Vol. 1 No. 22 (2021): 2021-1

As a crucial factor affecting the bilateral relations between Armenia and Turkey, the
international recognition of the Armenian genocide is strongly governed by the latest
developments in world politics where each country predictably pursues its own interests. It is,
however, indisputable that the already adopted resolutions are not changed because of the
changes in the quality of relations. For this very reason, in their fight against the denial of the
Armenian Genocide espoused by Turkey in 2015, the adoption of pro-Armenian resolutions by
different states can be deemed a major victory. The highly eventful commemoration of the
centenary of the Armenian Genocide, both in Armenia and around the world, as well as its
recognition and condemnation by various countries conclusively proves that the enthusiastic
efforts of the Turkish authorities aimed at suspending the process of the international
recognition of the Armenian Genocide not only failed to yield the desired results but also
heavily impacted the links between those states and Turkey and the Armenian-Turkish
relations alike, which currently appear to be suspended.

Tavush canton is the fifth administrative unit of Utik province of Great Armenia. It used
to stretch from the Miapor mountain range to the Kura River and from the Gardmana Moun-
tains to the Hakhum (Paytapar) mountain range. Originally inhabited by Armenians, this
canton was initially under the economic and political influence of the Kingdom of Van. Later it
was included in the kingdom of Haykid Yervanduni. During the reign of the Orontid, the
Artaxiad and the Arsacid dynasties, Tavush canton was a royal domain and was a royal winter
residence. Due to its strategic position, it played an important role in the life of the then
Armenia.

The Nagorno Karabakh is rich in numerous and very various monuments, which belong to
different epochs. This is explained by the fact that Artsakh was struggle for its survival, freedom
and a bright future since the ancient times. The monastery complexes are witnesses, which came from the ancient history sources and describe the generation’s secular and spiritual life; the region’s century-old history. It is relevant to mention, that even though above mentioned monuments have their unique features, these all monuments definitely belong to Armenian architecture traditions; the structure and the style was common to Artsakh-Karabakh, as well as in neighbour Syunik-Zanezur areas. In this context it is significant the fact, that constructors were operated their old traditions, and this is how they returned the domed structure style, which was the most famous in previous Armenian architecture areas, during VI-IX and XI-XIII centuries.

In 1827-1835, a printing house functioned in Shushi, founded by Basel protestant
missionaries. The books published in Shushi were classified into two groups: educational
publications and scientific tractates, which were the first editions throughout the territory of
Karabakh. In the article we have analyzed in detail the works, publications of this printing
house, their applicable signification, as well as issues related to censorship and printing
permissions.

In the Ottoman Empire before the reforms implemented at the first stage of Tanzimat, the
non-Muslim population didn’t have any access to educational colleges. The Armenians of
Constantinople got education mainly in national colleges, which didn’t give comprehensive

and secular academic education. In order to fill up the gap a group of eminent Armenian
figures sent smart and diligent Armenian learners to some European colleges at their own
expense. At first the students got education in Italy, mainly in Murad-Rapaelian colleges
established with the efforts of the Mechitarist Unity. By the end of 1940s the centre of
education for the Armenian youth of Constantinople became Paris. A group of young
intellectuals inspired by the ideas of European enlightenment, progress and French Revolution
of 1848 returned to Constantinople and set about the education of their own nation. They
established a great number of non-governmental, educational and cultural associations, which
promoted patriotic activity throughout the city. On January 7, 1859, “The Murad-Rapaelian
Students’ Association” was established in Constantinople, the founders of which were
members of “All-Armenian Association”. The members of that Association made contacts with
the masonry during their study in Europe, some of them were affiliated to the free masons’
lodges. The Association foundation was quite similar to the masonic lodge gatherings. Some
members of the Association became active public figures and constitutional movement
participants. Some of them were members of European masonic lodges working in Constanti-
nople. At the beginning of the 1860s some members of the Association became members of the
Armenian “Tigran” and “Ser” Lodges. At the foundation of these lodges “The Murad-
Rapaelyan Association” stopped its activity in 1871.

