# Holy crap; what just happened in Armenia?!? **URL:** \ **Category:** Politics & Elections\ **Created:** [April 23, 2018, 11:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/holy-crap-what-just-happened-in-armenia/813003 "2018-04-23T23:04:54Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 14\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Chisquirrel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6bbea6/32.png) [@Chisquirrel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chisquirrel)\ **Post date:** [April 25, 2018, 9:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/holy-crap-what-just-happened-in-armenia/813003/21 "2018-04-25T21:00:43Z")
> [@carnivorousplant](#): > > So how did Stalin get away with it? Surely the rumor that the first guy to stop clapping for him at a concert got whacked is exaggerated, but he did things like starving a bunch of Georgians to death. Georgians aren’t Russians. ---
**Author:** ![Sage\_Rat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sage_rat/32/399_2.png) [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)\ **Post date:** [April 25, 2018, 9:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/holy-crap-what-just-happened-in-armenia/813003/22 "2018-04-25T21:54:14Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > But that’s the thing: The army is drawn from the people. If the people dislike you too much, then the army will, too. > > And **asahi** isn’t saying that the populace needs to be unarmed-- He’s saying that it’s irrelevant if they’re armed. Even if they’re not armed, a tyrant still can’t stand up against a people united. > [@carnivorousplant](#): > > So how did Stalin get away with it? Surely the rumor that the first guy to stop clapping for him at a concert got whacked is exaggerated, but he did things like starving a bunch of Georgians to death. I’ll suggest that reality is more messy than single variables. Wings are strongly correlated to flying. That doesn’t mean that penguins can fly, nor does it mean that rockets cannot. ---
**Author:** ![XT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xt/32/456_2.png) [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)\ **Post date:** [April 25, 2018, 10:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/holy-crap-what-just-happened-in-armenia/813003/23 "2018-04-25T22:58:31Z")
> [@Alessan](#): > > It delends if the tyrant is capable of using violence. If the army is not willing to open fire on the people - which is what happened in East Germany in 1989 and in Egypt in 2011 - then the tyrant is done for. Or you get the Chinese Tiananmen Square massacre. And decades more of authoritarian rule. It really depends on where things are at wrt the population. If the structure is so rotten that it’s ready to collapse then you don’t need weapons, as the military will probably stand back and watch regardless of their orders. If it’s not? Then you get a bunch of dead students and civilians. ---
**Author:** ![Johnny\_Ace](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/6bbea6/32.png) [@Johnny\_Ace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_Ace)\ **Post date:** [April 26, 2018, 2:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/holy-crap-what-just-happened-in-armenia/813003/24 "2018-04-26T02:13:07Z")
> [@Alessan](#): > > In the U.S., maybe, but not everywhere. So you think that NK’s military is less propagandized than the American military? ---
**Author:** ![Alessan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alessan/32/465_2.png) [@Alessan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alessan)\ **Post date:** [April 26, 2018, 4:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/holy-crap-what-just-happened-in-armenia/813003/25 "2018-04-26T04:54:16Z")
> [@Johnny\_Ace](#): > > So you think that NK’s military is less propagandized than the American military? I think the average North Korean is much more likely to have a close family member in the military. ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [April 26, 2018, 6:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/holy-crap-what-just-happened-in-armenia/813003/26 "2018-04-26T06:54:43Z")
> [@XT](#): > > Or you get the Chinese Tiananmen Square massacre. And decades more of authoritarian rule. It really depends on where things are at wrt the population. If the structure is so rotten that it’s ready to collapse then you don’t need weapons, as the military will probably stand back and watch regardless of their orders. If it’s not? Then you get a bunch of dead students and civilians. But that doesn’t change with an armed populace. ---
**Author:** ![Alessan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alessan/32/465_2.png) [@Alessan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alessan)\ **Post date:** [April 26, 2018, 8:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/holy-crap-what-just-happened-in-armenia/813003/27 "2018-04-26T08:24:47Z")
> [@XT](#): > > Or you get the Chinese Tiananmen Square massacre. And decades more of authoritarian rule. It really depends on where things are at wrt the population. If the structure is so rotten that it’s ready to collapse then you don’t need weapons, as the military will probably stand back and watch regardless of their orders. If it’s not? Then you get a bunch of dead students and civilians. Nothing is certain, and there’s never any “magic bullet” for toppling tyranny (barring an actual magic bullet, I suppose). Even so, while I don’t think we’ll ever really know what happened at Tiananmen Square, from what I’ve read it was really touch and go there for a while, with individual soldiers and even entire units very reluctant to open fire on Chinese civilians. These’s a chance the whole thing could have gone very differently, giving us a very different China, and world, than what we have today. ---
**Author:** ![carnivorousplant](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnivorousplant/32/3563_2.png) [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)\ **Post date:** [April 26, 2018, 12:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/holy-crap-what-just-happened-in-armenia/813003/28 "2018-04-26T12:29:46Z")
I wonder what happened to the soldiers who wouldn’t fire. Were they in a nasty training accident? ---
