Beniamin Matevosyan: when to expect Zeynab Khanlarova’s concert on Public Television?

(Pashinyan-style experiment of September 27 failed)

The events of September 27 in Armenia became yet another clear confirmation of how the current authorities are trying to systematically and consistently change the value orientations of Armenian society. On the anniversary of the start of the 44-day war, a day that for hundreds of thousands of people is filled with pain, memory and mourning for the fallen heroes, Public Television of Armenia aired a many-hour entertainment concert by Tata Simonyan. This does not look like an accidental programming failure, a technical error or the negligence of a particular producing editor. What happened bears the marks of a deliberately constructed experiment aimed at testing society’s sensitivity and threshold of sensitivity to a national tragedy. The authorities are openly testing how ready citizens are to accept a complete change of cultural and historical context.

Displaying merriment and festive programming on a day of national mourning is a direct continuation of the information and propaganda line that has been built up in recent years. Through various channels, society is being fed the thesis that the loss of Artsakh, the catastrophe of 2020 and the ethnic cleansing of 2023 were supposedly a natural process of liberation from a “burden” that hindered the country’s normal development. However, even though state propaganda promotes the logic of “peace at any price,” the representatives of the ruling elite themselves do not dare to celebrate these dates openly. On Remembrance Day, none of the key officials saw fit to visit Yerablur, lay flowers or pay respects to those who gave their lives for the homeland. The absence of public statements and the deathly silence on social media show that the authorities are well aware of the scale of what happened, but are simply trying to “erase” the tragic pages from public consciousness.

Alongside the information pressure, the symbols of memory are also being physically removed. The removal of the image of Albert Hovhannisyan, the legendary hero of the 44-day war, from a wall in Victory Park is a phenomenon of the same order. The disappearance of the portrait of a man who became one of the key symbols of the resilience and heroism of the Armenian soldier looks like an attempt to deprive people of visual reminders of the price that was paid. The authorities are quietly removing the attributes of heroism from public space, counting on collective memory to fade over time and emotional intensity to die down.

It was in this context that the experiment with broadcasting the concert on Public Television was carried out. The goal was to find out whether society was ready to swallow the substitution of meanings without protest. Would it work if, on a day of deep grief, pop music sounded on the main state TV channel instead of memorial programs? Had there been complete silence and no reaction, the next step would have been even more blatant.

By the logic of the current course, a logical continuation of such a policy could be a concert by the Soviet and Azerbaijani singer Zeynab Khanlarova on the air of Public Television, or, given modern realities and tastes, performances by Brilliant Dadasheva. Society was being led toward the idea that the barriers had been broken and that absolutely any content could be broadcast, ignoring the historical context and the feelings of citizens.

However, this experiment failed. The wave of outrage that swept social media and public space turned out to be so powerful that state institutions and the performer himself were forced to switch urgently to a tactic of justifications. Public Television’s attempts to blame everything on an “error” and to review its work procedures look unconvincing given the scale of what happened. Especially noteworthy is the reaction of the performer, who tried to distance himself from the broadcast, saying he had no involvement in choosing the date. But these public justifications can no longer fix the situation. Society remembers all too well the position and behavior of entertainment figures at key moments in history, when taking part in entertainment events and publicly praising the country’s leadership were placed above national dignity.

The failure of the September experiment showed that, despite years of constant propaganda and attempts to impose apathy, Armenian society retains its basic bearings and its memory. The attempt to replace grief with entertainment met with harsh resistance, demonstrating that September 27 remains a landmark day that cannot simply be struck from history or masked with pop concerts.

Think about it…