Armenia

Stephanie Platz

Hayasdan (country), Hay (people), Armyanin (people, in Russian), Somekhi (people, in Georgian)

The Armenian Republic consists of eleven administrative regions. The official language of the republic is Armenian. The three main industrial centers are the capital city, Yerevan (Erevan), Gyumri (formerly Leninakan and, before that, Alexandropol), and Vanadzor (formerly Kirovakan). Beginning in the 1920s the Soviet republics of Armenia and Azerbaijan opposed each other in a violent border dispute over the fertile region of mountainous Karabakh (the Nagorno-Karabakh Oblast), which by Soviet law was an autonomous region within the jurisdiction of Azerbaijan, but which was populated by a majority of Armenians (eighty percent in the 1970s) and is, according to Armenian accounts, traditionally Armenian. Open fighting for secession by the Armenian population erupted in 1988, and intensified after both Armenia and Azerbaijan gained independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, halting with a 1994 ceasefire which remains in place; tensions and diplomatic efforts at a resolution are ongoing.

Historically, the Armenian nation was situated in the Anatolian highlands of Asia Minor. Greater Armenia, as identified by the ancient Romans, once lay to the east of the Euphrates River, while Lesser Armenia lay to the west. At different times Armenian kingdoms have occupied territory within the present-day boundaries of modern Turkey, Iran, and Azerbaijan, as well as the Soviet Socialist Republic of Armenia. As recently as the early nineteenth century, Eastern Armenia was controlled by Persia and Western Armenia by the Ottoman Empire. In 1828 Eastern Armenia came under Russian rule. The transition to Soviet rule was marked by a brief and difficult period of independence (1918-1921). In 1915 many Armenians fled persecution and genocide in eastern Turkey (Western Armenia) and came as refugees to Eastern Armenia. This genocide and the subsequent seventy years of Soviet rule have played a major role in shaping contemporary Armenian culture and consciousness, in addition to determining the geography and demography of present-day Armenia. The Armenian Republic (formerly the Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic) is in the southwestern region of the former Soviet Union, bordered on the east and west by Azerbaijan and Turkey, respectively, and on the north and south by Georgia and Iran, respectively. Its territory comprises 29,740 square kilometers, and its border is 1,422 kilometers long. Armenia encompasses multiple climatic zones, varying seasonally in temperature from -13° C to 25° C. Much of the land is dry and arid, which makes large-scale cultivation difficult.

In 1990 the population of the Armenian Republic was 3,515,000, the second-highest population density in the Soviet Union, with Armenians constituting 93.5 percent of the population, Russians making up 2.7 percent, and Kurds accounting for 1.5 percent; 66 percent of the Armenian people lived in urban areas, with 60 percent (1.5 million) living in the capital city, Yerevan. The 2011 census of the independent Republic of Armenia put the population at 2,871,771; 63 percent were urban residents, with 57 percent of those living in Yerevan. The population was estimated to be 3,021,324 in July 2020, with Armenians comprising 98.1 percent and Kurds 1.2 percent of the population.

The Armenian language represents an independent subgroup of the Indo-European Language Family. The Armenian alphabet was devised in the early fifth century by Mesrop Mashtots, for the purpose of translating biblical texts and Christian liturgical materials. In the twentieth century, written Armenian underwent two spelling reforms in Soviet Armenia, to improve the phonetic relationship between the written and spoken languages and to standardize the grammar. There are many spoken dialects in Armenia.

