As a result of korenizatsia, Armenia became more Armenian in the 1920s. A social and cultural "re-nationalisation" took place in the tiny republic. Thousands of displaced Armenians migrated to Armenia. Refugees from the genocide, victims of war and the upheavals of the Russian revolution, moved into Yerevan and the surrounding areas. Armenians who had lost their privileged position in Georgia and Azerbaijan because of the nativization of those republics travelled to Armenia to find new opportunities. Armenians from Greece, the Middle East, and France joined in Armenia the migrant intellectuals and dispossessed bourgeois from Tbilisi, Baku, and Moscow. Poor peasants came in from the countryside and settled in the towns, looking for work. A new urban population made up very disparate elements was formed. Speaking different dialects, bringing in varied customs, foods, and experiences, these migrants melded together to make up the first generation of the new Soviet Armenian nation.
While integrating the new immigrants into Armenia society, the republics also engaged in a program of "cultural revolution", making Armenian the language of state administration, education, art and science. In September 1921 the Council of People's Commissars of Armenia issued a decree that required all illiterate and semiliterate citizens from sixteen to fifty to study the Armenian language. Circles were set up throughout the republic to teach reading and writing. By 1920 the Armenian government could announce that full literacy of the adult population had been achieved. At the same time a new school system was set up to teach children. In 1924-1925 a network of seven-year village schools was created for the peasant population. Workers could attend special schools established for those active in production. Teachers' colleges were opened, and in 1926 Yerevan State University graduated its first thirty-seven students. Almost all instructions were in Armenian.
For the first time since the Middle Ages, Armenian became a language of science. In 1921 an institute for cultural and historical studies was opened in Etchmiadzin, and four years later the Institute of Science and Art (later the Academy of Sciences) was formed in Yerevan. Historians such as Leo (Arakel Babakhanian) and Hakob Manandian, scholars of language such as Hratchia Ajarian and Manuk Abeghian published their work under state sponsorship – with all the advantages and disadvantages such an arrangement implies. A new literary language, based on the Yerevan dialect was developed, along with a new orthography. Established artists such as Martiros Saryan, writers Alexandr Shirvanzade, Avetik Isahakian and Yeghishe Tcharents, and musicians such as Alexandr Spendiarov, pursued their art under the auspices of official support from an Armenian government. A state dramatic theatre was founded in Yerevan in January 1922. The following year the government established a conservatory of music. So poor was the country that Armenian supports of the Soviet republic living abroad sent money and musical instruments to keep the conservatory operating. In 1925 the actor-director Hamo Bek-Nazarov directed the first fiction film from the Armenian film studio, Armenkino. Based on the novel Namus (Honour) by Shirvanzade, the film portrayed pre-revolutionary provincial life with its barbarous traditions that destroy two young lovers. In 1935 Bek-Nazarov made the first sound film from Armenia, Pepo, adapted from the nineteenth-century play by Gabriel Soundoukian. From the point of view of Armenian artists, the 1920s was a period of rebirth, experimentation, and new creativity.
At the same time, however, the Soviet state had its own agenda. Though it tolerated artists and intellectuals who were not fully committed to the building of a socialist society, it also imposed strict restrictions on their expression. Nationalism was officially condemned, though much of what intellectuals produced could have been construed as nationalistic. No overtly antisocialist or anti-Soviet writing or painting or teaching was permitted. Religion was allowed, but antireligious propaganda was encouraged and supported by the state.
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