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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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Essentially Soviet Armenia existed within a pseudo-federal system in which the final decision-making power lay outside the republic. The all-important matter of who should decide the budget was resolved in favour of the centre, and Armenia's budget became part of the budget of the ZSFSR, which was part of the budget of the whole USSR. The ruling party of Armenia was not a separate and independent Communist party but a constituent part of the All-Russian Communist Party (RKP), a local branch of a highly centralised political organisation directed by a small group of men in Moscow.

Through the early 1920s, Armenia's political structure came to resemble that of the RSFSR. In January 1922 the First Congress of Soviets of Armenia adopted a constitution modelled on that of the RSFSR. Everywhere the emphasis was on standardisation and uniformity in the interest of building a strong, unified country. The leaders of Soviet Armenia did not resist centralisation, as did the Georgians up to 1923, but worked together with Stalin and the centralisers, who ultimately had their way. Lenin, too ill to fight any longer, died in January 1924. His brainchild, the Soviet Union, survived, but his conception of it as a union of relatively autonomous republics was buried along with him.

Within Armenia a monopoly of power was assured the Communist Part. All other political organisations were eventually eliminated. Under pressure from the dominant political movement, the Dashnaktsoutyoun in Yerevan formally abolished its local organisation in November 1923. Within a few years of the establishment of Soviet power, Armenia had ceased in any real sense to be a sovereign state, though officially in Soviet law it was so designed. Within the republic, as throughout the Soviet Union, representative government had ceased to have any reality. A one-party state ruled by men with loyalty to the central Communist leadership in Moscow had been established in Armenia. As the Russian Politburo fell year by year under the influence of one man, Joseph Stalin, so in Armenia those Communists who could prove their loyalty to Stalin came to power and those who could not were removed. The Communist Party of Armenia – headed by Ashot Hovhannisian from 1922 to 1927, Hayk Hovsepian in 1927, and Haikaz Kostanian from 1928 to 1930 – refused to tolerate non-Communist intellectuals in positions of influence. In 1927 the independent Marxist ("Spetsifist"), Davit Ananun, a brilliant social critic and political analyst, was thrown out of his job as part of a campaign against "counterrevolutionary nationalists". Other former Dashnaks and Mensheviks were also purged from institutions and party calls. One hundred twenty members of the Trotskyist opposition were arrested in April 1927, and in the turmoil of these purges, First Secretary Hovhannisian was dismissed for underestimating the dangers of deviant Marxists. These purges, part of the Stalinist consolidation of power, ended the period of relative intellectual tolerance in Armenian and Soviet political circles.

Making Armenia Armenian

While politically Soviet Armenia was a dictatorship of one party, in the 1920s it was mixed economically, with state enterprises coexisting with private business and independent peasant agriculture. Socially and culturally the country was also relatively pluralistic, with Marxist artists and scholars coexisting with the old pre-revolutionary intelligentsia in an uneasy arrangement. The Communists made an effort to realize certain national aspirations of the Armenians, particularly in the cultural sphere. The policy of korenizatsia (rooting) or "nativization", first outlined in a resolution of the Tenth Party Congress (March 1921), was directed at encouraging members of local nationalities to run their own newspapers, and other institutions were to operate in the native language of the region. Cadres of the local nationality were to administer each republic, and the national language and national culture were to be nourished by state support. Communists were warned to avoid all colonial aspects of imperial Russian rule, to work to eliminate social and ethnic inequalities between the centre and the peripheries. These lofty intentions were proclaimed by the Communist Party, and though in practice such ideals were seldom completely realised, the aims of the leadership attracted many members of the minority nationalities.