THREE dilemmas dominate daily life in Armenia: the war in Karabakh; the economic changes in a country with an outworn industry and no natural resources; and the genocide of Armenians during the First World War and future relations with Turkey. In the capital, Yerevan, people wonder: can independent Armenia survive? VICKEN CHETERIAN 66 A WOMAN enters her kitchen,"
runs one of the jokes circulating in Yerevan, "and puts on the light to discover that there is electricity, puts on the oven and finds out that there is gas, puts on the tap to find there is running water. She runs to her husband and shouts: 'the Communists are back!"'
In Armenia — as in other regions of the former Soviet Union - people speak about the Brezhnev era as Paradise Lost. A time of abundance when shops were full, goods cheap and everyone had jobs. Armenia is a mountainous country of thirty thousand square kilometres with no access to the sea and very poor in natural resources. The Soviets built enormous chemical factories, which produced enormous pollution, but Armenia depended on raw material coming from Russia, and on the common market for the distribution of the end product.
In any case, the republic did not decide since the investments came from Moscow and the income made by selling the products went there too. The blockade of Armenia by Azerbaijan since 1989 and the gradual collapse of the Soviet economy have had disastrous effects. This winter only 20% of industrial capacity was operating
Half the republic's population live in the capital Yerevan. The Soviet Armenian lea-
ders tried to bring the city above the one million limit so they could get bigger invest-
RUSSIAN
•*FEDERATION
ARMEN A triated Greek-Armenians, wanted to emigrate to Los
Angeles. And they were no exception. "There, the poo-
GEORGIA ments under the plan. The city itself is in a poor state, as if struck by a disaster; the roads ARMENIA are pitted with holes while the housing is divided between badly built blocks and slumlike one family houses. Factory chimneys protrude out of resi- TURKEY dential neighbourhoods.
After dark the city is dead while the smart cafes that speak of better days stay closed. The 2,750 water springs built to commemorate the city's history stay dry. Crowdss stand for hours at bus stops; public transport is out of order while private cars are rare.
In May, when a gallon of gasoline cost 120 roubles in Moscow, its price in Yerevan was more than 700 roubles - more than most people's monthly salary. The country is closer to the Middle East than to
Russia — or Europe. Family relations dominate social and economic life while women, if they work, do unskilled jobs.
With the collapse of Soviet values and increasing economic pressure, traditionalism is trying to push women back into the kitchen.
After the earthquake
Leninakan is the country's second city;
the statue of Lenin and his name have been removed and it is now called Gumri. The ruins left after the 1988 earthquake have only partly been reconstructed. Probably over one third of the population in the earthquake region still live in containers which are cold in winter and hot in sum-
Concrete apartment blocks, damaged by the earthquake, stand empty. People fear that in case of another shock these rapidly and poorly constructed blocks would once again become mass graves. Cranes hang idly over half made sites — building materials have been unable to get through the blockade. Moreover, in the past year the government has not invested in housing, while people cannot afford free market prices.
The privatization of land, the most radical in the former-USSR, was adopted by parliament in February 1991 and some
80% of the land has already been distributed. The step has been considered a success and the media has even claimed that
"Armenia will soon be self-sufficient" in agricultural products (Les Nouvelles de
Moscou, December 3, 1991). Indeed, in a mountainous region, small farms are usually more productive than big kolkhoz [collective] systems. Now, the major difficulty is the tractors and machinery used on the
Yovlakh AZERBAIJAN bed) •Shaumyan NAGORNY KARABAKH : stepanstert IRAN farms, which used to come from Russia. The second stage of privatization, involving shops, stores and cafes, has already started. Although hundreds of young men stand idly at street corners during daytime, there is no unemployment, meaning they receive a salary for a job they don't do; but by the end of the year massive unemployment can be expected.
The airplane from Moscow to Yerevan was overcrowded; some people had openly paid money to the captain to get on the plane and stood up during the whole journey. Most of them were on business, carrying all sorts of things, from imported chocolates to piles of eggs to sell on the streets of Yerevan. We walked out of Yerevan airport without being checked.
### Hundreds of statues
The national pride of the Armenians is striking. The streets of the capital are decorated with hundreds of statues of Armenians considered important. The loss of the identity of belonging to a superpower is replaced by nationalism, always strong in the Caucasus. The two national heroes these days are General Antranik — a guerilla leader who fought against the Turkish army at the start of the century - and the French-Armenian singer Charles Aznavour, who made big collections for victims of the earthquake.
In Soviet times, even the repatriated Armenians were looked at suspiciously and never rose to high position. Now the president, Levon Ter-Petrossian, is Syrianborn. His parents repatriated in 1946, while the foreign minister, Raffi Hovanesnalist choice is buoyed up by hopes of support from the diaspora, where half of the seven million Armenians live, in countries including Iran, Syria, Lebanon, France, the USA and Canada, or from the prosperous communities of Western Armenia in Turkey.
However, national pride is not enough to keep people at home. My hosts, the Goharian family, the elders in which were reparest of the poor lives better than the rich here," said Siranoush, who used to work in the city soviet and was looking for work in the private sector. In Armenia, it is difficult to get a clear idea about what is happening in the world. The international TV news is two minutes of rapidly changing CNN pic"We have an agreement with CNN", said Samuel Kevorkian, the director of the local TV station, "they provide us with the international news images for free and we show only CNN".
### Nationalist arguments
Even the Armenian Communist Party's defence of its links with Moscow is based on nationalist arguments. "Armenia is surrounded by hostile Muslim states", said Aram Sarkissian, who was a politburo member of the local CP and is now the head of the Democratic Party of Armenia. "History has proved that the West, Britain and later the US, supports Turkey in this region. Our only ally is the Russians and for that we need a strong pro-Russian political party in Armenia, to strengthen Russian interest in us".
This argument is an old one — Armenian Communists argued against nationalists that the Red Army saved the country in 1920 from the invading Turkish armies. A monument commemorating the entry of the Tsarist Russian army in 1828 stands not far from Yerevan.
When the movement started in the Armenian-populated Karabakh enclave in neighbouring Azerbaijan, demonstrators in both the Karabakh capital Stepanakert and Yerevan carried portraits of Gorbachev. "They not only believed in perestroika and glasnost", said Vahan Ishkhanian, a journalist, "but they thought that the Russians ruling in Moscow would intervene in favour of their cause". The position of the Soviet leadership, which tried to portray the Armenian popular movement of 1988 as "irresponsible and adventurous" while trying to maintain the status quo, created a strong anti-Russian mood. Thus the struggle for Karabakh soon evolved into a movement for independence from Moscow.
The pogroms in Sumgait (1988) and Baku (1990) revived memories of the genocide organized by the Turkish authorities in 1915, while the war has created a dies pread belief that Aurkey is sure 1sg 15 widespread belief that Turkey is supplying July 6, 1992 • #232 International Viewpoint