Category Archives: CORNERSTONES

Summary

Suren A. Manukyan
Ph.D. in History

In its fifth decade of development, the field of Genocide studies continue the exploration of many fundamental topics that have been central since its foundation. The phenomenon of genocide, encompassing its underlying causes, the actors involved, the methods of execution, and the enduring consequences, remains a focal point of attention for specialists from a range of disciplines, including history, political science, law, sociology, psychology, and more.

Several core themes have endured throughout this field’s evolution, such as the definition of the term “genocide,” the categorization of mass murders, intergroup conflicts, the construction of overarching narratives for individual genocides, the strategies and technologies employed in mass killings, the behaviors of both perpetrators and victims, third-party complicity and indifference, the influence of international relations and geopolitics, as well as the role of war and ideologies in the initiation and progression of genocides. Moreover, the portrayal of these crimes and tragedies in art remains a significant aspect of study.

Nevertheless, new trends have emerged, significantly reshaping the field and, in some cases, bringing about revolutionary change. Notably, the scope of examined cases has expanded beyond recognized genocides to include lesser- known incidents, forgotten genocides, mass atrocities, and war crimes. Much like in other social science disciplines, individual case studies and micro-narratives have gained prominence, effectively complementing larger narratives and, at times, challenging established paradigms. The role of colonial and imperial policies has come to the forefront in explaining these crimes, altering the traditional scientific basis. Memories and testimonies of survivors have been freed from their prejudicial labels and now hold an equal place in scholarly investigations.

Comparative genocide studies also remain a promising research method, despite recognition of certain inherent challenges.
Finally, there is an ongoing effort within the field of genocide studies to transition from a purely theoretical, descriptive, and analytical discipline into a practical and applied branch of science. While the prevention of genocides has not been successful, researchers persist in their endeavors, developing various models and delving deeper into the essence of the genocide phenomenon, contributing to the broader effort to combat these heinous acts.

REFERENCES

1.Bartʻikyan M., Arnashaghakh Izmirĕ, Ohanēs (Onnik) Ghazerean, Kensagrakan notʻer (ed. Tʻehmine Martoyan), Yer., Hayotsʻ tsʻeghaspanutʻyan tʻangaran-institut himnadram, 2022(in Armenian).
2.Manukyan S., Tsʻeghaspanagitutʻjan hantsʻagortsutʻyunĕ kankhargelelu yev patzhelu masin konventsʻiayi kirarman hnaravorutʻyunnern u dzhvarutʻyunnerĕ, Haykakan kʻaghakʻagitakan handes, N 1(15), 2021 (in Armenian).
3.Manukyan S., Tsʻeghaspanagitutʻyunĕ vorpes gitachugh. Dzevavorman yev zargatsʻman patmutʻyunĕ, “Vēm”, N 3 (67), 2019 (in Armenian).
4.Manukyan S., Tsʻeghaspanagitutʻyunneri gitakan dasakargumneri hartsʻi shurj,
Tsʻeghaspanagitutʻyan handes, 2, 2021(in Armenian).
5.Matʻosyan T., Hayotsʻ tsʻeghaspanutʻyan yev hreakan Holokʻost. Hamematman pʻordz, Yer., 2005 (in Armenian).
6.Poghosyan N., Hayotsʻ tsʻeghaspanutʻyan khndirĕ Rafayel Lemkini usumnasirutʻyunnerum, Yer., Hayotsʻ tsʻeghaspanutʻyan tʻangaran-institut himnadram, 2020(in Armenian).
7.Poturean G., Taragir husher 1915-1917 (ed.Mihran A. Minasean), Yer., Hayotsʻ tsʻeghaspanutʻyan tʻangaran-institut himnadram, 2022 (in Armenian).

A historical tragedy and an alarm for the Republic of Armenia

Otto Joh. Luchterhandt (Hamburg, Germany)

The article covers the recent events in Artsakh in the context of regional
geopolitical interests and international law. It is shown that Azerbaijan and Turkey have violated international law with their aggressive war against Nagorno-Karabakh and that Azerbaijan’s threats against the Republic of Armenia also violate the prohibition of the use of force established by international law (Article 2, (4), UN Charter).

