The Armenian

[Anonymouse]

"Nation".

 

Armenia became a Nation-State in 1991 after it seceded from the Soviet Union. I have a particular problem with Armenian nationalist historians who try to use the past to justify the present and the future. What I will examine here, isn't just about Armenia as a nation, but rather, all peoples of the world and all nations.

 

The idea of an Armenian "nation-state", which seeks to form a homogenous Armenian speaking land is not in accordance with history. This implies that "we have always been Armenian for thousands of years all the way from the Yervantid Dynasty to the present State". We project ourselves into the past that for some reason Armenians have always been a nation. That is untrue.

 

When I see Armenians today speaking of Armenian history and saying "Why couldn't the Armenians have been more united?", well that ignores an integral part of history, which should not be viewed with the lens of isms that reared their ugly heads from the Enlightenment. Whether you are a Marxist viewing the rest of history with the lens of Marxism, or viewing history through the lens of Nationalism, makes no difference.

 

When Armenians of the present, seek to compare themselves to the Armenians of the past, and outline a common ancestry or descent and project themselves into the distant past, that is anti-historical. This implies that Armenians ( and this isn't just for Armenains this applies to all modern nations ), have always had a fixed and common identity for all time. What this does is ignore the history of a world before nationalism became a potent ideology. Then, after that was established, all history was viewed through this lens. And to that degree, one can say that 'history' was created in 19th century Germany, where nationalism gained a foothold.

 

The truth is that Armenians of today, or those who claim "Armenian ethnicity" are nothing like what the Armenians of the Yervantid Dynasty were, or the Arshakhuni. Throughout its history "Armenian" has been a term that has changed in meaning. At one point "Armenians" were those who were heavily influenced and interacted with the Greeks, at another it was with the Achaemenians. Many Armenian nakharar houses are of Persian origin as well, even the Mamikonians. Then when the Umayyads attacked Armenia, there was further demographic changes. The same applies to the Turkic and Mongol invasions, and then on to the Russian influence. Throughout all its history people have changed. The fact that an a nakharar such as the Bagratunis or Artsrunis can ally themselves with an Arab emirate in Armenia, against another "Armenian" nakharar house, show the fungible nature of what it meant to be "Armenian". Likewise if an Arab Muslim can convert to Christianity and call himself "Armenian" suggests the same thing. We must stop looking into the past, through the eyes of the Nationalist present. It is because of this bias that we are left with the question "Why weren't Armenians more united?".

 

Yet acknowledging that nationalism has roots in the Enlightenment, that doesn't deter us from somehow giving ourselves legitimacy that "Armenian" has been a fixed national identity even before they knew themselves as a "nation". To quote Patrick Geary:

 

"Even today, neonationlists acknowledge that the political self-consciousness of modern nationalism is a nineteenth- or twentieth century phenomenon, yet attempt to claim that while political ethnicity is of recent origin, cultural ethnicity is much more ancient. The people was a people, in other words, before it knew itself and language is both the sign and innermost reality of this immutable identity."

 

The truth his the people that have been "Armenian" throughout the ages, have changed, and as they have changed, the language has changed also because of different influences. The same applies for "Turks". What is meant by a "Turk"? If it is someone who speaks a Turkic language in modern day "Turkey", then it is implied that he has always had a fixed identity for all time, descending from the Mongoloid invaders. Well, this ignores the fact that the region was heavily populated by Armenian and Greek speaking peoples and they were merely absorbed, since they were the majority and/or converted. That is why todays Turks Greeks and Armenians look far more alike with one another, than a modern Turk Greek or Armenian would with people from the 4th - 10th century who claimed to be "Greek, Turk, or Armenian".

 

I know this isn't a comfortable position to take, especially one that is bound to get me ostracised in my own community. I nonetheless cannot taint history because of ideological bias. Cheers.

Edited December 13, 2003 by Anonymouse

[Teutonic Knight]

An unusual first post handled well.

There is no question that the Armenian genetic makeup has changed several times but name a nation that hasn't gone through the same changes?

This is evident especially in the case of Armenians and Greeks, two of the most ancient peoples on planet earth but I fail to see what you are trying to say.

Most Armenians I have met acknowledge the fact that Armens or even the later Urartians looked nothing like the inhabitants of Byzantium. Greeks are bit more hesitant with this fact even though it is more evident (ancient art) in their case pointing to changes in Hellenic makeup.

Considering the plethora of invasions both nations went through it is a miracle that both have managed to preserve even this much, both Greeks and Armenians could have easily ended up like the Assyrians or even worse.

[Anonymouse]

Indeed, what I am trying to say is that the modern Armenian nation attempts to project itself into the past that "we have always been one people" when historically different people have come and gone and settled in the region adopting the label and culture. Perhaps it was because of the location of Armenia that it has survived, in the center of everything yet in the highlands. What does it mean to be "Armenian" again I ask. In the past, there were many "Greeks" who spoke Armenian, and likewise "Arabs" or "Turks" who spoke Armenian. This problem with identity and labels continues to haunt us even today, such as in the United States. Politics thrives on it, nationalism loves it, and the individual proves it as erroneous.

 

I am trying to answer the question most Armenian nationalists come up with, "Why weren't Armenians united?". To answer that question one must not view history through the lens of the present nationalistic fervor, but rather view the past for what it is, a complex world of chaos in which the bigger powers had tried to put "order" on, but this tradition of historiography has been handed down from generation to generation since the time of Herodotus, until now. That is what I am trying to say. I refer the reader to look into "The Myth of Nations" by Patrick J. Geary in which he tangles the subject of "nations" and how this idea came out of Europe in the 19th century and "Europe" itself has medieval origins, and like a domino effect everyone followed it since it was imposed by the powers that be, which at the time was "Europe". I have provided the review on Amazon.com for Geary's book if the readers are interested, you can check it out:

 

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detai...=glance&s=books

 

Can you define what is meant by Armenian nation? If it is defined as comprised of Armenians who speak an Armenian language and have similar cultural traditions, then that is not so, since Armenians have always differed and even now continue to differ since the "Hayastansis" don't like "Beirutsis". The Armenians in "Greater Armenia" were not as "Greekified" as the Armenians in "Lesser Armenia", the Armenians in "Soviet Armenia" were not as "Turkofied" as the Armenians outside of "Soviet Armenia". Likewise, the Armenians of today are a combination of some people who had been there, others who intermarried or simply others who just adopted it as their "identity" as sometimes I myself can see the spectrum of Armenians who display certain "Mongoloid" features, namely Aram Asatryan, with those short Asiatic legs and the no neck.

