Where do Russia and the West fit into the new Armenian government?

Naira Hayrumyan

A month has passed since Armenia’s ‘violet revolution’. The country is being lead by a new prime minister who came from outside the old system, and the new government, young and energetic, is completely unalike any other government that has been in power before.

But what has changed in Armenia, both within the country and within its foreign relations, especially with Russia and the West?

Armenia's Peaceful Revolution Is a Lesson for Putin

Leonid Bershidsky

It was almost inconceivable after Russia's violent reaction to Ukraine's 2014 "Revolution of Dignity" that tiny Armenia, a largely Moscow-friendly nation, would attempt a revolution of its own. Yet on Monday [April 23, 2018], Armenian Prime Minister Serzh Sargsyan was forced to resign by mass protests that paralyzed the nation.

Caucasus Women Demand Power, Not Flowers

Giorgi Lomsadze

 

In the South Caucasus, International Women’s Day is still largely about men offering flowers, candies and compliments to their mothers, wives and significant female others. But many women in the region are now saying that they want “rights, not flowers.”

Throughout the post-Soviet part of the world, March 8 has long ranked as a bit of a Soviet Valentine’s Day. In keeping with that tradition, Russia’s Vladimir Putin this year panegyrized women’s beauty and grace, and threw in a poem for good measure. “Woman is with us when we are born; woman is with us in our final hour; woman is the flag we fight for,” the Kremlin boss rhapsodized, borrowing lines by the 19th-century Russian symbolist poet Konstantin Balmont.
Caucasus leaders avoided poetry, but their governments did have other offerings.

Georgia: Protecting an Ancient Alphabet in a Digital Age

Dato Dolidze’s fingers move slowly on the old handset as he writes a text message to his son.

“My phone only has the Latin alphabet, so every time I text I need to translate the Georgian letters into the Latin. It’s a pain,” says the 50-something orange vendor at a Tbilisi vegetable market.

While newer smartphones enable the use of the Georgian alphabet, many in Georgia – where the average wage is $333 a month – are, like Dolidze, stuck with cheaper, older phones.
Georgia’s unique alphabet is one of the unintended casualties of such digital compromises.
The curvy Georgian alphabet has seduced scholars and calligraphers for centuries, most recently the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization. Last December, UNESCO included the Georgian alphabet in the organization’s register of the intangible cultural heritage of humanity.

Georgian in fact features three scripts – the mkhedruli, the one commonly used today, and the ancient asomtavruli and nushkhuri, used mainly in religious scripts, and in most ancient documents. The three scripts, UNESCO wrote in its citation, “coexist thanks to their different functions, reflecting an aspect of Georgia’s diverse cultural identity.”

Scholar Erna Shirinian Delves into Armenian-Greek and Armenian-Byzantine Relations

Aram Arkun

Normally Dr. Erna Manea Shirinian spends the first half of her workday as a full professor of history at Yerevan State University and then goes in the afternoon to Yerevan’s Mesrop Mashtots Institute of Ancient Manuscripts (“Matenadaran”), where she is head of the department concerned with researching and editing ancient Armenian texts. Fortunately for the Mirror, she was in Boston a few months ago, during the spring, and spoke a little about the state of scholarly affairs in Armenia as well as a conference she was organizing on Tayk.

Born in Akhalkalak, Georgia, Dr. Shirinian began her education in Armenia. Her father did not want her to leave the country, but as a good student, she was sent by her teacher to Russia to learn classical literature and translation. Most of the other students did not continue in academia. When she returned, she was told she could go to specialize in Byzantine Studies in Moscow.

The Tigran Honents Church of Ani Becomes "Georgian Chalcedonian"

The National Park-Museum of Sculpture of Gyumri expressed concern over the Tigran Honents Church of Ani and stated that the policy of Turkey about the falsification of historical facts and incomplete reconstruction of the mentioned church thrusts a wedge into the culture and friendship of neighboring countries. In order to combat the distortion of history, a petition was started at the website change.org.

Time to Demand Cultural Reparations

Hagop Avedikian

The tenth anniversary of the destruction of the khachkar (cross-stone) cemetery in New Julfa and the decision of the Georgians to prevent the entry into Georgia of Samvel Karapetyan, a well-known specialist on Armenian monuments, once again have made the issue of the destruction or usurpation of the treasures of Armenian monuments and spiritual culture in countries neighboring Armenia urgent (the December 18 issue of Azg contains further articles on this issue).

Dangerous Trends Developing in the Caucasus

Edmond Y. Azadian

 

Call it with whatever you wish but realize that an intensifying Cold War is looming on the horizon. The East-West confrontation is gaining momentum and further developments in that direction may soon get out of hand.

There's More to Armenia than the Kardashians

Lucy Westcott

 

Armenia is looking to harness the power of Wikipedia to draw attention to their rich culture, history and language. The government is asking every Armenian to pen one article each to spread the word.

There's also no doubt they wish to remind everyone that there's more to Armenia than popular Eurovision Song Contest entries and the ubiquitous Kardashian clan.

Karabagh Goes “Happy,” Pharrell-Williams-Style

Giorgi Lomsadze

 

Disputed and destitute Nagorno Karabagh has become the latest place to produce a version of Pharrell Williams’ “Happy” video, the fad which has gotten much of the world “clapping along.”

With funky dance moves and a vivacious collection of characters, “We Are Happy from Karabakh,” sponsored by the Los-Angeles-based Armenia Fund, does its best to make separatism look hip. British Baroness Caroline Cox, one of the breakaway territory's most prominent supporters, is featured rocking together with staff and patients at a clinic in the capital, Stepanakert. (*)

The Many Homelands of Sergei Parajanov

Eugenia Sokolskaya

 

Sergei Parajanov was always hard to define, but he was best summed up as “an Armenian born in Georgia and put in a Russian prison for Ukrainian nationalism,” and as one of Soviet film’s creative geniuses.

