Armenian Community Research Articles

Odnaleziona księga gminy ormiańskiej w Zamościu

A Newly Found Book of Armenian Community in ZamośćThe Armenian community in Zamość developed in the 80s of the 16th century. In 1589 Jan Zamoyski, a hetman and chancellor of The Kingdom of Poland, as well as the city owner, allowed for creating an independent Armenian court with its vogt and jurors. The court proceeded by Magdeburg law, which was in force in Zamość, and by Armenian law which had been approved by King Sigismund I in 1519. The Armenian court acts record plaints, defences, testimonies, sentences, notary acts, election protocols of the Armenian selfgovernment, tax rolls, city owners edicts, copies of sentences which concerned Armenians from other courts. Until very recently there has been only seven books of this kind, all stored in the National Archive in Lublin. Last year another book kept between 23 October 1660 and 23 September 1668 was found in the National Historical Archive in Minsk in Belarus.

"Pomniki Dziejowe Ormian Polskich" – nowa seria źródłowa dotycząca społeczności ormiańskiej w Polsce

„Historical Memorials of Polish Armenians” – a New Source Edition Series about Armenian Community in PolandA five-year-long research and editing project “Historical Memorials of Polish Armenians”, funded from “The National Programme for Development of Research in Humanities” of the Ministry of Education in Poland has been led by the Foundation of Culture and Heritage of Polish Armenians and headed by Krzysztof Stopka. Other people involved in the project are: Monika Agopsowicz, Armen Artwich, Andrzej Gliński, Tomasz Krzyżowski, Marcin Łukasz Majewski, Hripsime Mamikonyan, Tatevik Sargsyan, Edward Tryjarski, Franciszek Wasyl and Andrzej A. Zięba. The aim of the project is to edit and publish the sources contributive to the history of Armenians in Poland between the 14th and 18th centuries. The historical sources are to be translated from Kipchak, Armenian and Latin into Polish. Volumes 1 and 2 comprise of: Zapisy sądu duchownego Ormian miasta Lwowa za lata 1564-1608 (Records from the Spiritual Court of Lwów’s Armenians between 1564-1608), Metryka katedry ormiańskiej we Lwowie za lata 1635-1732 (Lwów Cathedral Baptism Records from 1635-1732) and Zbiórki pieniężne gminy Ormian lwowskich za lata 1598-1637 (Tax Collections of the Armenian Community in Lwów from 1598-1637); volume 3 is to include Travel Notes by Simeon Lehatsi (in Armenian), volume 4 is to include Chronology, or church yearbooks by Stepanos Roshka; volume 5 is to include a translation of A Journey to Poland and other countries where exiles from Ani live by Minas Bzhyshkyan. Volume 6 Nowy Aliszan (New Alishan) references the historical sources collection published in 1896 by Ghewond Alishan, however, volume 6 is a new critical edition with many documents of which Alishan was unaware.

Kobieta w społeczności ormiańskiej w dawnej Polsce (wieki XVII i XVIII)

Women in Armenian Community of Old Poland (the 17th and 18th Centuries)A woman in the modern period was confined to her social role of a mother, wife and daughter. Armenian craftsmen’s and merchant’s wives in Poland enjoyed freedom, which gave them potential for greater influence in their marriages. Due to their husbands’ frequent departures, the wives’ time was divided between professional work and households management. It is possible that a seventeenth-century chronicler Jan Alembek is in fact pointing to independence when he is criticising the female Armenians for their tenacity. Alembek also imputes acrimony to elderly Armenians, which he seems to conclude from numerous petty court cases involving Armenians, which fill Armenian court records.

Minas Bżyszkian i jego relacja o Ormianach Lwowa

Minas Bzhyshkyan and His Report on Armenians in LwówMinas Bzhyshkyan, an armenologist, philologist, pedagogue, historian, ethnographer, and musicologist was a member of the Armenian Catholic Mechitarists order. He travelled widely and took scrupulous notes of his journeys, which aided writing his monograph A Journey to Poland and other countries where exiles from Ani live. His work, crucial for research on Armenians in old Poland, was originally published in 1830 in Venice. It was written in classical Armenian, an ancient language of a highly ornate quality. The book is a valuable source of information on geography, architecture, and epigraphy of peoples living on territories travelled by Bzhyshkyan, as well as on the past and present of the Armenian diasporas in the Central Europe and the Black Sea Basin countries. The author presents data on the Armenian community of Lwów and evaluates it against information from other sources.