Although Azerbaijan’s aggressive policy completely contradicted the current
international law, Azerbaijan was able to succeed because not only Russia but also the entire international community stopped acting on the Karabakh issue. The participation of NATO member Turkey was decisive for the outcome of the 44-day war. Azerbaijan would also have lost in that Karabakh war, a war contradicting international law, if Turkey and the Syrian mercenaries did not take part in it.

The end of the Republic of Artsakh and the mass migration of Karabakh
Armenians were a drastic turning point in the history of the Armenian people, and the Armenian Diaspora spread throughout the world. The catastrophe unwittingly evokes memories of the Genocide that took place in the Ottoman state during the First World War, even if its dimensions are incomparable. The shock associated with the fall of Artsakh is perhaps even greater because it happened in front of the eyes of the world community, which, compared to 100 years ago, not only knows international law, genocide, and human rights but also often demands great sensitivity in this regard.

The disastrous consequences of the collapse and loss of Karabakh hit
Armenia at a time when its international political conditions have become significantly complicated, firstly, by Russia’s war against Ukraine, and secondly, by Russia’s still intensifying confrontation with the “collective West.” The war of Hamas against Israel and the resulting tensions in the entire Islamic-Arab region have led to the fact that the conditions for Armenia have become more unfavorable and unpredictable. Under these conditions, the Armenian government can avoid the risk of becoming a victim of new military attacks like in the remaining part of Karabakh only by continuing to maintain traditional close allied relations with Russia and neighborly relations with Iran and by involving the EU in its efforts to resolve its national problems with Azerbaijan and Turkey.

With the flight of more than 100,000 compatriots within a week, the issues
and the challenges facing the Republic of Armenia are enormous. It is possible to overcome these challenges only in conditions of striving with the forces of all state bodies and institutions, public organizations, broad citizen solidarity, willingness to help, and the generous support of the Diaspora.

An essay in tribute and in attempt to sketch his life and work

Rubina B. Peroomian (Los Angeles)

These and still many more were the accolades inundating social media, mourning the loss of the man who had just relinquished life, leaving behind a monumental legacy in the field of Armenian Studies. And none of these words were exaggerations but in fact a roadmap or even a challenge for me to try to accomplish the impossible task to construe and present, within the limits of this
journal article, the life and work of someone who had been my mentor, my role model, my inspiration, my colleague, my friend. I will do my best, holding in my heart the pride of having been a part of a minuscule portion of his activities, and cherishing the honor of having been trusted to write this article for Vem, a reputable academic journal in Armenia.

Mariam M. Karapetyan

The article analyzes the experience of the “Narrative Journalism” course at the Faculty of Journalism of Yerevan State University. The chosen teaching method is interpreted as an example of applying the principles of heuristics. The article first discusses some problems of the ecology of education in Armenia, in particular, the difficulties of teaching and mastering modern humanities, then suggests the use of heuristics as an expedient educational strategy in the context of existing problems.

As typological elements of intertextuality

Hripsime A. Zakaryan

The potential and ability to clearly convey to the reader the internal logic of speech, psychological or mental features, content-conceptual information in a fiction text is due to a number of circumstances and forms that are determined not only by the content and semantic system of the text. The semantic system of a fiction text is a comprehensive self-developing complex system, the structure of which involves the interconnection of certain text elements, through which unique semantic connections are formed. Among these elements, the most important function is performed
by the title of the text and the epigraph to it, which, in addition to being key textual elements, are also independent semantic-informational units, typological elements of intertextuality.

Davit R. Mosinyan

Peace and security have long been one of the most important standards of
modern life. Among universal values, they are primary. Nevertheless, the number
of deaths due to war worldwide has decreased in recent decades, and war
operations in general have decreased, their intensity not only has not weakened, but
also their involvement has expanded, including even civilians on various platforms.

Summary

In the context of value orientations

Harutyun T. Marutyan

The memory of the Armenian Genocide is one of the pillars of Armenian identity and, as such, has an important role in the Armenians’ value system. More than this, it is also one of the important tools for building the given value system through education.