The first known textual reference to the Armenians is by the Greek historian Xenophon, dated approximately 400 BC. From this time on Armenians were a noted cultural presence in the Mediterranean world. Centered in eastern Anatolia, now within the boundaries of modern Turkey, historic Armenia was a buffer zone between successive empires: first between the Roman and Persian empires, and then between the Byzantine and Muslim empires. By the sixteenth century, Greater Armenia had been absorbed into the Iranian and Ottoman empires. This is the source of the division of Armenia into two cultural and linguistic halves: eastern and western. Two dialects have been standardized: one for the Eastern and one for the Western Armenian peoples. Eastern and Western Armenia have distinctive cultural and literary traditions reflecting their linguistic differences. Western Armenian is characteristically spoken in the Armenian diaspora by Armenians deriving from Turkey, Lebanon, Syria, and other countries of the Middle East—primarily those displaced by the genocide of Armenians in Turkey in 1915. Contemporary speakers of Eastern Armenian are characteristically indigenous to the region of historic Armenia (the current Armenian Republic) or belong to the Armenian communities of Iran. Yet the split between Eastern and Western Armenians predates the Soviet period; indeed, it goes back to the sociopolitical context of the Middle Ages.

Another major challenge to the authority of the Armenian church began in the late nineteenth century when, as part of a policy of Russification, the czarist government attempted to convert Armenians to the Russian Orthodox church with tactics such as the imprisonment of the Armenian clergy and the confiscation of church property. Yet the church has survived and is enjoying a renaissance in its leadership of the Armenian people. Several distinctive Armenian churches formed in the diaspora, including a Protestant church (which originated under the influence of Presbyterian missionaries in Turkey in the nineteenth century); an Apostolic church with a catholicosate at Antelias, Lebanon; and an Armenian Catholic church. The majority of Armenians both in the diaspora and in the Armenian Republic, however, belong to the Armenian Apostolic church, with its catholicos (primate) at Echmiadzin in the Armenian Republic.

According to legend, Armenia was the first nation to convert to Christianity, between the years 301 and 330, when a Parthian missionary, Saint Gregory the Illuminator, met the Armenian King Trdat (Tiridates III). Prior to the national conversion, the first Christian Armenian church was founded by the saints Bartholomew and Thaddaeus in the first century. Despite the pressures of Zoroastrian Iranian, Islamic Seljuk (1063-1072), Mamluk, Mongol (1242-1244 and 1400), Russian, and Soviet occupiers over the centuries, the Armenians have retained their Apostolic church to the present day. Although the church was at first subordinate to Constantinople, it broke away at the Council of Chalcedon in 451 to follow a Monophysite doctrine. Armenians nevertheless continued to make a significant cultural contribution to the Byzantine Empire, notably through their distinctive tradition of church architecture. In fact, it is rumored that when the Hagia Sophia Basilica was damaged by an earthquake, the Patriarch Basil sent for the Armenian architect Trdat to come to Constantinople and direct the repairs. Squinches—small, arch-like structures where walls meet, making the transition to a circle upon which a dome rests— are often attributed to the Armenian architectural tradition, even specifically to the architect Trdat.

During the last two decades of the twentieth century, in the context of perestroika and glasnost, and of the conflict with Azerbaijan over the Nagorno-Karabakh region, an Armenian nationalist movement grew in the Soviet republic. Born out of conditions of oppression and persecution in the late nineteenth century, Armenian nationalist parties had last dominated Armenian politics in the republic during the period of independence. Often having a Socialist agenda, these parties stated as their goal the liberation and improvement of the Armenian people. These groups retained some power among Armenians in the diaspora throughout the Soviet period.

Living arrangements, accommodations, and architectural styles differed from village to village and were altogether different in the towns of Alexandropol (later Leninakan, now Gyumri) and Erevan, where people participated much less in their neighbors' daily lives. In the towns, family units were smaller and men were primarily artisans, merchants, and traders by profession. Residents of the villages might come to the towns to visit the bazaar, where most business was conducted. Traditionally, in addition to the Armenian populations of Alexandropol and Erevan, there have been large Armenian populations in the cities of Tbilisi (the capital of Georgia) and Baku (the capital of Azerbaijan). Generally these Armenians were also artisans, merchants, and businessmen.

