Ethnic homogeneity
Situated at the crossroads of East and West and on the axes of the great invasions, Armenia occupies only a small part of its historical territory, which the Armenians have had to share with domineering neighbours over the course of the invasions, but it has an unprecedented ethnic homogeneity. The Armenians, a people of Indo-European language whose ancestors are said to have come from Thrace, are said to have mixed in the first millennium BC with the indigenous populations of Uruartu (neither Semitic nor Indo-European language, like the present-day peoples of the Caucasus, Georgians and other Chechens), to eventually dominate and assimilate them, constitute the overwhelming majority. This extreme homogeneity of a people that was almost wiped out in 1915 is the result of the slow process of creating nation-states in the South Caucasus. A painful process, due to the persistent enmities between the peoples of the region, the latest episode of which is the war between Armenia and Azerbaijan over Armenian Nagorno-Karabakh. This conflict echoes the Armenian-Tatar wars of the early 20th century, which led to large-scale population transfers between Armenia and Azerbaijan when these provinces of the Tsarist empire gained independence. The Tatars (Turks, Azeris or Persians), who made up almost 40% of the population of the 1st Republic of Armenia, left the country, making way for Armenians driven out of Azerbaijan (especially Nakhchivan) and Western Armenia as a result of the genocide.
Sovietization and collapse of the USSR
Sovietization in 1921 fixed the ethnic map of Transcaucasia, interweaving populations in the name of internationalism, and dividing in order to better rule. Thus, there remained large pockets of Armenian population in Azerbaijan, concentrated in Nagorno-Karabakh and scattered in Baku and elsewhere (nearly 500,000 people in all), as well as in Georgia, which had the same number of Armenians, including a large concentration in Djavakhk, bordering Armenia. The collapse of the USSR will awaken latent problems. In response to the Karabagh revolt, the Armenians were driven out of the rest of Azerbaijan in 1988, with the pogroms in the oil city of Sumgait, while the Azeris (7% of the population) and the Muslim Kurds fled Armenia, then the territories under Armenian control in Nagorno-Karabakh proper and in the 7 surrounding districts, which the Armenians victorious in the first war (1989-1994) will leave uninhabited, in the hope of trading them for a lasting peace. The war of autumn 2020, declared and won by Azerbaijan, will decide otherwise: recovering the 7 districts, but also the emblematic city of Shushi, as well as Hadrout in Nagorno-Karabakh, the Azerbaijani authorities work to resettle there the Azeri refugees who had been driven out during the first war, while returning to Nagorno-Karabakh (which has less than 150,000 inhabitants, all Armenians, since the defeat of 2020) under the protection of Russian peacekeepers, the thousands of Armenians who had taken refuge in Armenia during the fighting.
In Armenia itself, since 1991, only the so-called Yezidis have not been affected by these population transfers. Many Russians and Ukrainians have left the country for economic reasons. As for the Assyro-Chaldeans (Eastern Catholic or Nestorian people descended from the Babylonians), Greek Orthodox and descendants of German settlers, there are only a few thousand.Reversing the demographic decline
Presented as the national home of a people most of whom have been deprived of a homeland since the disappearance of Western Armenia, independent Armenia was intended to attract the Armenians of the diaspora (about 7 million) whom the Dashnak Party mobilised as early as 1991 with its slogan tebi Yerguir! (towards the country). But in a country plagued by war with Azerbaijan and economic difficulties, this appeal was heard much less than the one launched in the 1940s by Soviet Armenia, which attracted 200,000 Armenians from the diaspora, including Franco-Armenians, most of whom, disappointed by the Nerkaght (literally "internal exodus") to the "motherland," returned to France. Although it welcomed a few reckless patriots, independent Armenia became a land of emigration and was emptied of its inhabitants - including those who had fled Azerbaijan - who went to work in Russia, Europe or America. The foreign currency they sent to their relatives back home was a valuable financial boost, but the demographic decline was alarming. Armenia had 3.5 million inhabitants in 1991, it will have only 2.9 million in 2021, and neither natural growth nor the arrival of 13,000 Armenians from Syria who fled the war have been able to compensate for the bloodletting caused by the 1988 earthquake (25,000 dead), the war against Azerbaijan and emigration. Reversing this curve was set up as a national cause as early as 2017 by S. Sarkissian, his successor N. Pachinian, claiming to achieve this by creating the conditions for a massive return of Armenians from the diaspora to an Armenia that would then have 4 million inhabitants in 2050. These objectives were announced before the humiliating defeat of 2020...
Yezidis
The only significant ethnic minority, some 60,000 Yezidis live in villages around Arakadz. Speaking a Kurdish idiom, Kurmandji, these pastoral people practice a religion inherited from the ancient Persians, in its Manichean version, Mani being the Persian prophet whose interpretation of the conflict between the principle of good, Ahura Mazda, and evil, Ahriman, met with some success in the region at the beginning of our era. With Christian and Islamic influences, their beliefs and initiation rituals have earned them the derogatory nickname of "devil worshippers". They consider Armenia their adopted homeland, the Lalsh-Avan Gorge in Sinjar, northern Iraq, where their patriarchs are buried, being the cradle of this persecuted religion. Armenia in return, makes a point of protecting the Yezidis, whose Iraqi brethren were massacred by Daech in 2014, and boasts of housing, in Aknalidj, near Yerevan, the largest Yezidi temple in the world, to be built in 2019, where they honor their peacock god and the other deities of their pantheon in peace.
Malakans
In a declining Russian community, the Malakans occupy a special place. These schismatic Russians or Old Believers were present before the arrival of the Tsarist troops in Armenia, where they had come to practice their "heresy", safe from the wrath of Peter the Great. Their sect, like so many others, prospered in the 18th century in Russia where it was subject to persecution. The Malakans only ate milk (malako in Russian) and dairy products, synonymous with purity. Industrious and taciturn, recognizable by their long beard, they installed their isbas in villages in the north, such as Krasnosselsk or Semionovka.
