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Index

Armenia

The Urartu Civilisation

Victory for Independence

Artashisian Dynasty on the Armenian Throne

Armenia caught between Rome and the Arsacids

The Acceptance of Christianity

Defending Christianity

Armenia Under the Bagratouni Dynasty

Cilicia - the New Armenia

Armenia Under Turanian Rule

The Renaissance or the Resurrection of Armenia

The Eastern Question

Russia in the Caucasus

The Armenian Question

Battle on Two Fronts

Tsarist Russia Against the Armenians

The Revolution of the Young Turks and the Armenian People on the Eve of World War I

The First World War

The Resurrection of Armenia

Armenia on the Road to Independence, 1918

- Armenia on the Road to Independence, 1918

Eastern Armenia

Western Armenia

"The Fateful Years" (1914-1917)

"Hopes and Emotions" (March-October, 1917)

The Bolshevik Revolution and Armenia

Transcaucasia Adrift (November, 1917

Dilemmas (March-April, 1918)

War and Independence (April-May, 1918)

The Republics of Georgia, Azerbaijan, and Armenia

The Suppliants (June-October, 1918)

In conclusion

- In conclusion

Soviet Armenia

The Second Independent Republic of Armenia

Epilogue

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The Cold War ended the period of direct relations between the diaspora and Soviet Armenia. For nearly a decade travel became nearly impossible. The years of late Stalinism were marked by a fierce anti-Western propaganda. A policy of tighter control over the population was instituted in the late 1940s, and a new campaign was launched against nationalism. The all-too-brief flowering of wartime cultural life came to an end. In November 1948 the Armenian Communist Party's congress condemned scholars and other writers for "idealising the historical past of Armenia", for "ignoring the class struggle" in the history of Armenia, and for being too attracted by the "reactionary culture of bourgeois West". Historians were attacked for their failure to recognise the "progressive" significance of the annexation of Armenia by Russia. The nineteenth-century nationalist writer Raffi, who had been republished as late as 1947, was once again castigated. Even the internationally famous composer Aram Khatchatourian had to submit an apology for having written "bourgeois" music. In this culturally cramped atmosphere real creativity became impossible, and any slight expression of Armenia pride was once again condemned as nationalism. In 1949 it was announced that a Dashnak underground existed in the republic. Thousands of Armenian families were exiled to the Altai region of Central Asia.

Stalin died on March 5, 1953, and with his passing an entire era in Soviet history came to an end. Stalinism had radically changed Armenia. From a basically agrarian country with a small-holding peasantry, Armenia had become increasingly industrial and urban. But even as it entered modernity, Armenia was severely restricted in its cultural and national formation. Education and social mobility made Armenians more eager to explore the world and experience what modern life offered. Stalin's revolution had created rising expectations, a hunger for a richer material and cultural life, but at the same time Stalinism prevented people from fully achieving their potential. The contradiction between the achievements and the new aspirations created great frustration, but discontent not be expressed openly in the police state ruled by the Georgian dictator. At the same time Armenians were pulled in two directions; on the one hand, their country had become more Armenian, more homogeneously Armenian, more conscious of its heritage; on the other, strict limits shut off avenues of national expression. The material and spiritual tensions built up under Stalin manifested themselves in a new nationalism in the decades after the dictator's death.

The Years of Reform: Khrushchev (1953-1964)

At the time of Stalin's death, the Soviet Union was economically stagnant, its agriculture displaying the signs of permanent structural weakness. Though the country had largely recovered from the devastation of the World War II, industrial growth had slowed down and disproportionately high investments in heavy industry had left consumers with little to buy. Internationally the USSR was isolated from the other Great Powers, who were organised into the anti-Soviet North Atlantic Treaty Alliance (NATO), and at that moment were fighting the Chinese and North Korean Communists on the Korean peninsula. Anti-communism dominated the political discourse both in the United States and Western Europe, and the Cold War hostility toward Stalinism made negotiations with the Soviet Union nearly impossible. Within the country a repressive political system stifled innovation, initiative, and cultural expression.