 

The point I am trying to make is that when we project ourselves into the past, we invariably do so in a nationalistic tone, "For the Armenian nation" which has "survivived" for so long, ignoring the fact that those same people of the past that we are looking at, didn't think of themselves as a "nation" or "to survive" because they envisioned a future independent Armenian state, they simply thought in contemporary terms of politics of trying to maintain autonomy of themselves, not for the sake of "nationhood" and if that meant adopting the Armenian culture and language, that's what happened. But it hasn't survived because these people were very "nationalistic" since that concept was alien to them. They survived because they were a resilient people, able to adapt and borrow and interact with other peoples and because of this "Armenian" has changed in its meaning throughout the ages. History is not a particular point in time, it is a process, and we cannot look at any one point in the past and use that as a justification for the present and the future. When Armenians of today try to imbue nationalistic traits into Tigran the Great, they do so mistakenly because Tigran spoke Greek and Persian and had no sense of what it is to be "Armenian" in the modern sense of the word. He was just a Hellenistic conquerer.

 

I am not suggesting that "Armenian" is non existent. Quite the contrary, I like my people and my culture. There is an Armenian culture and we are all a part of this cultural consciousness, it's just it has changed over time and projecting ourselves into the past eventually fits with the nationalist agenda of keeping Armenians guilt ridden with ideas of "this nation has survived through thick and thin" and ultimately ties in to politics and Genocide. By creating an "Armenian history" full of peril, destruction, and survival of being "Armenian" and ultimately facing the Genocide, we somehow have this sense of Armenian being a fixed identity that others have tried to wipe out. Even now I see many Armenians kids instilled with this fear or hatred of "Turks" or this idea that "we are Armenian" and "a nation". Israel is based on the same thing, in which Zionists trying to creation the idea of "nationalism" among "Jews" have been able to maintain group solidarity and this "the world is out to get us" mentality. "Jews" are not "Hebrews" and Israel is based on a 19th century creed that came out of Europe ( Zionism ), at the same time when Europeans themselves were each building their own nations with the rise of nationalism. Of course, this idea has led to tremendeous consequences since political systems thrive on this.

[Twilight Bark]

Dear Anonymouse,

Welcome to the forum, and thanks for bringing a good intellectual level with you. A few quick comments:

 

One can overdo in his zeal for objective self-evaluation. For example, our ancestral link to the ancient Armenians are not as weak as one might surmise from your prose. The reason is quite simple, there was not much incentive for other groups to melt into Armenians for much of our history. Armenians, on the other hand, were a constant source of "recruits" to the stronger cultures surrounding them. One possible exception is the Assyrians. Being weaker than Armenians for much of "recent" history, I believe they assimilated into Armenians in large numbers. Whether that was a "recycling" of old "recruits" is another matter.

 

One can also overdo the reasonable urge to compare the Armenian case with others. For example, the examples you provide are not quite comparable. They are either imperialistic cultures, or a perennially diasporan one that claims and promises profound religious "rewards". All of them are much more prone to swallowing up huge numbers of people from other peoples. Armenians did absorb others, but not at that rate.

 

As for the "national consciousness", it is hard to argue against the notion that modern nationalism is, well, modern. However, the existence of a single language (admittedly with numerous dialects), and more importantly the single name they called themselves suggest something more profound and fundamental than simply a bunch of villagers trying to get by (which, of course, they were). The political disunity (which is a misnomer since all it means is that none of the local tough-guys outfoxed or outmuscled the others for long) was an idiosyncracy on top of a single "people" that saw themselves as such (since they called themselves by the same name, and not because the local tyrant told them to, or because they adopted a religion that dictated it). Armenian national consciousness has never been "theoretical" or "abstract". It has always been rooted in kinship and shared values. That is not a cause of concern, or a surprising finding. Our "nationalism" is still not nearly as "abstract" as the European kind. And it is all the more sensible because of it.

 

Sorry if my quick thoughts did not come across as very well organized. I never have time these days.

[Vayri7X]

For a good book on how history serves to forge or undo links of unity or solidarity, how "communities" are formed , and ideas of nationalism and its cultural roots I suggest:

 

Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism by Benedit Anderson

 

Anderson supplies some interesting theoretical backgrounds for discussion 'nations' and the like. I think how he qualifies 'imagined', ' limited' , ' sovereign' and 'community' form a good basis for discussing things such as historical processes of Armenian nationalisms.At the same time, I limit it to an informative theory where our Armenian case in particular deserves _and has_ our own demarcations of meaning.

 

A section of five small paragraphs from it:

 

"In an anthropological spirit, then, I propose the following definition of the nation: it is an imagined political community - - and imagined as both inherently limited and sovereign.

 

"It is [I]imagined[/i] because the members of even the smallest nation will never know most of their fellow-members, meet them, or even hear of them, yet in the minds of each lives the image of their communion. Renan referred to this imagining in his suavely back-handed way when he wrote that 'Or l’essence d'une nation est que tons les individus aient beaucoup de choses en commun, et aussi que tous aient oublié bien des choses.” With a certain ferocity Gellner makes a comparable point when he rules that 'Nationalism is not the awakening of nations to self-consciousness: it invents nations where they do not exist.'

 

The drawback to this formulation, however, is that Gellner is so anxious to show that nationalism masquerades under false pretences that he assimilates 'invention' to 'fabrication' and 'falsity', rather than to 'imagining' and 'creation'. In this way he implies that 'true' communities exist which can be advantageously juxtaposed to nations. In fact, all communities larger than primordial villages of face-to-face contact (and perhaps even these) are imagined. Communities are to be distinguished, not by their falsity/genuineness, but by the style in which they are imagined. Javanese villagers have always known that they are connected to people they have never seen, but these ties were once imagined particularistically-as indefinitely stretchable nets of kinship and clientship. Until quite recently, the Javanese language had no word meaning the abstraction 'society.' We may today think of the French aristocracy of the ancien régime as a class; but surely it was imagined this way only very late. To the question 'Who is the ‘Comte de X?’ the normal answer would have been, not 'a member of the aristocracy,' but 'the lord of X, 'the uncle of the Baronne de Y,'or 'a client of the Duc de Z.'

 

"The nation is imagined as limited because even the largest of them encompassing perhaps a billion living human beings, has finite, if elastic boundaries, beyond which lie other nations. No nation imagines itself coterminous with mankind. The most messianic nationalists do not dream of a day when all the members of the human race will join their nation in the way that it was possible, in certain epochs, for, say, Christians to dream of a wholly Christian planet.

 

"It is imagined as sovereign because the concept was born in an age in which Enlightenment and Revolution were destorying the legitamcy of the devinely-ordained, hierarchical dynastic realm. Coming to maturity at a stage of human history when even the most devout adherents of any universal religion were inescapably confronted with the living pluralism of such religions, and the allomorphism between each faith's ontological claims and territorial stretch, nations dream of being free, and, if under God, directly so. The gage and emblem of this freedom is the sovereign state.

