Armenia And Armenians Between East And West

There is a strange coincidence: Armenians always seem to appear on the borderline between East and West. This coincidence is such a constant in the course of history that one is even tempted to call it “the fate of the Armenians” or else one has to at least take this phenomenon into account when classifying characteristics of Armenianness.

Presently this phenomenon is mainly expressed in the Europe/Asia controversy when identifying the Republic of Armenia and the Armenians. Since there is no distinct natural borderline between Europe and Asia, it is drawn differently. Mainly this borderline varies in the area between the Caspian and the Black Sea. Usually it is drawn along the Central Caucasian mountain ridge or a little to the north of it, across the Kumo-Manych valley, leaving Armenia, together with Transcaucasus, in Asia. But sometimes Transcaucasus is included in Europe, so that Armenia finds herself in Europe. However, according to other divisions, Armenia finds herself in Europe with greater permanence. For example, the Armenian soccer team is a member of the European Soccer League or Armenia is admitted to the Council of Europe, from where she is threatened to be withdrawn in case she will not behave like a European, that is a civilized country. Such “European encouragement” from the outside is met with a counter-reaction from the inside: Armenians usually consider themselves Europeans anyway. However, this seems to be a civilizational self-appraisal of many, maybe even all peoples living near a geographical borderline. Thus, Turkey seeks to enter the European Union, while Georgians, after the recent find of the most ancient scull of European appearance, often treated by Georgians as an “ancestor of the Europeans,” begin to consider themselves Europeans in a paleoanthropological respect as well.

At the same time, present-day Armenia semiotically manifests its closeness to Asia. For example, the first “Western free market” in Yerevan (represented on the level of small vendors) was introduced through a typical Asian bazaar structure, or Western consumer goods were introduced in their Eastern disguise. Let us also recall the situation with music: the part of the Armenian populace oriented toward European music co-exists with a greater part of the populace oriented toward r'abiz music, which itself is a synthesis of Oriental and Western musical styles. And all the r'abiz, jazz or flamenco type phenomena indicate that we are dealing with a borderline situation, an intermediary space between at least two cultures. In the case of Armenia, in addition to the mentioned geographical intermediary position, many signs also indicate her being (or imagining herself) in a borderline intermediary position between Asia and Europe. A good illustration of the Armenians’ “fixed idea” of their intermediary position could be the results of one brainstorming session and sociological investigation carried out in Yerevan in the autumn of 1990. This investigation was aimed at locating the future Europolis, a city that was planned to be built after the earthquake of 1988 but never was. The majority of the respondents wanted this illusive city with a telling name to be built near the village of Yeraskhavan in the Ararat valley, a site which is simultaneously the closest to Turkey, Iran and Azerbaijan.

The present Asia/Europe controversy presupposes and was preceded by a more general East/West controversy. Unlike the borderline between Asia and Europe, which may shift a little in the minds of geographers, policy makers and borderline territory dwellers, the borderline between East and West is much more flexible and mobile. Thus, this borderline shifted toward the West as a result of the Seljuk expansions. And suddenly an Armenian kingdom of Cilicia appeared just on this borderline in the 12th-14th centuries, away from the ethnic territory of the Armenians.

For relations between Russia and Oriental countries, the East/West direction corresponded to the South/North direction, in cases when the road to the East passed via the Caucasus. And it is just in this borderland that we find the Circassian-Armenians, who played the role of an important intermediary link between South (East) and North (West).

Another example is the dramatic end of Jugha, a city in Armenia, which was a flourishing trade center in the 16th century. When the Persian king Shah Abbas decided to move the borderline between East and West toward his country, he accomplished this by destroying Jugha, the former intermediary point between East and West, and moving its population to Persia in the beginning of the 17th century to found New Jugha, which soon became a new intermediary point between East and West. Nearly two centuries later, when this borderline moved further to the East, to India, this time as a result of the activities of the Dutch and later British East India Company, the British found Armenians, who had already created a trade network there, just at this borderline. The Armenians, who were tradesmen from New Jugha, helped the Company in its initial steps into the Indian market and played the role of a buffer between Western and Eastern merchants.

There are many more such examples and each example has, of course, a different and specific history ranging from deportations to adventurous trade expeditions, which hardly fit a common model. But, however different the reasons for these moves were, the result was the same: wherever the flexible borderline between East and West shifts, Armenia and/or the Armenians are in some mysterious way right there, as if waiting to become intermediates between the newly distributed East and West. Usually this happens against their will, Armenians are as if doomed to become intermediates, but sometimes it becomes a point of political strategy, as it is, for instance, in the case of present-day Armenia’s ambiguous intermediate position between Iran (South [East]) and Russia (North [West]), which takes aback and annoys the West, especially the United States.

The many minor cases, in which Armenians play the role of intermediates in local East/West divisions, for example, between the British and the Turks in Cyprus, show that we really are dealing with a universal model of an Armenian way of life. The last example also illustrates that this model is not always a successful model of survival. In Cyprus, the Armenians that fled Turkey during the Genocide first settled in the part of the island inhabited by local Turks (that is why they played the role of intermediates between the British and the Turks), but after the Greek/Turkish conflict they had to move to the Greek part of the island. Beyond this mini-model, the general model discussed in this Path shows that there are two sides of the coin and a cost to “being in between”: the same fate of being in between has brought many misfortunes to Armenia and the Armenians, since the West and the East not only cooperate, but also war, and those in between become the immediate victims of such wars.

This “trend” of always being between East and West also refers to the diaspora-forming processes in one way or another. Both sides of the coin contribute to these processes. Let us recall the division of Armenia between Persia and Byzantium in 385/387. Nowadays, when caravans do not cross Armenia any more, Armenians look toward new models that fit the old intermediary model to survive in the modern world of airplanes flying over the former busy crossroads of East and West. Especially as the East/West borderline seems to be preparing for a new shift. The mystical logic outlined in this final Path gives us a clue, a litmus test for prognosticating the location of the new borderline between East and West: one just has to look for large accumulations of Armenians on the world map. Presently, such a place is California. The increasing numbers of Asian people living there gives a visible “confirmation” of such a possible future shift. The trend of the US to realize trade communications via the Pacific instead of the Atlantic ocean since the1980s also points in this direction. So, perhaps, it will be the Armenian diaspora with its internal structure of successive intermediary components (including the Hayastants'is and all other different old and new diaspora groups with their many levels of social and professional standings) that might play an important role in establishing a new model of homeland – diaspora relations and thus enter a new stage of Armenian identity in a changing world.

Levon Abrahamian