Role of the Armenian Intelligentsia through the Prism of the Problems of Post-Soviet State Governance

Abstract

The article deals with the theoretical understanding of the role of the Armenian intelligentsia in the context of the problems of post-Soviet public administration. The author considers that the key mission of intelligentsia is the contribution to the development and implementation of the national ideology capable to become the necessary basis for state policy and public administration. In order to achieve this result the state authorities have to stop treating the intelligentsia as an object of control, and the post-Soviet intelligentsia should free itself from ideological clichés of a pseudo-democratic nature imposed from outside. The author’s analysis is based on the methodological approach of Immanuel Wallerstein who considered liberalism as an ideology fundamentally different from democracy. The ideas of Jürgen Habermas regarding the dimensions of the modern state also serve as a methodological guideline. Conclusions about the typological inconsistency of the post-Soviet Armenian state with the criteria of modern statehood are based on the author’s study of school practices of identity politics.