Putting an End to “Celestial Armenia”

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Thus, the prime minister launched the debate between “real Armenia” and “historical Armenia”. The image is pertinent, the comparison a bit less so, because the word “historical” poses a problem—history being a social reality, a human science that falls within the realm of the real. What if instead of “historical Armenia”, Nikol Pashinyan had used the expression “celestial Armenia”? Wouldn’t that be even more apt? But what exactly are we talking about here?

The expression “celestial Armenia” draws its particularity from both ancient and new precepts of the construction of Armenian identity in the space-time relationship. Ancient, because it is linked to the antique formula of “celestial Jerusalem”. New, because it supplants the prime minister’s term “historical Armenia”, an expression more geographical than political anyway and associated with “Greater Armenia”.

What is the origin of celestial Armenia? It is less the conversion of Armenians to Christianity than the adoption of the Ephesus creed during the eponymous council convened by the Eastern Roman Emperor, Theodosius II, in 430, which is at the origins of this sacralized Armenia.

In what context did the Council of Ephesus take place? In a dark period of Armenia’s history and its fall of sovereignty. The Council of Ephesus was held in 430, nearly 50 years after the partition of Armenia between the Roman Empire and the Persian Empire in 387 and two years after an even greater collective trauma: the annexation of Armenia by the Persians in 428. The Council of Ephesus therefore took place after two profoundly tragic events. It is important to keep this in mind to better understand what follows.

What is the meaning of this double ordeal? It suggests the idea that the real world is not made for Armenians—that it is too conflictual, too brutal. The partition of the Kingdom, followed by the erasure of Armenia as a sovereign state, signaled a descent into chaos for this ancient people. It was as if the political and religious elites (the great families) feared reality itself: the balance of power, the world as it truly is, shaped by conquest and hardship imposed by stronger neighbors upon the dominated. In response, Armenians withdrew from the world, retreated from real time, and spread a collective fear that ultimately froze their behavior for an indeterminate period. Yet even in this retreat, they held on to a quiet hope—a belief in the miracle of rebirth, and the dream of realizing a celestial Armenia.

How does the Council of Ephesus align with this double ordeal? The theological debate of the time revolves around the dialectic between the human and divine natures of Jesus Christ. Are human beings creatures descended from Heaven, or autonomous beings rooted in the material world? At Ephesus, the bishops gathered in council declared that Jesus was essentially of divine nature, and only through the Word—through orality—was he also of human nature. The unity of Christ is certainly preserved, but the relationship between the spiritual and the temporal is made in favor of the former.  

For the Armenian Church, which became Monophysite, Jesus, like humanity, and like the Armenians themselves, was conceived in the image of God and descended to Earth by the grace of God. Their relationship to reality is translated only by the Word, only the words of Christ make the Kingdom of Heaven visible and real. Reality, then, was affirmed, but remained intangible. Presence in the world was acknowledged, but not through the corporeal body; rather, Armenians were spiritual beings, their essence not material but divinized. In other words, at the collective level, Armenians were present without truly inhabiting the world—they existed within it but did not fully belong to it. They distanced themselves from the real, temporal and material realm, seeking instead refuge in the Kingdom of Heaven as the Kingdom of Elsewhere. The earthly world, marked by the trauma of partition and annexation, had become unbearable and corrupted by human sin. The Council of Ephesus thus became an invitation to ascend toward the Kingdom of God, toward imagination and faith, governed not by geopolitical power but by divine law—a realm where authority resided not in earthly kingdoms but in the temple of belief in Christ’s message. Thus Armenians withdraw from the real world to find refuge in celestial Armenia…

What happens in this celestial Armenia? By withdrawing from the real world, Armenians under the impulse of their Monophysite Church, also severed ties with the Chalcedonian Churches, which, in 451, reversed the conclusions of Ephesus. The Council of Chalcedon declared that Jesus possessed both a fully divine and fully human nature. The Armenian Church, condemned as heretical by Rome, reaffirmed the creed of Ephesus during the Councils of Dvin in 506 and 555. In doing so, it distanced itself from the broader Christian world and sanctified celestial Armenia as a form of spiritual sovereignty, like a hidden treasure buried in the field, echoing the parables of the Kingdom of Heaven. Thus, in this celestial Armenia, this paradise or this garden of Eden, everything is pure, unblemished, absolute. And because the Kingdom of Elsewhere knows no earthly borders, its contours shaped instead by faith in dogma and in sacred landmarks scattered across the earth (churches, monasteries, khachkars, etc.), the realm of the imagination becomes a boundless sanctuary, governed only by canon law. In this spiritual domain, the Armenian is neither citizen, nor subject, nor consumer; he is merely a servant, a sheep in the fold of God. In celestial Armenia, where all is sacred and idealized, sin has no place, and human responsibility is rendered meaningless—because man has entrusted his destiny entirely to divine providence.

