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Armenian SSR
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The Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic ( Haykakan Sovetakan Sotsialistakan Hanrapetutyun; Armyanskaya Sovetskaya Sotsialisticheskaya Respublika), also known as the Armenian SSR for short, was one of the republics that made up the former Soviet Union. It came into being when the Communist Party of Armenia proclaimed control of Armenia on November 29, 1920. On December 1, 1920, Prime Minister Simon Vratsian ceded control of the country. It later changed its name to the Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic. The period is sometimes known as the Second Republic of Armenia, which followed the short lived Democratic Republic of Armenia (also known as the First Republic of Armenia).
From 1828 to the October Revolution in 1917, Armenia was part of the then Russian Empire and confined to the borders of the Erivan Governorate. By Article 4 of the Treaty of Turkmenchay, the Erivan khanate (most of present-day central Armenia), which was a part of Persia was annexed by Russia in 1828.
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, Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia, declared themselves independent from Russian rule and each established their respective republics. After suffering numerous casualties under Ottoman rule during the Armenian Genocide and the subsequent Turkish-Armenian War, the historic Armenian area in the Ottoman Empire was overrun with despair and devastation. When the Democratic Republic of Armenia was invaded by the Bolsheviks in 1920, it was declared a Soviet republic.
Under Soviet rule, the Armenian SSR transformed from a largely agricultural hinterland to an important industrial production center. On August 23, 1990, it was renamed into Republic of Armenia, but remained in the Soviet Union until its official proclamation of independence in 1991.
Government
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 who were part of the plenipotentiary body 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.
EconomyUnder the Soviet system, the centralized economy of the republic banned private ownership of income producing property. Nevertheless, the authorities in Moscow tacitly approved the economic plans in certain republics, including Armenia, that did not strictly adhere to socialist guidelines.
Culture and lifeWith 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. 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 schools, newspapers, and theaters. 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.
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 held 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, responded by saying, "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?" The government of Turkey dropped the issue after this.
History
Sovietization
Many Armenians joined the advancing Bolsheviks including those in the formation of the 20th and 22nd divisions of the 11th Soviet Red Army. Afterwards, 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, Igdir, 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. Stalin also felt that that the Armenian population was far too small to be accorded a republic of its own, and considered instead granting them autonomy under the auspices of another republic. However, Armenian leaders protested, and he reversed his decision.
With the induction into the Soviet Union, Armenians, along with Russians, Ukrainians, Belarusians, Georgians, Germans, and Jews were judged as "advanced" peoples, while other nationalities were deemed culturally backward. 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.
From March 12, 1922 to December 5, 1936, Armenia was part of the Transcaucasian SFSR together with the Georgian SSR and the Azerbaijan SSR. Armenians enjoyed a period of relative stability under Soviet rule. Life under 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 Moscow. Additionally, the Armenian alphabet was reformed to increase literacy among the populace. The situation was difficult for the church, which was regularly criticized in educational books and struggled greatly under Communism.
Stalin's reignAfter the death of Vladimir Lenin in 1924, Joseph Stalin took the reins of power. Armenian society and its economy were changed dramatically by Stalin and his fellow Moscow policy makers. 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, however, conditions only became worse under Stalin's iron fist. 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 Apostolic Church already weakened by the Armenian Genocide and Russification policy of the Russian Empire.
In the 1920s, the Church was robbed of its worldly possessions. Initially, Stalin's attempts to remove religion from the Soviet Union did not immediately reach Armenia. In 1932, for example, Khoren Muradpekyan became known as Khoren I and assumed the title of His Holiness the Catholicos. However, in the late 1930s, the Soviets began attempts to physically eliminate the Church. This culminated in the murder of Khoren in 1938 as part of the Great Purge, and the closing of the Catholicate of Echmiadzin on August 4, 1938. The Church however survived underground and in the diaspora. Talented Armenian leaders of the communist party such as Vagarshak Arutyunovich Ter-Vaganyan and Aghasi Khanjian also fell victim to the Great Purge, the former being a defendant at the first of the Moscow Show Trials.
As with various other ethnic minorities who lived in the Soviet Union under Stalin, tens of thousands of innocent Armenians were executed and deported. In 1936, Lavrenty 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. Under Beria's command, the Communist Party of Armenia used police terror to strengthen its political hold on the population and suppress all expressions of nationalism. Many writers, artists, scientists and political leaders 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 occurred in 1948, when 58,000 nationalist Armenian Dashnak supporters and Greeks were forced to move to Kazakhstan.
World War IIArmenia was spared the devastation and destruction that wrought most of the western Soviet Union during the Great Patriotic War of World War II. The Nazis 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 aiding the allies both through industry and agriculture. Many Armenians served in the war, with many attaining the highest rank of Hero of the Soviet Union.
Armenian Army General Hovhannes Bagramyan (later on a Marshal of the Soviet Union) was 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. For recapturing the river Dniester, he was awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union.
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. Armenia contributed an estimated 300-500,000 men to the war effort, nearly half did not return. Additionally, there were a total of 50 generals among other senior officers who served in the Soviet armed forces during the war.
Stalin temporarily relented his attacks on religion during the war. This led to the election of bishop Gevork II as the new Catholicos in 1945. He was subsequently allowed to reside in Echmiadzin.
