Author Archives: SimonVratsian

THE STUDY OF EXOTICISMS TRANSFER ED FROM AND THROUGH RUSSIAN INTO ARMENIAN – 2023-4

Silva V. Papikyan

The Armenian language has been greatly influenced by Russian especially after the unification of Eastern Armenia with Russia in 1828. The connection between a nation and its history is unarguable and the history of any nation leaves its mark on the language. In this sense political, economic, cultural relations with neighboring nations are important, as a result of which languages borrow many words from each other. Among the borrowed words there are a certain number of exoticisms that indicate objects, phenomena and customs specific to a particular nation or country. Usually, they are used when it comes to culture-specific concepts characteristic of a given nation. The article considers some exoticisms transferred from and through Russian into Armenian, which are classified into the following semantic groups: accommodation-residence-area, art-literature, mode of address-address, political directions, clothes, common words.

Based on the examination, it turns out that some exoticisms passed from and through Russian into Armenian are native Russian and direct borrowings in bolshevik, decembrist, menshevik, muzhik, etc., some of them completely went out of use and joined the ranks of archaicisms – batrak, burlak, kholop, etc., many of them acquired new meanings in the course of historical development resulting in polysemy of the word. The origin of some exoticisms from Russian is unknown.

A large number of borrowings passed from different languages into
Armenian through the mediation of the Russian, such as taiga <Rus. тайга <Turk. tundra <Rus. тундра < Fin., etc.

The words borrowed from the European languages are mostly international words.

THE SECRET REPORT OF THE RUSSIAN AMBASSADOR IN CONSTANTINOPLE N. CHARIKOV ABOUT THE MEETING WITH SIMON ZAVARYAN AND HAKOB ZAVRYAN (DECEMBER 1911) – 2023-4

Manyak M. Yeranosyan

In the early 1910s, Russia’s repressive policy towards Armenian political parties, especially the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (Dashnaktsutyun), has undergone certain changes. This fact is explained by an attempt to attract Eastern and Western Armenians to the side of Russia in the context of regional changes at the beginning of the 20th century.

Taking into account the existing changes in Russian policy in the context of the creation of the Entente, it is still unclear whether there were preliminary meetings between members of the ARF Dashnaktsutyun and the Russian authorities, and if there were, then how and through whose mediation the parties determined their positions.

From the point of view of the mentioned and other issues, the document published for the first time, which is preserved in the microfilm fund of the Armenian National Archive, is noteworthy. The original of the document was kept in the Politarchive fund of the Russian Foreign Policy Archive and was sent to Yerevan during the Soviet years.

This document is a letter sent by Russian Ambassador N. Charikov to the Minister of Foreign Affairs, in which he shares his impressions and observations from the meeting with prominent ARF figures S. Zavarian and H. Zavryan. From the content of the document it becomes clear that at the end of 1911, having frozen their relations with the Young Turks, representatives of Dashnaktsutyun began to consider the possibility of restoring the trust of the Russian state. Through the mediation of G. Zohrab, getting the opportunity to meet with the Russian Ambassador, they made great efforts in order to receive the favorable attitude of the Russian state.

In turn, Ambassador N. Charikov, having listened to the arguments and comments of S. Zavarian and H. Zavriyan, recommended his government to show generosity in the large trial scheduled in St. Petersburg over the ARF with the aim of using in the future the opportunities of the most influential political party among Armenians in the interests of the Russian state.

CHRISTAPOR MIKAELIAN AND THE ARF ORGANIZATION OF BAKU – 2023-4

The secret readings of the Police Department of Tsarist Russia in the 1890s

Mkrtich D. Danielyan

In the Ottoman Empire parallel to the Armenian massacres that began in the fall of 1985, the persecution of Armenian politicians by the Police Department of Tsarist Russia began in Transcaucasia. The Tsarist government thought that the idea of restoring national statehood among Armenians was very viable, so they considered the possible rebellion of Western Armenians against the Ottoman Empire as a dangerous example for Eastern Armenians. Therefore, in order to prevent the possible financial support to the Armenian national liberation movement, the Tsarist government first of all directed its attack directly to the ARF Central Committee of Baku or “Oskanapat” led by Christapor Mikaelian, in which Nerses Davtyan (Hrashali), Mikael Zalyan (Dr. Zaliev), Nerses Abelyan, Levon Tadevosyan (Papasha), Stephan Ter-Mkrtchyan (Gagik) played a major role, the latter later became the head of the military fund of ARF (Zinphon).

