Armenia’s Elections and the Future of the Left

Decolonization through Elections

Elections in Armenia have never been dull. The 2018 election is a case in point: it was held just months after the Velvet Revolution, when mass protests led by opposition figure Nikol Pashinyan — a former journalist and political prisoner — toppled Serzh Sargsyan’s authoritarian regime. In the ensuing wave of revolutionary euphoria, Pashinyan’s My Step Alliance captured 70 percent of the vote. Or, take the 2021 election, when voters stood by Pashinyan even after a crushing defeat in the Karabakh war, handing him a smaller but decisive 54 percent victory. Because Armenia is a parliamentary republic, it is parliamentary elections that decide who rules. On both of these occasions, Pashinyan’s party formed a government, and he took the helm as prime minister.

Even so, the June 7, 2026, election was permeated by geopolitics to an unprecedented degree. It was essentially a referendum on the foreign policy of Pashinyan, who casts himself as a pro-European, pro-democracy leader fighting against corruption and oligarchy. As a post-Soviet state, Armenia spent most of its modern history within Russia’s sphere of influence. This dependence stemmed primarily from Armenia’s conflict with its neighbors, Azerbaijan and its key regional ally Turkey. The dispute over Nagorno-Karabakh left Armenia in a state of permanent anticipation of war, forcing it to seek protection from Russia as a security guarantor. Exploiting this role, Moscow steadily tightened its grip on the country. Yet during the 2020 war and subsequent clashes with Azerbaijan, Russia would not, or could not, come to Armenia’s aid. Now, Armenia is trying to break free from this dependence and pursue an independent foreign policy that looks towards Europe.

It is worth noting that viewing the situation solely through the lens of a West-versus-Russia power struggle oversimplifies a complex reality. Pashinyan’s strategy rests on two pillars: a “peace agenda” and “diversifying foreign policy.” The peace agenda part is straightforward — it centers on normalizing relations with Azerbaijan and Turkey, nations many Armenians still see as historical adversaries. Meanwhile, diversifying foreign policy does not mean, as many assume, simply pivoting away from Russia and toward the West (i.e., the EU and the United States); it means building up Armenia’s diplomatic agency and independence from Moscow. The trouble is that Moscow, by all appearances, still treats Armenia as a vassal state — but the harder it tries to assert control, the more reason Armenia has to look westward.

Ultimately, voters backed the agenda of peace and diversification championed by Pashinyan. His party, Civil Contract, captured roughly 50 percent of the vote — an amount sufficient, under Armenian electoral law, to form a single-party government. Also clearing the parliamentary threshold were Strong Armenia, led by Russian billionaire Samvel Karapetyan (23.3 percent), and the Armenia Alliance of former President Robert Kocharyan (9.9 percent). A third major pro-Russian party, led by local billionaire Gagik Tsarukyan, fell just short of the required 4 percent of the vote. Although pro-Russian opposition figures and one pro-Western party have petitioned the Constitutional Court to contest the results, the overall outcome is highly unlikely to change.

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Never before in Armenian history, it seems, have Armenian elections been subject to such international scrutiny. Both Brussels and the Kremlin viewed them as the next geopolitical battleground after Moldova and Hungary. Moscow was eager to avenge its previous defeats, despite heavy spending on fake news and other subversive operations. That might have been easy enough, had Armenian public opinion on Russia not shifted dramatically in recent years. First of all, Russia dashed Armenian expectations of aid during the 2020 Karabakh war, whereas Turkey threw its full weight behind Azerbaijan. Russia did eventually step in as a peacemaker, brokering a ceasefire and deploying a peacekeeping contingent to Nagorno-Karabakh. But in the years that followed, Moscow again did nothing to protect Armenia or the Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh. A second factor was the invasion of Ukraine. In all likelihood, it was the war in Ukraine that motivated the Kremlin to avoid a fight with Ankara and Baku, effectively buying them off at Armenia’s expense. When Baku launched a military operation in Nagorno-Karabakh in 2023, Russian peacekeepers made no attempt to intervene, forcing the region’s entire Armenian population to flee to Armenia. After that exodus, Armenian public opinion toward Russia changed, perhaps irreversibly. Moscow has just now begun to realize that it could “lose” Armenia.