 

"Finally, it is imagined as a community, because, regardless of the actual inequality and exploitation that may prevail in each, the nation is always conceived as a deep, horizontal comradeship. Ultimately it is this fraternity that makes it possible, over the past two centuries, for so many millions of people, not so much to kill, as willingly to die for such limited imaginings.

 

"These deaths bring us abruptly face to face with the central problem posed by nationalism: what makes the shrunken imaginings of recent history (scarcely more than two centuries) generate such colossal sacrifices? I believe that the beginnings of an answer lie in the cultural roots of nationalism."

 

Anderson, Benedict. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. Revised Edition ed. London and New York: Verso, 1991, pp. 5-7.

[Accelerated]

mmm...pretty much agree with what has been said, but you cant really blame our government/leadership/people for turning to the past for motivation. As far as world history goes, we are a relativelly insignificant bunch but we have had some (brief) moments of glory: gotta milk em for all their worth. Edited December 17, 2003 by Accelerated

[Accelerated]

What this does is ignore the history of a world before nationalism became a potent ideology. Then, after that was established, all history was viewed through this lens. And to that degree, one can say that 'history' was created in 19th century Germany, where nationalism gained a foothold.

 

Just nitpicking here, but I would think 'nationalism' was first agitated by the French. Napoleonic France used it to curb the power and influence of her most dangerous rival on the continent: Austria - with some success. The frogs didnt forsee the establishment of a unified German state on their doorstep as a result of this, but then again.....'the present moment is a powerful goddess'. The same forces were at work in Italy and as Austrian influence was ousted she too was united in 1870.

[Vayri7X]

No problems w/ the governments turning to the past. Makes sense. And I agree w/ what you said about the French, Germans and so on. I am right now in the middle of writing about how nationalism in pre-WWI 'germany' helped create a "civic religion" . The historian Mosse - FAllen Soldiers: Reshaping the Memory of the World Wars argues the exact same thing about the roots being in Napoleonic France, as well as affecting Italian nationalism.

[sev-mard]

No problems w/ the governments turning to the past. Makes sense. And I agree w/ what you said about the French, Germans and so on. I am right now in the middle of writing about how nationalism in pre-WWI 'germany' helped create a "civic religion" . The historian Mosse - FAllen Soldiers: Reshaping the Memory of the World Wars argues the exact same thing about the roots being in Napoleonic France, as well as affecting Italian nationalism.

Sounds very interesting. Civic religion..... Maybe we could get some excerpts of your work when you're finished.

[Yeznig]

For those interested in the evolution of the modern nation a book worth examining is 'Nations and Nationalism Since 1780 - Programme, Myth, Reality' byE J Hobsbawm.

 

The nation state and the sense of nationhood is indeed a historic form, ie it has its orginins, it develops and will not doubt transform and cease to exist in the form we have experienced it.

 

This said the nation state and nationalism became critical forces in the evolution of hsitory and politics and for this reason it merits study. The concept of nation and nationalism even though inherently limited and potentially exclusivist nevertheless became an instrument of progress and liberation for people oppressed by feudalism or colonialism.

 

Irish nationalism is a case in point - it became the medium through which the Irish people fought to free their land of a predatory power - English imperialism.

 

In the Armenian case too nationalism and the ideals embodied in the concept of national independence became, were used to express the struggle for freedom from Ottoman-Turkish and Tsarist imperialism which had transformed the life of the ordinary Armenian into an inferno.

 

Needless to say these concepts have been exploited to produce the worst possible chauvinist and racist movements - the Young Turks, the Nazis and even British nationalism on the one hand representing. But on the other it produced some quite remarkably tolerant, democratic and inclusive conceptions of nationalism - the movements in Latin America and in the Armenian case the vision espoused by Abovian and Mikael Nalpantian.

 

Progressive national movements or a progressive sense of nationhood has produced also a wealth of wonderful human culture. Let us recall Daniel Varoujean one of the greatest of 20th century poets in any language, the Whitman of the 20th century if you must. Or even Nazim Hikmet the Turkish poet whose sense of nation did not exclude Armenians and nor did it deny the genocide, quite the contrary. Examples are almost infinite.

 

Significantly in terms of Armenian history the Armenian political movement resorted to nationalism only in the last instance, both in the Ottoman and Tsarist Empires Armenian nationalism was an expression of the incapacity of both empires to find a democratic and popular road to resolving the enormous problems that beset it.

 

As for today, I must say that the Armenian nationalism that was born within the Soviet Union has produced a rather unsavoury bunch of people at the head of the Armenian state, a bunch who unlike Nalpantian do not have the interests of the Armenian people at heart.

 

Whether in this day and age of globalisation the days of the nation and the nation state are numbered is still to be determined. Globalisation in fact rather that do away with nations is merely a new ideological cloak that conceals the plunder of small natons by the Behemoth and its allies.

[Yeznig]

Thanks BTW to Anonymouse for introducing this exchange.

[Shahumyan]

although me and anon come to bitter disagreement on other forum, this is a good thread, with a good explaination and analysis. credit where its due tio anon

[hagopn]

Anonyouse wrote, having made the judgement of "nationalist bias," thus having cultivated the prejudicial bias against Armenian historians:

 

Armenia became a Nation-State in 1991 after it seceded from the Soviet Union. I have a particular problem with Armenian nationalist historians who try to use the past to justify the present and the future. What I will examine here, isn't just about Armenia as a nation, but rather, all peoples of the world and all nations.

 

There is the assumption that "nation" means the same thing to all. Nation for Armenians has meant quite a different thing than post-Romanic, post-Feudal Europeans.

 

The idea of an Armenian "nation-state", which seeks to form a homogenous Armenian speaking land is not in accordance with history. This implies that "we have always been Armenian for thousands of years all the way from the Yervantid Dynasty to the present State". We project ourselves into the past that for some reason Armenians have always been a nation. That is untrue.

 

Actually, it can be safely speculated, as much as it can be counter-speculated, (which is all that there is, historiogaphically speaking) that we have been Armenians beyond the Yervandunis, and that the very Yervanduni clan we speak of were part of the so-called "Urartuan" hierarchy/nobility. Are you familiar with the writings of Martiros Gavoukjian?

 

When I see Armenians today speaking of Armenian history and saying "Why couldn't the Armenians have been more united?", well that ignores an integral part of history, which should not be viewed with the lens of isms that reared their ugly heads from the Enlightenment. Whether you are a Marxist viewing the rest of history with the lens of Marxism, or viewing history through the lens of Nationalism, makes no difference.

 

Let's see where this above takes us...

 

When Armenians of the present, seek to compare themselves to the Armenians of the past, and outline a common ancestry or descent and project themselves into the distant past, that is anti-historical. This implies that Armenians ( and this isn't just for Armenains this applies to all modern nations ), have always had a fixed and common identity for all time. What this does is ignore the history of a world before nationalism became a potent ideology. Then, after that was established, all history was viewed through this lens. And to that degree, one can say that 'history' was created in 19th century Germany, where nationalism gained a foothold.

