Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic

From 1828 to the October Revolution in 1917, Armenia was part of the then Russian Empire and largely confined to the borders of the Erivan Governorate. After the October Revolution, Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin's government announced that minorities in the empire could pursue a course of self-determination. Following the collapse of the empire, in May 1918 Armenia, and its neighbors Azerbaijan and Georgia, declared their independence from Russian rule and each established their respective republics.^[1] After the near-annihilation of the Armenians during the Armenian Genocide and the subsequent Turkish-Armenian War, the historic Armenian area in the Ottoman Empire was overrun with despair and devastation.

A number of Armenians joined the advancing 11th Soviet Red Army. Afterward, both Turkey and the newly proclaimed Soviet republic negotiated the Treaty of Kars, in which Turkey ceded Adjara to the USSR in exchange for the Kars territory, corresponding to the modern day Turkish provinces of Kars, Iğdır, and Ardahan. The medieval Armenian capital of Ani, as well as the spiritual icon of the Armenian people Mount Ararat, were located in the ceded area. Additionally, Joseph Stalin, then acting Commissar for nationalities, granted the areas of Nakhchivan and Nagorno-Karabakh (both of which were promised to Armenia by the Bolsheviks in 1920) to Azerbaijan.^[2]

From March 12, 1922 to December 5, 1936, Armenia was a part of the Transcaucasian SFSR (TSFSR) together with the Georgian SSR and the Azerbaijan SSR. The policies of the first Soviet Armenian government, the Revkom, headed by young and inexperienced communists, were implemented in a highhanded manner and did not take into consideration the poor conditions of the republic and the general weariness of the people after years of conflict and civil strife. As the Soviet Armenian historian Bagrat Borian wrote in 1929:

The Revolutionary Committee started a series of indiscriminate seizures and and confiscations, without regard to class, and without taking into account the general economic and psychological state of the peasantry. Devoid of revolutionary planning, and executed with needless brutality, these confiscations were unorganized and promiscuous. Unattended by disciplinary machinery, without preliminary propaganda or enlightenment, and with utter disregard of the country's unusually distressing condition, the Revolutionary Committee issued its orders nationalizing food supply of the cities and peasantry. With amazing recklessness and unconcern, they seized and nationalized everything – military uniforms, artisan tools, rice mills, water mills, barbers' implements, beehives, linen, household furniture, and livestock.^[3]

Convinced that these acts were alienating the native population, in 1921 Moscow appointed an experienced administrator, Alexander Miasnikyan (1886-1925), to carry out a more sensitive and moderate policy. With the introduction of the New Economic Policy, Armenians began to enjoy a period of relative stability. Life in the Soviet Union proved to be a soothing balm in contrast to the turbulent final years of the Ottoman Empire. The Armenians received medicine, food, as well as other provisions from the central government and extensive literacy reforms were carried out.^[4] The situation was difficult for the Armenian Apostolic Church, however, which became a regular target in educational books and in the media and struggled greatly under Communism.

After the death of Vladimir Lenin in January 1924, there was a brief power struggle in the Soviet Union, from which Joseph Stalin rose to take the reins of power. Armenian society and its economy were changed by Stalin and his fellow Moscow policymakers. In 1936, the TSFSR was dissolved under Stalin's orders and the socialist republics of Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia were established instead. For the Armenian people, conditions grew worse under Stalin's rule. In a period of twenty-five years, Armenia was industrialized and educated under strictly prescribed conditions, and nationalism was harshly suppressed.