The Kremlin chafed at Yerevan hosting the European Political Community Summit in early May, and was particularly infuriated by Volodymyr Zelensky’s attendance and harsh words for Moscow. This triggered a wave of hostile rhetoric toward Yerevan — not just in state media, as expected, but from high-ranking officials as well. Vladimir Putin himself demanded that Yerevan hold a referendum to decide once and for all whether to remain in the Eurasian Economic Union or pursue European integration. This was quickly followed by Russian import bans on various Armenian products, ranging from Jermuk mineral water to flowers and apricots. Such punitive measures could potentially inflict serious damage on the Armenian economy. While trade between Yerevan and Moscow has been declining, Russia remains Armenia’s largest trading partner; in 2025, even after trade volumes dropped by nearly half compared to the previous year, Russia still accounted for 35.5 percent of Armenia’s total foreign trade. 

Ultimately, however, this pressure not only failed to bolster pro-Russian forces within Armenia but actively backfired. Pashinyan’s victory was no landslide, but it was decisive — all the more impressive given the vast arsenal of hybrid interference the Kremlin deployed against him. Even so, it is worth remembering that this electoral outcome was not shaped by foreign policy factors alone. 

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Beyond Foreign Policy

When the first exit polls and initial results began trickling in on the evening of June 7, Pashinyan’s party appeared poised for a landslide victory of around 60 percent of the vote. This was because the vote count began in the countryside and smaller towns, where voters lean heavily toward Pashinyan. However, as data from Yerevan began rolling in, the margin narrowed noticeably. The fact that the pro-European Pashinyan performed better in the provinces, while pro-Russian parties running on nationalist rhetoric drew substantial support in major urban centers, was the central paradox of these elections. It demonstrates that framing the Armenian elections as a clash between the pro-Western Pashinyan and a pro-Russian opposition, while not completely inaccurate, is oversimplified, because it fails to account for their socioeconomic and domestic-policy dimensions.

Put simply, the standard of living for most Armenians has steadily improved in the years since 2018. Armenia’s GDP per capita has more than doubled, climbing from $4,200 to nearly $9,500 in 2025. To be sure, much of this surge was driven by shifting economic conditions across the post-Soviet space after Putin’s invasion of Ukraine — but not all of it, as the country had been charting impressive growth even before then. The revolution successfully cleared away the structural barriers to socioeconomic development that characterized the presidencies of Kocharyan and Sargsyan: namely, systemic corruption and a network of monopolies controlled by pro-regime oligarchs.

Pashinyan’s ideological stance can broadly be classified as centrist. In many areas, his administration pursues distinctly neoliberal policies; shortly after the revolution, for instance, Armenia introduced a flat income tax. Pashinyan himself has, on multiple occasions, expressed views that sound like a defence of old-school capitalism with zero social guarantees — like, that “poverty only exists because people lack the skills to not be poor,” or that “living well means working hard, earning a lot, and spending a lot.” Behind this laissez-faire approach, however, lies a bleak reality for labor rights. Armenia does see occasional strikes, such as those at the Kajaran mines in 2025 and at Akhtala in 2026. Recently, the country even witnessed its first strike by Indian migrant workers at a garment factory in Ijevan. In these disputes, state authorities typically either remain passive or openly side with employers.
Perhaps the clearest example of the Pashinyan administration’s neoliberal bent is the controversy surrounding the gold deposit on Mount Amulsar, located near Jermuk, a resort town famous for its mineral water. A permit to develop a mine here, right next to one of Armenia’s best-known resorts, had been granted before the 2018 revolution, leading many to expect that Pashinyan’s government would rescind it. Yet despite fierce opposition from local residents and environmental activists — and even a rift within the ruling party — the government ultimately sided with the investors (who, for their part, handed a 12.5 percent stake in the company over to the state).

