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THE ART WORKS OF VARDGES SURENYANTS IN RESPONSE TO THE ARMENIAN GENOCIDE

Summary

Shushanik G. Zohrabyan
The importance of the art works of Vardges Surenyants is stressed especially by the fact that the painter being a contemporary of the Armenian Genocide of 1894-1896 and then 1915 has left for future generations many valuable pictures, drawings and photos reflecting the greatest tragedy of the Armenian people. They have great art and historic-documentary value. The Hamidian cruel massacres of 1894-1896 are depicted in the Surenyants paintings “Deserted” (1894), “Violated holiness” (1895), “After the massacre” (1895), “Come to me all well-deserved” and the paintings depicting Armenian refugees.

During the Armenian Genocide of 1915 Surenyants came to St.Etchmiadzin and together with great patriot Garegin Hovsepyan did his best to ease the refugees’ lot. At the same time he painted orphans and refugees in Etchmiadzin, Yerevan, Ashtarak, Oshakan where he took part in the opening of schools, got acquainted with everyday life of refugees. Barefooted men, women and children from Shatakh, Aljevazi, Vaspurakan, Karin, Sasun and Western Armenia’s other places in torn clothes but with smiles on their faces and deep consciousness of dignity are painted in his pictures. Gathered in Etchmiadzin refugees in colourful national costumes by their individuality and variety made the painter feel deeper the grief suffered by the people, who left native regions and brought with them a fragment of the lost Motherland’s fragrance and charms.

ARMENOCIDE IN THE CONTEXT OF CULTURAL GENOCIDE – 2010-2

Summary

Anush R. Hovhannisyan
The article is an attempt to present the demolition of Armenian culture during and after the Armenian Genocide in Turkey in the context of the conception of cultural genocide. According to R.Lemkin, genocide is not only the physical annihilation of an ethnic or religious group but also the elimination of its national culture. A number of specialists believe that the definition of genocide also includes the notion of cultural genocide. Cultural genocide is expressed in those actions and measures which are aimed at damaging the identity of the target-group and encouraging the annihilation of its ethnic culture, destructing the monuments, applying linguicide, cultural cannibalism, reinterpretation of history, denialism, etc.

The Republican Turkey has not recognized and is still trying to deny the very fact of genocide. So the long history of the efforts of the Turks to erase the fact of the crime of the Armenian genocide from memory, to destroy the Armenian cultural monuments, to discriminate the Armenian historical heritage of Western Armenia are part of a systematic policy and can be defined as cultural genocide.

The Armenian cultural heritage is a part of the world’s civilization, so the concern of its preservation should be shared by the world community and must be protected by international effort.

THE MAIN REASONS OF EMIGRATION AND PERCEPTION OF THREAT – 2010-2

Summary

Arsen L. Petrosyan
Emigration is the most essential challenge for Armenia now. Due to emigration and the existing reasons of emigration, Armenia registers a fall of demographic data and there are no optimistic tendencies.

The reasons generating emigration are grouped into socio-economic, moral psychological, and foreign factors. It is noted that the morally and psychologically healthless surroundings and the absence of faith for developing perspective are the main factors nowadays.

Summing up the article, the author concludes, that Armenia’s and everyone’s economic security and prosperity are connected with the number of the permanent population of the country. A significant precondition to reach this target is to establish fairly and creative social surroundings in the country

THE ALTENATED ARMENIAN IN INDEPENDENT ARMENIA: Politological Perspective – 2010-2

Manuk A. Harutyunyan
In the article the manifestations of one of the most crucial notions of modern social sciences, i.e. the phenomenon of alienation, are being examined in Armenia. An ordinary Armenian citizen’s isolation, alienation from those basic institutions, groups and people who supervise the country’s political life is being demonstrated. The Armenian’s flexibility and passive position to the latters bring to the gradual formation of shady stipulated right, shady justice and, actually, “shady law and order” in the country.

