A Caucasian model revisited by the Soviets
Armenia is a remote province of the Tsarist Empire, marked by centuries of Persian domination, but was introduced to Western culture by Russia when it gained independence in 1918. The main centres of Armenian culture were then elsewhere, in Tbilisi, Baku and Constantinople. But it is in this small, essentially rural territory, where the survivors of the genocide perpetrated by the Ottoman authorities in western Armenia are flocking, but which must continue the war effort against the Kemalist Turks and their Azeri allies, who have also become independent, that the foundations of a modern society will be laid, under the authority of the Dashnak Party, in which women will thus be granted the right to vote. The Soviets will then make a clean slate to build a new model of society, urban and industrial, where the CP replaces the family and the Church. Armenia still bears in its cities - few apart from Yerevan - and in its countryside, in the mentality of its inhabitants too, the imprint of the Soviet East. A tenacious trademark! For it was Russia, and above all its Soviet avatar, that introduced it to modernity. Soviet mismanagement was grafted onto Eastern nonchalance, and the results were hardly conclusive: the development of the Armenian SSR, exalted by propaganda, which ironically commented on the Eastern torpor in which the little "sister republic" was languishing before Lenin propelled it into the industrial era, was often a cover-up. Once the mask was removed, the misery remained, all the more striking in this pseudo-modern setting inherited from the Soviet era. And the values of solidarity taught by communism did not stand up to the transition period that saw the birth of an oligarchic system, a source of corruption, leaving a large part of the population, 45% of whom were living below the poverty line at the beginning of the 2000s, on the sidelines of the road to growth. In 2019, 24 per cent of Armenians were still living below the poverty line. With the improvement in living conditions, the Soviet greyness is resisting in residual touches, but it coexists with a changing society.
The family, an ever-present value
A two-tier society has developed, depending on whether you live in the city or the country, whether you are rich or poor, and the two often go hand in hand. But the patriarchal family, sealed by an early and fertile marriage, under the authority of the father and master of the house (dandér), remains the foundation of this society. Already thwarted by the Soviet model, this pattern, which is not unlike the family codes of Mediterranean and Eastern societies, is nevertheless losing momentum. Social gaps have widened, undermining the cohesion of society on its family foundations. Western influence, combined with economic difficulties, has dealt a severe blow to large families, while the authority of the patriarch is undermined by the entry into the world of work of the wife, who sometimes provides the sole income of the household. Massive economic emigration has also contributed to the break-up of families, with the husband going into exile in Russia or elsewhere to support his family back home. The large oligarch families, for their part, still operate on a Caucasian clan basis. If the bride-to-be is no longer kidnapped on horseback, as was the practice in some regions of Armenia until the end of the 19th century, marriage, which is later, remains a key and festive moment in family life. But divorces, trivialized during the Soviet period, are on the rise, withering away the myth of the faithfulness of the Armenian couple. The mythical king Ara the Handsome must be turning in his grave: the legend says that, urged by the pulpy queen of Assyria, Semiramis, to marry him or, failing that, to fulfil his desires, he repulsed his advances at the risk of his life, for the love of Nvard his wife and children... Free couples are rare, as for celibacy, it still remains marginal, even if it is not limited to the high clergy - members of the lower clergy, as among the Orthodox, can start a family!
The place of women
Armenian society is patriarchal and has given women an ambiguous status, between submission and power. Traditionally, she is the object of all consideration and attention, as the guardian of the home and holder of educational power, but this consideration is paid for by absolute obedience to the " dander " (head of the family). The Armenian woman has certainly come a long way since the days when she had to serve her husband at the table and was not allowed to speak in his presence, rules still observed in some rural areas. Even before Sovietization, which contributed to her emancipation, she had acquired rights in the revolutionary movements that made her a valuable "auxiliary" of her husband or " fédahi " companion. This evolution towards parity has met with resistance from old patriarchal reflexes, from the countryside to the organs of power, where women remain under-represented. If she sometimes provides for the needs of the household alone, if she displays a voluntary and independent character, she owes respect to the man, who claims to return it to her and prides himself on never brutalizing her... in theory, as shown by the controversy aroused in 2017 by a law sanctioning domestic violence! The new female generation intends to shake up this rigid straitjacket, however, and does not really reflect the image of submission. But the provocative outfits and outrageous make-up are not the external signs of a sexual revolution that would have liberated women from macho diktats, and rather reflect the sometimes clumsy efforts to copy Western models, starting with Kim Kardashian, the American reality TV icon who brought Armenia into the celebrity world and the social networks. Behind this mask lies the modest and fierce personality of a woman ready to spurn the overly enterprising flirt, but also to seduce the future husband.