The Downing of a C-130 and Host-State Utilization of the American Armenian Community

This study examines the relationship between the Soviet shooting down of the C-130 aircraft over Soviet Armenia in September 1958 and the investigations spearheaded by Samuel Klaus, Special Assistant to the State Department’s Legal Adviser, in preparation of the legal case for presentation at the International Court of Justice. Klaus believed that the case required eyewitness testimony from both sides of the Turkish-Soviet border. He organized a series of interviews of American Armenians who had visited Soviet Armenia soon after the incident and proposed to interview American Armenian expatriates in Soviet Armenia as well. Considering it was impossible to conduct interviews in Soviet Armenia, Klaus sought to facilitate their return to the United States, as several expatriates, disillusioned with the Soviet Union, had sent petitions to President Eisenhower seeking his assistance to return to the United States. Although the Office of the Legal Adviser eventually did not submit the case to the ICJ, the investigations launched by Klaus set in motion the process of their return home.

The transformation of the political position of the Armenian community in Istanbul vis-à-vis the declaration of the Republic of Turkey

ABSTRACTThis article analyzes the transformation of the political position of the Ottoman Armenian community by focusing on the community’s reactions vis-à-vis a major turning point in modern Turkish history: the proclamation of the Republic of Turkey. The article demonstrates how and why the Ottoman Armenian community reacted as it did when the status of the state as a Republic was proclaimed by the Grand National Assembly in October 1923. The major argument the article puts forward is that following the results of the Turkish-Armenian War in the Caucasus, the Greco-Turkish War in Western Anatolia, and the retreat of the French from the Cilicia region, the majority of the Ottoman Armenian community which remained within the borders of ‘New Turkey’ shifted its political position to accommodate the policies of the ruling power in order to protect their physical and cultural existence during this period of political turmoil. Benefiting from primary sources, including Ottoman Armenian and Ottoman Turkish newspapers, archival documents, and parliamentary minutes, this article focuses on the position of Ottoman Armenians following the proclamation of the Republic of Turkey, and thus contributes to the historiography on the Armistice period.

The Cost of Memorializing: Analyzing Armenian Genocide Memorials and Commemorations in the Republic of Armenia and in the Diaspora

In April of 1965 thousands of Armenians gathered in Yerevan and Los Angeles, demanding global recognition of and remembrance for the Armenian Genocide after fifty years of silence. Since then, over 200 memorials have been built around the world commemorating the victims of the Genocide and have been the centre of hundreds of marches, vigils and commemorative events. This article analyzes the visual forms and semiotic natures of three Armenian Genocide memorials in Armenia, France and the United States and the commemoration practices that surround them to compare and contrast how the Genocide is being memorialized in different Armenian communities. In doing so, this article questions the long-term effects commemorations have on an overall transnational Armenian community. Ultimately, it appears that calls for Armenian Genocide recognition unwittingly categorize the global Armenian community as eternal victims, impeding the development of both the Republic of Armenia and the Armenian diaspora.

Political Uses of Religion in Complex Contexts. The Soviet Republic of Armenia and the Armenian community in Argentina during the beginning of the Cold War

The present paper analyses the political uses of religion after the Sovietization of Armenian Republic and the first years of the Cold War until the death of Stalin in 1953 focusing in the Armenian community of Argentina. The interest of this community lies in its scarce visibility despite its relevance in the Western Diaspora - after the Armenian communities of France and the United States -, taking into account its number and the relevance of its institutional life from their creation to the present as well as its close link with the Republic of Armenia. The article focuses on the Armenian Apostolic Church as the axis of tensions between the diaspora and Armenia as well as within the diverse Armenian communities. We concentrate on the Armenian community in Argentina and the links of this community with Soviet Armenia during the Cold War, sometimes with fruitful exchanges, in others, tense including the relation with the Argentine State from the moment of the resumption of diplomatic relations with the ex USSR.