Stalin took several measures in persecuting the Armenian Church, already weakened by the Armenian Genocide and the Russification policies of the Russian Empire.^[5] In the 1920s, the private property of the church was confiscated and priests were harassed. Soviet assaults against the Armenian Church accelerated under Stalin, beginning in 1929, but momentarily eased in the following years to improve the country's relations with the Armenian Diaspora.^[6] In 1932, Khoren Muradpekyan became known as Khoren I and assumed the title of His Holiness the Catholicos. However, in the late 1930s, the Soviets renewed their attacks against Church.^[7] This culminated in the murder of Khoren in 1938 as part of the Great Purge, and the closing of the Catholicosate of Echmiatsin on August 4, 1938. The Church, however, managed to survive underground and in the diaspora.^[8]

The Great Purge was a series of campaigns of political repression and persecution in the Soviet Union orchestrated against members of the Communist Party, the peasantry, writers and intellectuals, and other unaffiliated persons. In September 1937 Stalin dispatched Anastas Mikoyan, along with Georgy Malenkov and Lavrentiy Beria, with a list of 300 names to Yerevan to oversee the liquidation of the Communist Party of Armenia (CPA), which was largely made up of Old Bolsheviks. Armenian communist leaders such as Vagharshak Ter-Vahanyan and Aghasi Khanjian fell victim to the purge, the former being a defendant at the first of the Moscow Show Trials. Mikoyan tried, but failed, to save one from being executed during his trip to Armenia. That person was arrested during one of his speeches to the CPA by Beria. Over a thousand people were arrested and seven of nine members of the Armenian Politburo were sacked from office.^[9]

As with various other ethnic minorities who lived in the Soviet Union under Stalin, tens of thousands of Armenians were executed and deported. In 1936, Beria and Stalin worked to deport Armenians to Siberia in an attempt to bring Armenia's population under 700,000 in order to justify an annexation into Georgia.^[8] Under Beria's command, police terror was used to strengthen the party's political hold on the population and suppress all expressions of nationalism. Many writers, artists, scientists and political leaders, including the writer Axel Bakunts and the celebrated poet Yeghishe Charents, were executed or forced into exile. Additionally, in 1944, roughly 200,000 Hamshenis (Sunni Muslim Armenians who live near the Black Sea coastal regions of Russia, Georgia and Turkey) were deported from Georgia to areas of Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. Further deportations of Armenians from the coastal region occurred in 1948, when 58,000 nationalist Armenian Dashnak supporters and Greeks were forced to move to Kazakhstan.^[10]

Armenia was spared the devastation and destruction that wrought most of the western Soviet Union during the Great Patriotic War of World War II. The Wehrmacht never reached the South Caucasus, which they intended to do in order to capture the oil fields in Azerbaijan. Still, Armenia played a valuable role in the war in providing food, manpower and war matériel. An estimated 300–500,000 Armenians served in the war, almost half of whom did not return.^[11] Many attained the highest rank of Hero of the Soviet Union.^[12] Over sixty Armenians were promoted to the rank of general, and with an additional four eventually achieving the rank of Marshal of the Soviet Union: Ivan Bagramyan (the first non-Slavic commander to hold the position of front commander when he was assigned to be the commander of the First Baltic Front in 1943), Admiral Ivan Isakov, Hamazasp Babadzhanian, and Sergei Khudyakov.^[12] The Soviet government, in an effort to shore up popular support for the war, also allowed for token expressions of nationalism with the re-publication of Armenian novels, the production of films such as David Bek (1944), and the easing of restrictions placed against the Church.^[13] Stalin temporarily relented his attacks on religion during the war. This led to the election of bishop Gevork in 1945 as new Catholicos Gevork VI. He was subsequently allowed to reside in Echmiatsin.^[14]

Some Armenians who were captured by the Germans as POWs opted to serve in German battalions rather than risk life-threatening conditions in POW camps. As with many Soviet soldiers who surrendered to German forces during fighting, Armenians were punished by Stalin and sent to work at labor camps located in Siberia.

At the end of the war, after Germany's capitulation, many Armenians in both the Republic and worldwide lobbied Stalin to reconsider the issue of taking back the provinces of Kars, Iğdır, and Ardahan that Armenia had lost to Turkey in the Treaty of Kars.^[15] In September, 1945, the Soviet Union announced that it would annul the Soviet-Turkish treaty of friendship that was signed in 1925. Soviet Minister of Foreign Affairs Vyacheslav Molotov presented the claims put forth by the Armenians to the other Allied heads.