In comparing Russia to the Soviet Union, one often overlooked point is the sheer number of various ethnicities and nationalities that made up the USSR. The USSR was not just the Russian Federative Republic – it included 14 other republics, politically subjugated, but culturally distinct. In much the same way, Soviet film was not just Russian film: while the Russians had a technological headstart, actors and directors of the various republics eventually came into their own, drawing on their home cultures and methods of storytelling.

Georgia and Armenia: a Spiritual Journey

Peter Hughes

For the people who live there, the upheavals in the Middle East have been disastrous. But for travellers they have also placed many of the region’s great archaeological sites out of bounds, leaving big blanks in the atlas of cultural tours.

Yet one site’s quarantine is another’s discovery, and holidaymakers in need of their annual history fix are casting around for new lands and new epochs for their edification. It was in that prospecting spirit that I went to Transcaucasia and the former Soviet republics of Armenia and Georgia. They were two countries that hitherto had not loomed large on my list of places to go. I was wrong.

The Southern Caucasus Is Turning into a Russian Playground

Aleksandra Jarosiewicz

 

Tension has been rising in the Southern Caucasus over the past few months. This is primarily an effect of the upcoming presidential elections in Georgia and Azerbaijan (October) and the fact that another stage bringing the region closer to the European Union is approaching finalisation. This move towards the EU is to be symbolised by the Eastern Partnership summit in Vilnius (November) and the initialling of the Association Agreements between the countries from this region and the EU. The process of determining the final shape of the Southern Gas Corridor, a strategic project for the EU, is also underway.

In Facing Its Anniversaries, America's Got a Hidden Lever: Armenia

Daniel Gaynor

 

Most Americans wouldn’t be shocked to learn that the largest American embassy in the world is in Baghdad, Iraq. But the second-largest is in a surprising place: Armenia. It begs the question: why?

The best explanation is a real estate mantra: location, location, location. Armenia, a landlocked country with just three million people, might be in the roughest neighborhood in the world. But in America’s eyes, it might be in the most important position of any US ally to advance President Obama’s foreign policy agenda.

What it lacks in natural resources–it has little oil, gas or jewels–it makes up for in geography. Few countries are in better position to shape US foreign policy than Armenia.

15 Years Later: Is It Getting Any Better?

Kristi Rendahl

“Is Armenia getting any better?” I’m asked on a regular basis. Few people hide their skepticism when they ask, but I also hear a hint of desperation in the question. After watching Armenia change over the past 15 years, I’m always happy to respond with plenty of reason for hope.

Corruption by the Numbers

 Garen Yegparian

We hear a lot about corruption, and see various forms of it in our daily lives. Sadly, in some places, such as Armenia, it is present at a disturbing, probably economically disruptive, scale.

For the last two decades, Transparency International and Goettingen University have compiled a “Corruption Perception Index” which is a “poll of polls” as they describe it. They amass others’ studies of corruption in countries throughout the world and produce an annual tabulation of countries with a rating, on a scale of 0-10, where 10 means corruption free and 0 totally corrupt. They require that a minimum of three (formerly four) surveys/studies include a country for that to be included in their index. They have used at least twelve surveys/studies since 1999 (earlier years had fewer). Polling done over the preceding three years is considered valid for inclusion in any year’s compilation. For these reasons, they caution that year-to-year comparisons should not be made easily. But take a look at the accompanying table, and you’ll note the trends in our homeland and its neighbors are pretty consistent.

Karekin II to Barack Obama in 2009: "Unacceptable Situation" in Georgia

His Holiness Karekin II, Catholicos of All Armenians, in December 2009 wrote a letter to U.S. President Barack Obama alerting him to the continued abuses of religious and ethnic minorities in Georgia, a cable released on August 26, 2011 by the whistleblower site WikiLeaks revealed. In his letter, the Catholicos brought the “unacceptable situation” of religious minorities in Georgia to Obama’s attention, noting that the situation has worsened since the collapse of the Soviet Union.

The Phantom Menace

This article in The New York Times (August 15, 2011) by two professors of Georgetown University about unrecognized states deserves some attention. It shows a fresh approach to the problems posed by them, especially under the stubborn insistence of the United States and other countries to stick to the one-sided narrative of "territorial integrity," which, if always followed in history, would have even prevented the Thirteen Colonies from seceding the British empire...

The example of Taiwan shows a way for these "phantom states." Although omitted, the example of Mountainous Karabagh also follows that path. "But transparent government, free elections and a peaceful foreign policy are as vital for phantom states as they are for real ones. If phantom governments behave well, they should be offered a path toward legitimacy by the world’s major powers," write the authors. Karabagh has not only free elections (more transparent than those in Armenia, unfortunately), but also a Constitution, as well as attempts to have a peaceful foreign policy, as much as Azerbaijani provocations do not become a hurdle to it.

Djavajk ya tiene bandera, escudo e himno

El largo proceso de lucha para lograr el autogobierno local y así convertir la región de Djavajk en una región autónoma armenia dentro del marco constitucional de la República de Georgia se ha robustecido con la reciente creación de los símbolos distintivos fundamentales como la bandera, el escudo y el himno regional. Ahora, estos símbolos son, por su sola presencia, una expresión visible de la voluntad autonomista del pueblo de Djavajk.

Recordemos que en la región viven alrededor de 140.000 armenios, quienes constituyen casi el 60% de la población, mientras que los georgianos apenas llegan al 24% del total.