Within Armenia, the process of national development created the most homogenous republic in the USSR. Of Armenia's population 89.7 percent was Armenian in 1979. The rate of increase among Armenians (23.4 percent) was higher than that of non-Armenians (9.9 percent). Even after sixty-five years of Soviet rule, most Armenians in Armenia preferred to communicate in the Armenian language. Among Armenians in Armenia 99.4 percent considered Armenian to be their native language. Even many members of ethnic minorities in the republic, such as the 50,000 Kurds and the 160,000 Azeris, used Armenian as a lingua franca. In the late Soviet period, however, many better-educated urban Armenians preferred sending their children to Russian-language schools in order to enhance their career horizons. Despite the attractiveness of Russian among young Armenians and the widespread bilingualism, Armenians did not face any danger of Russification or assimilation in Armenia – in contrast to the evident threats to western Slavs and the Baltic peoples. When in 1978 the Soviet authorities considered removing the clause in the Georgian and Armenian constitutions that established the local languages as the official state languages, protests in Tbilisi compelled the government to back down, and the Armenians were spared the need to defend their language rights.
At the same time, however, Armenians were the most dispersed people in the USSR, except for the Jews. Only 65.5 percent of Soviet Armenians (2,725,000 out of 4,151,000) lived in the Armenian republic in 1979. Educated Armenians, anxious to better their prospects for interesting careers and for their children's future, often left Armenia for Russia and other parts of the Soviet Union. These emigrant Armenians faced a real possibility of losing their language, of intermarrying with non-Armenians, and over time of assimilating with Russians. This trend of assimilation moved in a direction opposite of what was happening in Soviet Armenia itself. On the positive side, it should be noted that in 1959, Armenians in Soviet Armenia represented only 55.7 percent of all Armenians in the USSR; by the late 1970s, they represented two-thirds. Immigration, a fairly strong birth rate, and a sense of pride in being Armenian worked to strengthen the ethnic cohesion of Armenians in Armenia.
The conflict in the Soviet Union between ethnic consolidation, on the one hand, and potential acculturation and assimilation, on the other, created fears among small nationalities that their national distinctiveness might be lost in the near future. Such fears, as well as more positive aspirations to improvements in the status of the nationalities, created a renewed sense of nationalism in various parts of the Soviet Union. Unlike the nationalisms of Georgia, Ukraine and Estonia, Armenian nationalism was distinct in that it was directed not so much against the dominant Russians as against the traditional enemy, the Turks. The Communist government of Armenia not only made concessions to nationalism but often subtly encouraged it. Since Armenian nationalism was no threat to the unity of the USSR, except in certain militant forms, the Soviet government could afford to be tolerant of its manifestation – within limits. Thus, one can speak of an orthodox or official nationalism, which the party accepted, and an unorthodox or dissident nationalism which it condemned and punished.
The line between orthodox and dissident nationalism was not always easy to determine, and as the party's tolerance of nationalist expression increased or diminished, certain poets or politicians found themselves on the wrong side of the line. The Armenian intelligentsia continually raised the issues of language policy, repatriation of Armenians abroad, and territorial adjustments in favour of Armenia. The government made moderate concessions, such as the establishment of an Association for the Preservation of Armenian Historical Monuments in 1965 or the erection of monuments to Armenian national heroes such as Vartan Mamikonian, General Andranik (Ozanian), and the Western Armenian poet and victim of the genocide Daniel Varouzhan. A complex of statues and buildings was built in 1968 at Sardarabad in a neo-Urartian style to commemorate the battle in May 1918 that prevented the Turkish army from overrunning Yerevan. Local lore recounted how the fierce-eyed eagles that line the approach to the ensemble were first set up to face Turkey, but later, when this was seen as too provocative, were turned with their backs to the border. In the late 1960s the original Armenian word for "republic" (hanrapetoutyoun) was restored in the official designation of the Armenian SSR.
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