Tag: soviet

Albanians and Armenians are different peoples with different histories. However, there is value in analyzing the conflict comparatively, both through engaging with scholarship on the region and, on a practical level, with Kosovo's experience.

While innovation is increasingly being acknowledged as key to a country’s competitiveness in global markets, contributions of the humanities and social sciences to the body of knowledge are largely left out of debates.

This next installment in a series of articles on Yerevan looks at issues concerning the transportation infrastructure, most importantly, the need for a modern public transport system, something that has plagued the capital since independence.

A response to Gaidz Minassian’s article that explored the asphyxiating spirit of the “village” pitted against the “polity” argues that renouncing the village in favor of the polity may be redundant, since the village might be all that we have.

A disciple of Shahumyan, Anastas Mikoyan was a native of the village of Sanahin, in the historical Lori region of Armenia. A survivor from Il’ich Lenin to Il’ich Brezhnev, he became renowned both in the Soviet Union and internationally for his role as a consummate diplomat and for his management of foreign trade. However, less well known has been Mikoyan’s role in Armenian affairs. Although forced by Stalin to participate in the 1930s repressions in Armenia, he would later become the major force behind de-Stalinization in his native republic. He also worked behind the scenes as an informal lobbyist for Yerevan in Moscow, securing key support for Armenia from the Kremlin. The series is hosted by historian Pietro A. Shakarian and produced by Sona Nersesyan.

The first in a series of articles about the challenges facing Armenia’s capital city, Yerevan, examines the issues of urban planning and development.

Although Armenia did not see any combat during the Second World War, known throughout the post-Soviet space as the Great Patriotic War, both Armenia and Artsakh sacrificed disproportionately to the rest of the Union.

While the recent wave of Russians moving to Armenia following the invasion of Ukraine has been surprising to some, it’s worth pointing out that Yerevan has hosted successions of Russian emigre communities for quite a long time now.

In light of Azerbaijan’s aggressive military operations, the international community’s response and the formation of a format for the delimitation and demarcation process, Sossi Tatikyan offers comprehensive suggestions on potential formats and phases.

How a black evening handbag found among countless items in Yerevan’s largest flea market revealed a paradigmatic shift from the egalitarian criteria of Soviet ideology, which accorded functional objects with purely practical properties.

Attitudes toward food and culinary art can reveal much about a people’s past and future. Ella Kanagerian writes that we are trying to work with our cultural influences and approach the concept of national cuisine more consciously.

Although performance art has practically disappeared from the contemporary art scene as an autonomous medium, early practitioners had a profound impact in changing perceptions of the body in Armenia’s post-independence culture.

The Treaty of Moscow reaffirmed, almost identically, the borders laid out in the Treaty of Alexandropol. Armenia, thus, conceded 20,000 square kilometers to Turkey. Mikayel Yalanuzyan reveals the details of those turbulent times.

The Armenian love for following trends is something that is a part of the collective cultural and political history. And that tendency became stronger after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

The majority of the music we hear in contemporary Armenian films and TV-series are simply plucked from the Internet with little regard for copyright issues, professionalism or the suitability of the tracks.

Yerevan’s iconic Youth Palace was demolished in 2006. While it still remains unclear who and what will fill the void the Youth Palace left behind, its spirit continues to live in the memories of those whose youth was interwoven with its existence.

Armenia’s Physics Institute with its Cosmic Ray Division is trying to overcome many challenges by collaborating with different international institutes. A new generation of scientists believe that more investment is needed to support research and science.

A story weaving together the fragments of a woman’s life who organized the chaos of reality into a sensible and livable realm offhandedly called “home” but no one recognized it until she was gone.

Mariam and Eranuhi Aslamazyan are two of the most well-known female painters of Soviet Armenia. They broke stereotypes in the art world and left behind a rich legacy and heritage.

The late Samvel Karapetyan's work goes beyond Armenian heritage: It is a luminous testimony that highlights the violence of certain states to annihilate an indigenous culture with impunity.