In such a situation, ARF and its leaders, in particular Christapor Mikaelian, were able to disguise their activities under the guise of various humanitarian and charitable initiatives. In this way they organized fund-raising and other initiatives in order to support the Western Armenians. However, these initiatives caught the attention of the Police Department, and many prominent figures, including Cr. Mikaelian, were arrested.

The presented documents include not only reports and bulletins of the
officials of the Police Department, but also the translations of the writings and letters of a number of famous figures of the Federation, which were confiscated by the Tsarist policemen during the searches, but due to the lack of knowledge of the Armenian language and the lack of necessary information about these figures, were partially distorted and were warped by the translators.

The first part of the documents that are being published includes the reports and bulletins of the officials of the Russian Police Department and the translations of the writings and letters of a number prominent ARF figures, which were seized during the searches.

The second part of the documents will include the documents related to the judicial investigation initiated by the Ministry of Justice based on the materials submitted by the Police Department.

Hakob Movses. “THE POEM SON OF MAN” – 2023-4

Suren S. Abrahamyan

Analytical research material one of the significant names of the modern Armenian poetry-three books of Hakob Movses “Notes” was published in 2015, 2017 and 2018. The notes, which are voluminous as well as relevant in terms of the mastered world and the Armenian aesthetic thought, the development of the contemporary Armenian poetry, music, and social thought. The worldview of Hakob Movses’ notes, as complex as it is and has a spiritual understanding of the concept that versatile material, be it world or Armenian poetry, philosophical and artistic systems, social perception or other issues, is considered from the perspective of the poet’s experience, which comes from the sphere of cultural issues of the modern world.

The main question is the examination of Movses’ worldview, philosophical-aesthetic understandings, which have the same structure and hierarchy of questions in all three poem books of “Notes”. The interpretative center, from which Moses’s thought originates, presupposes a metaphysical beginning, from which the worldview of the writer and the aesthete originates and ends as a whole. This is the basis of the analysis of the article, which is the innovative basis of Movses’ poetry, which is also one of the problems of the experience of modern Armenian aesthetic thought.

THE MILITARY MOVEMENTS OF THE TURKISH CRIMINAL WORLD AGAINST THE ARMENIAN ORGANIZATIONS IN THE 1980s. – 2023-4

New discoveries regarding the activities of the Turkish National Intelligence Service

Aram S. Sayiyan

In the second half of the 1970’s, the internal political situation in the
Republic of Turkey remained tense. Larger and larger masses of the population of Turkey were joining leftist views. The situation became more complicated when the public and the political forces of the national minorities, such as ASALA or the Kurdish Workers’ Party, also joined them. The Turkish military leadership incited right-wing nationalist groups under its influence to clash with the leftist parties to create chaos in the country, and then to create a demand for a “strong hand” among the Turkish public in order to carry out a military coup and stop the influence of the socialists and the Soviet Union. Members of nationalist group «Bozkurt» Abdullah Chatli, Oral Chelik and Mehmed Ali Aghja killed several socialists in Ankara in 1978 and in the next year – socialist Abdi Ipekchi, who was the editor of “Milliyet»” newspaper and then moved to Europe. In 1981 Mehmed Ali Aghja carried out an assassination attempt othe Pope.