 

This is also based on the European "Enlightenment" concept of "nationalism," which is not compatible with the Armenian concept. The European "nationalism" tends to veer towards state-based citizenship, and therefore subject populations (or its post-"enlightenment euphimism of "minority") are coerced through various means to assimilate to the so-called "mainstream." Armenian nationalism clearly meant ethnic and linguistic ties, and all who did not so belong or confrom were seen as non-Armenians. However, they also were not forced to assimilate as some sort of state policy. There is no memory of such an occurrence.

 

The truth is that Armenians of today, or those who claim "Armenian ethnicity" are nothing like what the Armenians of the Yervantid Dynasty were, or the Arshakhuni. Throughout its history "Armenian" has been a term that has changed in meaning. At one point "Armenians" were those who were heavily influenced and interacted with the Greeks, at another it was with the Achaemenians. Many Armenian nakharar houses are of Persian origin as well, even the Mamikonians. Then when the Umayyads attacked Armenia, there was further demographic changes. The same applies to the Turkic and Mongol invasions, and then on to the Russian influence. Throughout all its history people have changed. The fact that an a nakharar such as the Bagratunis or Artsrunis can ally themselves with an Arab emirate in Armenia, against another "Armenian" nakharar house, show the fungible nature of what it meant to be "Armenian". Likewise if an Arab Muslim can convert to Christianity and call himself "Armenian" suggests the same thing. We must stop looking into the past, through the eyes of the Nationalist present. It is because of this bias that we are left with the question "Why weren't Armenians more united?".

 

"The Truth" is no such thing. The "truth" is that we have no idea, but we can examine and speculate. We also can be honest with ourselves in identifying, at least to ourselves, what our reasons and intentions are in participating in such exercises of "deconstructionism."

 

Armenians have inherited traits that were evident to men as far back as Xenophon, and the obvious linguistic continuity is proven by qualified linguists. Linguistic morphology does not discount a continuity of a language due to "influence," and this is equally true of civilizations as a whole.

 

Genetic "continuity" in some neo-Nazi form is irrelevant, as anthropology is not necessarily the best measure of inheritance, but it is neverthless an element, however negligible, considering the dynamic and ancient attributes of our civilization.

 

There is a clear line of inheritance of collective memory via historians, custom, epic, and so on. To ignore such factors is to demonstrate a total westernized outlook, obvlivious of what the Armenian interpretation of "the Armenian self" meant and still means. It's ironic, and somewhat amusing and tragic simlutaneously, that so many Armenians are drawn to Armenian forums, but still play the game of denying that they are nationalists in the Armenian sense of the word.

 

Yet acknowledging that nationalism has roots in the Enlightenment, that doesn't deter us from somehow giving ourselves legitimacy that "Armenian" has been a fixed national identity even before they knew themselves as a "nation". To quote Patrick Geary:

 

That is semi-reasonable, but my position is that Geary's quote is inacurate and outright dishonest in nature: i.e. if the Russians were the Russians, then they are in the right to claim their ancestry. They were not products of "national virgin birth." Armenians are a unique case in that there are no closely linked "Armenian-like" identities with their own separate statehood and "post-enlightenment agenda." All Armenians do in fact have no choice but to admit linkage to, at least on the grounds of historical memory and ancestral ties, the same Armenian nation that Khorenatsi was speaking of.

 

"Even today, neonationlists acknowledge that the political self-consciousness of modern nationalism is a nineteenth- or twentieth century phenomenon, yet attempt to claim that while political ethnicity is of recent origin, cultural ethnicity is much more ancient. The people was a people, in other words, before it knew itself and language is both the sign and innermost reality of this immutable identity."

 

Inaccurate in the case of Armenians. I am no expert on the history of the Germanic peoples or Slavs, but Armenians have the right to claim the past. It is ridiculous to make the opposite claim due to "influences of foreign occupiers" and what-not. Perhaps Geary is equating the Ango-phones with their distant and quite disparate cousins. Grabar for Armenians was the only classical language, from which they still source their modern colloquial and literary languages. Lexical "influence" is irrelevant, even to professional linguists.

 

The truth his the people that have been "Armenian" throughout the ages, have changed, and as they have changed, the language has changed also because of different influences. The same applies for "Turks". What is meant by a "Turk"? If it is someone who speaks a Turkic language in modern day "Turkey", then it is implied that he has always had a fixed identity for all time, descending from the Mongoloid invaders. Well, this ignores the fact that the region was heavily populated by Armenian and Greek speaking peoples and they were merely absorbed, since they were the majority and/or converted. That is why todays Turks Greeks and Armenians look far more alike with one another, than a modern Turk Greek or Armenian would with people from the 4th - 10th century who claimed to be "Greek, Turk, or Armenian".

 

1. Here we go again with "The Truth" again. The root language has certainly not changed especially since the 4th century (which is unfortunately our earliest surviving record for obvious historical reasons).

 

2. "Influence" by way of lexical injection is irrelevant in identifying a language's historical continuity, but this is especially true about Armenian, which has manage to retain much of its vocabulary down to the current vernacular. The strong ties between Grabar and the vernacular forms is astounding, and you do not see that in Latin and Italian where word forms are passed on unchanged. In many dialects you don't even see much grammatical change.

 

3. Anthropologically speaking, Armenians and Turks are probably the most similar "races," but lingusitically, consciously (in epic, history, ancestry, etc), culturally, and politically (as character orientation) they are as dissimilar as Flemands and Mongols. I mean this in terms of cultural tendency due to historical bias espoused by the respective cultures.

 

I know this isn't a comfortable position to take, especially one that is bound to get me ostracised in my own community. I nonetheless cannot taint history because of ideological bias. Cheers.

 

You have your biases. One thing, please, if you could, is throw out the idea that you have "no biases." You are trying you best to be unbiased, and for that reason you are being biased, but only in the "secular westernized form." "Western secularists" are among the most biased and dogmatic people out there.

Edited January 11, 2004 by hagopn

[hagopn]

Anonymouse wrote, again obsessed by the "unbiased" nature of his biases:

 

Indeed, what I am trying to say is that the modern Armenian nation attempts to project itself into the past that "we have always been one people" when historically different people have come and gone and settled in the region adopting the label and culture. Perhaps it was because of the location of Armenia that it has survived, in the center of everything yet in the highlands. What does it mean to be "Armenian" again I ask. In the past, there were many "Greeks" who spoke Armenian, and likewise "Arabs" or "Turks" who spoke Armenian. This problem with identity and labels continues to haunt us even today, such as in the United States. Politics thrives on it, nationalism loves it, and the individual proves it as erroneous.