And yet, when compared to the pre-2018 era, Pashinyan’s socioeconomic policy looks almost social democratic. State spending on infrastructure — including the construction and repair of roads, schools, and day cares, particularly in the provinces — has risen sharply. Corruption significantly declined and ceased to be a fixture of the political system, creating a more favorable environment for small and medium-sized businesses. In the run-up to the election, Pashinyan took a series of steps that prompted some critics to label him a welfare populist. Chief among them was a healthcare reform that will phase in universal medical insurance for all citizens; for pensioners, it is already in effect and entirely free, with the state covering all costs. Another example of Pashinyan’s “left-wing” policies was nationalizing the Electric Networks of Armenia (ENA). The takeover of ENA, which had been owned by Samvel Karapetyan’s conglomerate, marked a major escalation in the ongoing feud between Pashinyan and Karapetyan.

The opposition forces arrayed against Pashinyan also attempted to win voters over with  welfare promises. For instance, Karapetyan’s party pledged to exempt small businesses from taxes. Similarly, local billionaire Gagik Tsarukyan declared that “no one should have to choose between medicine and food,” promising free healthcare, free education, and high pensions if he won. Former President Robert Kocharyan was equally lavish with his promises. Even so, many Armenian voters remember the pre-revolutionary era all too well and are hesitant to trust the oligarchs. In fact, many are willing to vote for anyone at all just to prevent the return of the byvshie — “the exes,” as the pre-2018 ruling elite is commonly known in Armenia. 

Furthermore, Pashinyan faces heavy criticism for failing to penalize these figures; despite his repeated campaign promises, men like Kocharyan and Tsarukyan were never held accountable for past corruption and vote-rigging, allowing them to retain the immense financial resources needed to run for office these days. Yet there are also plenty of those who view Pashinyan with such hostility — blaming him for the loss of Nagorno-Karabakh — that they would back any candidate just to oust him. For voters of that stripe, though, the socioeconomic agenda is secondary to concerns over security and national identity.

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Against this backdrop, a left could have capitalized on issues of inequality, but left-wing forces were virtually non-existent in this election cycle. That is, unless you count the Armenian Revolutionary Federation, one of Armenia’s oldest political parties, which was originally founded as a left-wing socialist and nationalist movement. However, it has long since mutated into a conservative — if not far-right —  party that forms the backbone of Kocharyan’s Armenia Alliance.

One could consider Hayk Marutyan’s New Force party a part of the left. Marutyan, the former mayor of Yerevan and a onetime ally of Pashinyan, has mentioned his social democratic values before; indeed, during his mayoral tenure, Sanitek — the private company handling the capital’s waste management — was nationalized. For the most part, however, Marutyan focused his campaign on attacking Pashinyan over the loss of Nagorno-Karabakh and his concessions to Azerbaijan. Thus, on the rare occasions when a left-wing agenda surfaced in election discourse, it was rudimentary at best.

Socioeconomic promises that could be classified as left-wing also popped up in the platforms of various other parties that otherwise had little to do with the left. For instance, one party proposed nationalizing Armenia’s mineral resources while simultaneously vowing to preserve the country’s “mono-ethnic character” and to crack down on undocumented migrants (“supposedly from India, but actually from Pakistan”). Another faction, led by a retired general, advocated for rejoining the Collective Security Treaty Organization and restoring an alliance with Russia, while pairing those geopolitical stances with a call for progressive taxation.

The absence of a left in Armenian elections is nothing new; they were missing from the 2021 vote as well. Back in 2018, the Citizen’s Decision Social Democratic Party — founded by left-wing activists who had participated in the revolution — did run in the election. Their campaign is chiefly remembered for handing out tangerines to prospective voters. The tangerines did not work: the party captured less than 1 percent of the vote and quickly disbanded. In the current election cycle, several former members of that defunct party aligned themselves with the None of the Above Party. This fringe movement brought together a disparate coalition of people united solely by their rejection of mainstream politics, including leftists, libertarians, nationalists, and gun-legalization advocates. None of the Above ran a highly unconventional campaign, with party representatives frequently appearing in costume as Spider-Man and other superheroes. Ultimately, however, the superheroes failed to clear the 4 percent electoral barrier.