Turkey itself was in no condition to fight against the Soviet Union, which had emerged as a superpower after the war. By the autumn of 1945, Soviet troops in the Caucasus were already assembling for a possible invasion of Turkey. However, as the hostility between the East and West developed into the Cold War, especially after the issuing of the Truman Doctrine in 1947, Turkey strengthened its ties with the West. The Soviet Union relinquished its claims over the lost territories, understanding that the newly formed NATO would intervene on Turkey's side in the event of a conflict.^[16]

With the republic suffering heavy losses after the war, Stalin allowed an open immigration policy in Armenia; the diaspora was invited to settle in and revitalize the country's population and bolster its workforce. Armenians living in countries such as Cyprus, France, Greece, Iraq, Lebanon, and Syria were primarily the survivors or the descendants of the Genocide. They were offered the option of having their expenses paid by the Soviet government for their trip back to their homeland. An estimated 150,000 Armenians immigrated to Soviet Armenia between 1946 and 1948.^[17]

Lured by numerous incentives such as food coupons, better housing and other benefits, they were often viewed with contempt by Armenians living in the Republic on their arrival. The new arrivals spoke the Western Armenian dialect, instead of the Eastern Armenian spoken in Soviet Armenia. They were often addressed as aghbar (աղբար) or "brother" by Armenians living in the Republic due to their different pronunciation of the word. Although initially used in humor, the word went on to carry on a more pejorative connotation.^[18]

Following a power struggle after Stalin's death in 1953, Nikita Khrushchev emerged as the country's new leader. In a secret speech he gave in 1956, Khrushchev denounced Stalin and his domestic policies largely loosened the government's grip over the country. Khrushchev put more resources into the production of consumer goods and housing. Almost immediately, Armenia began a rapid cultural and economic rebirth. To a limited degree, some religious freedom was granted to Armenia when Catholicos Vazgen I assumed the duties of his office in 1955. One of Khrushchev's advisers and close friends, Armenian Politburo member Anastas Mikoyan, urged Armenians to reaffirm their national identity. In 1954, he gave a speech in Yerevan where he encouraged them to republish the works of writers such as Raffi and Charents.^[19]

In the eyes of early Soviet policymakers, Armenians, along with Russians, Ukrainians, Belarusians, Georgians, Germans, and Jews were deemed "advanced" (as opposed to "backward") peoples, and were grouped together with Western nationalities.^[20] The Caucasus and particularly Armenia were recognized by academic scholars and in Soviet textbooks as the "oldest civilisation on the territory" of the Soviet Union.^[21]

On 24 April 1965, thousands of Armenians demonstrated in the streets of Yerevan during the fiftieth anniversary of the Armenian Genocide.^[22] Soviet troops entered the city and attempted to restore order. To prevent this from happening again, the Kremlin agreed to have a memorial built in honor of those who perished during the atrocities. In November 1967, the memorial (designed by the architects Kalashian and Mkrtchyan) was completed at the Tsitsernakaberd hill above the Hrazdan gorge in Yerevan. The 44-meter stele symbolizes the national rebirth of the Armenians. Twelve slabs are positioned in a circle, representing twelve lost provinces in present day Turkey. In the center of the circle, in depth of 1.5 meters, there is an eternal flame. A 100-meter wall around the memorial's park contains the names of towns and villages where massacres are known to have taken place.

Many Armenians rose to prominence during this era, including one of Khrushchev's friends, Mikoyan, who was the older brother of the designer and co-founder of the Soviet MiG fighter jet company, Artem Mikoyan. Other famed Soviet Armenians included composer Aram Khachaturyan, who wrote the ballets Spartacus and Gayane that featured the well known "Sabre Dance", the renowned astrophysicist and astronomer Viktor Hambartsumyan, and popular literary figures Paruyr Sevak, Sero Khanzadyan, Hovhannes Shiraz, and Silva Kaputikyan.