**Author:** ![Alessan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alessan/32/465_2.png) [@Alessan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alessan)\ **Post date:** [April 26, 2018, 1:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/holy-crap-what-just-happened-in-armenia/813003/29 "2018-04-26T13:16:23Z")
> [@carnivorousplant](#): > > I wonder what happened to the soldiers who wouldn’t fire. Were they in a nasty training accident? Depends how many disobeyed. If one soldier disobeys your orders, he has a problem; if 1,000 soldiers disobey your orders, YOU have a problem. If there really were a lot of reluctant troops, my guess is that the government did the smart thing: absolutely nothing. No need to poke the bear. ---
**Author:** ![Textual\_Innuendo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/898d66/32.png) [@Textual\_Innuendo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Textual_Innuendo)\ **Post date:** [April 26, 2018, 2:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/holy-crap-what-just-happened-in-armenia/813003/30 "2018-04-26T14:57:50Z")
> [@Bryan\_Ekers](#): > > Maybe he just wanted to spend more time oppressing his family. _Snerk_ Classic. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![XT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xt/32/456_2.png) [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)\ **Post date:** [April 26, 2018, 4:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/holy-crap-what-just-happened-in-armenia/813003/31 "2018-04-26T16:25:35Z")
> [@BigT](#): > > But that doesn’t change with an armed populace. Yeah, tell that to the Afghani’s. Or perhaps ask Assad how easy it is to keep an iron fist when at least some of his citizens have arms. 😛 > [@Alessan](#): > > Even so, while I don’t think we’ll ever really know what happened at Tiananmen Square, from what I’ve read it was really touch and go there for a while, with individual soldiers and even entire units very reluctant to open fire on Chinese civilians. We know pretty much all the details of Tiananmen, despite decades of the CCP trying to suppress or erase the evidence. There was a ton of western reporters for another event (something to do with the Soviet Union and China IIRC), and they just happened to be in the area when things went down (this was after 6 weeks of protests). Certainly there was some reluctance initially. But the main reason was that CCP leadership hadn’t decided how big the threat was, or what should be done…or, more importantly, who should be in charge and what should be done. Once those pesky details were worked out there wasn’t a lot of hesitation. > [@](#): > > These’s a chance the whole thing could have gone very differently, giving us a very different China, and world, than what we have today. No chance at all, if you are implying that the CCP would have been toppled. It was never even remotely possible. The only real difference would have been who would have come out on top wrt the CCPs leadership. Even the crowd wasn’t calling for an end to the CCP. What the students were asking for was basically reforms within the CCP, not an overthrow of the CCP. ---
**Author:** ![foolsguinea](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/foolsguinea/32/14751_2.png) [@foolsguinea](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/foolsguinea)\ **Post date:** [April 26, 2018, 6:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/holy-crap-what-just-happened-in-armenia/813003/32 "2018-04-26T18:41:31Z")
The students did talk some military personnel out of clearing them out. The reason the massacre was able to happen was that Chinese central power was vast enough to bring in more military from another part of their territory, who were less similar ethnically, and get them to do it. At least, if I recall correctly. Talking about “toppling the CCP” is a bit much. The students wanted democratic reforms. That would have changed things in some meaningful ways. ---
**Author:** ![carnivorousplant](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnivorousplant/32/3563_2.png) [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)\ **Post date:** [April 26, 2018, 6:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/holy-crap-what-just-happened-in-armenia/813003/33 "2018-04-26T18:46:27Z")
> [@foolsguinea](#): > > The students did talk some military personnel out of clearing them out. The reason the massacre was able to happen was that Chinese central power was vast enough to bring in more military from another part of their territory, who were less similar ethnically, and get them to do it. Like asking red necks from Arkansas to shoot damn Yankees. I can see that. ---
**Author:** ![asahi](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/asahi/32/8693_2.png) [@asahi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/asahi)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2018, 11:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/holy-crap-what-just-happened-in-armenia/813003/34 "2018-04-27T11:50:45Z")
> [@Quartz](#): > > That is dangerous and ignorant rubbish. It only works if the tyrant is not willing and able to use violence to repress the people. And you should have checked your facts first: about 1 in 8 Armenians own a gun with around 380K private firearms. [Cite](http://www.gunpolicy.org/firearms/region/armenia). So he was not dealing with an unarmed populace. The tyrant might be willing to use violence against his people, but mass protest is a very powerful phenomenon, and it can convince people who start out supporting a dictator that the gig is up. I think the Arab Spring and the Color Revolutions made that very clear. I’m not saying that what happened in Armenia would happen in North Korea if a few North Korean soldiers would just start acting out. Each case is different. In the case of China post-Tiananmen Square, for instance, the Chinese government authoritarians were able to succeed because they were more powerful than the movement. They successfully controlled the flow of information so that support for their movement didn’t spread. And it didn’t hurt that their economy grew like mad during the 1990s and 2000s. If China’s economy were to suddenly collapse, though, the Communist Party would have a very real problem on its hands, particularly if it were deemed incompetent and incapable of delivering a basic quality of life to the average Chinese person. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/holy-crap-what-just-happened-in-armenia/813003.md?page=1)