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A Brief History of the Armenian Left

The left has been fairly marginal within the political landscape of post-Soviet Armenia. Yet it was not always so. The Armenian left boasts a rich history stretching back at least to the mid-nineteenth century. Its roots lie with the revolutionary democrat Mikayel Nalbandian, whose poetry would later form the lyrics of Armenia’s national anthem. Furthermore, of the three historic Armenian political parties founded in the late nineteenth century, two were left-wing: the aforementioned Armenian Revolutionary Federation and the Hunchak party, whose name — meaning “The Bell” — was a deliberate nod to Alexander Herzen’s famous radical periodical of the same name.

Armenians, most notably Stepan Shahumyan, leader of the Baku Commune, were also well-represented among the Bolsheviks. When Armenia briefly gained independence as a republic from 1918 to 1920, it was governed by the Armenian Revolutionary Federation. However, following the “Sovietization” of Armenia, the Bolsheviks branded the party bourgeois and systematically persecuted it. While the Armenian Revolutionary Federation survived within the Armenian diaspora, it essentially mutated into a right-wing, national conservative party, retaining its membership in the Socialist International purely out of inertia.

In the final years of the Soviet Union, the Armenian Communist Party was heavily tarred by its association with Moscow, and it never recovered from its defeat in the first free elections of 1990. Subsequent attempts to build a modern social democratic party from its ruins yielded little success; the Democratic Party, led by Aram Sargsyan, remained a marginal political force. Nevertheless, by the mid-1990s, a deep nostalgia for the relative prosperity and stability of the late Soviet era had taken root among the public. Consequently, the unreformed Communist Party of Armenia, led by Sergei Badalyan and ideologically similar to the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, continued to stand in elections throughout the decade, even winning seats in parliament. However, after Badalyan’s death in 1999, the party’s electoral base rapidly eroded. 

The primary beneficiary of this Soviet nostalgia was not the ideological left, but rather one of Armenia’s last Soviet-era leaders, Karen Demirchyan. He was widely viewed as a pragmatist and “capable manager.” In the 1998 presidential election — apparently rigged — Demirchyan narrowly lost to Robert Kocharyan. He subsequently went on to serve as speaker of parliament before being tragically assassinated in the 1999 parliament shooting.

When Levon Ter-Petrosyan, the “Armenian Yeltsin,” was forced to hand power to Kocharyan in 1998, it signaled that Armenia’s liberals had given way to the national conservatives. In the socioeconomic sphere, an oligarchic capitalism with neo-feudal elements became firmly institutionalized, while the ideological landscape shifted onto conservative, nationalist ground. Under the successive presidencies of Robert Kocharyan and Serzh Sargsyan, the ruling elite cultivated a state-sponsored nationalist ideology that served both to neutralize the opposition and to legitimize the oligarchic system.

During Kocharyan’s tenure, the administration outsourced its ideological apparatus to the Armenian Revolutionary Federation, giving it control over the ministries of education and culture. Under Serzh Sargsyan, the balance of power shifted toward the Republican Party — heir to the Soviet-era nationalist dissidents — and the Armenian Apostolic Church (AAC). Public schools even introduced a mandatory course on “the history of the Armenian church,” which effectively amounted to religious indoctrination into AAC theology.

Following a brutal crackdown on protests in 2008, a wave of grassroots activist groups and civic initiatives emerged across Armenia. While they fiercely opposed the authorities, they deliberately avoided aligning themselves with any established opposition party. It was from this specific milieu that a new generation of left-wing activists began to surface. They made their presence felt most acutely in 2012 during the Mashtots Park protests. What began as local opposition to the city government’s plan to rezone part of the public park for commercial retail development quickly evolved into a broader struggle against authoritarianism and oligarchy, framing itself as a localized branch of the global Occupy movement. Later, these left-wing activists participated in the far larger Electric Yerevan movement — dubbed the “Electromaidan” in the Russian-language press — which erupted in protest against the rise in electricity tariffs.