During the reign of Abdul Hamid II, massacres and forced Islamization were central to
the ideology of pan-Islamism. The Sultan believed that the steadfastness of his throne would
only be ensured by the Islamization of the empire, so in parallel with the Armenian massacres,
he used the methods of forcing Islam. Armenians saw the only way out of the clutches of death
in the form of religious conversion. After the massacres of the 1890s, in many cases,
Armenians living in the surrounding villages resorted to conversion, hoping to escape death.
Meanwhile many forcibly converted Armenians tried to reconvert to their religion. Despite the
fact that after the massacres under the pressure from foreign diplomats the authorities allowed
Armenians to reconvert to Christianity, the atmosphere of fear did not allow them to do so
openly, as the lessons of past made them distrust any “permission” of the Ottoman Empire.
Therefore, many did not openly take this step, because they were under public pressure and
death threats. As a result, they became hidden Armenians.

The article examines the importance of advertising for the Tiflis-Armenian newspaper
“Mshak”. The author notes that, as in the first period of the newspaper’s existence (1872-
1892), when advertising did not give significant income, and the newspaper was supported
mainly by investments of the founder of the newspaper Gr. Artsruni, in subsequent years
advertising was not the main source of income either. The activities of the publication were
supported by sponsorship and donations from various persons. In the field of advertising, the
newspaper actively cooperated with many advertising agencies, among which the main place
was occupied by the advertising agency “L. and E. Metzl & Co.” until 1915. The majority of
local advertisers for the newspaper were Armenian cultural institutions and representatives of
small and medium-sized businesses. Large entrepreneurs preferred to print their advertisements in Russian-language periodicals of Tiflis

The German-Armenian Society played a great role in helping the Armenian people to
overcome the challenges during the years of the National Socialist regime in Germany. This
refers in particular to the racial identity of Armenians and Jews circulated in the German media
in 1933. This was fraught with unpredictable consequences, and the struggle against it became
the priority of the German-Armenian Society and other German friends of the Armenian
people. The struggle, which had lasted for months, finally reached its desired goal. The
German media campaign aimed at the racial identification of Armenians and Jews came to an
end. In order to avoid new falsifications, in 1934 the German-Armenian Society published the
collection of works “Armeniertum-Ariertum” on the Aryan origin of Armenians. In the
following years, from 1933 to 1939, the German-Armenian Society continued to support the
development of German-Armenian cultural ties

This paper presents our reflections of an article published in the Azerbaijani online news,
the medium named <Azvision.az>. The article is entitled “Armenian So-called Genocide”. The
absurdity of this formulation made us study the article from the perspective of the
implementation of manipulative tactics usually and inevitably employed by authors of this
category to achieve certain political ends. Indeed, it occurred, that everything is turned
absolutely upside down in this article. The deliberate juggling of facts, leading to a monstrous
distortion of reality, as well as the heinous arrogance of the anonymous author, prompted us to
present reasonable and empirically sound facts which completely expose the anonymous author
in his lie. Our article also provides additional facts about the events that happened during the
Armenian Genocide, which the author may not have been aware of, although the very
anonymity of the article suggests otherwise.

The purpose of the research carried within this article is to show the current state of the
RA natural population change and, as a result, the multiplicity of its future challenges. We have
investigated the factors influencing the current natural growth rate, the trends in the dynamics,
and the upcoming demographic challenges. We have introduced suggestions on the adoption of
a demographic development national project. The consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic
and the 2020 Artsakh War are also taken into account.

The article analyses the novel “An Unhealed Wound” by one of the most talented
representatives of Armenian literature Stepan Alajajyan in the light of national, political and
geopolitical issues in ideological and artistic dimensions. The three-volume novel depicts the
difficult and cruel situation of Western Armenians during World War I and the heroic self-
defense battle fought by Fnditchak, one of the settlements of Cilicia, with historical certainty,
deep plot and vivid characters. The peculiarities of the novel’s imagery, the rich system of
characters, the principle of “coexistence”, i.e. the author’s ability to “move” the reader to the
first decades of the XX century making him the “participant”, the “eyewitness” or the
“witness” of the unfolding events, the ingenuity of “summarizing the feelings of an Armenian
in Armenian words”, and the original linguistic thinking have been studied comprehensively.

Guided by the well-known theoretical definitions of the myth transformation into a fairy
tale, the author of the article carried a folkloristic analysis of the legend “Ara the Beautiful”
recorded by the eminent ethnographer and folklorist Yervand Lalayan in 1902. It shows how
the myth of Ara the Beautiful and Semiramis, mentioned in the medieval Armenian
historiography, was originally a mythological work, but later gradually lost its mythological
appearance, changed its nature and became a fairy tale undergoing a process of transformation. It became an extended story with a more fabulous nature and a reminiscent of a fairy tale. By studying the legend-fairy tale in detail, the author of the article has discovered both the typological features of a fairy tale that are vivid in it, and also has shown those motives in the plot which are based on mythical symbolism and can be interpreted in a mythological context.

