The University of Bath’s Dr Doreen Pastor explores an “assembly of memorials” that embodies “the struggle for Armenia and Armenian identity”.

One of the most striking monuments in Armenia’s capital Yerevan is the ‘Mother Armenia’ monument. Situated on a hilltop in Victory Park, the original monument featured a statue of Stalin which was connected via Stalin Avenue to the Matenadaran (the Museum of Ancient Manuscripts). In 1957, the Stalin statue was dismantled and replaced by ‘Mother Armenia’, now featuring a local Armenian woman holding a sword in her hand that symbolises the defence of the Armenian homeland.

Visiting the monument today involves a walk through Victory Park where most visitors will encounter an amusement park that was built following Armenia’s independence. Yet another path, Victory Street, leads to a variety of smaller memorials:

1. The Armenian Genocide Memorial

2. World War II

3. Afghanistan War (with a Russian inscription ‘Afghanistan is living in my soul’)

4. The memorial to the Armenian Heroes

5. The Karabakh Conflict Memorial

6. 70 years World War II Memorial with the inscription ‘I remember, I am proud.’

Given the variety of conflicts commemorated here, one could argue that this assembly of memorials is what Rothberg (2009) calls ‘multidirectional memory’, yet what binds them together is the struggle for Armenia and Armenian identity. This theme continues at the Mother Armenia monument itself, which, at first sight, resembles other iconic WWII Soviet memorials such as the ‘Motherland Calls’ in Volgograd. However, a closer look at the architecture shows a desire to move away from Soviet iconoclasm by emphasising Armenian culture.

The main door is decorated with 19 rosettes which symbolise the Christian heritage of Armenia. Inside, the monument features four floors – the ‘Hall of Fame’, commemorating the heroes of Soviet Armenia who fought during World War II (basement), the Soviet WWII exhibition (basement), the Karabakh conflict exhibition (previously also a Soviet exhibition; ground floor) and finally the Bell Tower (second floor).

The Hall of Fame is connected to the upper floors via a gap, allowing visitors to look up from the basement (ultimately ‘death’) to the Bell Tower (ultimately ‘heaven’ or ‘resurrection’). In fact, it could be argued that the interior celebrates the resurrection of Armenia.

At the same time, a visitor standing on the upper floors is able to look down to the ‘Hall of Fame’, thus bowing to the soldier who struggled for Armenia. Today’s visitors, however, do not have access to the Bell Tower and only very restricted access to the Soviet exhibition or the ‘Hall of Fame’, and so are unable to engage with the original intention of the architect. Moreover, visitors are immediately directed to the Karabakh exhibition, clearly with the intention to emphasise Armenia’s contemporary fight to secure its future in Nagorno-Karabakh.

The Soviet exhibition, established in 1974, has a strong focus on the Armenian contribution to fighting Nazi Germany, in particular the 89th division which captured Berlin and subsequently performed the traditional Armenian kochari dance on the footsteps of the Reichstag. In addition, the exhibition features the original desk of Marshall Bagramyan (twice ‘hero of the Soviet Union’ for his contribution in WWII) who captured Königsberg (today’s Kaliningrad), as well as several rooms with portraits of Armenian heroes.

Today’s Armenian heroes are commemorated in the Nagorno-Karabakh exhibition on the ground floor; it explains the conflict by often using the personal belongings of the fallen soldiers. In so doing, the exhibition resembles a shrine to Armenia’s current struggle against Azerbaijan.

Display cabinet: war in Nagorno-Karabakh

As a German academic who researches the memorialisation of the Nazi past in Germany, I realised that Germany’s focus on the Red Army without recognising its diversity is a significant gap in understanding the Red Army’s role as a liberator. In the case of Armenia, the memory and/or first-hand experience of the Armenian Genocide would have profoundly shaped their motivation to fight against Nazi Germany. In fact, Marutyan (2016) reminds us that Armenian Genocide is intrinsically linked to the Second World War since Germany sided with Turkey during World War I, ignoring the massacres that Turkey committed against the Armenian population. Thus, capturing Berlin was, and still is, a source of pride in Armenia.

On the other hand, the overarching message of the ‘hero’ in the exhibitions (and in society as a whole) left me somewhat uncomfortable. How did an Armenian soldier with the traumatic memories of the Armenian Genocide approach a regime that carried out another genocide? An emphasis on heroism gives little space for acknowledging the suffering that accompanies every war. Indeed, what does this failure to acknowledge the pain do to a society that is still embroiled in violent conflict?

I would like thank Dr Arsen Hakobyan, National Academy of Sciences of Armenia and Dr Aram Vartikyan, Yerevan State University for their time in showing me around the site and for several fascinating conversations about Armenian memory.

References:

Marutyan, H. (2016) How the Great Patriotic War is remembered in Armenia: Some observations. PLURAL. History. Culture. Society. Journal of History and Geography Department, “Ion Creangă” State Pedagogical University, 2: 95-106.

Rothberg, M. (2009) Multidirectional Memory: Remembering the Holocaust in the Age of Decolonization. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

Dr Doreen Pastor is a Lecturer in German in the University of Bath’s Department of Politics, Languages and International Studies. Her research focuses on the memorialisation of the Nazi and GDR past in museums in Germany, and in particular, how visitors engage with violence in exhibitions. She recently published her first monograph, titled Tourism and Memory – Visitor Experiences of the Nazi and GDR Past (Routledge, 2021).

Entangled Armenian memory