy are:
- Enhancing the intellectual, spiritual, creative and physical potential of the Armenian people
- Providing equal and open access to high quality education, cultural institutions and facilities, and sports for everyone independently of age, gender and physical abilities.
- Preservation, creation and promotion of national cultural heritage
- Raising new generations in accordance to patriotic and humanistic values.
- Providing equal facilities and opportunities for healthy physical and mental development of individuals and communities.
- Considering and developing education, science, culture and sports as the main factors for developing the economy, competitiveness, societal progress and security.
- The Ministry’s general functions correspondingly lie in: developing policies and programmes and bringing them into compliance with international conventions, norms and agreements; implementing programme and financial management, monitoring and evaluation of targeted programmes and projects; international cooperation; and mediation between private and public sectors.
The main substantial distinctions of current policies from the previous ones may be formulated as: a) an integrative perception of culture as a compound of creative, value-generation/preservation, intellectual and physical development processes; b) the focus on accessibility of and targeted involvement in, culture, education, creative activities and sports, for all social groups of the population, both individuals and communities.
In the new government programme developed immediately after the snap parliamentary elections of June 2021, which accepted by the National Assembly (August 2021), culture is not separately addressed and makes up part of the general concept of “development of human potential”.
Main features
Article 6 of the Law on the Principles of Cultural Legislation (2002) defined culture as “a set of modes of activities, perceptions and thinking in the material and spiritual fields of the society and their expression representing a stated value”. Since 2009, another broader definition of culture included in the Universal Declaration on Cultural Diversity has been introduced. It states that culture “should be regarded as the set of distinctive spiritual, material, intellectual and emotional features of a society or social groups, and that it encompasses, in addition to art and literature, lifestyles, ways of living together, value systems, traditions and beliefs”. No other official definition or concept of culture appeared since.
However, post-revolutionary authorities (the “Civil agreement” party) have brought several concepts of cultural development, which are reflected in their political programme as of June 2021 for the next 5 years[4]. Put briefly, it includes optimization, technical, technological and substantial modernisation, community involvement, infrastructural development, diversity and creativity support, and heritage protection/preservation. To generalize, the main idea is that better access to culture and education, creativity and technological advancement are thought to provide an economically, socially and physically more developed and secure environment.
Background
During the last 70 years Armenia has passed through a number of political regimes each imposing its own system of perception, management, implementation and control over culture.
1950-1991 – The Soviet regime
The Soviet system of cultural policies and management was extremely politicised and ideologised. Education and culture were tightly controlled and orchestrated by party and government officials through a pyramidal system of power. In general, it can be characterised as a strongly “paternalistic” model according to Abraham Mole’s definition[5]. All professionals in art, literature, music were registered as members of the so called “creative unions” managed and controlled by party officials. On the other hand, “bringing culture and education to the masses” was the main concept of the soviet cultural policy. Culture and education were perceived as the main and the most powerful tools of soviet propaganda since the first days of Soviet power. Armenia as an integrative part of the Soviet Union underwent all stages of cultural transformation with some local specifics. Firstly, infrastructural development was prioritised: thousands of schools, houses of culture, institutions of technical and higher education, art and music schools, theatres, cinema theatres, music halls, libraries and museums had been built throughout the country. Most of educational institutions were free of charge and the charge for cultural events (concerts, performances, cinema, etc.) was minimal and accessible even to those on low incomes. Secondly, creative arts, literature and science was funded by the state only, in a centralized way, and the state officials (through membership in different committees and the censorship system) used to decide who/what deserved funding and who/what did not. Thirdly, special attention was paid to mass media and mass literature: thousands of books, news-papers and magazines in millions of printed copies were issued daily and disseminated through official (in some cases obligatory) subscription networks.[6]. All this ensured the process of active everyday consumption of highly regulated and controlled mass culture. At the same time, culture as a concept was very limited, it was understood as a scope of selected cultural heritage and creative activities as arts, literature, music, etc. implemented within the communist, socialist and atheist ideological frameworks. Cultural diversity was understood only as a variety of ethnographic cultures: the population of all Soviet republics was divided into the privileged “title” nations and the unprivileged “minorities”. Religion was excluded from the definition of culture. In terms of language, national history and cultural heritage, the Soviet authorities conducted the politics of standardization, unification and russification, although in some republics including Armenia these trends were less effective.
1991-2021 The post-Soviet developments
During the first decades since independence, some Soviet perceptions and patterns of implementation and management of culture like the centralized pyramidal management, the predominantly state funding of education and cultural institutions, and the perception of education and culture as a tool for ideological/political propaganda, etc., were preserved. However, the adoption of a market economy and the developing oligarchic system of political power appeared to be destructive for the Soviet cultural and educational infrastructures, especially in rural communities. Tens of schools, houses of culture, museums, and theatres were privatized, sold, reconstructed and changed functions or even completely destroyed. The private and international funding reanimated performative and creative arts, but could not recover the previous scale of consumption of cultural education and mass culture and the government programmes and strategies did not set such a goal.
Recent changes in the cultural policy system, their main reasons and motivations
Pre-revolutionary cultural development policy[7] focused mostly on preservation of tangible and intangible cultural heritage, development of cultural infrastructures, international collaboration and considered public TV as a main tool for cultural promotion. Practically, that meant the allocation of money for different construction and reconstruction projects, and targeted funding for cultural actors, preferred by the government, that contained a lot of corruption risks. The velvet revolution of 2018, aimed at annihilation of corruption and conducting the democratic/economic transformations of the country was a main reason for changing policies, including those related to culture and education. However, the rapidity and the complicated political agenda of revolutionary events did not give enough time and possibilities to fully develop profound and well-thought concepts and programmes, although their main principles were formulated as it was mentioned above. The COVID-19 pandemic and the Azerbaijani-Armenian war (2020) were other serious factors affected policy changes. For instance, the war and the Azerbaijani occupation of the Armenian-populated territories of Karabakh exacerbated the problem of protection and physical preservation of the Armenian cultural heritage, and the pandemic forced the government to resort to necessary reconsiderations of its strategies and to make a stronger focus on creativity, infrastructural development and modern technologies.
[1] https://www.arlis.am/documentview.aspx?docID=130615
[2] https://www.gov.am/en/structure/275/
[3] https://www.e-draft.am/projects/1503/digest
[4] See the full programme аt: https://www.civilcontract.am/hy/culture
[5] Moles, A. Sotsiodinamika kultury [Sociodynamics of culture]: Translated from French. B.V.
Biryukov. 3rd edition. M.: LKI Publishing house, 2008.
[6] Khudaverdyan K. Kul’turnaya revolyutsiya v Sovetskoy Armenii (1920-1940), Yerevan, 1969.
[7] https://escs.am/files/files/2019-07-04/e3c0b7f3ce6e00f5a386a824e84f02d9.pdf
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