Zhoghovurd: Artsakh parliament member says proposal to declare Russian an official language 'will not downgrade status of Armenian'

In an interview with ArmLur.am, the chairperson of the Nagorno-Karabakh (Artsakh ) National Assembly’s Standing Committee on Science, Edication, Culture, Youth and Sport dismissed the concerns over the proposed bill for granting a higher language status to Russian.

Aram Harutyunyan said the draft amendments, initiated by him and two other lawmakers, aim to make Russian an official rather than a state language in Karabakh, citing the increased daily contacts with Russian peacekeepers as a justified reason to revise also the law “On Language”. But the Harutyunyan appeared to be uncertain about the government’s position on the proposal.  

“We stated in the justification that apart from the existing situation, there are other preconditions as well, the most important being the fact that Russia is home to the biggest Armenian Diaspora.

"So in case of organizing repatriation, we are required to create the necessary conditions for them to enable them to come here to continue their regular life in Artsakh. Also it will facilitate the investment-related acitivties of the Armenians in Russia. All that prompted us specific steps to spread and strengthen the knowledge of Russian in our society. And I want to emphasize that this is not being done at the expense of Armenian. There is no tendency to subordinate, or downgrade the status of, Armenian. The society has often developed the wrong opinion about the changing concepts of ‘state’ and ‘official’. Armenian has been and remains the official language here. Also our relations with peacekeepers were taken into account. All our government agencies are at the moment collaborating with the peacekeepers and have to arrange their correspondence in Russian,” he added.  

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