Food for deadly thought

[Eddie]

Food for deathly thought

 

Here a question to consider: was the Soviet Armenian experience, in one particular aspect an enormous and indubitable register of cultural, social, economic and demographic attainment, a mere cosmetic edifice obscuring the truth of yet another seven decades of inexorable national shrinkage, decades during which the presence of an Armenian population in historic Armenian homelands throughout Asia Minor and the Caucuses continued to decline and brought now to the precipice of elimination.

 

For centuries, but closest to our times from the mid-19^th, one the most striking demographic and geo-political trends in Asia Minor and the Caucuses has been the steady, irreversible diminution of its Armenian communities and the equally steady shrinkage of the territorial space they inhabit. Armenian populations across historic Armenia have been systematically uprooted and removed, cleared out with all signs of their presence ruthlessly cut to pieces. Those who remain have been herded into a tiny, inhospitable territorial space – the current Republic of Armenia - that allows for no sustainable independent nationhood.

 

Take a look at a demographic and geo-political map and you will see the shocking truth…the sure disappearance of the Armenian people from Asia Minor and the Caucuses that for thousands of years been their homeland. The Genocide finally cleansed historic western Armenia of most of its Armenian population whilst the post-Genocide Turkish Republic headed by Kemal Ataturk completed the process during the 1930s and 1940s. Besides eradicating an Armenian presence from western Armenia, Kemal Ataturk’s Turkey also reduced the once substantial Armenian presence in Istanbul to a shadow of its glorious past. Systematic discrimination against national minorities threatens to drive remaining Armenian communities to extinction.

 

From a map of Asia Minor and the Caucuses that showed substantial Armenian communities across the region, Armenians today appear isolated to a rump, escape from which seems the sole chance of human survival.

 

The Soviet Armenian age, despite a population growth that touched 3 million, did nothing to stem or reverse demographic and geographic collapse. On the contrary, this period appears to mark a further stage in this process, operating particularly in the Caucuses. Parallel with the Soviet Armenian cultural and demographic flourish, through the Caucuses during the same period, a long-established Armenian presence underwent a critical decline, accelerated by the assimilationist policies enforced by the nationalist elites in Georgia and Azerbaijan.

 

Nakhichevan during the Soviet era, that has no natural borders with Azerbaijan, was attached to Azerbaijan and emptied of its Armenian population. Garabagh similarly, despite its Armenian majority was also annexed to Azerbaijan and suffered a steady decline of its Armenian population. In Armenian populated Azerbaijani regions – Baku in the main – linguistic, educational and cultural restrictions lead to enforced assimilation. Similar processes were at work in Georgian controlled territories where Armenians constituted overwhelming majorities. In Tbilisi, once a thriving centre of Armenian culture and commerce, only its ghost survives.

 

In the post-Soviet age Armenians have been finally cleared from their homes in Azerbaijan whilst their cultural legacy has been barbarously reduced to rubble. In Georgia too Armenians are being pushed out of remaining Armenian strongholds.

 

The Soviet era increase of the Armenian population has offered no compensation. It has indeed underlined the unsustainability of the territory as an economically viable state. Since the end of the Soviet era, without central Soviet support and as a result of the ruthless plunder of national wealth by the new elite, the Armenian state has been incapable of sustaining its 3 million Soviet era population.

 

The Armenian Republic, the last redoubt for an Armenian community in Asia Minor is collapsing asunder in the throes of a catastrophic demographic blood-letting that continues day in day out with queues thronging foreign ambassadorial buildings. A greedy and voracious Armenian elite of looters and criminals does nothing to reverse the process.

 

As Armenia is emptied, its increasingly thinly populated lands are eyed both by Azeri and Georgian elites, also voracious and vicious but in addition well financed and well- armed to boot.

 

Can there be any respite or recovery? As we approach the 100th anniversary of the Genocide let us be under no illusion that Genocide recognition even by the most powerful states on the globe will alter these trends. Radical action is necessary, action for which we have the intellectual and cultural resources. But have we the political will?

 

31 May 2013