Jazz and Armenia have a complicated history. From its early beginnings under Soviet rule to contemporary interpretations of jazz, the genre is part of the fabric of Armenian cultural life.

The 1986 Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant accident was considered the worst nuclear disaster in history. It exposed hundreds of thousands of people to high levels of radiation, killing dozens and affecting millions across Europe. Experts from all over the Soviet Union were sent to “liquidate” the effects of the radiation. Among them were several thousand Armenians.

Public Radio of Yerevan, known as Radyoya Erîvané or Erivan Radyosu* beyond the Armenian-Turkish border, has left a mark in the memories of thousands of Kurds across the Middle East, Europe and the former Soviet republics. Throughout the years when Kurdish language and culture were banned in Turkey, Radio Yerevan served as a bridge between the Kurdish people and their culture.

Three decades after the catastrophic Spitak Earthquake, Hovhannes Nazaretyan takes a look back at how that tragedy was covered by one of America’s most prestigious newspapers.

Thirty years ago, a devastating earthquake ripped through northern Armenia, killing over 25 thousand people, destroying buildings, decimating entire villages and in its ominous wake, leaving a people traumatized. Today, 30 years on, Gyumri, one of the hardest hit cities, is rising.

A prominent Armenian Bolshevik activist and head of the Baku Commune Stepan Shahumyan’s ghost now wanders through his native Caucasus. Armenians have largely forgotten his century-old verbal attacks on nationalism and insistence on internationalist fraternity of peoples, yet his statues remain and streets, villages and towns are named after him in Armenia and Artsakh.

Even after Armenia gained independence from the Soviet Union, it is still reliant on many Soviet-built (sometimes very poorly built) infrastructure that can prove to be dangerous to local communities, flora and fauna, as well as the country’s economy and national security.

If we look at how many monuments have been erected in Yerevan and how many were dismantled, we’ll have an extensive overview of the political currents and ideological tendencies that swept through the country since independence. As per the list provided by Yerevan Municipality, 51 statues and busts were erected in Yerevan since 1991.

Born in Gyumri in the late 19th century, Sergey Merkurov is considered the greatest Soviet master of death masks. He was highly sought after to take the death masks of various Soviet luminaries and leaders, as well as prominent cultural figures of the era.

As Armenians prepare to mark the centennial of the First Armenian Republic (1918-1920), Varak Ketsemanian writes that there seems to be little consensus regarding its true meaning, its contested legacy and the various forms through which it should be commemorated.

Tatevik Hayrapetyan writes that the Karabakh Movement was a catalyst for domestic developments in Azerbaijan. Unlike in Armenia, however, alternative forces like the Azerbaijani Popular Front in Azerbaijan, couldn’t find a way to collaborate with the local Communist Party. The issue of Karabakh and anti-Armenian propaganda was thereby used in their struggle against the Communist regime.

For decades, production of historical texts in Armenia was in the tight grip of Soviet state ideology. Post-independence, some topics previously repressed or omitted found their way back into Armenian history textbooks, however “memory gaps” remain.

In this exceptionally honest and candid article, Gevorg Ter-Gabrielyan writes about his impressions from the first few months of the Karabakh Movement 30 years ago, with words he did not have nor could find at the time.

The Karabakh Movement was a crystallizing moment in the collective and historical memory of the Armenian nation. In this first in a series of articles about the Movement, EVN Report presents a chronology of the events of 1988 which eventually paved the way to independence.

An extensive collection of vintage Soviet glassware has found a home in Gyumri, Armenia’s second largest city. Boasting over 1600 pieces, the collection was carefully curated by collector Artush Mkrtchyan. Arpine Haroyan unfolds the history of the collection to its post-WWII origins.

The Diaspora has been an inherent component of Armenian reality since antiquity. Its enduring roots, affluent heritage and indispensability to the Armenian nation is difficult to challenge. This article examines the global entrepreneurial endowment of the Diaspora, how it developed and what its role can be today for the Republic of Armenia.

This special section is a historical overview of the disputed region of the Republic of Artsakh (Nagorno Karabakh Republic, NKR), one of the last unresolved conflicts in the former Soviet space.