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COPYRIGHT 2000 Gale Group, COPYRIGHT 2005 Thomson Gale, a part of The Thomson Corporation
ARMENIAN AMERICANS
OVERVIEW
The estimated 700,000 Americans of Armenian ancestry are descended from an ancient nation located at the borders of modern Russia, Turkey, and Iran. Through much of the past 4,000 years, Armenians have been a subjugated people with no independent state until September 23, 1991, when the Soviet Union dissolved and the 3,400,000 people in that area voted to form a new Republic of Armenia.
HISTORY
The Armenian homeland lies at the crossroads of Asia Minor, which links Europe with the Middle and Far East. The plateau's original settlers, beginning about 2800 B.C., were the various Aryan tribes of Armens and Hayasas who later melded to form the Urartu civilization and kingdom (860-580 B.C.). These settlers developed advanced skills in farming and metal work. The Armenian civilization managed to survive despite a steady succession of wars and occupations by much larger groups, including the Hittites, Assyrians, Parthians, Medes, Macedonians, Romans, Persians, Byzantines, Tartars, Mongols, Turks, Soviet Russians, and now Azerbaijanis, in the 25 centuries that followed. The capital city of Armenia today, Yerevan (population 1.3 million), celebrated its 2,775th anniversary in 1993.
The long history of the Armenian nation has been punctuated by triumphs over adversity. In 301A.D., the small kingdom of Armenia became the first to adopt Christianity as its national religion, some 20 years before Constantine declared it the state religion of the Roman empire. In 451, when Persia ordered a return to paganism, Armenia's small army defiantly stood firm to defend its faith; at the Battle of Avarair, Persia's victory over these determined martyrs proved so costly that it finally allowed Armenians to maintain their religious freedom. By the time European Crusaders in the twelfth century entered the Near East to "liberate" the Holy Land from the Moslems, they found prosperous Armenian communities thriving among the Moslems, while maintaining the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem and other Christian sites. Under 400 years of Ottoman Turkish rule (1512-1908), the Christian Armenian minority—an industrious, educated elite within the Sultan's empire—had risen to a position of trust and influence. One such subject of the Sultan, Calouste Gulbenkian, later became the world's first billionaire through negotiations with seven Western oil companies that sought Arabian oil in the 1920s.
"I should like to see any power of the world destroy this race, this small tribe of unimportant people, whose history is ended, whose wars have been fought and lost, whose structures have crumbled, whose literature is unread, whose prayers are no longer answered.... For when two of them meet anywhere in the world, see if they will not create a new Armenia!
During World War I (1915-1920), with the collapse of the Ottoman empire and the rise of Pan-Turkish nationalism, the Turkish government attempted to eradicate the Armenian nation in what is now termed "the first genocide of the twentieth century." One million Turkish Armenians were slaughtered, while the other million survivors were cast from their Anatolian homeland into a global diaspora that remains to this day.
THE ARMENIAN REPUBLIC
On May 28, 1918, facing death, some Armenians declared an independent Armenian state in the northeast corner of Turkey. Facing the stronger Turkish army, the short-lived Republic quickly accepted Russian protection in 1920. In 1936 it became the Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic (ASSR), the smallest of the Union's 15 republics, occupying only the northeastern ten percent of the territory of historic Armenia. (The remaining 90 percent in Eastern Turkey lies empty of Armenians today.) Though Stalin successfully encouraged some 200,000 diaspora Armenians to "return" to Soviet Armenia after World War II, the Stalin years were marked by political and economic oppression. On September 23, 1991, with the Soviet Union dissolving, citizens of Armenia overwhelmingly voted to form another independent republic. As of 1995, Armenia is one of only two of the 15 former Soviet states not headed by a former communist, now maintaining a free press and vigorous new multi-party system that it has not had before.
Armenia is still recovering from a severe 1988 earthquake that destroyed several cities and killed some 50,000 people. Also since 1988, Armenia has been embroiled in a painful armed conflict with larger, Moslem Azerbaijan, resulting in a blockade of Armenia, and dire shortages of food, fuel, and supplies. The fighting is over Nagorno-Karabakh, an ethnic Armenian enclave in Azerbaijan which wants to break away from Azerbaijani rule. A cease-fire went into effect in 1994 but little progress has been made towards a permanent peaceful resolution. Disagreements within the government over the peace process led to the resignation of Armenian President Levon Ter-Petrossian in 1998. He was replaced by his prime minister, Robert Kocharian. Meanwhile, the four million Armenians in the diaspora energetically extended their support for Armenia's survival.
Among the 15 Soviet republics, Armenia was the smallest; its 11,306 square miles would rank it 42nd among the 50 U.S. states (it is about the size of Maryland). It was also the most educated (in per capita students), and the most ethnically homogeneous, with 93 percent Armenians, and 7 percent Russians, Kurds, Assyrians, Greeks, or Azeris. The capital city of Yerevan (population 1,300,000) was nicknamed the Silicon Valley of the USSR because of its leadership in computer and telecommunications technology. The huge statue of Mother Armenia, sword in hand, facing nearby Turkey from downtown Yerevan, symbolizes how citizens in the Armenian republic historically see themselves as stalwart guardians of the homeland, in the absence of the far-away spiurk (diaspora Armenians).
Although the independent Republic of Armenia has existed since 1991, it is misleading to term it a homeland like, for example, Sweden is for Swedish Americans, for a few reasons. First, for almost all of the past 500 years, Armenians have had no independent state. Second, communism's avowed policy of quashing nationalists within its 15 republics rendered the status of the previous Sovietrepublic and its citizens as questionable among most diaspora Armenians. Third, this Republic occupies only the northeastern ten percent of the territory of historic Armenia, including only a few of the dozen largest Armenian cities of pre-1915 Turkey—cities now empty of Armenians in Eastern Turkey. Only a small fraction of the ancestors of today's Armenian Americans had any contact with the Russified northern cities of Yerevan, Van, or Erzerum. A recent survey finds that 80 percent of U.S. Armenian youth express an interest to visit the Republic, yet 94 percent continue to feel it important to regain the occupied part of the homeland from Turkey. Modern Turkey does not allow Armenians into parts of Eastern Turkey, and less than one percent of American Armenians have "repatriated" to the Armenia Republic.
IMMIGRATION TO AMERICA
Like ancient Phoenicians and Greeks, Armenians' affinity for global exploration stretches back to the eighth century B.C. By 1660, there were 60 Armenian trading firms in the city of Amsterdam, Holland, alone, and Armenian colonies in every corner of the known earth, from Addis Ababa to Calcutta, Lisbon to Singapore. At least one old manuscript raises the possibility of an Armenian who sailed with Columbus. More documented is the arrival of "Martin the Armenian," who was brought as a farmer to the Virginia Bay colony by Governor George Yeardley in 1618—two years before the Pilgrims arrived at Plymouth Rock. Still, up to 1870, there were fewer than...
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