 

To be Armenian means, as it has always meant, to be part of a linguistic group of people, probably in large part with common ancestry (yes, we know about "influence" and other anthropoligical clinical theories), who identify themselves as Hayk. Armenians have never been otherwise. You cannot produce historical text that contradicts the above opinion. You can only produce wishful Westernized globalist biases that impose "patterns" onto others that only they have been subject to. In particular, I mean the "English nation," which s truly a documented hodge-podge of nationalities that eventually fused into one state. Yet, even they trace their "roots" to the Ango-saxon identity, dismissing the linguistic inheritance of any other due to the root language in fact being Germanic, despite the huge Latin, Greek, and Franco/Norman lexical influence.

 

I am trying to answer the question most Armenian nationalists come up with, "Why weren't Armenians united?". To answer that question one must not view history through the lens of the present nationalistic fervor, but rather view the past for what it is, a complex world of chaos in which the bigger powers had tried to put "order" on, but this tradition of historiography has been handed down from generation to generation since the time of Herodotus, until now. That is what I am trying to say. I refer the reader to look into "The Myth of Nations" by Patrick J. Geary in which he tangles the subject of "nations" and how this idea came out of Europe in the 19th century and "Europe" itself has medieval origins, and like a domino effect everyone followed it since it was imposed by the powers that be, which at the time was "Europe". I have provided the review on Amazon.com for Geary's book if the readers are interested, you can check it out:

 

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detai...=glance&s=books

 

The political question of identifying Armenians as a "modern nation-state" are irrelevant to the question of whether or not the Armenians considered themselves to be a nation, one nation. They certainly did, and all literature that we have inherited that predates anything the Europeans can concoct on the topic point to the fact that Armenian nationalist thought, particularly accenting the linguistic ties amongst all those who identified themselves as "Hayk," was a fact.

 

Armenians, evern after occupation by foreign entities, have never identified themselves as anything other than Armenian, save for those who have completely assimilated.

 

The political structure of the nation as a whole as has shifted form the strongly federated, to the strong autocratic monarchial state, to the strongly confederated depending upon who was in charge of what dynasty and what the geopolitical circumstances were. This in no way negates the fact that they all identified themselves to be part of the same Armenian nation. You cannot produce text that refutes this. You may be able to produce instances of allegiances to individual dynasties, Nakhararakan clans, and so on, but then again, that is a weak point upon which to attempt to manufacture "nations."

 

Can you define what is meant by Armenian nation? If it is defined as comprised of Armenians who speak an Armenian language and have similar cultural traditions, then that is not so, since Armenians have always differed and even now continue to differ since the "Hayastansis" don't like "Beirutsis". The Armenians in "Greater Armenia" were not as "Greekified" as the Armenians in "Lesser Armenia", the Armenians in "Soviet Armenia" were not as "Turkofied" as the Armenians outside of "Soviet Armenia". Likewise, the Armenians of today are a combination of some people who had been there, others who intermarried or simply others who just adopted it as their "identity" as sometimes I myself can see the spectrum of Armenians who display certain "Mongoloid" features, namely Aram Asatryan, with those short Asiatic legs and the no neck.

 

Yes, it is so. Dialectic differences are irrelevant, as the dialects are, without exception, all clearly identified by lingusits as being the same language, part of the same language root. To use the weak example of the Diasporan and the unfortunate reality of assimilation is to draw straws, to draw irrelevant arguments to prove a non-point, and it indicates that one has not thought the matter through deeply enough. It is indicative of a superficial bias based on elementary "education" on historiography as mandated by the "western secularist.." The "western secularist," despite is "unbiased exterior," is still the same racist bigot who created excuses for Imperialism not too long ago. To impose their inane concepts of "nationalism" onto Armenians and other older groups is simply a change in methodology, but the idological basis is still that "Europeans are the superior race." Thus, "Europeans" cannot possibly accept Armenian continuity in its true form.

 

The actual topic you brough to the table is whether or not those who DO consider themselves to be Armenians have ground to do so, and they certainly do. Current lack of access to educational instutitions in their idiom due to their geographical location is a poor argument.

 

Armenians can certainly identify themselves to Khorenatsi, as he certainly did identify himself with his ancestors, and thank God for Khorenatsi, despite his Biblical biases (which were probably imposed anyhow).

 

The point I am trying to make is that when we project ourselves into the past, we invariably do so in a nationalistic tone, "For the Armenian nation" which has "survivived" for so long, ignoring the fact that those same people of the past that we are looking at, didn't think of themselves as a "nation" or "to survive"

because they envisioned a future independent Armenian state, they simply thought in contemporary terms of politics of trying to maintain autonomy of themselves, not for the sake of "nationhood" and if that meant adopting the Armenian culture and language, that's what happened. But it hasn't survived because these people were very "nationalistic" since that concept was alien to them. They survived because they were a resilient people, able to adapt and borrow and interact with other peoples and because of this "Armenian" has changed in its meaning throughout the ages. History is not a particular point in time, it is a process, and we cannot look at any one point in the past and use that as a justification for the present and the future. When Armenians of today try to imbue nationalistic traits into Tigran the Great, they do so mistakenly because Tigran spoke Greek and Persian and had no sense of what it is to be "Armenian" in the modern sense of the word. He was just a Hellenistic conquerer.

 

Of course we do so in a nationalistic tone, the same nationalistic tone that Khorenatsi used in his writings, the same nationalistic tone even strongly Christian writers such as Yeznik, Yeghishe, and Ghazar used. Do you know why? The answer is much more simple than our "European cousins" sould like.

 

As far as the loose and obtuse manner of using the word "change" is concerned: Having "changed meaning" is not as true as our European cousins would like. At one point the Germans were "abolustely Holy Roman" after being "aboslutely Frankish" and that after being "Absolutely Tuetons, Germans," and so on. Armenians? Well, they have always been, unfrotunately for our detractors, absolutely Armenian. Dialectic and pronvcial identifications are and have always been considered to be subcategories by all Armenians, rural and urban. If not, then find me literature that proves otherwise, not the "opinions" of euro-centered "scholars." I want the beef.

 

This bring be to "Having changed identity:" Ths is certainly not he case. Armenians, again, at no time have they identified themselves as being anything other than Armenian, and that is what counts as far as "national identity" is concerned.

 

Now, "Having changed form" is perhaps more true to the cause, and this is more in line with the CORRECT premise of "history being a process." Although pivotal eras do exist, history is, yes indeedy, a "process" of change, and thus, "change" of that sort, the sort that is identifiable in FORM is irrelevant in the domain of NATIONAL identity, NATIONAL Self-Identification. Yes, due to the power of Father Time, Imperial Occupations, random and no random invasions, cultural cross-fertilization, endemic need to change and grow, and so on, we have "managed to change form" in anthropoligical, linguistic, cultural, and political terms, but, then again, this is only valid for superficial "national definitions" as adopted by Europeans.