Everything, then, is sublimated, magnified and rendered absolute: justice becomes Justice, freedom becomes Freedom; right becomes Right, independence becomes Independence, union becomes Union, and truth becomes Truth—each concept elevated to a sacred, untouchable ideal. In such a paradigm, there is no room for an ethic of responsibility, no space for compromise, political sense, or negotiation. Any concession is seen not as pragmatism but as weakness, even betrayal, an act that threatens to undermine the very foundations of celestial Armenia.

Who, then, are the guardians of celestial Armenia? They are many. First, there is the Armenian Apostolic Church, both Etchmiadzin and Antelias, bringing in its wake, through ecumenical ties, the Armenian Catholic and Protestant churches. Then come the traditional Armenian political parties: the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (ARF), the Social Democratic Hunchakian Party (SDHP), and the Ramgavar Liberal Party (RLP). Finally, we find the Armenian General Benevolent Union (AGBU) and the broader constellation of traditional Armenian institutions with their newspapers and local chapters.

Why these organizations? Because none of them draws a clear line between the political and the religious. Each of them accepts that the religious dimension stands on equal footing with the political, which then becomes subordinated, whether to the religious (as in Etchmiadzin), to ideology (as in the ARF), or to culture (as in the AGBU). Etchmiadzin, by its very nature and vocation, is the spiritual epicenter of celestial Armenia. The AGBU, operating with a hierarchical, near-medieval structure centered on the authority of a single leader, mirrors the Catholicosate in form and function, Etchmiadzin and the AGBU thus appear consubstantially linked.

As for the ARF, it has served as the secular arm or the avenging sword of celestial Armenia since the death of its founder Christapor Mikaelian in 1905. After his passing, the Federation (Dashnaktsutyun) withdrew from the practical sphere of politics to drape itself in the “virtuous” domain of ideology, preserving internal unity through abstraction rather than action. In doing so, it projected itself toward the heavens, a leap into the symbolic, since its call for a “Free, Independent and Reunified Armenia” issued 1919, became nothing less than the avatar of celestial Armenia. In other words, the “Greater Armenia” of the ARF, the “Armenia of the three seas” espoused by the AGBU (a vision originally attributed to Nubar Pasha) and the “Armenia of Ephesus” of the Church all converge within the mythic construct of “celestial Armenia”.

Can celestial Armenia then be realized? No and three times no; first, because the international community does not want it. To pursue celestial Armenia is to clash with the forces and constraints of the global order. Second, because celestial Armenia is an ideal, a Kingdom of Heaven, that cannot be achieved in this world but accessible only after the death of those who believe in it. Hence the enduring slogan “freedom or death.” And finally, because the Armenian state, in its very restoration and assertion of sovereignty, stands as a profound obstacle to celestial Armenia. 

And here we are…

Is celestial Armenia, then, opposed to the sovereignty of the Armenian state? Yes, and here we arrive at the core of the current debate in post-Soviet Armenia and its diasporic extensions. The regimes that governed Armenia from 1991 to 2018 may not have actively played the celestial card, but they allowed themselves to be drawn into the orbit of celestial Armenia—what Nikol Pashinyan calls memorial Armenia, or historical Armenia—at the expense of restoring actual sovereignty of the State. This Kingdom of Heaven, which does not and cannot exist because it rejects earthly reality, is fundamentally incompatible with the sovereign Armenian state recognized by the international community within its current borders. That State belongs to the world of humans and sin. As such, it is cast as a traitor and an enemy of celestial Armenia, just as Pashinyan himself has been in the eyes of the servants of celestial Armenia, because he risks defiling the ideal by grounding Armenia in the flawed, compromised and corrupt world order.

But who, then, truly benefits from celestial Armenia? Primarily Russia, which since its 18th-century presence in the Caucasus, has understood that the most effective way to assert its imperial dominance is to exploit the servants of this celestial Armenia. From St. Petersburg to Moscow, Russia has encouraged Armenians to dream and the right to dream of a celestial Armenia, solely as a means of advancing its own expansionist interests. Yet, Russia not only turns Armenian dreams into nightmares, it also denies Armenians the right to fixed borders—those markers of sovereign states—offering only with fronts, the mutable boundaries of empire. Moscow tells them: “Dream, my little Armenian brothers, dream of Greater Armenia, but don’t dare to think of yourselves as sovereign, otherwise I will crush you or push others to do so.”