The fact that the diffidence and discontentment that exist in Armenia are not crystallized in the massive complaint against the political system testifies to the feeling of social dissatisfaction and the de-centralization and de-unity of the political energy. The reasons are to be sought in the undeveloped nature of the massive political consciousness, as well as the individum-worshiping psychology uniquely typical of the Armenians, through which we traditionally used to be taught to concentrate our attention on persons and the personal factor in the socio-political life. To overcome the phenomenon of alienation in Armenia, the state management ideology should be based on the principle of social cooperation and democratic participation, as without the nation’s massive participation and assistance, democracy cannot exist.

MIKAYEL NALBANDYAN: Philosophy of freedom – 2010-2

Summary

Aram G. Alexanyan
In the articles, monographs about Nalbandyan published in the Soviet region, his philosophical worldview was mainly qualified as materialism, or a passage from idealism to materialism. Moreover, Soviet researchers portrayed M. Nalbandyan as an atheist, a person who denied God’s existence. But, in reality, on the basis of the eminent Armenian thinker’s worldview lies deism, which is the organic synthesis of theology, philosophy, and science, and has a syncretic, undifferentiated nature.

In Nalbandyan’s works the classification of the main problems of the theory of cognition and will freedom in mind, having an exceptional blend in his deictic worldview context, also present a necessity of a new examination. M. Nalbandyan’s theory of cognition is greatly relativistic. A lot of formulae discussed in his various works have later been elaborated much more minutely by different streams of philosophical investigation. Mikayel Nalbandyan’s worldview is of epistemological and historicalcultural high value and presupposes a thorough professional study.

A TRY OF DESPISING ARMIN WEGNER’S MEMORY – 2010-2

On Martin Tamkey’s Dissertation: “Armin T. Wegner and the Armenians: one Witness’s Claim and the Reality”

Summary

Albert V. Musheghyan
In 1980-90s the evangelic theologian Martin Tamkey came up with a number of articles, a PhD dissertation and a monograph in Goethingen, Marburg and Hamburg. The mentioned works were addressed against the pure memory of the witness of the Armenian Genocide, Armin Theofil Wegner. In his dissertation “Armin Theofil Wegner: One Witness’s Claim and the Reality”, separately published as a book in Hamburg in 1993 and 1996, written on the basis of the materials collected by him in the literary archive and extraneous documents, professor M. Tamkey has taken the task to prove that ostensibly Armin Wegner who served as a sanitarian in the German military headquarters did not witness the Armenian Genocide in Mesopotamia in 1915-1916. He also defends the mendacious thesis of the Turkish historiography according to which during World War I thousands of Armenians who were displaced from Asia Minor merely because of military necessity died in the Syrian Desert only because of unfavourable conditions. In the article based on the testimonies of contemporaries, Martin Tamkey’s own new publication and Wegner’s diaries the undivine and insolvent viewpoints of the Doctor of Theological Studies are being one after the other denied.

THE MIGRATION PROCESSES IN ARMENIA: TENDENCIES AND MAIN ISSUES – 2010-2

Summary

Gagik K. Yeganyan Ruben S. Yeganyan
The revolutionary reforms in 1988-2001, along with the disastrous earthquake in December 1988, the Nagorno-Karabakh war and the blockade have had an overall and decisive influence on the migration situation in the country, introducing drastic changes into the reality shaped in the Soviet era. In these years, more than 3.2 million people were included in the emigration movement. The drastic changes of the emigration situation started with masses of ethnic Armenians leaving the country, continued with the dislodgement of around 200 thousand homeless inhabitants in the 1988 December earthquake zone, also caused by the influence of reforms in 1989-1991, but it turned into a more disastrous picture in the years 1992-1994, when within the period of three years about 1 million people emigrated abroad. Still, due to the influence of the reemigration developed in the next years, as well as the impact of other processes, in 1988-2001 the number of the emigrated Armenian citizens staying abroad calculated about 1.1 million people.

