Leonid Bershidsky, Columnist

Armenia's Peaceful Revolution Is a Lesson for Putin

Mass protests have pushed the nation's power-hungry leader to resign without bloodshed or foreign interference.

April 23, 2018 at 6:13 PM UTC

Leonid Bershidsky, formerly Bloomberg Opinion’s Europe columnist, is a member of the Bloomberg News Automation Team. He recently published Russian translations of George Orwell’s “1984” and Franz Kafka’s “The Trial.”

Odd leader out.
Photographer: Vano Shlamov/AFP--Getty Images

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It was almost inconceivable after Russia's violent reaction to Ukraine's 2014 "Revolution of Dignity" that tiny Armenia, a largely Moscow-friendly nation, would attempt a revolution of its own. Yet on Monday, Armenian Prime Minister Serzh Sargsyan was forced to resign by mass protests that paralyzed the nation.

Russia is unlikely to intervene: The protesters have been careful to stress that their motives were strictly domestic. And yet the end of Sargsyan's career should be of interest to another leader who might be tempted to extend his reign past constitutional limits: Russian President Vladimir Putin.