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, Igdir, and Ardahan that Armenia had lost to Turkey in the Treaty of Kars. On September 25, 1945, the Soviet Union announced that it would annul the Soviet-Turkish treaty of friendship that was signed in 1925. Head Soviet diplomat Vyacheslav Molotov, presented the claims put forth by the Armenians to the leaders of the Allies of World War II however opposition stemmed from British leader Winston Churchill who objected to these territorial claims.
Turkey itself was in no condition to fight a war with the Soviet Union which had emerged as a superpower after the second world war. By the autumn of 1945, Soviet troops in the Caucasus were already assembling for a possible invasion of Turkey. However, as the feelings of hostility between the East and West had transpired into the Cold War, while Turkey had strengthened its ties with the West, the Soviet Union ceased its claims over the lost territories - realizing that the United States might enter and aid Turkey in such a conflict.
Armenian immigrationWith the republic suffering heavy losses after the war, Stalin allowed an open immigration policy in Armenia where 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 and were presented the option of having the expenses paid by the Soviet government for their trip back to Armenia. An estimated 150,000 Armenians emigrated to Soviet Armenia in the time period from 1946 to 1948.
Lured with numerous incentives such as food coupons, better housing and other benefits, they were often viewed with contempt by Armenians living in the Republic when arriving there and also since most of them spoke the Western Armenian dialect of the Armenian language (contrary to the Eastern Armenian spoken in Armenia). They were often addressed as aghbar (?????) or "brother" by Armenians living in the Republic due to their different pronunciation of the word. Although initially used in a good sense of humor, the word went on to carry on a more pejorative connotation. One of them, who immigrated with his family as a baby, Syrian-born Levon Ter-Petrossian, would reach the highest office of the republic in the 1990s.
Revival under Khrushchev
Following a power struggle after Stalin's death in 1953, Nikita Khrushchev emerged as the country's new leader. The Kremlin soon began a process allowing for greater expression of national feeling. Khrushchev's De-Stalinization process also eased fears for many Soviet residents. Additionally, he 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 Khruschev's advisers and close friends, Armenian politburo member Anastas Mikoyan urged Armenians to affirm 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 that were earlier banned" indicating that Mikoyan himself "harbored such sentiments."
On April 24, 1965, thousands of Armenians demonstrated in the streets of Yerevan during the fiftieth anniversary of the Armenian Genocide. 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. By 1967, the memorial (designed by 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 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. Along the park at the memorial there is a 100 meter wall with names of towns and villages where massacres are known to have taken place.
Many Armenians rose to prominence during this era including one of Khruschev's friends, Mikoyan, who was the older brother of the designer and co-founder of the Soviet MiG fighter jet company, Artem Mikoyan. Other famous Soviet Armenians included composer Aram Khachaturyan, who wrote the ballets Spartacus and Gayane that featured the well known "Sabre Dance", and also renowned astrophysicist and astronomer Viktor Hambartsumyan.
Under BrezhnevAfter Leonid Brezhnev assumed power in 1964, much of Khruschev's reforms were reversed. The Brezhnev era entered into a new state of stagnation and saw a decline in both the qualities and quantities of products in the Soviet Union. Armenia was severely affected by these policies, as demonstrated several years later in the 1988 Spitak earthquake. New homes being built during the 1970s largely had materials such as cement and concrete being diverted for other uses. Bribery and a lack of oversight saw the completion of poorly built and weakly supported apartment buildings. As the earthquake hit on the morning of December 7, 1988, the houses and apartments that collapsed the most effortlessly were the ones built during the Brezhnev years. It was said that the older the date of the dwellings, the better they withstood the quake. Brezhnev's policies continued in trend following the subsequent changes in the leadership in the early 1980s.
The Gorbachev eraMikhail 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. 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 peaceful, democratic movement to unite the area with Armenia. The majority Armenian population in the area claimed to be fearful of the "forced Azerification" of the region. On February 20, 1988, Armenian deputies to the National Council of Nagorno-Karabakh voted to unify that region with Armenia. 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 riots began breaking out between both Armenians and Azeris, thus 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 Gorbachev's rejection to Armenia demands, the Soviet leader was viewed favorably by Armenians. As Gorbachev refused to change his stance on the issue, his standing amongst Armenians deteriorated sharply.
IndependenceOn May 5, 1990, Armenians took part in creating the New Armenian Army (NAA), a defense force that was to serve as a separate entity from the Soviet Union's military. On May 27, many Armenians planned on celebrating the anniversary of the creating of the first Armenian republic which fell on May 28. However, with the presence of Soviet MVD troops based in Yerevan, hostilities broke between the NAA and resulted in the deaths of five Armenians killed in a shootout between the MVD at the railway station. Witnesses there claimed that the MVD has used an excessive amount of force in the firefight and claimed that they had instigated the fighting. Further firefights between Armenian militiamen and the MVD in a town near the capital, Sovetashen, resulted in the deaths of over twenty-six people as the May 28 celebration was cancelled indefinitely.
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. On August 23, 1991, Armenia became one of the first republics to declare independence from the Soviet Union. Armenia's urges to break away from the Soviet Union largely stemmed from Moscow's intransigence on Karabakh, mishandling of the earthquake and the shortcomings of the socialist economy.
On September 21, 1991, the state of Armenia became fully recognized and re-established. With Armenia's independence, tensions between Armenia and Azerbaijan continued to escalate, ultimately leading to the Nagorno-Karabakh War. Despite a cease-fire in place since 1994, Armenia has yet to resolve its conflict with Azerbaijan over Nagorno-Karabakh. Aside from this, Armenia 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 important regional power Russia.
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