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Bleyan shows his students' talents to the Prime Minister during the September 1 visit.

When the territory of Nagorno-Karabakh was in the fiery ring of the Azerbaijani army in 1991, Ashot Bleyan published a series of pro-Azerbaijani and pro-Turkish articles in the Armenian press. Political analyst Levon Ghazaryan notes in this connection: “It was impossible to measure the whole gravity of those articles, for the readers, who could not believe their eyes, thought they simply weren’t getting something in there. But in 1992, in the atmosphere of total national indignation, he went on a ‘troubleshooting’ mission to Baku, a mission so unnatural and illogical that the Turks and Azeris themselves did not believe it.”

Later, in 1994-1995, he was appointed minister placed in charge of the whole educational system. It was Bleyan who gave instructions to school principals not to take children to the Tsitsernakaberd memorial on April 24, which caused a general public discontent. Then Bleyan had to resign and limit his ideological activities to the Mkhitar Sebastatsi educational complex.

In the mid-1990s, Armenia’s then defense minister Serzh Sargsyan did not pay attention to the policy of Bleyan. But he also kept silent when the latter began to expound on issues immediately connected with the defense sphere. Last year Bleyan had a series of articles published in the “Zhamanak Yerean” newspaper in which he spoke against service in the Armenian army. “And now in this soulless, abandoned homeland should every citizen participate in the homeland defense as the law requires? Why? How? What does it give to the Homeland and the person if participating in this defense is not taking care of the Homeland? Why should my son serve in the army? What has the Homeland done for him?”

And now, Serzh Sargsyan decided to visit Ashot Bleyan and congratulate him on the Day of Knowledge. This step was widely covered on television and caused bewilderment among the public at large. Speculations that Armenia’s prime minister was going to cede Nagorno-Karabakh to the Azeris after becoming president began to spread in the city already the following day. Such thoughts were given a boost on the morning of September 5 after Bleyan stated during a midnight Armenia TV talk show: “The most well-considered step of the Karabakhis was made in the 1920s when they decided to remain within Azerbaijan. This choice should be up to them today as well.” It only remains to guess whether he, in fact, meant Armenia’s prime minister (himself from Karabakh).

There is also a version that such an unprecedented step is a pre-election gimmick designed by the prime minister, who thus wished to intensify the political activity of the former ruling elite. Rumors about a possible nomination of Armenia’s ex-president Levon Ter-Petrosyan in next year’s presidential election are being actively circulated at present. In the aspect of numerous meetings of the first president and against the backdrop of the general activity of the former ruling Armenian Pan-National Movement and its satellite political parties, the fact of the visit of Armenia’s most influential official to Bleyan can play the role of a catalyst and lead to the opposition deciding on Levon Ter-Petrosyan as their single candidate.

“The opposition needs a single candidate,” Shavarsh Kocharyan, the leader of the National-Democratic Party, stated on September 4. “But if the first president of Armenia Levon Ter-Petrosyan is fielded as the single candidate from the opposition for the presidential elections, it will become a find for Prime Minister Serzh Sargsyan. People in Armenia have not yet forgotten what was happening in the country during the years of the first president’s rule, nor have they forgotten Ter-Petrosyan’s readiness to make unjustified concessions in the Karabakh issue. Considering this, part of society will prefer the candidacy of Serzh Sargsyan.”