Traditional Armenian villages generally consisted of two or three hundred households or, in the mountainous regions, twenty to thirty farms. Although separate, the households were interdependent. When village families could not produce enough to meet their own subsistence needs they engaged in barter. Individual houses were often arranged around a central courtyard or were grouped together around a communal space in which fruit trees were usually grown. The flat roofs of contiguous houses provided a space where neighbors and relatives might gather socially (although in some regions subterranean houses might have domed or cone-shaped roofs with a central opening called yerdik‵). Most often, the individual houses each consisted of a stable and two rooms: one for the reception of guests and one for general living. Part or all of the structure was often subterranean, a building feature derived from defense tactics. External walls were built of either mud bricks or the indigenous tuf (tufa, a kind of volcanic rock). Kitchens and bathrooms (outhouses) were usually located in external structures. There was usually a special oven, called a t‵onir, in the center of the earthen floor of the reception room. The t‵onir is a round hole dug in the ground, which can be used for baking Armenian flat bread (lavash) and for heating the home in winter. In some households, the fire in the t‵onir was never extinguished and was said to symbolize the family. At the end of the Soviet period the t‵onir was still common to Armenian village households.

Less than one-third of the land of historic Armenia was arable, and cereals were the staple crop. Although the crops were the responsibility of the men, the women often helped during the harvest if extra hands were needed.

The Armenian diet was somewhat monotonous, consisting largely of grains and cereals. Bulgur, pilaf, porridge, and flat bread were staple items. Dairy products were also commonly eaten, such as yogurt, milk, butter, and cheese. A popular Armenian drink to this day is tan, a mixture of water and soured yogurt. Fruits such as apricots and figs were dried for consumption in the winter and were often eaten with nuts. Other fruits, such as berries, were canned, and vegetables were pickled. Grapes were very commonly grown in Eastern Armenia, where there is a long history of wine production. Meat was eaten rarely, usually only when an animal could not be sustained through the long winter. Livestock were kept primarily for dairy products, and in winter they shared living quarters with the family.

For about two centuries European styles of dress have been popular in Armenian towns and cities. Until the Soviet period, however, traditional dress could be found in many villages. For both men and women traditional garb consisted of baggy trousers covered by long shifts and overcoats. Men in particular might wear sheepskin hats and elaborate metalwork belts made in the style of their particular region. It was popular for women to wear their hair in long braids until marriage and to wear gold and silver jewelry (especially coins), which represented the family's wealth and investments. Most clothing was made of wool, although cottons and silks were used when they were available. Many features of traditional Armenian dress are common to other peoples of the Caucasus.

Labor in the household economic unit was strictly divided according to the principles of gender and generation: the patriarch managed communal work and the incomes of all family members, while domestic work and the household itself were supervised by the wife of the head of the family. The rigidity of the domestic labor hierarchy and the pertinence of gender and generation to the associated social roles are best illustrated by the subordinate position of the new bride. Upon entering the household of her in-laws, the bride was expected to serve all of its members. Because cooking was the privileged work of the mother-in-law, the bride's responsibilities included menial tasks such as cleaning the shoes of all household members. Her face was usually veiled in public for at least one year (and sometimes it was tightly bound, a practice known as mounj), and during a ritual period of silence she was allowed to speak to no one except children and her husband (should they find themselves completely alone). After the birth of her first child, she was sometimes permitted to speak to the women of her household. Some women maintained a period of ritual silence for ten years or for life. The other responsibilities of the bride included kissing the hands of elders, never falling asleep if her father-in-law was still awake, and helping him to dress and undress. Humiliating tasks were considered an initiation of the new bride into the household. In general, women's responsibilities included the preparation of food, clothing, and domestic items such as candles, soap, and pottery, the weaving of rugs, and the tending of dairy animals and poultry. While women were working, the eldest children of the household would care for the younger children. This required little work in the case of infants, who were swaddled. Men were responsible for the heavy agricultural work, the building of houses and furniture, and the working of leather. The vast majority of labor was organized by family units, although occasionally an entire village might undertake a project. Hospitality, regarded by Armenians as a great virtue, was considered to be the obligation of everyone, male and female.