After Leonid Brezhnev assumed power in 1964, much of Khruschev's reforms were reversed. The Brezhnev era began a new state of stagnation, and saw a decline in both the quality and quantity of products in the Soviet Union. Armenia was severely affected by these policies, as was to be demonstrated several years later in the catastrophic earthquake that hit Spitak. Material such as cement and concrete allocated to the building of new homes was diverted for other uses. Bribery and a lack of oversight saw the construction of shoddily built and weakly supported apartment buildings. When the earthquake hit on the morning of December 7, 1988, the houses and apartments least able to resist collapse were those built during the Brezhnev years. Ironically, the older the dwellings, the better they withstood the quake.^[23]

Mikhail Gorbachev's introduction of the policies of Glasnost and Perestroika in the 1980s also fueled Armenian visions of a better life under Soviet rule. The Hamshenis who were deported by Stalin to Kazakhstan began petitioning for the government to move them to the Armenian SSR. This move was denied by the Soviet government because of fears that the Muslim Hamshenis might spark ethnic conflicts with their Christian Armenian cousins.^[10] However, another event that occurred during this time made an ethnic clash between Christian Armenians and Muslims inevitable.

Armenians in the region of Nagorno-Karabakh, which was promised to Armenia by the Bolsheviks but transferred to the Azerbaijan SSR by Stalin, began a movement to unite the area with Armenia. The majority Armenian population expressed concern about the forced "Azerification" of the region.^[24] On February 20, 1988, the Supreme Soviet of the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast voted to unify with Armenia.^[25] Demonstrations took place in Yerevan showing support for the Karabakh Armenians. Azerbaijani authories encouraged counter demonstrations. However, these soon broke down into violence against Armenians in the city of Sumgait.

Soon, ethnic rioting broke out between Armenians and Azeris, preventing a solid unification from taking place. A formal petition written to Gorbachev and senior leaders in Moscow asked for the unification of the enclave with Armenia, but the claim was rejected in the spring of 1988. Until then, the Soviet leader had been viewed favorably by Armenians, but following his refusal to alter his stance on the issue, Gorbachev's standing among Armenians deteriorated sharply.

Tension between central and local government heightened in the final years of the Soviet Union's existence. On May 5, 1990, the New Armenian Army (NAA), a defense force envisioned to serve as a separate entity from the Soviet Union's military, was created. A celebration was planned for May 28, the anniversary of the creation of the first Armenian republic. However, on May 27 hostilities broke out between the NAA and the MVD troops based in Yerevan, resulting in the deaths of five Armenians in a shootout at the railway station. Witnesses claimed that the MVD had used an excessive amount of force in the firefight and insisted that it had instigated the fighting. Further firefights between Armenian militiamen and the MVD in nearby Sovetashen resulted in the deaths of twenty-six people and an indefinite cancellation of the May 28 celebration.

On March 17, 1991, Armenia, along with the Baltics, Georgia and Moldova, boycotted a union-wide referendum in which 78% of all voters voted for the retention of the Soviet Union in a reformed form.^[26] On August 23, 1991, Armenia became one of the first republics to declare independence from the Soviet Union. Armenia's desire to break away from the Soviet Union largely stemmed from Moscow's intransigence on Karabakh, mishandling of the earthquake relief effort, and the shortcomings of the Soviet economy.

On September 21, 1991, Armenia declared its independence. Tensions between Armenia and Azerbaijan continued to escalate, ultimately leading to the outbreak of the Nagorno-Karabakh War. Despite a cease-fire in place since 1994, Armenia has yet to resolve its conflict with Azerbaijan over Nagorno-Karabakh. The country, however, has seen substantial development since independence and, although blockaded by both Turkey and Azerbaijan over the Karabakh dispute, maintains friendly relations with its neighboring states of Georgia and Iran, as well as Russia, the important regional power.

On July 5, 1995, the new constitution of the Republic of Armenia was adopted.

