Alternate History: In your opinion, would Armenia have become more or less successful/developed/wealthy/powerful if it was never a part of the USSR (or if USSR never existed), and why?

I'd split it into two parts.
I don't think Armenia would've remained independent without a big ally at the time, strictly militarily speaking. So if USSR never existed it would still be allied with whatever form Russian Empire would've taken. Their trajectory was towards democracy before the red terror, so that would've been pretty nice. But if the USSR as a territory never existed, as in there would've been a big hole where Russia is right now, it would've been pretty bleak.

The second part is the economic and social development - I think it's been proven many times that democratic countries with free markets are more prosperous and are better off, and there was enough resolve and potential in the country to become a robust economy. Instead, the whole planned economy aspect slowed the development for decades and culminated in an enormous blow during the Spitak earthquake, where soviet handwaving resulted in whole cities being leveled due to inappropriate building techniques for the region. So first Armenia got slowed down by an ineffective and braindead economy model, and then it had to pull itself together and recover from being integrated into the larger empire while simultaneously dealing with the fallout of one of the biggest natural disasters in human history. I'd say if the entire USSR was lagging behind the free world by 20 years that probably pushed Armenia back 40 years in development, if not more.

/r/armenia Thread