Traditional Armenian cultural practices have changed dramatically since the 1915 genocide and subsequent dispersal of Armenians from eastern Anatolia. Many traditional elements still characterize contemporary Armenian life, however, particularly in rural villages of the former Soviet Union. The most general category of Armenian descent was the azk, a nonresidential community of Armenians with kinship and political loyalties. The largest unit of Armenian kinship was the clan or gerdastan. While this term may refer to the immediate relatives of a single parent or grandparent, it is also used to describe patriarchal, patrilineal clans that included ancestors in the male line, sometimes extending as far back as six or eight generations. These clans resembled other European and Caucasian clan organizations dating back to the Middle Ages. Among the many responsibilities of the head of the clan were the maintenance of clan honor, consent for all marriages, the burial of deceased clan members, and the avenging of blood feuds. Clans often served the purpose of self-defense against other clans and other peoples.

Although the clans were not characteristically residential, they sometimes occupied a particular territory within a village. In such cases, a network of blood ties constituted a cooperative economic unit, and consensus was required among male members for the disposal of any property. Both residentially and non-residentially based clans were exogamous, with strict taboos against marriage between second cousins and between god kin and against levirate.

Armenian families were traditionally patrilocal, requiring that the bride move to the home of the groom's parents at the time of marriage. In traditional Armenian society marriages were arranged by the families of the bride and groom or by a matchmaker hired by the groom's family. In-law (khnami) relations were very important to social life in the village, and therefore the wedding was a social event involving the entire community. The average age of a bride (hars) was between 14 and 16 years, while the average age of the groom (p‵esa) was between 15 and 20. The bride and groom were generally, but not always, acquainted prior to the engagement. The engagement began as a series of negotiations between families and did not involve the participation of either the bride or groom. When the boy's father obtained the approval of the girl's father for the marriage, the “word was tied” (khos-gab), i.e. pre-engagement began, and the female relatives on both sides began visiting one another. With the first visit of the girl's entire family to the home of the boy, the actual engagement and in-law relationship was established. The engagement usually lasted from several months to two years, during which the boy and girl were prohibited from talking with one another during family visits. If the girl had older, unmarried sisters, it was considered important for her to wait for them to marry first. A party to celebrate the formal betrothal was hosted by the girl's parents, and at this party the boy's mother placed gold coins or some other ornament (like a ring) on the girl (nshan), thereby starting the period of her initiation as a bride in the boy's household.

The wedding celebration itself (harsanik‵) was commonly held in autumn (approximately one year after the engagement). It would begin on a Friday and last between one and seven days, with the consummation occurring on a Sunday evening. On the wedding day the groom and his party would go to the home of the bride, where she would be dressed by his godmother or, if dressed by her own female relatives, she would be veiled by the godmother. An outer veil was removed after the wedding ceremony; an inner veil was not removed until after consummation of the marriage. After she was dressed, the bride was escorted to the church by the groom and his relatives. The marriage took place there, and the godparents (k‵avor and k‵avorkin) of the groom usually presided over the ceremony as well as over the subsequent festivities. These festivities were conducted at the home of the groom, where all the guests gathered. Upon entering the house, the bride and groom would break dishes, jars, or sometimes eggs to bring good luck in the new home. Also during their entrance to the house, the bride and groom wore lavash (traditional Armenian flat bread) draped over their shoulders to ward off evil spirits. The wedding festivities usually included (and still do in some regions of Armenia) the pre-Christian practice of jumping over a fire three times to ensure fertility. The bride and groom would “fly” (t‵rrch‵il) over the fire together, while the guests circled around them, holding hands and dancing. The bride was expected to remain quiet throughout the party, both in respect for her in-laws and husband and in sorrow at leaving her own family. The period directly preceding the wedding ceremony was one of joviality for the groom and of lamentation for the bride, who was about to permanently leave her home. On the day following the wedding ceremony the groom's parents would send a red apple to the parents of the bride, to recognize the bride's virginity. The bride was prohibited from seeing her family for the first week after marriage. On the seventh day her parents would visit her at the home of her in-laws, bringing symbolic gifts or sometimes the trousseau, a practice is known as “head washing” (gloukha laval). The bride herself was not permitted to visit her parents until after the birth of her first child or, with the permission of her mother-in-law, after forty days. Many of these practices pertaining to marriage were still common at the end of the Soviet period, although generally engagements were shorter, lasting one to two months. Similarly, whereas autumn was traditionally the season for weddings—because fruits and vegetables were still available, the summer's wine was ready to drink, and animals that could not be kept alive through the long winter could be slaughtered—weddings currently take place year-round.