One of the important ways of keeping that memory alive is teaching the subject of genocide in schools. The teaching of the subject of the
Armenian Genocide within the curricula in schools in Armenia is mainly included in “Armenian History” classes in the 8th and 11th grades and, as such, mainly provides cognitive information.

Cognitive knowledge is, as a rule, formed by providing information about the period, stages, developments and course of events characterizing
the phenomenon and is directed at the past. In other words, the information to be provided is knowledge about the past. However, this path is not
effective, in today’s reality, in terms of confronting the student with moral and other dilemmas in his/her life.

Several topics are put forward in the article and, by emphasizing them, it is possible to endow teenagers and young adults with positive value orientations and an identity based on the revered memory of the genocide. Those that stand out are (1) the self-defense battles fought by Armenians during the World War I and the Armenian Genocide; (2) humanitarian resistance, when the cause of Armenian salvation became, for the Armenians who took refuge in or near the places of exile, the spur to stimulate their organizational activities as well as those of already existing Armenian communities. As a result, effective rescue mechanisms were
formed (“One Armenian for one gold coin”); (3) manifestations of different forms of non-violent resistance: self-sacrificing strong internal family bonds, selfless mutual assistance between relatives and friends, acquaintances and strangers and reaching out to one another, sharing last pieces of bread and various things that testify to high moral values; (4) highlighting the role of organized Armenian self-help, Armenian organizations, benefactors of the Armenian nation, the Armenian press, Armenian teachers and ordinary Armenian people in the work of saving Armenians; (5) using accepted practical international standards to rate the Turkish “salvation” of Armenians; (6) the resurrection of the role of the great internal force of resistance that the survivors of the Armenian Genocide have established within the powerful Armenian diaspora that numbers many millions; (7) including the reading and analysis of stories and memoirs concerning the human destinies of victims, those who resisted and survivors within the school education system and creating a digital database of victims and survivors; 8) considering the Armenian Genocide to be the result of the inhuman ideology, which has a lot in common with similar ideology during the Second World War; (9) knowledge of the main episodes of the history of other genocides, which will enable teenage Armenian boys and girls to strengthen their awareness of the need to fight against them, allow them to observe the Armenian Genocide in a wider context and to realize its patterns and characteristics in the context of the world history.

The article justifies the early resolution of the issue of creating a course “Basic issues of the Armenian Genocide” and teaching it in public schools and centers of higher education.

Summary

As a social and humanitarian mediation

Mariam M. Karapetyan
In discussions about the role of science in Armenia and the ways of its development, the arrow of criticism and expectations is primarily directed at the state, expecting a significant increase in funding for the field of science. However, in addition to the main addressee and its functions, we can see other possible participants in the development of the field, often with less obvious and less specific functions. The given article discusses scientific journalism. Its role as a socio-humanitarian mediator between science and society is investigated. The coverage of natural sciences in the media is discussed as a social and humanitarian practice, its means and possible obligations are considered.

The discussed approach to socio-humanitarian mediation not only states that expectations from natural sciences in Armenian society are often unfounded, since real needs are of a socio-humanitarian nature, but also allows us to look for practical starting points for creating their relationship. The proposed approaches may lead to qualitatively new questions. For example, the realization that scientific journalism makes scientific practices public through social and humanitarian mediation raises the question of what kind of connection we want to create between society and scientific knowledge in each specific case of coverage. What stories turn scientific knowledge into unscientific? Who talks about science and how?

From the viewpoint of this issue, the analysis of direct and indirect knowledge transfer can be considered one of the important points of the article. The discussion of the problem can be summarized as follows: indirect knowledge transfer is the practice of considering and creating social contexts of knowledge and science, a practice capable of articulating the connections between the relations of different fields.

The practical directions of journalistic activity mentioned in the article, with the help of the theoretical questions presented, can become the basis for the development of conscious journalistic obligations. In particular, the promotion of the institutionalization of the fields of science and the promotion of scientific knowledge to the public may seem to be two important, yet opposite directions, but as a journalistic activity they can be quite comparable precisely because of the functions of journalism.

Gevorg S. Khoudinyan
The current deadly battle between Russia and Ukraine – the sons of Ruthenia founded by chieftain Rurik of the Scandinavian Rus (Ros) tribe in 862, is a clash of centuries-old archetypes that will pave the way for the clarification of the eastern borders of Western civilization.

