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Paper short abstract

I examine ethnonationalist identity and anti-Soviet memory politics as narratives promoting a return to a supposedly lost European modernity. I critique state-sanctioned liberal nationalism and Western epistemic dominance in CSO research, linking both to a broader crisis of hegemony.

Paper long abstract

With increased institutionalization, professionalization, and bureaucratization of Armenian social movements after the deficient revolution of 2018, development aid dictates that common-sense neoliberalism (Hall and O’Shea 2013) shape policy and, by extension, public understanding of national identity and civilizational belonging. This trajectory gained momentum after Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, as post-Soviet states became tangled in the clash of civilizations, with European securitization narratives framing Putin and Russia as sole antagonists of the global order, while an allegiance to Euro-Atlantic militarism as a moral choice between forces of light and evil (Foley and Unkovski-Korica 2024). Employing the framework of liberalism as empire (Shirinian 2025), my paper studies the development aid-dominated knowledge production economy in Armenia, offering a critique of its subsequent decolonial turn. By treating liberal ideology as indispensable to capitalism and neoliberalism, I study ethnonationalist identity frameworks and anti-Soviet memory politics as narrative projects promoting a return to a supposed European modernity that was lost upon the communization of Armenia. Based on my professional and academic experiences within civil society organizations in Armenia and Europe, I offer a critique of the current government’s liberal nationalism and the prominence of Western epistemic frameworks in CSO research projects, demonstrating how the crisis of hegemony--characteristic of all post-Soviet states (Ishchenko 2024)--underlies these developments. I study how, in this political economy, the two defining characteristics of the decolonial turn are the promotion of (ethno)nationalism and neoliberalism, a dangerous insurgence that threatens radical political imaginations and leads to anti-welfare, anti-class political movements.