In the mentioned years, the immigration situation in the country was also damaged in connection with the fact of displacing a part of the population from the disaster zone and border adjacent districts to safer places, along with the intensification of the “village→city” and “city→city” flows. In the years 2002-2007, some positive displacements were accounted in the immigration and emigration processes, the future procession of which was again endangered by the influence of the world economic-financial crisis, as well as by the enlargement of Armenia’s agricultural grounds, and the development of the monopoly of the trade sphere.

ARMENIANS IN THE ECONOMY OF THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE – 2010-1

Economic reasons as influencial factors in the Armenian Genocide

Summary

Anahit Kh. Astoyan
As the ruling ethnic group in the Ottoman Empire, the Turks left the main spheres of the economy to the experienced representatives of the indigenous, civilized peoples of the countries they had conquered. Because of their skill, entrepreneurial mind, and diligence, Armenians, as the oldest bearers of the Western Asia’s civilization, gradually began to take up influential positions in the management of agriculture, foreign and internal large-scale trade, crafts, industrial production and finances in the Empire. They controlled the important elements of the Empire’s economy. Compared to the Armenians, the Turkish affluent class was peripheral and did not represent as an important element in the Ottoman economy. The Young Turk government, the organizer of the Armenian Genocide, besides their Pan-Turkic political goals, also intended to get rid of the Armenian economic competition.

After the deportation and massacre of Armenians, the Empire’s economy collapsed. By annihilating the Armenians living in Western Armenia and Armenian Cilicia, as well as in other parts of the Ottoman Empire, the Young Turk government eliminated its powerful competitor and was able to cover enormous war expenses and pay up its foreign debts simply at the expense of the Armenian wealth and belongings they had confiscated.

THE ARMENIAN GENOCIDE – 2010-1

On the Applicability of the Fundamental Tenets of the “Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide“ adopted by UN on December 9, 1948

Summary

Vladimir D. Vardanyan
The article is dedicated to the issues of applicability of the 1948 UN Genocide Convention to the events constituting the Armenian Genocide. The international legal development of the prohibition of the crime of genocide in the framework of the United Nations is one of the focal aspects of the paper.

Having analyzed the controversial points of view on possibility of the retroactive application of the Genocide Convention author comes to the conclusion that there is no official position on that matter. The issue of retroactive application of the Genocide Convention as an issue of legal interpretation is exclusively under the jurisdiction of the International Court of Justice in accordance with Article IX of the Convention. Since there is no Court jurisprudence on the issue of its retroactive application, any statement for or against its retroactivity will remain non binding and disputable.

THE WORD ԵՂԵՌՆ (YEGHERN) AND THE SEMANTIC FIELD OF ITS EQUIVALENCE IN ENGLISH – 2010-1

Recommended for publication by the Department of Contemporary Armenian, Institute of Language, Armenian National Academy of Sciences

Summary

Seda Gasparyan
The article deals with the study of the Armenian word եղեռն (yeghern) and the semantic field of its equivalence in English. Proceeding from the well-established statement of the dialectical correlation between language and speech the author carries out the research on both the emic level (i.e. the language system) and the etic one (i.e. from the point of view of its functioning in speech). The study of the field of equivalence in the language system is based on different data registered in Armenian and English monolingual and bilingual dictionaries.

The confrontative study of these data reveals the presence of a common dominant seme (crime) in the semantic structure of the majority of them, as well as the possibility of rejecting some of the semantic equivalents offered.

By the research carried out on the etic level it is established that full equivalence is provided not only by semantic but also stylistic and pragmatic adequacy of linguistic elements. The role of the horizontal and vertical contexts, as well as the speech situation cannot be underestimated.

In the closing part of the article, the results of the investigation are summed up graphically presenting the constituent semes in the semantic globality of the word genocide the only internationally established term, equivalent to the Armenian word եղեռն (yeghern).