ОСОБЛИВОСТІ ДІЯЛЬНОСТІ ВІРМЕНЬСЬКИХ ГРОМАДСЬКИХ ОРГАНІЗАЦІЙ В США

It is stated that the Armenian community in the USA is one of the largest and most influential in the world. It is proved that the numerous Armenian community of the USA plays a prominent role in the development of Armenian-American relations. It is shown that the urgent issues for the development of the Armenian Diaspora is to overcome contradictions and competition within the Armenian Diaspora, especially among its most active organizations dealing with political issues. It will solve specific foreign policy tasks and promote the unification of the Armenian Diaspora based on group identity and common goals. The Armenian organizations, acting separately, complicate integration and unification within the community itself, lead to competition and disunity in defending its interests not only in the United States, but also in the world. It is determined that numerous Armenian Diaspora, famous and influential personalities of Armenian origin, national organizations and lobby groups are the “soft power” of Armenia. The Diaspora provides significant and comprehensive support to Armenian diplomacy in advancing national interests, especially in matters of international recognition and condemnation of the Armenian Genocide, the settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict and overcoming the many economic problems that Armenia faces today. During the post-bipolar period, the Armenian Diaspora in America was quite active namely because of participation in various international organizations. To a certain extent, the Diaspora of Armenia followed the common tradition of using intergovernmental and intergovernmental associations to solve the problems of their states. On the other hand, the Armenian Diaspora confidently applied the method of "complementarily policy". This policy envisaged the deep involvement of the Republic of Armenia in the process of discussing and promoting projects of international organizations of various levels in the foreign policy of leading, influential states of the world and, first of all, the United States. In this regard, it is relevant to study the active and successful activities of the Armenian Diaspora in the United States. It is proved that Armenian Diaspora, with its rich international experience, seeks to integrate into American politics, which represents valuable experience for Ukraine, which has a significant Diaspora in the USA and Canada.

О формировании армянской общины во Владикавказе

О формировании армянской общины во Владикавказе

Illuminating an Armenian Collection of Manuscripts A Forgotten Treasure in the Layard Collection

In 1902 Enid Layard bequeathed four illuminated Armenian manuscripts, belonging to her late husband, to the Armenian Mekhitarist College of Venice and to the Correr Museum. This survey retraces the manuscripts’ earlier provenance and their arrival in the Venetian collections. Austen Henry Layard’s private papers and publications attest to a close relationship with the Armenian community, both in Constantinople and Venice. The aim of this paper is not only to show more fully the early reception of Armenian artworks in a Western context, but also to present a first study of these manuscripts by providing some comparisons.

The Armenians of Glendale: An Ethnoburb in Los Angeles's San Fernando Valley

Glendale may house the most visible Armenian diaspora in the world; however, it remains among the most invisible in print. The following begins to shed light on this community by providing a brief background and demographic profile of Armenians in Glendale. The article then attempts to expand discussions of Chinese “ethnoburbs” by situating Glendale Armenians in these discussions. Despite scholars’ expansion of the concept, the ethnoburb has had limited application—largely, to Chinese and a few other Asian immigrant communities. However, is the concept of the ethnoburb generalizable in contexts outside of Chinese immigrant settlements? In this article, I contend that the ethnoburb model is generalizable by situating Glendale's Armenian community within this framework.

THE HUNCHAKIAN REVOLUTIONARY PARTY AND THE ASSASSINATION ATTEMPTS AGAINST PATRIARCH KHOREN ASHEKIAN AND MAKSUDZADE SIMON BEY IN 1894

AbstractThe spring of 1894 was an important period for Constantinople's Armenian community. Two assassination attempts targeted the Armenian patriarch Khoren Ashekian, and the chairperson of the Armenian Political Assembly Maksudzade Simon Bey, respectively. In both cases, the assailants were partisans of the Hunchakian Party, an Armenian revolutionary organization established in 1887. Analyzing the reasons behind these two attacks, and the imperial context in which they took place, this article challenges aspects of mainstream Armenian and Turkish historiography on the Hamidian period. It argues that a critical look at these two attacks through a socio-economic paradigm rather than an ethno-political one provides a viable analytical framework for deconstructing the notion of the “Armenian millet” as an undifferentiated community. More generally, the article explores the role of violence in shaping intracommunal relationships in the early 1890s.

Repetition and uncanny temporalities: Armenians and the recurrence of genocide in the Levant

ABSTRACTThis paper presents a meditation on how memory and repetition are played out when experienced as both a historical event and an ongoing and returning possibility. Amongst the Armenian community in Lebanon repetition takes on a particular salience in the form of a haunting from the foundational genocide of 1915, a genocide that in recent years has been brought back with the events in Syria where family and kin have faced severe hardships, random killings, and destruction of entire villages. In this paper I over various fieldworks in Lebanon return to the incident of the cleansing of Kessab, an important Armenian village in Syria, and how such an event in today’s Syria points to past, present, and future forms of haunting but also the reconfiguration of affect. The same event draws different landscapes of the imagination, landscapes of fear, haunting, return, but also of resilience and responsibility in the meeting with the time to come.

An Opportunity to Strike a Blow? The United States Government and the Armenian Apostolic Church, 1956–1963

ABSTRACTThis analysis examines the influence of the United States government on the internal conflict within the Armenian Apostolic Church and the transnational Armenian community between 1956 and 1963. During these years, American officials followed closely and occasionally intervened in this strife amongst various Armenian political parties and factions within the church. The intervention helped to shape the outcome of the struggle within the Church and within the broader Armenian community.

