The denial of the Armenian Genocide is on the rise again. These days, both Armenia and Armenian communities across the globe, from Glendale to Sydney, are discussing the denial of the Armenian Genocide. It seems that this shameless disease should be nothing new for Armenians who survived the Genocide. For more than a century, the executioners of Armenians, their successors, political and academic allies have continued to deny, distort, or justify this crime.

Recently, however, Armenians around the world have witnessed an unprecedented reality. During a meeting with the Armenian community in Switzerland, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan literally stated that “we must revisit the history of the Armenian Genocide, we need to understand what happened and why it happened, and how we perceived it, through whom we perceived it, how is it that there was no agenda for the Armenian Genocide in 1939, and how is it that the Armenian Genocide agenda appeared in 1950? Should we understand this or not?”

Pashinyan’s controversial statement sparked outrage on Armenian social platforms. For example, the Armenian National Committee International, a body of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation, described Pashinyan’s remarks as “another display of ignorance seasoned with semi-literacy.” One of the Armenian historians also called Pashinyan’s statement semi-literate. Nevertheless, and in general, judging by Pashinyan’s subsequent Facebook posts on the matter, the (non-)response of the opposition or the state-funded Armenian academic community to his remarks would have hardly stopped him.

Of course, denying Pashinyan’s semi-literacy is a futile task. He seemed to be unaware that there could be no issue of recognizing the Armenian Genocide back in 1939, as the Convention on Genocide was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in 1948. But he knew about the international silence regarding the issue of the Armenian Genocide in the years between the two world wars. He also knew that during those same years, the Armenian Genocide was not a welcome topic in Soviet Armenia, which was part of the totalitarian empire. But he did not know how the memory of the Genocide was preserved in the communities of the Armenian Diaspora. He can search the press archives of the Diaspora and see that, for example, on April 30, 1939, Armenians organized a memorial event dedicated to the victims of the Genocide at Soorp Khatch Armenian Apostolic Church in Los Angeles. Moreover, two years before that, an article was published in the Diaspora “Hairenik” newspaper called “Propaganda of the Armenian cause among foreigners.” And these are not isolated examples.

Unfortunately, semi-literacy is only one side of the coin. The other side is grayer and more unprecedented in the history of the Republic. It is not the refusal of the international recognition of the Armenian Genocide that is unprecedented. Under the first president, the recognition of the Armenian Genocide was not a foreign policy issue. Similarly, the leaders of the first republic did not demand compensation for the tragedy suffered by the Armenian people from the Turkish authorities. What is unprecedented is perhaps the fact of the Armenian Genocide being questioned by the leader of our young republic, the first open manifestation of which was Pashinyan’s statement on April 24, 2024 followed by the assessment by the Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention. Pashinyan’s behavior is not only unprecedented, but also shameful for the people that survived the Genocide.

The desperate attempts of Pashinyan’s party members to defend him mainly boil down to the fact that when building relations with the neighbors one should get rid of the burden of history and look at the world realistically. History, however, teaches us otherwise. In 1930, Greek Prime Minister Venizelos signed a treaty of friendship with Turkey, “putting behind” the massacres and deportations of Greeks in the Ottoman Empire. This did not free the Greeks from the Cyprus problem in the following decades, the 1955 Greek pogroms in Constantinople, or the Aegean Sea disputes. Likewise, the leaders of France and Britain signed the Munich Agreement with Hitler in 1938 with the hope to appease him. British Prime Minister Chamberlain, who had just returned from Munich, was greeted by a large crowd as a bearer of peace when he showed the Munich Agreement at London Airport. A year later, the World War II began, during which the Holocaust also occurred.

Denying the massacre of the ancestors does not create security. Nor will you win respect and sympathy in this world through elastic morality. The hard truths of our history should not be avoided, no matter how painful and unwelcome they may be. The truth about the past and nothing but the truth must be told. This is required not only out of respect for the memory of 1.5 million victims but also for the sake of building a just and secure future. If you deny your past, your punishment will be quick in the future.

Gevorg Vardanyan is a historian, Doctor of Sciences (History); he has worked at the Armenian Genocide Museum-Institute.

These views are his own.