 

I am not suggesting that "Armenian" is non existent. Quite the contrary, I like my people and my culture. There is an Armenian culture and we are all a part of this cultural consciousness, it's just it has changed over time and projecting ourselves into the past eventually fits with the nationalist agenda of keeping Armenians guilt ridden with ideas of "this nation has survived through thick and thin" and ultimately ties in to politics and Genocide. By creating an "Armenian history" full of peril, destruction, and survival of being "Armenian" and ultimately facing the Genocide, we somehow have this sense of Armenian being a fixed identity that others have tried to wipe out. Even now I see many Armenians kids instilled with this fear or hatred of "Turks" or this idea that "we are Armenian" and "a nation". Israel is based on the same thing, in which Zionists trying to creation the idea of "nationalism" among "Jews" have been able to maintain group solidarity and this "the world is out to get us" mentality. "Jews" are not "Hebrews" and Israel is based on a 19th century creed that came out of Europe ( Zionism ), at the same time when Europeans themselves were each building their own nations with the rise of nationalism. Of course, this idea has led to tremendeous consequences since political systems thrive on this.

 

Ah, this is more like it, at least the first portion.

 

Armenian is an identity that clearly others, at least one that is identifiable, have tried to wipe out. The infamous Ittihad, the usurpers of Ottoman power for the sake of "nationalizing" Turkey (ironically) in the European form, did have this nasty agenda of wiping us out, yes. Are you dismissing this as "yet another nationalist myth" because the college prof said so? (just kidding, no offense--

 

Another one I like as an example: Itiglat, or Tiglath (named after the River Tigris, which is another "semiticized" form of the name Tigran) Pileser was another "Genocidalist" whose Imperial policy of gaining permanent foothold on any given territory was that of three step "occupation, migration, and denationalization." (Yes, the Assyrian King's name was actually Tigran, but that's besides the Armeno-biased point!) He went out of his way to shift thi tribe here, and shift that tribe there, and, thus, by uprooting as much as he could, he managed to create indeed this mixed Middle-East (at least the Mesopotamia portion). He is given credit by scholars in paving the way for a denationalized and SECTARIAN Levant. I agree with them, but, unfortunately for our detractors, Tiglath old Buddy did not manage to get the Armenians to disappear, much as he tried...

 

In the case of th Zionists, http://www.khazaria.com should be enough of a counter-argument to the "ancestral ties to Abraham" myth. Most Jews consider that irrelevant anyway.

 

In the case of tehe Slavs, they have managed to divide up into many segments with enough mutual enmity, enough to have produced separate folkloric and epic traditions! It is amazing. Despite their linguistic proximity, they do in fact swallow whole the idea that "State makes Nation."

 

Again, Armenians havenot done so, not in the past, and not anytime soon....

Edited January 13, 2004 by hagopn

[hagopn]

Vayri7X wrote:

 

For a good book on how history serves to forge or undo links of unity or solidarity, how "communities" are formed , and ideas of nationalism and its cultural roots I suggest:

 

Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism by Benedit Anderson

 

OK. I am familiar with the work and have read it in the remote past. To refresh my memory, I had a friend lend it to me for a day. One thing I have to tell you after reading your other posts: Anderson is not as certain on his theories as you are! It is the classic case of the "Frankenstein Syndrome" where the "Teacher" or "Creator" inadvertently forge uni-directional monsters out of what they meant as transference of educated opinion. (End of tongue-in-cheek humour content.)

 

Anderson supplies some interesting theoretical backgrounds for discussion 'nations' and the like. I think how he qualifies 'imagined', ' limited' , ' sovereign' and 'community' form a good basis for discussing things such as historical processes of Armenian nationalisms.At the same time, I limit it to an informative theory where our Armenian case in particular deserves _and has_ our own demarcations of meaning.

 

OK. Let's examine it closely, keeping in mind that the Armenian case has stayed unique in that no Imperial domination has managed to alter the form of self-identification. The same cataclysm of "denationalization by wayf transportation and resetllement" en masse did not succeed in Armenia, or at least not in the critical level to alter the identity, or, rather, the self-identification of Armenians with their own ancestors. Whereas elsewhere it succeeded, in Armenia, as grudgingly recorded by one invader and occupier after another, it for the most part failed.

 

A section of five small paragraphs from it:

 

"In an anthropological spirit, then, I propose the following definition of the nation: it is an imagined political community - - and imagined as both inherently limited and sovereign.

 

OK, here is his anthropologist's bias shining through. Anthrolpoligical arguments are mostly irrelevant in our case, and are only applicable to idetify our phenotype as that belonging to those who have been in the general vicinity of our Plateau, encompassing the so-called expanse covered by the Kur-Araxes culture. This means that the "genetic identification" would make Jews, Turks, Nabateans, et al all one "race." Ironically, this has to do both with the fact that Armenians had been agressors, colonizers and captives, having taken on the role of dominance and supplicant in political matters contributing to the anthropoligical make-up of our nation and their tendencious "cousins."

 

Having said that (and out of the way), what he considers "Imaginary" is quite consistent among Armenians. I have said this before, and I shal say it many times more: Armenians have in fact never identified themselves as bieng other than Armenians. Political, Anthropoligical, and other superficial (in Armenian terms) criteria have not been the basis for self-identification, making us one of the most resilient people on our native land (up until you know what).

 

"It is imagined because the members of even the smallest nation will never know most of their fellow-members, meet them, or even hear of them, yet in the minds of each lives the image of their communion. Renan referred to this imagining in his suavely back-handed way when he wrote that 'Or l’essence d'une nation est que tons les individus aient beaucoup de choses en commun, et aussi que tous aient oublié bien des choses.” With a certain ferocity Gellner makes a comparable point when he rules that 'Nationalism is not the awakening of nations to self-consciousness: it invents nations where they do not exist.'

 

He has argued this point, but, the same Anderson has negated his own theory with the following bold assertion: " "... 'nation-ness' is the most universally legitimate value in the political life..." Of course by this Anderson is talking about the hodge-podge and non-contiguous (in chronological terms) national identities in Europe, most of whom were forged out of Roman conquests and the cataclysmic effects of mass resettlement and re-identification through slavery policies and "citinzeship" policies. Even the Germans could escapte the Romanization of their tribal groups, as the Romanization efforts were inherited by teh Roman Catholic Church and their number one Northern disciplnes, the Poles and Teutons.

 

TO be continued... My baby just woke up!---

Edited January 11, 2004 by hagopn

[hagopn]

OK, I'm back after bathing my baby "Armenian style, with Armenian soap and water filtered with Armenian rocks, singing Armenians bathing songs, with Armenian coral sponge used as the abrasive cleansing material... Coral from the HawaiIAN Islands)

 

"Yeznig" wrote:

 

For those interested in the evolution of the modern nation a book worth examining is 'Nations and Nationalism Since 1780 - Programme, Myth, Reality' byE J Hobsbawm.

