At ‘Home’ Away from ‘Home’: The ex-Ottoman Armenian Refugees and the Limits of Belonging in Soviet Armenia

Abstract

This article explores spatial attachments among the ex-Ottoman Armenians who survived the Armenian Genocide and settled in their ‘new homeland’, Soviet Armenia. It addresses the question of how the refugees dealt with loss and displacement and reflected on their former hometowns, referred to as ‘Ergir’, a spatial construct denoting a symbolic ‘Armenian homeland’ or a ‘local homeland’ in Anatolia. I argue that the refugees conceptualised Ergir not only in relation to their expulsion but also the socio-political factors that influenced them in Soviet Armenia in three periods. The first era of reflection on Ergir was the 1920s and 1930s, replete with nostalgic sentiments. The second was the suppression of the theme of Ergir, between 1936–1960, particularly during political crackdowns in Stalin’s era. The third period saw the revival of Ergir and marked a new phase in the conceptualisations of ‘homeland’ in which the displacement from Anatolia in 1915–1916 and the Stalinist purges were enmeshed into one tragedy of the ex-Ottoman Armenians.