The article is dedicated to the comprehensive examination of Ghazaros Agayan’s novel
“Divorce”. In addition to patriarchal manners and customs, the novel depicts the life of the
patriarchal family, the division of the paternal property of the four brothers. Gh. Aghayan
artistically presented the patriarchal world, the social problems of the individual, the vicious
aspects of life, the perceptions of social phenomena.

“The Refutation of the Sects” by Yeznik Koghbatsi is one of the famous creations of the
Armenian literature of the 5th century, which is distinguished not only by its original content,
but also by its linguistic qualities. In this study, we wrote out the words and phrases belonging
to the semantic group “religion and beliefs” from four chapters of the book, identifying word-
building, etymological and semantic features of these words and terms. The semantic field of
religious words is very closely related to the units of lexical thematic groups “rights”, “people
and social relations”, “nature and natural phenomena”. The analysis of religious words shows
the natural semantic transitions of lexical units from one group to another due to changes in
human thinking, the transition from pagan polytheism, pantheism to monotheism. The basic
concepts of this lexical group are Indo-European words, for example, աստուած, դի, հաւատ,
մեղ, ձօն, տօն, ոգի, to which Iranian, Greek and Syrian borrowings were later added:
դէն, մազդեզն, քէշ, մեհեան, բագին, բարսմունք, յաշտ, մոգ, դեւ, դրաշտ, հրէշ, եկեղեցի,
հերետիկոս, կաթողիկոս, եպիսկոպոս, քրիստոնեայ, հեթանոս, սատանայ, սրովբէ,
քուրմ, etc. Many religious terms, phraseological units, phrases of the Ancient Armenian lan-
guage presented in “The Refutation of the Sects” by Yeznik Koghbatsi were handed down to
both Middle Armenian literary language and Modern one, enriching the vocabulary at all its
levels.

According to different views in Armenian Studies, Old Armenian (OA) վ [v] 1) was a
labio-dental consonant which acted as a semi vowel in certain positions, the same goes for
ւ (ṷ) and consonant ու (oṷ) (H. Hyubshman, H. Marcvart, M. Abeghyan); 2) different sounds

have been expressed by վ and ւ letters (phonemes) (A. Meye, N. Mar, H. Acharyan, S. Avetyan);

3) along with ւ and consonant ու, վ used to be one of the sub-phonemes of Ու/ sonorant, i.e.

there were additional distributional relations between these three sounds (E. Agahayan);

4) վ and ւ had the same consonant sound value. Moreover, վ, ւ and consonant
ու were the positional variants of the phoneme <Վ> (H. Muradyan). In my view,

the traditional pronunciation of these sounds as labio-dental [վ/v] played an indirect

role in seeing additional distributional relations between վ-ի, ւ-ի and the so-called

“consonant” ու i.e. in ascribing them to one phoneme. Whereas, according to phonetics,

similarity in sound forms is not an indicative of
belonging to the same phoneme. The phonemic belonging of a sound depends on its ability to

form functional contrasts, rather than sound resemblance with other sounds or its appearance in
mutually-excluding positions. Hence, though OA վ and ւ cannot appear in the same position
and form distinctive contrasts with each other, they do create similar contrasts with numerous
other phonemes which provide ample grounds to claim that վ and ւ were full representatives of
the OA phoneme system rather than positional variants of the same phoneme.

This article offers an overview of the typological changes that the Indo-European noun
declension has undergone up to the Modern Armenian period. The individual typological
features have changed at different chronological stages. In this regard the Old Armenian noun
declension with its zero-marking of the nominative singular and at the same time cumulative
case-number exponents typologically represents a transitional stage from the I.-E. flective to
the Middle Armenian (as well as Modern Armenian) agglutinative type of inflection. It is
argued that the typological shift of the nominal declension from cumulative to separative expo-
nence in Middle Armenian was not triggered by the influence from neighbouring languages, as
usually believed, but rather it has been a direct and quite expected consequence of the new
plural markers going back to Old Armenian collective plural suffixes, the latter being inflected
in singular. On the other hand, the very process of the collective plural suffixes developing into
regular plural markers had inner-systemic motivation as well. Specifically, the growing tende-
ncy for the Old Armenian plural marker ք to function also as a purely derivational (word-buil-
ding) suffix inevitably weakened its plural-marking value necessitating a new plural marker.