In 1975, ASALA, the secret army for the liberation of Armenia, was created in Lebanon. After a short time, the organization and other Armenian groups began to carry out terrorist activities in Europe and North America, mainly against the Turkish diplomats, in order to attract the attention of the Western governments and the international structures to the forgotten Armenian issue. However, when ASALA warriors captured Ankara’s Esenbogha airport and a Turkish military attaché was killed in Ottawa in August 1982, the Turkish authorities decided to resort to punitive measures. Although the Turkish National Intelligence Service wanted to carry out these operations with its regular officers, president Kenan Evren ordered them to be carried out by the nationalist groups who fled to Europe after the military coup of 1980, so that the punitive actions would be presented as the response of the Turkish community. Among the nationalist groups that fled to Europe, the most famous was the group of Abdullah Chatli and Oral Chelik, who were mainly involved in the sale of heroin. The Turkish intelligence service provided them with a list of the Armenian targets, as well as explosive materials. In addition, the NIS also attracted other terrorist groups to punitive actions against Armenians: the Kurdish El-Zein family living in Lebanon, and the Iraqi Turkmen group in Holland. From 1984 to1985 these groups carried out a number of terrorist operations against Armenians and their sturctures in different coutries of Europe by assasiatig their leaders.

In addition to terrorist activities, the Turkish authorities also used economic and political levers in the fight against the Armenians, attracting the interest of the Western powers to the Turkish market liberalized after the military coup, as well as maintaining active political contacts with them, as a result of which many Western countries recognized ASALA as a terrorist organization.

TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY WAR-RELATED DISCOURSE – 2023-4

Linguistic manipulation in action

Seda K. Gasparyan, Gaiane H. Muradian

War discourse is a specific type of communication maintained and structured through language, serving as a medium of mass interaction. The discourse is purposefully created to construct internal support against an external enemy and encourage direct action against a certain state, country, nation, or ethnic group. Social actors worldwide employ the language of war to shape ideologies that legitimize violence and justify certain political, economic, territorial, or social interests. Any call for war masterfully uses the power of words to achieve the consent of society and the citizens to get involved in war.

MANIPULATIVE FUNCTION OF THE WORD “NOTHING” – 2023-4

Sergey A. Aghajanyan, Arsine S. Aghajanyan

The ambiguity of the word “nothing” and the uncertainty of that meanings make it possible for the person using them to form situations of speech manipulation becoming unique, non-standard means of thoughts expressing. One of the best expressions is the famous and of folklore origin fable by “That nothing is me” by Av. Isahakyan. As is the case with all other types of this genre, this too has its own moral and disciplinary component. What is it?

According to the text of this fable, two possible lifestyles are opposed: the mayor and the dervish. It has already been discussed. As for the instructive content of the fable, it is obvious from the text that this is also the author’s ideology. The author tries to convince the reader that out of the two lifestyles presented to them and their symbolic images, out of the values characterizing them, Dervish is preferable. A person who has formed a system of values of his inner psycho-mental freedom, positive social significance, which is significantly different from the purely biological needs of a government official-mayor. The first is intellectual, unique in the sense of his existence, in the form of his self-assertion, the second is a functionary with his place in a coexisting pattern.

However, with all this, it is necessary to keep in mind another form of verbal manipulation, in which the reader is already involved by the author of the text with his narration, created images. And this is the following. His characters embody extremely opposite, contradictory life decisions and lifestyles. In the presented specific situation, as already mentioned, the preferred type of person is Dervish, distinguished by his rich inner world. The author created a conflict where, in any case, Dervish becomes the more sympathetic and the preferred one out of these two. And the author’s manipulation noted lies precisely in the life situation formed according to this idea and in not leaving the listener or reader an alternative to his narration.

Meanwhile, from the cultural and creative experience of mankind, there are other options for understanding life or choosing a lifestyle, characteristic of which is not the opposite of extreme, contradictory options. These variants lack manipulations with thought and speech, and the principle of their formation is to form another lifestyle option by a reasonable combination of possible variants. For example, famous saying from ancient Greek culture “A healthy mind in a healthy body”. Another saying about satisfying the needs of both body and soul through balancing and harmonizing is famous in Christian culture: “Not only long live the man, but also everything that comes from the mouth of God” (Gospel of Matthew, E. 10:15)., 2005, ch. D, part 4/.

In both of the latter cases, the full physical existence of a person is
emphasized as a necessity, since an inferior biological existence becomes the cause of mental inferiority as well. But at the same time, the mental activity of a person is also important, without which he cannot form a lifestyle and a system of values that distinguish him from other beings.