The unfounded mass burials of the so-called Armenian Genocide

According to some sources, The Armenian Genocide Appeals (the so-called Armenian Genocide or the Unfounded Armenian Claims) indicate that the Armenian deportation, which was carried out by the Ottoman State in Eastern Anatolia for internal security reasons from May to November 1915, was aimed at destroying the Armenian community in the region, Millions of Armenians are alleged to have been killed by this reason. In the early years of the First World War, the Ottoman State while fighting in many fronts with Allied Powers, the Armenians attacked the Ottoman army jointly with the Russian army in the region up to Central Anatolia in the East, and rebelled in many cities. In order to overcome these rebellions, the Ottoman State held a joint meeting with the Armenian Patriarchs, especially the Armenian Members of the Tanzimat Parliament, and the leaders of the Armenian community, and informed them that the Ottoman State would take countermeasures if the Armenians continued to kill local Muslim people in Eastern Anatolia. On the basis of this notion, the Ottoman State in April 24, 1915 arrested 235 people who had organized the rebellions and closed down all the Armenian Committees and local organizations that supported and organized the rebellions. The Ottoman State promulgatiated the Temporary Law of Deportation, in 27 May 1915. Accordingly, it was decided some of the Armenians in Eastern Anatolia would be displaced to Syria, Lebanon and Iraq. According to the Armenians' claims, massacre and genocide were carried out under the deportation title and 1.5 million Armenians were killed. This article is about the mass graves of 1.5 million Armenians which would form the basis of the massacre allegations, the size, how and by whom they were dug, how the massacred Armenians buried and how the mass graves covered with soil. The paper is written to investigate whether there are mass graves or not.

Rethinking the Turkish-Armenian War in the Caucasus: The Position of Ottoman Armenians

This article analyses the Turkish–Armenian War in the Caucasus and its implications for the Ottoman Armenian community. After the signing of the Armistice of Mudros, the Ottoman Armenians established alliances with their Armenian compatriots in the Caucasus as well as the Greeks. When the Turkish–Armenian War erupted in 1920, the Ottoman Armenian community organized fundraising campaigns for the Armenian state. Benefiting from primary sources, including Armenian and Ottoman-Turkish newspapers of the period, this article focuses on the position of Ottoman Armenians during the Turkish–Armenian War, and in doing so contributes to the historiography on the Turkish–Armenian War.

Female Labor, Merchant Capital, and Resilient Manufacturing: Rethinking Ottoman Armenian Communities through Labor and Business

Abstract The present article is a study of the social history of textile production in the city of Yerznka (Erzincan) in East-Central Anatolia. It examines textile manufacturing as a site in which gender, class, and ethnicity interacted to form the basis of an Armenian community before the Genocide. It brings a fresh perspective to studies on the persistence of Ottoman textile production in the age of European industrial production by approaching the community as a nexus of production relations. It argues that extensive female labor and a hierarchically organized production system under the control of merchant-entrepreneurs were among the main factors in the endurance of the Ottoman production system into World War i. At the same time, the control of the production system by the merchant-entrepreneurs, who were also leaders of the local Armenian community, reproduced patriarchal communal ties.

“Religious Privileges” and “Political Rights” of Non-Muslims in the Tanzimat-Period Ottoman Empire: Case of the Armenian Community (in Japanese) (Doctoral Theses in Middle East Studies)

“Religious Privileges” and “Political Rights” of Non-Muslims in the Tanzimat-Period Ottoman Empire: Case of the Armenian Community (in Japanese) (Doctoral Theses in Middle East Studies)

Struktura i finanse gminy ormiańskiej we Lwowie w świetle rękopisu "Dzieje Ormian lwowskich od r. 1649 – aż do r. 1713" (Ossolineum nr 1646/II)

The Structure and the Finances of the Armenian Community in Lwów in the Light of the “History of Lwów Armenians from 1649 until 1731” Manuscript (Ossolineum no 1646/II)Armenians from 1649 until 1713”, which is a part of the collections of the Ossolineum library, contains a great deal of information about the Armenian community in Lwów (now: Lviv) in the second half of the 17th century and at the beginning of the 18th century. On the basis of this source the author examines the administrative and social structure of the community as well as the way in which the requirements of this community were financed. Owing to the comprehensive registers featured in the second part of the manuscript, which were drawn up due to the imposition of contributions on Lwów by a foreign army in 1648 and 1704, the author also traces the changing number of the population and the estate-related stratification of the community in the period of about half a century.