Within a village, families resided either in extended family (clan, or gerdastan), or nuclear (untanik‵) units. Extended family residences were usually multigenerational and consisted of somewhere between fifteen and fifty relatives who were bound together by principles of patrilineal descent. Residential nuclear families usually consisted of an elder married son who had left the extended family home with his wife and older children.

The extended family home was typically inherited by the youngest son, who remained there with his wife and children and cared for his parents after his elder brothers had moved away. Property was nevertheless generally distributed evenly among brothers. The senior male of the domestic family was usually succeeded by his eldest son, and the wife of the family head was typically succeeded by the eldest son's wife.

Village organization was often distinct from clan organization. The traditional Armenian village (kiwgh) was governed by a local patriarchal headman, usually a senior representative of the wealthiest family in the village. However, the village headman (tanouter) was elected by residents, who usually cast votes by placing a nut or a bean in the hat of their candidate.

The headman's responsibilities included mediating domestic and village-level quarrels, distributing tax loads, and punishing violations of custom.

Most rituals in Armenian tradition follow the calendar of the Armenian Christian church, so that, for example, Easter and various saints' days are often celebrated. The New Year is celebrated on the first of January in Soviet tradition, and it is customary for people to go visiting from house to house on that day to wish each other luck and success for the coming year. At midnight of New Year's Eve, it is common to go to the cemetery to visit and drink a toast to deceased family members. Christmas is celebrated by Armenians on the sixth of January, which is also the date of Christmas in the Orthodox Church. Like other peoples of the Near East, Armenians believe in the evil eye and have various ritual means of averting it, such as wearing blue clothing or a clove of garlic.

Education and the arts have traditionally been held in high esteem in Armenian society. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, many young men were sent abroad for education and made significant contributions to international education, letters, and business. In the former Soviet Union, Armenians were particularly recognized for their contributions to science and the arts. A Western Armenian literary tradition has flourished in the diaspora, and Armenians have achieved a worldwide reputation for literature and painting. Armenians have been active in the government and politics of many countries of the world. Armenian folk arts notably include metalwork, woodwork, rug weaving, and verbal arts.

In the nineteenth century Armenians practiced various healing rituals. In the twentieth century medical care was typical of that within the Soviet Union, with the exceptions of the treatment of colds or small wounds: the remedy for a sore throat was to take lemon with honey, and yogurt was used as a salve for the treatment of skin wounds.

Armenian funerals generally take place three days after death. Prior to the burial, relatives and close friends gather at the home of the deceased; the men might stand and talk while the women take coffee and pastries together. The body is kept at home until the burial, and the coffin lid is placed upright by the front door of the house as a sign to neighbors that there has been a death in the family. The grave is visited by close friends and relatives on the seventh and fortieth days after death, and on the anniversary as well as at the New Year. Until the visit on the fortieth day, male members of the family are prohibited from shaving. Food, alcoholic beverages, and flowers are common offerings for the dead.

This culture summary is based on the article "Armenians" by Stephanie Platz, in the Encyclopedia of World Cultures, Vol. 6, Russia and Eurasia/China, Paul Friedrich and Norma Diamond, eds. Boston, Mass.: G. K. Hall & Co. 1994. The section on Identification and Location was revised in November 2019, and the section on Population was updated in July 2020, by Leon G. Doyon.

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