 

Another interesting attempt at deconstruction of the concept of "nationalism." I am not familiar with this one and shall check it out, as they say here in"Lossum."

 

The nation state and the sense of nationhood is indeed a historic form, ie it has its orginins, it develops and will not doubt transform and cease to exist in the form we have experienced it.

 

Yes, "in form." Songs also "change in form" within the same century, but that does not make the two variations of a song "different songs." Certainly the title of the song will not change if the culture that composed it (sine I am referring to Folk songs) has maintained continuity. However, if you have a song republished after it had been forgotten under a different title, but the sentiment attahce to it has remained pretty much the same, then it is essence still the same song.

 

Our civilization might have changed "form" in terms of geopolitical position (hierarchially speaking), "linguistic dialectics," dmographic density/sparsity, political organization, religious "confession/profession," and so on. That is true. Father Time is a cruel force that simply does not allow non-change, but, then again, you are no longer the same you from 1 year ago. ALL OF YOUR ATOMS HAVE CHANGED, but, does anyone call you by a different name and no longer recognize you? Why is that, I wonder? Since your atoms have changed from the time your mother gave you birth, are yo no longer her "baby child?" I don't know. I alsways like to consider the fact that my mother thinks of me as that very baby and not as some "unintelligible matter/energy entity that is the result of atomic flux."

 

Nationality, as conceptualized by Armenians is ancestor worship, first and foremost. We are still the "babies" of Khorenatsi, even if our "genetic continuity" might have been temprarily and abruptly "distorted" (perhaps rfereshed? A matter of perspective, I say, Jove, tip tip). The days of the horrible "invadig Locust" as cruelly and vividly brought to us by Lazdiverttsi did manage to alter our "phenotypical make-up" to an unknown degree (i.e. we still don't look much like Genghiz, Sorry!) Yet, we stil, however we "envision it" on the personal (and quite disengaged from our own ancestral reality) level (when speaking of those denationalized an westernized flock detached from that cultural continuum), we still collectively try our best to re-engage. Tat is part of the reason (I would like to think at least) that we are so busy like bees violently searching, constructing , and deconstructing the concept of nationality as it means to us.

 

However, I like to think in terms of ancestry and only ancestry, in terms of the spiritual, conscious, and cultural (if not 100% genetic) connection with my ancestors... It keeps life simple, and it does give me a springboard from which to cultivate enough Armeno-energy to raise my child, God Bless Her Sweet Atoms (vay, vay, myerrnem yes mshtapopokhakan ko atomikneri hamar!)

 

This said the nation state and nationalism became critical forces in the evolution of hsitory and politics and for this reason it merits study. The concept of nation and nationalism even though inherently limited and potentially exclusivist nevertheless became an instrument of progress and liberation for people oppressed by feudalism or colonialism.

 

"Became" since when and for whom? Again, let me kindly remind our astute, beautiful, and very joyful aragh drinking and khorovats eating readers (beer dringkin too, according to Xenophon, my pal), that there are pivotal instances in history that determine, once and for all, what "nationalism" means and what "statehood" means in relation to "nationalism." May I also remind our readers, as I have written before as part of my vitamin and mineral supplemental series (in terms of healthy historiography), that there is a definite difference in objective quanitfication of these two seemingly (artificially so) "similar" concepts: i.e. "Citizenship" is not the same as "Nationality." Or, rather, it is the case, depending on whose viewpoint or perspective one judges from, that "nationality" is interchangeable for EITHER "ethnicity" or "citizen of a given state." In the case of the so-called "Enlightenment" and all of its empirical retardism (sorry about the personal arsenic, couldn't help it), "nationalism" is still not decided, and it depends on which schizophrenic "nationalist" or "cosmopolitanist" author you read...

 

Irish nationalism is a case in point - it became the medium through which the Irish people fought to free their land of a predatory power - English imperialism.

 

They were Irish people, though, were they not? Or is it that "Irish atoms" had changed so much that 'Mother Macree" no longer recognized her own "children?" I think that the Irish case is remarkable as well, and they are to be credited to be the foremost driving force for the "Re-Celticization" (I just invented this term, or so I would like to think) of Europe's (perhaps majority) "Celtic Stock." Remember, I am sourcing the "CIA" for my description of "Celtic Stock." The CIA thinks of France as having "90% Celtic Stock." Is the CIA mroe "nationalist-minded" than we thought? Hey, perhaps there is hope after all!

 

In the Armenian case too nationalism and the ideals embodied in the concept of national independence became, were used to express the struggle for freedom from Ottoman-Turkish and Tsarist imperialism which had transformed the life of the ordinary Armenian into an inferno.

 

Therefore, prior to "Englightenment conceptualizations" it is perhaps being implied that "Armenians did not know they were Armenians until they were told by European Enlightenment Idealists that they are the Armenian Nation?" Sounds like someone is tryig to sell me the Brooklyn Bridge again!

 

Needless to say these concepts have been exploited to produce the worst possible chauvinist and racist movements - the Young Turks, the Nazis and even British nationalism on the one hand representing. But on the other it produced some quite remarkably tolerant, democratic and inclusive conceptions of nationalism - the movements in Latin America and in the Armenian case the vision espoused by Abovian and Mikael Nalpantian.

 

Here is another anti-nationalist concoction by our anti-nationalist alchemist under the guise of "scholars." The imagery provided is that "Nationalism is inherently evil." The "reasoning" of course, is that "nationalists are people who think that tey are so different due to their superiority complexes."

 

Notice the blindingly obvious bias under the guise of "plain empirical truth." First, it is taken for granted as some sort of "constant" (which is something that "science" is not ever supposed to do arbitrarily) that "nationalists adopt an identity solely for the sake of feeling different," as if on some sort of "superiority rush" that provides for them a "raison d'etre."

 

In order to prove this unprovable assumption as a "constant," only ONE or TWO selected types of examples or contexts are consistently brought to the table as "proof of the pudding." For example, we only hear about "hwo Nazis went overboard due to (sic) nationalism," or how "nationalist Turks killed 1.5 million Armenians in a planned Genocide. See how bad nationalism is? It only creates friction and distrurbs all harmony." That is the first variant, that of "opressive dominant." The second variant "allowed" in the so-called "scientific debate" is the "reactionary or reactive supplicant wishing to obtain freedom by anchoring an ethnic mass-mobilization onto some sort of quasi-fictional primordialist national mythology." Are these the only two instances that "nations" are formed under? Please, take me to Brooklyn!

 

Now that a vacuum "of identification" is created (one that even our old quasi-globalist friend Benedict Anderson did not agree with) that must be filled, work as to be done to "fill" this void. What is it to be filled with? Why, "a new world order of united nations" of course, where "there exist no such trivial and imaginary difference among nations..." It sounds pretty, but only to the dumb and jaded ear of the conditioned westerner who has been drummed with the "a priori" belief that "nationalism has only caused evil." It's like a record being played in Universtities ad nauseam telling people to "free themselves by comforming." Dichotomous you say?