During the 2018 revolution, activists — including leftists who had gained vital on-the-ground experience in previous demonstrations — played a pivotal role. Working alongside members of Pashinyan’s Civil Contract party, they initiated the earliest acts of civil disobedience, which rapidly swelled into a mass nonviolent uprising. The Ilik Café in Yerevan, a traditional gathering spot for the left, served as one of the revolution’s headquarters during those days. In fact, it was left-wing activists who coined the slogan, “Long live the revolution of love and solidarity!” — a rallying cry soon adopted by Pashinyan and his fellow party members. 

Yet, as the movement grew exponentially, it became obvious that a centralized political leader and an established party were required to wrest power from Sargsyan’s tottering regime. The left lacked the desire, coherent organizational structure, and the necessary public profile to lead the protests. So, while the demonstrations were still unfolding, Pashinyan and Civil Contract emerged as the undisputed leaders of the revolution.

Faced with this political vacuum, left-wing activists had three choices: some joined Pashinyan’s coalition, some returned to their old lives, and others set about building their own parties (Citizen’s Decision among them). Consequently, the left failed to coalesce into a unified political force capable of shaping national events. This fragmentation deepened following the devastating defeat in the 2020 war and the subsequent mass exodus of Karabakh Armenians in 2023, which opened fresh rifts within the movement. Today, while one faction of left-wing activists backs Pashinyan's “peace agenda,” others have pivoted toward nationalist positions, actively participating in the rallies of the national conservative opposition. This latest election cycle found Armenian leftists divided, with some absorbed into Pashinyan’s camp, others remaining on the sidelines, and the rest firmly entrenched in the opposition.

One final, symbolic player in these elections warrants mention: the pro-democracy Russian emigrant community, which includes a substantial number of left-wing activists. Since 2022, Armenia has taken in many political exiles; many have stayed and are working to integrate into Armenian society, while others have moved on to Europe while maintaining ties to Armenia. In the days leading up to the vote, Russian political émigrés even took to the streets of Yerevan to demonstrate against Russian interference in the Armenian election cycle. While the impact of Russian-speaking political exiles was largely symbolic, their support for free elections was noticed and appreciated across Armenia.

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In Place of a Conclusion: What Is to Be Done?

Demand still persists for a left-wing agenda in Armenia, at least within a segment of society. The evidence is visible in numerous activist campaigns — from labor strikes to environmental protests — and in the sheer volume of left-wing rhetoric and promises that filled the platforms of otherwise non-left parties during these elections. But, as of now, there is no political force capable of putting these demands forward. Instead, isolated components of the left-wing agenda are being co-opted by the centrist government, the oligarchic opposition, or the far right.

However, there is still time before the next election cycle. A political vacuum has emerged in which a significant portion of the electorate does not feel represented by any of the parties in parliament. That means that the left has the opportunity to regroup and put forward its own agenda. Doing so is vital: it must push back against the rising far-right sentiment that is basically inevitable as long as the right is the only alternative to Pashinyan.

The very logic of Armenia’s  development points directly to what a left-wing agenda should look like. The forces of market capitalism unleashed by the 2018 revolution and championed by a business-oriented administration have brought a wave of new systemic challenges. These include pressing environmental issues, labor rights for both domestic and migrant workers, skyrocketing property prices and rents that threaten to spark a housing crisis, gender inequality, the rights of minorities and marginalized groups, and the widening economic chasm between an affluent greater Yerevan and the rest of the country. Mainstream political discourse glosses over these issues — meaning that the time is ripe for the left to champion them. Otherwise, the opposition will remain full of pro-Russian oligarchs and right-wing populists, an outcome that bodes ill for Armenia’s democratic future.