Gays and lesbians... under the critical eye of the Church..
The Church regularly draws the red line in matters of morals, exalting national values, starting with the traditional family, which would be threatened by the debates on gender, which are the source of heated controversy. The LGBTQ+ community does not see life as rosy. Armenian morality generally condemns homosexuality, although since 2003, Armenia has removed from its penal code the article condemning homosexual relations to 5 years in prison. Embryonic, the LGBTQ+ community (the NGO Pink Armenia has been defending their rights since 2007) has broken a taboo with the new wind blowing through the country since the "Velvet Revolution" of April 2018. In 2019, an Armenian transgender man invited himself to a parliamentary debate, provoking an outcry from virtue leagues, the Church and part of the political class. Gays therefore prefer to avoid displaying themselves in public, except in rare friendly places in Yerevan... and to avoid any misunderstanding, if young men often hold hands in the street, it is a local habit, and not, in general, a sign of a particular friendship l .
A promised land
The attachment to traditions, with the exaltation of virile, even martial values, is the ransom of a cruel history as much as a Caucasian atavism. Armenians owe it to their rural roots to have their feet on the ground and they are all the more determined to keep them there as it has too often slipped away from them. After many ups and downs, Armenia has become the sanctuary of an endangered identity. Marked by the haunting reminder of a heavy past, the apprenticeship of modernity must pass here by the vehement affirmation of the right to exist, and not only on April 24, the anniversary of the genocide when the country freezes in meditation. Armenia is fighting to defend its language, its culture, its Church, in short, the constituent elements of its identity. This explains its massive commitment to Nagorno-Karabakh. For the Armenians, it was the survival of the entire nation that was at stake in this war, designated as a 'national liberation struggle', with its 'martyrs' (zoh) and its 'heroes', the fédahis or azadamardik. Far from the fantasies of a 'Great Armenia', the return of this ancestral land to the national fold resounded like a victory over the fate of history, restoring to the Armenians their dignity after centuries of defeat and subjection, like a revenge on a 20th century inaugurated by the genocide.. This is to say the immense shock, the trauma caused by the humiliating defeat in the Karabakh war of autumn 2020, which reminded Armenia of its fragility in a hostile environment. Promised land or "acquired land" (the expression comes from the late Catholicos Karekine I), Armenia is also a dreamed land, a fantasy land, which will make people travel to the depths of the Armenian conscience. Each Armenian, wherever he or she comes from, will have his or her own vision of an Armenia where he or she projects his or her expectations and hopes. This inner country is discernible in the excitement of the Armenian passengers as the plane begins its descent to Yerevan. Like a ritual, they crowd around the windows to catch a glimpse of the snowy cap of Ararat, the magic mountain of the Armenians, which rises in Western Armenia, the land of their ancestors. Coming from France, the United States, Canada or Lebanon, they let speak this Armenia which they carry within them under other skies and which they cultivate like a secret garden - of Eden! - secret garden of Eden. This country will not necessarily resemble the demanding idea they have of it, forged in the story of a vanished Armenia. But isn't Armenia also the laboratory of this encounter between a country rooted in its land and the fantasized projection of a diaspora rich in its diversity? From the top of its mountains, Armenia has an appointment with the world. "When two Armenians meet, anywhere in the world, see if they can't recreate a new Armenia... ", wrote the Armenian-American novelist William Saroyan.