Though Francis Fukuyama, recently inspired by the events in Ukraine, tried to find a modern value system in the causes of this bloodshed and described what was happening as a qualitatively new milestone in the triumph of the idea of freedom, we stick to the viewpoint expressed by “Vem” still at the beginning of 2014 – in the days of the Russian-Ukrainian first war, that the well-known London plan was launched to bring the “birth of the Cossack tribe” free Russians – Ukrainians, against Russia so as to put the latter, considered to be invincible, in a hopeless situation thanks to the persistent efforts of the Jewish-Turkish lobby deeply rooted within Russia.

The article presents the main stages of the implementation of that program and the levers and mechanisms of its key players to influence the Russian political leadership.

According to the author, since the 18th century, the Russian Empire had become stronger and had entered the arena of European and world politics through successive cycles of its rationalization, that is, Russia has developed and flourished as a European power. That is why the doctrine of Eurasianism, re-nominated in the 1990s by London’s prompt in the age of technological society and information, is in fact a vulgar Asianism that undermines the civilizational foundations of its own state.

Therefore, the prospect of the USSR restoration based on such a concept could not have stalled, even after the first “successful joint operation” in 2020 – after the 44-day war in Karabakh, since subsequent events showed that Russia sacrificed its ally for it not only economically, but is not militarily ready for further development of events.

The author considers that in such conditions the Ukrainian political nation is currently trying to become the Europe-directed face of the Russian double-headed eagle, whose Slavonic-Varyag nucleus persistently strives for Europe. Therefore, Ukraine, as a country of free Russians, is waging a life-and-death struggle against Tatar-Slavic Moscow, formed on the basis of the Finno-Ugric substratum.

Whereas, for Russia, to conquer Ukraine means to win itself politically and culturally, that is, in terms of civilization. Therefore, such persistence manifested in the arena of “defeating itself” opens the way of Russia’s suicide.

In contemporary diasporological theories

Summary

Hratsin V. Vardanyan

Since the end of the 1980s, and especially since the 1990s, the interest of academics towards diasporas has grown dramatically in a number of countries around the world. Large-scale theoretical and empirical studies have been conducted. If in the 1990s many of the theoretical studies on the diaspora started from the idea that the diaspora has not been properly examined by science, today, in fact, one can summarize, analyze the theoretical generalizations made over three decades, аlthough researchers have different approaches and scientific debates continue on a number of issues. It is noticeable that the interest towards diasporas is conditioned by the growth of the significant economic, political, social and cultural influence that diasporas have in the modern world.

Theoretical discussions about diaspora are not only somewhat different from each other, but are sometimes at different poles. These theories reflect the expansion of the semantic domain of the term diaspora over time, as well as changes in social processes, in particular, under the influence of globalization and transnationalism. Taking into account the chronological developments of the definition and the description of the main features of the diaspora, different theoretical directions were distinguished: from classical to constructivist and postmodern.

Only the old diasporas are taken as a starting point for the classical theory of the diaspora; an attempt is made to give a clear definition to the term diaspora, to determine its basic characteristics.

Constructivist studies use the ideas of nation, nationalism, the process of diaspora formation, issues of identity, in particular the changing nature of identity. Constructivist studies analyze the transition and processes, in the presence of which it can be said that people settled outside the homeland move from the status of an ethnic group to the status of the diaspora.

According to the post-modern theory, the diaspora is characterized by a number of opposite phenomena: centralization, globalization, radicalization, resettlement, variability, stability, and paradoxical combination. It is seen as a link between the past and present, the country of origin and the host country.

Among the issues discussed at the theoretical level on the diaspora, the issues of identity are basic. Like other issues related to the Diaspora, theorists have different approaches to issues of identity; the existence of wide scientific discussions is due to the fact that identity, as a social-psychological phenomenon, is complex in itself; it has different layers. In the case of the diaspora, it is based first on the formation of ethnic self-consciousness, and then on the formation of a typical diaspora self-consciousness. Diaspora identity is not always homogeneous, it can be characterized by heterogeneity, diversity, as well as hybridization.