Stories from Armenia, Part One

From Russia with Love

As all small, poor, third-world countries, Armenia is desperate for foreign investments. They are hard to come by in a country where the government has failed to fund infrastructure constructions, to reform the legislative system, and is itself very corrupt. Without a simultaneous tackle of all three problems, economic development will be hard to come by, and foreign investments even harder.

Russia is Armenia’s only foreign investor worth discussing. Russians rarely look at Armenia as a place to set up factories. Instead they buy out assets that can be dismantled for scrap and sold for a quick buck. Basically, nothing to write home about.

Less than one third of Armenia's economy (and GDP) is based on soft or service-oriented industries: banking (the topic begs for a separate article), food packing (wine, jams, cheese), wireless technology, tourism and, until three years ago, housing construction: tear down anything, build new apartment complexes, and sell to Iranians, Armenians from Russia, and a few people from Los Angeles.

Armenia’s few undeveloped mines are up for contracts to any outside bidder, including Turks doing business with Iran. The Chinese are buying like crazy. Armenia now counts a community of Chinese workers in the thousand. Two Chinese restaurants in Yerevan (food’s not bad), and a radio station in Mandarin cater to them.

But Russia remains Armenia’s main business partner, and they are not to be outdone. I might as well get to the point, otherwise you may think this is a story of love from Russia. Hardly!

A Russian agency has arrived to Yerevan to open up shop. It has rented a huge space (or maybe bought it) and employs some 500 people to conduct business:

Great? You bet!

Wait, wait. Don’t get overly excited.

The agency in question interviews, screens and prepares Armenians… for immigration… to Russia.

The agency provides visas, permanent residency, housing, travel expenses and jobs for Armenians to pack up, and go. Entire families at a time.

But go where?

Entire villages are being relocated, not to the lovely Caspian basin, not to marvelous Moscow or the fertile lands of southern Russia, or the prosperous oil fields of Tyumen. The destination is… hold on to your seat … south Siberia… on the border with China. Thousands of Armenians have been relocating to these remote, desolate, sub-freezing regions for menial work, physical labor… or anything resembling a living.

Russia is a capitalist country now, in case you missed the news. It too has resorted to importing people to replenish its diminishing population, and has found Armenia as a partner with a perfect “sense for business.” The entire leadership crowd of present-day Armenia prides itself for being very business-friendly (patriotism? What’s that?!) and a decision to allow such an agency to operate had to be approved by the highest office in the government, thus effectively making Armenia a net exporter of human beings (please, not to be confused with a real export industry).

There’s no doubt that years of aimless economic voodooism has resulted in more and more Armenians leaving the homeland since independence. More than 70,000 have left in the year 2010, and as many have already left in the first half of this year alone. The very government officials who are in power to address the crisis are actually spectators to the exodus. Immigration is used to keep an unpopular government in power by dismissing from the country people who may join mass protest of a million on the streets, the kind we have been watching sweep the entire Middle East these days – by students with no hope for jobs, elders with no dignity, mothers unable to locate their husbands who left the country for work but were never heard from, women who are forced into white slavery in Dubai or Istanbul, hungry academicians, army veterans, and the list goes on.

Immigration out of Armenia is hidden policy of a government that prefers to “see them go, rather than stick around and make trouble.” It serves yet another purpose for them: the government can grab the money sent by Armenians living and working abroad by artificially manipulating the currency exchange rate, or raising the price of basic food staples- which are monopolies of government ministers and members of parliament to begin with. That money (which accounts for another one third of Armenia’s GDP) is spent entirely - by the people who receive it - on necessities. Nothing is saved or invested. It does not contribute towards the construction of a sustainable economy.

I do not see any foreign aid (the other one third of the GDP) being invested in any long-term plans to refurbish the infrastructure, reform the courts of law, or to create jobs. A fifteen minute drive from Yerevan in any direction out of the city will reveal literally thousands of dilapidated residential buildings, abandoned shops, businesses, factories and schools, crumbling roads, emptying neighborhoods and villages.

It would be more fitting of the leadership in Armenia to undertake a plan to tear down all those eye-sores on the side of the roads, so visitors such as myself can be fooled that, maybe, things aren’t as bad as everyone from the UN on down has been saying. Besides, the undertaking to beautify the landscape may do some good to very sad unemployed laborers who are, most likely, on a waiting list to immigrate to, where else… south Siberia.

Incidentally, the mighty Russian (immigration) agency has made requests to open similar centers in other countries as well. I didn’t learn what the response was, and frankly, I really don’t care. But I did find out that both Georgia and Azerbaijan turned them down.

There’s something in the wind blowing from the steppes of Siberia, and it ain’t love.