In terms of modern cultural and creative activity of mankind, this problem is one of the most urgent, since it can at least mitigate the process that is being activated and becoming serious day by day through interested international structures and ideologies, as a result of which a person turns into a biological robot.

EPIDEMIOLOGY AND PECULIARITIES OF SUICIDE IN THE ELDERLY IN THE REPUBLIC OF ARMENIA – 2023-4

Kamo E. Vardanyan

The article discusses the epidemiology and peculiarities of suicides in the elderly. With every passing year, the number of suicides on planet Earth records an unprecedented surge, including RA. In 2017, 29 cases of suicide among the elderly were registered in the Republic of Armenia, in 2018 there were 48 cases, in 2019 53 cases were recorded. Over the same period of time, the number of suicide attempts by older people has also increased: 32 in 2017, 52 in 2018 and 59 in 2019.

In some cases, suicides among the elderly have a suicide-accident pattern that is the ramification of age-related dementia. The suicides of the elderly due to incurable and malignant diseases are aimed at ending their own suffering. The largest number of suicides occurs among elderly people who have lost their other half and are in a state of helplessness and despair. Sometimes older people imitate the destructive behavior of people who are suicidal as a result of severe stress. Suicidal modeling is predominantly found in adolescents, but in this case, the object of replication is a well-known, influential person, and in the elderly, the object of imitation is a spouse or a peer At this age, various mental disorders are also important: in nine out of ten cases of suicide, the person at the time of suicide suffered from a specific mental illness. Due to old age, the social roles of a citizen and a professional are devalued, the social significance of a parent is reduced, and the activity of a husband/wife/and sexual partner in matrimonial life weakens. With retirement, the social environment changes, the rhythm, quality and style of life change as well, with the loss of family members comes a feeling of loneliness and isolation, with the inevitability of death, a morbid fear of death manifests itself. Older people become more sensitive and susceptible to changes within themselves and in their social environment. As a result, the causes of suicide in combination with the conditions for suicide, when given the right opportunity, lead to suicidal actions.

THE DEVELOPMENT OF LEXICO-SEMANTIC SUBSET “PROTECTION OF A PERSON” IN THE ARMENIAN LANGUAGE – 2023-4

Artashes R. Martirosyan

The article refers to a relatively new, sometimes problematic area of
linguistics – lexical semantics of the word, in particular, to the problem of semantic changes in the lexical composition of the language. For the first time, the lexicographic elaborations of the development of semantic structures of lexemes of the lexical subset “to safeguard/protect a person”, operating in the lexico-semantic field “person, man”, are subject to chronological order, starting from the ancient Armenian period to the present day. Cognitive-semantic mechanisms of changing the meaning of lexemes in this huge historical period, their relationship with other lexical groups are revealed. The studies of lexicographic processing of lexemes of the subset show that the ancient Armenian period was quite rich in lexemes “to safeguard/protect a person” both in Armenian (grabar) and in borrowed forms with the archiseme “bodyguard”. The study showed that both Armenian and borrowed words subsets, historicisms did not develop their semantic structure from the ancient Armenian period, and some of them, as a generative basis, appeared in various compositions in both the ancient Armenian and the Soviet periods.

The study also revealed that semantemes functioning in the semantic structure of the studied lexemes at different stages of the development of the Armenian language are used in other semantic subsets and groups of the lexical field with the meaning “person, man” in different meanings (cf. BODYGUARD: “in accordance with interests, activities, social status, established community relations” (cf. henchman, accomplice), “to act as an aid, protection, assistance, concession” (cf. defender), “in the service of the judiciary, administrative and legal institutions” (cf. legal adviser/lawyer), “for a certain function in team sports games” (cf. (semi)defender-attacker), etc.).

Thus, in different forms of language development, it is not the lexical and semantic system of fields that changes, but individual sections within it, as well as the relations between them, since a member of any subset or group functioning in the FIELD is connected with other members operating in the FIELD: the whole system has many semantic threads, and any change in the latter leads to a qualitative shift in the vocabulary of the language.