Who benefits then from the link between Russia and celestial Armenia? All pro-Russian and all pro-celestial Armenian forces in Armenia and outside the country. In Armenia, besides Etchmiadzin, the ARF, the Armenian Communist Party, the Republican Party of Serzh Sargsyan, the Armenian National Congress (ex-ANM) of Levon Ter-Petrosyan, former president Robert Kocharyan and some factions of the Armenians of Artsakh, who, by Russophilia and religious beliefs, cannot integrate into the real world, dangerous and decadent because of man at fault for everything and responsible for nothing. Because the driving force of the history of celestial Armenia is not man but providence. This, just as unequivocally, holds true of the pro-celestial Armenian forces, the Ramgavars, the SDHP and the AGBU outside of the Republic of Armenia.

But what, then, sustains celestial Armenia? Its proponents cultivate an imagined purity—a world yet to be created—fueled by intransigence, religious and ideological dogmas, and conspiracy theories centered on Armenians themselves. They traffic in fear and a celestial morality that, to those who uphold universal ethics, often appears deeply immoral. They rely on falsehoods and ignorance, the solitude of the Armenian condition, the irresponsibility of celestial elites, and a worldview steeped in submission and Manichaean absolutes. Memory is weaponized, insecurity is enshrined, and unattainable territorial claims are elevated above human rights—because once again, it is man who is blamed.

Russia, having appropriated the ready-made narrative of celestial Armenia, manipulates it at will, pressing one emotional button after another to advance its own agenda. Sometimes it’s fear, other times false promises, forced submission, or the seductive invocation of “Western Armenia”—a cornerstone of the celestial Armenia mythos.

And what of the diaspora in all this? The devotees of celestial Armenia place the Armenian state and the diaspora on the same level, as if the two spheres of Armenian identity were inseparable, like the small and great Masis that form the sacred Mount Ararat. This unity isn’t just religious, it is also ideological. Yet, no other nation conflates its diaspora and state in this way—not Israel, not Ireland, not Greece, not Lebanon. Only the forces of celestial Armenia sculpt this balance between the motherland and the diaspora, risking the creation of a rootless identity and turning Armenia itself into a patchwork structure, precariously suspended above a void. But truthfully, this contradiction doesn’t trouble them because for these servants of the ideal, both Armenians and Armenia ultimately belong not to the real world but to the Kingdom of Heaven, an eternal utopia, forever just out of reach…

Is celestial Armenia opposed to the sovereign Armenian state? Unquestionably yes—because celestial Armenia promotes a worldview rooted in exile and victimhood, whereas a sovereign Armenian state must be grounded in citizenship and accountability. In celestial Armenia, no one bears personal responsibility; the only guiding principles are canon law or party regulations, referred to as ganonakir, and little else. In the sovereign state, individuals are held accountable under civil law. In celestial Armenia, divine or ideological law takes precedence over human law; canon law outranks positive law. In contrast, the sovereign Armenian state upholds the rule of human law above all else. Within celestial Armenia’s moral universe, a person becomes truly visible, as a transgressor, only upon death or when violating its sacred codes. At that point, the guardians of its ideology, whether church or party officials, have only one recourse: excommunication, from both the institution and celestial Armenia itself.

Celestial Armenia is a memory built on trauma, a form of indoctrination that refuses to name itself. It is a slow, quiet demise, like a candle burning down in general indifference. It demands absolute duty without offering any rights. It is a prison without bars, a limitless faith disconnected from reality. Celestial Armenia speaks in vague, empty slogans—like those invoked by Monsignor Bagrat and his supporters (the ARF, the Republican Party, etc.) in 2024: “Armenian, Armenia, Homeland and God.” But who is the “Armenian”? The one from Yerevan or from Los Angeles? A citizen or an exile? Settled or displaced? Republican or Imperialist? And what is “Armenia”? Is it the Republic of Armenia alone, or Armenia plus Artsakh, Javakhk, Nakhichevan, Western Armenia, and every diasporic home? What is the “Homeland”? Where does it begin and where does it end? And as for “God”—there’s no point even starting that debate. Like the voices of celestial Armenia’s most zealous and irresponsible defenders, His words remain impenetrable.

It is long past time to break with celestial Armenia, a construct that has become a form of servitude, a constant threat, a political infirmity, a pathology. It is a cult of fear disguised as fidelity, a rigid, rootless stance that undermines sovereignty at every turn. In truth, celestial Armenia is nothing more than the Armenian façade of Russian imperialism, weaponized against the very idea of an independent Armenian state.

EVN Security Report

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