The structure of government in the Armenian SSR was identical to that of the other Soviet republics. The highest political body of the republic was the Armenian Supreme Soviet, which included the highest judicial branch of the Republic, the Supreme Court. Members of the Supreme Soviet served for a term of five years, whereas regional deputies served for two and a half years. All officials holding office were mandated to be members of the Communist Party and sessions were convened in the Supreme Soviet building in Yerevan.

Under the Soviet system, the centralized economy of the republic banned private ownership of income producing property. Beginning in the late 1920s, privately owned farms in Armenia were collectivized and placed under the directive of the state, although this was often met with active resistance by the peasantry. During the same time (1929–1936), the government also began the process of industrialization in Armenia. By 1935, the gross product of agriculture was 132% of that of 1928 and the gross product of industry was 650% to that of 1928. The economic revolution of the 1930s, however, came at a great cost: it broke up the traditional peasant family and village institution and forced many living in the rural countryside to settle in urban areas. Private enterprise came to a virtual end as it was effectively brought under government control.^[27]

With the establishment of the Republic, Soviet authorities worked tenaciously to eliminate certain elements in society, in whole or in part, such as nationalism and religion, to strengthen the cohesiveness of the Union. At first, Armenia was not impacted significantly by the policies set forth by Lenin's government. Prior to his debilitating illness, Lenin encouraged the policy of Korenizatsiya or "nativization" in the republics which essentially called for the different nationalities of the Soviet Union to "administer their republics", establishing native-language schools, newspapers, and theaters.^[28] In Armenia, the Soviet government stipulated that all illiterate citizens up to the age of fifty were to attend school and learn Armenian, which became the official language of the republic. Adhering to the socialist dictum of "National in form, socialist in content," an institute for culture and history was established in 1921 in Echmiatsin, a dramatic theater in Yerevan in 1922, important historical studies were prepared by a new cadre of Soviet-trained scholars, and popular works in the fields of art and literature were produced by such luminaries as Martiros Saryan, Avetik Isahakian and Yeghishe Charents. The first Armenian film studio, Armenkino, released the first fiction film, Namus (Honor) in 1925 and the first sound film Pepo, both directed by Hamo Bek-Nazarov.^[29]

Like all the other republics of the Soviet Union, Armenia had its own flag and coat of arms. The latter became a source of dispute between the Soviet Union and Turkey in the 1950s when Turkey complained as to why it contained the image of Mount Ararat, which holds a deeply symbolic importance to Armenians but is located on Turkish territory. Turkey felt that by having the image on the flag, the Soviet Union was making a territorial claim against it. Nikita Khrushchev, the leader of the Soviet Union at the time, retorted by asking: "Why do you have a moon depicted on your flag? After all, the moon doesn't belong to Turkey, not even half the moon ... Do you want to take over the whole universe?"^[30] The government of Turkey dropped the issue after this.^[31]

• Template:Hy icon Aghayan, Tsatur., et al. (eds.), Հայ Ժողովրդի Պատմություն [History of the Armenian People], vols. 7 and 8. Yerevan: Armenian Academy of Sciences, 1967, 1970.
• Template:Hy icon Armenian Soviet Encyclopedia. Yerevan: Armenian Academy of Sciences, 1974–1987, 12 volumes.
• Aslanyan, A. A. et al. Soviet Armenia. Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1971.
• Matossian, Mary Kilbourne. The Impact of Soviet Policies in Armenia. Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1962, ISBN 0-8305-0081-2.
• Suny, Ronald Grigor. "Soviet Armenia," in The Armenian People From Ancient to Modern Times, Volume II: Foreign Dominion to Statehood: The Fifteenth Century to the Twentieth Century, ed. Richard G. Hovannisian, New York: St. Martin's Press, 1997.
• Walker, Christopher J. Armenia: The Survival of a Nation. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 1990.

• Armenia: big strides in an ancient land by Anton Kochinyan
• Melkonian, Eduard: "Repressions in 1930s Soviet Armenia" in the Caucasus Analytical digest No. 22

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