Letters from the Soviet ‘Paradise’: The Image of Russia among the Western Armenian Diaspora

Abstract

The paper deals with the complicated relationships between the Western Armenian Diaspora and Russians. These relations are mediated by the ambiguous attitude of Diaspora to the Eastern Armenians. The study examines two social contexts, the Soviet and Post-Soviet eras. To elaborate the topic the author draws from letters, jokes, and anecdotes taken from different kinds of international interlocutors, ranging from scholars to ordinary people. I argue that the image of Russia is constructed of intertwined discourses of negative and positive meanings. Positive discourses are based around the Russian-(Eastern) Armenians' cultural connections and Russian involvement to the political movement for recognition of the 1915–1923 Armenian Genocide, while negative ones are extracted from (1) the bitter experience of Armenian repatriates to Soviet Armenia (totalitarianism, political reprisals, and harsh social censorship), (2) the low standard of living in the USSR as well as (3) the idiosyncrasies of Russian/Eastern Armenian everyday life in post-Soviet times. So the stereotyped image of Russia is formed at least by three aspects of social life such as political, cultural, and routine. These types of exoticization/stereotyping engender some social distance between the Western Armenian Diaspora and Russians as well as between the Western Armenian Diaspora and post-Soviet Armenians. I conclude that nevertheless a litmus test for the Western Armenian Diaspora attitude to USSR/Russia is the latter's official position regarding the 1915–1923 Armenian Genocide in the Ottoman Empire.