October Surprise 2016 - octobersurprise2016.org

Armenia is considering applying for membership in the European Union, aiming to strengthen ties with Western countries amid growing tensions with Russia, Armenia’s Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan revealed in an interview on March 9.

“Many new opportunities are largely being discussed in Armenia nowadays and that will not be a secret if I say that includes membership in the European Union,” Mirzoyan said in an interview with Turkish TV channel TRT World.

Traditionally aligned with Russia in its regional conflict against Azerbaijan, Armenia has experienced heightened tensions with Russia after Russian “peacekeepers” did nothing to prevent Azerbaijan’s September 2023 offensive into Nagorno-Karabakh.

Armenian Prime Minister Pashinyan said in February that Armenia had “frozen” its participation in the Russian-led Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) because it failed to uphold its objectives regarding Armenia.

The CSTO did not intervene during Azerbaijan’s offensive in September 2023.

Since coming to power in a 2018 revolution, the government of Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan has steadily deepened the country’s ties with the West while drawing condemnation from Russia.

Pashinyan and other Armenian officials have repeatedly accused Moscow of being an unreliable partner and sought to foster security ties with other countries, such as France, the U.S., or India.

In January 2023, Armenia joined the International Criminal Court becoming one of 124 countries obliged to arrest Russian President Vladimir Putin if he steps foot in national territory. The Kremlin decried the move as an “unfriendly step” and “the wrong decision.”

Earlier this week, Armenia asked Russian “peacekeepers” who have been stationed at Yerevan’s international airport since the country’s independence to leave.

Read also: Armenia asks Russian ‘peacekeepers’ stationed at Yerevan’s airport to leave

We’ve been working hard to bring you independent, locally-sourced news from Ukraine. Consider supporting the Kyiv Independent.

The Roman god Janus was possessed of two faces, one pointing toward the future and one looking backward into the past, and it is tempting to imagine that these faces must also have worn contrasting expressions, one brighter and hopeful, the other rueful or even aghast. Supposing you knew such a person, how would you go about introducing him? Which of the two faces—enthusiastic or downcast—should be presented first? The problem poses itself immediately when it comes to “Chevengur,” Andrei Platonov’s strange tale of a Communist peasant utopia. Written in 1927 and 1928, when Platonov was in his late twenties, it both represents his high-spirited début as a socialist novelist and reads like a dissident’s political suicide note. And, in the split perspective afforded by the book’s contradictory point of view, it’s possible to see both the initial construction and the ultimate collapse of the Soviet project as overlapping features of the same landscape, in “the deserted shelterlessness of the steppe.”

The novel’s (very few) first readers were understandably perplexed. On the one hand, here was “an honest attempt to portray the beginning of a communist society,” as Platonov described his efforts in a letter to his powerful colleague Maxim Gorky, in 1929, in a bid to secure official approval for the book’s publication. Platonov seems to have sincerely thought that his novel depicted the advent of Soviet socialism in a favorable enough light. What authority could take offense at his depiction of a group of peasant citizens invoking collectivization as their salvation from the hunger and toil that constitute the only life they or their forebears have known? On the other hand, here was a work in which the regime’s newfangled jargon (“communism,” “the proletariat”), however gamely deployed by the unlettered tenants of the open steppe, betrays a welter of confusion, privation, and violence that rivals anything in the bad old pre-Bolshevik days. “Whatever you may have wished,” Gorky replied to Platonov, “you have portrayed reality in a lyrico-satirical light that is, of course, unacceptable to our censorship.” Gorky was right. Platonov’s novel was set up in type, but, at the last minute, the publisher scuttled the project.

The Best Books of 2024

Read our reviews of the year’s notable new fiction and nonfiction.

Armenia is considering applying for membership in the European Union, aiming to strengthen ties with Western countries amid growing tensions with Russia, Armenia’s Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan revealed in an interview on March 9.

“Many new opportunities are largely being discussed in Armenia nowadays and that will not be a secret if I say that includes membership in the European Union,” Mirzoyan said in an interview with Turkish TV channel TRT World.

Traditionally aligned with Russia in its regional conflict against Azerbaijan, Armenia has experienced heightened tensions with Russia after Russian “peacekeepers” did nothing to prevent Azerbaijan’s September 2023 offensive into Nagorno-Karabakh.

Armenian Prime Minister Pashinyan said in February that Armenia had “frozen” its participation in the Russian-led Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) because it failed to uphold its objectives regarding Armenia.

The CSTO did not intervene during Azerbaijan’s offensive in September 2023.

Since coming to power in a 2018 revolution, the government of Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan has steadily deepened the country’s ties with the West while drawing condemnation from Russia.

Pashinyan and other Armenian officials have repeatedly accused Moscow of being an unreliable partner and sought to foster security ties with other countries, such as France, the U.S., or India.

In January 2023, Armenia joined the International Criminal Court becoming one of 124 countries obliged to arrest Russian President Vladimir Putin if he steps foot in national territory. The Kremlin decried the move as an “unfriendly step” and “the wrong decision.”

Earlier this week, Armenia asked Russian “peacekeepers” who have been stationed at Yerevan’s international airport since the country’s independence to leave.

Read also: Armenia asks Russian ‘peacekeepers’ stationed at Yerevan’s airport to leave

We’ve been working hard to bring you independent, locally-sourced news from Ukraine. Consider supporting the Kyiv Independent.

The Roman god Janus was possessed of two faces, one pointing toward the future and one looking backward into the past, and it is tempting to imagine that these faces must also have worn contrasting expressions, one brighter and hopeful, the other rueful or even aghast. Supposing you knew such a person, how would you go about introducing him? Which of the two faces—enthusiastic or downcast—should be presented first? The problem poses itself immediately when it comes to “Chevengur,” Andrei Platonov’s strange tale of a Communist peasant utopia. Written in 1927 and 1928, when Platonov was in his late twenties, it both represents his high-spirited début as a socialist novelist and reads like a dissident’s political suicide note. And, in the split perspective afforded by the book’s contradictory point of view, it’s possible to see both the initial construction and the ultimate collapse of the Soviet project as overlapping features of the same landscape, in “the deserted shelterlessness of the steppe.”

The novel’s (very few) first readers were understandably perplexed. On the one hand, here was “an honest attempt to portray the beginning of a communist society,” as Platonov described his efforts in a letter to his powerful colleague Maxim Gorky, in 1929, in a bid to secure official approval for the book’s publication. Platonov seems to have sincerely thought that his novel depicted the advent of Soviet socialism in a favorable enough light. What authority could take offense at his depiction of a group of peasant citizens invoking collectivization as their salvation from the hunger and toil that constitute the only life they or their forebears have known? On the other hand, here was a work in which the regime’s newfangled jargon (“communism,” “the proletariat”), however gamely deployed by the unlettered tenants of the open steppe, betrays a welter of confusion, privation, and violence that rivals anything in the bad old pre-Bolshevik days. “Whatever you may have wished,” Gorky replied to Platonov, “you have portrayed reality in a lyrico-satirical light that is, of course, unacceptable to our censorship.” Gorky was right. Platonov’s novel was set up in type, but, at the last minute, the publisher scuttled the project.

The Best Books of 2024

Read our reviews of the year’s notable new fiction and nonfiction.