 

The viewpoint that nationalism is simply as the word implies, the concept of ancestral inheritance, is naturally (quite artificially, actually) never allowed in the debate as a "viable, sane, and empirically sound alternative." Yet, we were all born from SOMEONE were we not? But that is dismissed as "the primitive concept of primordialism." Actually, primordialism, if it were so primitive, then why are the "empirically sound" scientists sending multi-billion dollar probes to "scope out mars for a possible variation in DNA code?" Why are they so darn obsessed with Ancestry? Why? Because, friends, we all come from somewhere, and we love to preserve the memory of it. I love it that my child is my child. I thank God for her. I also love it that my father, who character traits I have inherited so much that complete strangers (who know him well but have never met me) have recognized me as either his "relative" or, in some cases, as his son in public! I love it. I don't know what to say. I get a heart-warming tingle from it, and, well, that is what I get from looking at Ararat, Haghbat, Akhtamar, Tondurak, and etc.

 

Progressive national movements or a progressive sense of nationhood has produced also a wealth of wonderful human culture. Let us recall Daniel Varoujean one of the greatest of 20th century poets in any language, the Whitman of the 20th century if you must. Or even Nazim Hikmet the Turkish poet whose sense of nation did not exclude Armenians and nor did it deny the genocide, quite the contrary. Examples are almost infinite.

 

Oh, how generous. We are now offered "progressive national movements," but yet again presented as mere "offshoots of the construct model." The word "movement" implies yet again that "there is no possibility of a primordial connection" even int he case of Armenians, those very Armenians whom Tiglath Pileser, our "assimilationist" friend from the 8th century b.c. did not manage to uproot, resettle, and assimilate into his "mixed and denationalized Empire." How much more PRIMORDIAL can one get? Not much, except when going beyond the Bronze Age (oldest apparition of which occurred in Armenia, yup), but this would make "European Constructionists" (i.e. "Cryptic Imperialists") unconfortable with their own bankrupt theories.

 

Significantly in terms of Armenian history the Armenian political movement resorted to nationalism only in the last instance, both in the Ottoman and Tsarist Empires Armenian nationalism was an expression of the incapacity of both empires to find a democratic and popular road to resolving the enormous problems that beset it.

 

Ah, here is yet another expression of the "second variant" of "constructionism," that of "reactive mobilization anchored in hyperbolic mythology." It "cannot be" that Armenians were always Armenians, and that is why they were pissed off to find out, once retaught their legacy, that they have been cheated out of their birthright. Such "thoughts are so primitive." The empirically sound and "open-minded" (sic) "scientist" says "NO, IT CANNOT BE."

 

As for today, I must say that the Armenian nationalism that was born within the Soviet Union has produced a rather unsavoury bunch of people at the head of the Armenian state, a bunch who unlike Nalpantian do not have the interests of the Armenian people at heart.

 

Ah, now we are equating this clanissh outcropping of the sludge of society due to "fantastic Bolshevik Policies" a form of "nationalism," but a perverted form of this "reactive" second variant in that this form merely "formed into something due to pressure froma prevalent regime."

 

It is interesting, considering that this is a paragraph full of grief, nationalist grief, that this individual considers his own genuine love and concern for his Mother Nation (or Father Nation, depending on your perspective and who you loved more as a little milk-suckler) something of "construct." He in effect, in one "empirical sweep," denies his own genuinely warmblooded birthright!

 

Whether in this day and age of globalisation the days of the nation and the nation state are numbered is still to be determined. Globalisation in fact rather that do away with nations is merely a new ideological cloak that conceals the plunder of small natons by the Behemoth and its allies.

 

WOW! After all this "deconstructionist" rhetoric, he is warm-blooded BRO after all! (or is he?)

 

With genuine love for a brother, (and all in good humour, since that's all us small and plundered rugrat nations have),

 

Your Loving and Caring (Atomically Linked) Brother Hagop

[Yeznig]

Brother Hagop!

 

When I complete my backlog of essays I shall return to this topic but I shall not try and match your erudition. I cannot yet fathom to truth of what you say but note the searching for something deepr than formal definitions...

 

For the moment just one point of clarification - my intellectual heroes are Rousseau, Nalpantian and Fanon. Together their thought amounts to a form of nationalism that I can admire. This nationalism is a far cry from that of the Young Turks or the Nazis.

 

But more once essays have been done and consigned to eternal rest.

[Anonymouse]

Well gee, I read the response, and if I can find the time to respond I would, for I assure you there is a response to your argument.

[hagopn]

Well, "gee," and I am sure there is a counter-response to your response.

[Anonymouse]

Well, "gee," and I am sure there is a counter-response to your response.

Well, duh!

[hagopn]

Well, duh!

Well, "counter-duh".

[Anonymouse]

Essentially this is my problem, and the whole reason I started this thread...namely that there is an Armenian nation and its for the Armenian people who are descendents of either Hayk, or Hayasa, or whatever tribes you can think of. This is ahistorical for it ignores history. This little graph will perhaps convey what I am trying to say.

 

 

R=Roman

P=Persian

A=Arabic

G=Greek

M=Mongol

Ru=Russian

As=Assyrian

 

 

----------R---------------G ----------A ------------- Ru

Hayasa -----------------------------------------------------------------Present

-------As-------------------P---------------------------M

 

 

Do you see what I am trying to get at? We may have a straight line and say "We descended from Hayk, etc.", but that doesn't take into account all the shifts, and changes of history. Maybe I descended from a Greek, and you from an Arab, and he from a Assyrian. Thus that is the problem with nationalism in that it projects itself into the past and says "we descended from this". Well maybe so, but no one stays pure, especially not in that region of the Caucasus.

 

And so Armenia as a "nation" one can argue never really existed, for "Armenian" was an identity constantly changing, since history is not a point in time, it is a process.

Edited January 16, 2004 by Anonymouse

[axel]

Thus that is the problem with nationalism in that it projects itself into the past and says "we descended from this".

 

This is no problem if the racial criterion is replaced by a spiritual one.

thus we might consider Armenians to be spiritual descendants of Hayk.

 

Racial or biological nationalism is the post-enlightenment ("modern") form of nationalism, an absurd constuct, that is opposed to the traditionalist worldview that seems to be that of hagopn (correct me if I'm wrong).

 

hagopn, the term "nationalism" refers to the modern ideology and therefore lends itself to confusion. It might be more appropriate to speak of the "armenian national idea".

Edited January 16, 2004 by axel

[Harut]

Who we were made us who we are and who we are will make us who to be in future.!

but our past made nobody for the present, and this nobody that we are has no future

[axel]

but our past made nobody for the present, and this nobody that we are has no future

Ara Baliozian has found his master in sophistry.