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The Nation, the Book and Foreign Language Schools in Armenia


Eddie

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The Nation, the Book and Foreign Language Schools in Armenia

 

I.

 

The historical development of the modern Armenian nation is marked by significant peculiarities the most prominent of which is the extra-territorial grounding for many of the defining components that constitute a nation. In the Armenian case the economic wealth that forms a nation’s solid base accumulated not in Armenia but in the Diaspora – in Tbilisi, in Baku, in Istanbul and beyond. The cultural and literary renaissance that accompanies nation formation also emerged abroad with outstanding centres of culture and education appearing in Venice, Vienna, Istanbul and Tbilisi that together contributed decisively to the shaping of a common modern language that is distinctive of nationality.

 

This historically unique process of nation formation was shaped by centuries of Armenian statelessness, mass migration and the formation of substantial Diaspora communities, combined with an extraordinary level of exploitation and oppression by Ottoman, Persian and Tsarist imperial power that devastated the Armenian social organism in the homeland. Whatever the precise nature of the causes, the effect of extra-territorial development was critical. Armenian national consciousness and ideology that was to guide political action developed disproportionately outside Armenia, on the basis of Armenian social and economic relations within and dependent on foreign political states with little reference to realities in the homeland.

 

A deracinated patriotism was one significant and debilitating result. Without being rooted in defined territorial borders the Armenian notion of nation and patriotism suffered an overemphasis of the idea against the act. Patriotism could be and often was little more than declamatory pride in ancient history and culture and was reduced to a sensibility independent of any direct practical service to the people in the homeland who constituted the nation.

 

The contemporary Armenian state’s enabling of foreign language schools is one contemporary expression of this same distorted nation-formation. Is it not indeed a manifestation of an extraordinary deformation when a state’s leadership will use its power to create conditions for the education of its elite in a foreign language whilst at the very same refusing to adequately sustain education, culture and publishing in the language spoken by the mass of the people in the land?

 

 

II.

 

A perusal of Rafael Ishkhanian’s ‘The Armenian Book’ (154pp, 1981, Yerevan) shows how the history of printing and publishing, so closely associated with the development of a national language that is central to any process of nation-formation mirrors Armenian particularity.

 

Armenians are proud that their first printed book appeared in 1512 ahead of the in Russian in 1517, Estonian 1535 in and Georgian 1629 in. But the printed Armenian book was born in Venice, took its first steps in Europe and returned to Venice with brilliant flourish long before it reached Armenia proper. Even as publishing moved nearer home it was to Armenian populated communities in Istanbul, Tbilisi, Baku and Smyrna where achievements were phenomenal. Through the 18th century for example Armenian presses in Constantinople published ancient authors such as Pavsdos Puzant, Yeghishe, Khorenatzi, Barbetzi, and others, many for the first time. The next century saw more than 350 periodicals published in the city with another 50 in Smyrna. The first Armenian bookshops also opened in Constantinople.

 

However during four centuries of printing the Armenian homeland, west and east, remained more than an extremely poor cousin. As Rafael Ishkhanian notes even:

‘During the first half of the 19th century the centres of the Armenian book remained outside Armenia. Even during the second part of the century no town in Armenia could compare with Venice, Vienna, Tbilisi or Constantinople. (p109)

 

The first press in Armenia proper appeared in Etchmiadzin in 1771 but ravaged by Persian occupation it did not flourish. Some 50 years later a second was established in Shushi in 1820 and it took a further 56 years for another to open in Yerevan and Cyumri (Leninakan). In Ottoman occupied western Armenia things were even worse. Efforts to develop a printing and book industry in Van by Khrimyan Hayrig in 1863 and elsewhere all fell foul of an Ottoman state increasingly dominated by Turkish chauvinist nationalism that understood well the danger Armenian publishing posed to its savage imperial domination.

 

Ironically, despite the extreme savagery of the Ottoman occupation of western Armenia, western Armenian as a modern literary language paced ahead of eastern Armenian. Of the 1720 Armenian titles published from 1800-1850, 1400 were in classical Armenian whilst of the 320 modern Armenian volumes 280 were in western with but 40 in eastern. By the second half of the century modern Armenian of course registered total triumph but the 1915 Genocide fatally wounded western Armenian. Here another peculiarity of Armenian national development: the emergence of two remarkably sophisticated and versatile variants of the same language that in normal course of things should have merged into a single national tongue.

 

Ishkhanian’s account ends in 1920. But it does set the historical context for beginning an evaluation of the printing and publishing record during the Soviet Armenia era.

 

It was only during the Armenian Soviet era that Armenia for the very first became a dominant centre for printing and publishing and that on a vast and unprecedented scale. Whatever the overall judgement of the Second Soviet Armenian Republic, and even when accounting for the catastrophes of the Stalinist purges and the damage done to linguistic development, Soviet Armenian printing left a remarkable legacy. With print runs in the thousands, tens and hundreds of thousands almost the entire body of ancient and medieval Armenian literature was made available to the common man and woman and that in modern Armenian translation. The classics of 18th, 19th and 20th century literature – eastern and western – and a huge body of translations also rolled off Yerevan’s presses. Despite censorship, the Soviet Armenian era witnessed a vast output of scientific, literary, historic and other journals that contained besides the mounds of rubble gems of the highest order.

 

Since the collapse of the Soviet Union and the failure of the post-Soviet Armenian elites to offer it adequate state support the Armenian publishing industry and the Armenian language has been dreadfully undermined. Current government legislation to legalise foreign schools in represents an additional threat. In an age where communication is supposed to be everything the Armenian state is weakening the most vital, the most essential and indispensable element of effective communication – the language that is spoken by the people and that defines a people.

 

Eddie Arnavoudian

19 June 2010

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