Armenian Velvet Revolution §

The Armenian Velvet Revolution (also "My Step Movement", Im Kayly) was a sustained non-violent civil-resistance movement in April and May 2018 that deposed the Republican Party government and brought Nikol Pashinyan to power as Prime Minister. It is the only mass democratic transition in the post-Soviet South Caucasus to date.

The trigger was Serzh Sargsyan's 17 April 2018 election as Prime Minister by the National Assembly. Sargsyan had completed his second and final presidential term on 9 April; the 2015 constitutional reform, sold to voters as a transition to a parliamentary republic, was widely understood to have created a vehicle for him to retain executive power as PM, after he had pledged in 2014 not to do so. Pashinyan, then a Yelk parliamentary deputy and former editor of Haykakan Zhamanak, launched a march from Gyumri on 31 March, arrived in Yerevan's Republic Square on 13 April, and on 22 April refused to negotiate Sargsyan's continued tenure on the steps of the Marriott Hotel.

The mobilisation peaked on 22–23 April. Sargsyan resigned on 23 April with a brief statement: "I was wrong. The street movement is against my staying in office. I am fulfilling your demand." Acting PM Karen Karapetyan attempted a transition; on 1 May Pashinyan's first parliamentary nomination failed; a general strike on 2 May closed Yerevan; on 8 May the parliament elected him by 59 to 42. The Republican Party retained a parliamentary majority but was politically delegitimised; the December 2018 snap election gave Pashinyan's My Step Alliance 70.4 percent of the vote and 88 of 132 seats.

Three structural conditions enabled the Velvet Revolution. First, the absence of significant repression: with the 2008 March 1 killings still recent, neither police nor army leadership were willing to fire on protesters. Second, the rotation rules of the constitutional reform, which had bound Sargsyan to a two-term limit and given the protest a clear constitutional finish-line. Third, the extraordinary deepening of social-media coordination since the 2015 Electric Yerevan protests, which had built an organisational repertoire short of regime change.

The post-2018 government's record has been contested. Anti-corruption prosecutions reached former presidents Robert Kocharyan and Sargsyan; contested critics charge selective prosecution. The 2020 war and the September 2023 operation have generated a sustained opposition movement, but two snap elections (2021, 2026) have re-confirmed the Civil Contract mandate, suggesting that the underlying regime change of 2018 has held. (sourced opinion: de Waal treats the Velvet Revolution as the most consequential domestic political event in post-Soviet Armenia; editorial its legacy will turn substantially on whether the Pashinyan government can secure a stable peace with Azerbaijan.)