The Treason of the Intellectuals? Reflections on the uses of Revisionism and Nationalism in Armenian...

Often directed toward an ethnic rather than a broader international orscholarly audience, Armenian historical writing has been narrowlyconcerned with fostering a positive view of an endangered national-ity. Popular writers and activist journalists both in the diaspora andArmenia handed down an uncritical historical tradition replete withheroes and villains, and scholars who might otherwise have enrichedthe national historiography withdrew from a field marked by un-examined nationalism and narcissism. Criticism has been avoided asif it might aid ever-present enemies, and certain kinds of inquiry havebeen shunned as potential betrayals of the national cause.1

These words written by Ronald Suny in 1993 have suddenly acquired a newresonance with the publication of a book by a young Armenian scholar fromYerevan.2 Indeed, Armen Aivazian’s Hayastani Patmutian Lusabanume AmerikianPatmagrutian Mej (The history of Armenia as presented in American historiogra-phy) (1998) lives up to Suny’s diagnosis in ways that perhaps Suny himself hadnot fully anticipated.3

Hayastani Patmutian Lusabanume is a polemic against the representation ofArmenian history in works written in North America in particular and the

Armenian Forum 2, no. 4, pp. 1–38. © 2002 The Gomidas Institute

“The Treason of the Intellectuals”

Sebouh Aslanian

Reflections on the Uses of Revisionism andNationalism in Armenian Historiography

1 Ronald Grigor Suny, Looking toward Ararat: Armenia in Modern History (Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Press, 1993),p. 2.

2 I would like to thank Mara Kolesas for her analytical insights and discerning commentary on an earlier versionof this paper. I am also grateful to Razmik Panossian for providing me with many helpful suggestions andreferences, to Khachig Tölölyan for his prudent counsel, and to Vincent Lima and an anonymous reviewer forcarefully reading my draft and offering meticulous comments. Lastly, I owe a special debt of gratitude to myadvisor, Professor Marc Nichanian, for his expert guidance and constant encouragement. Of course, I alone amresponsible for this essay.

3 Hayastani patmutian lusabanume amerikian patmagrutian mej: knnakan tesutiun (Yerevan: Artagers Publications,1998). All subsequent references to this text are noted in the body of this essay.

2 Armenian Forum Review Essay

Armenian diaspora in general. The book explores a wide body of literature pub-lished over the last forty years and finds much of it disappointing. Its centralthesis is that the scholarship of Armenian studies in the West is academicallyunreliable and also has acted as the principal agent of Turkish and Azerbaijanirevisionism. The book is thus devoted to unmasking what it calls this “falseschool of Armenian studies.” The author divides his work into two sections. Thefirst examines Suny’s Looking toward Ararat and focuses mostly on the latter’streatment of the formation of modern Armenian national identity in the eigh-teenth and nineteenth centuries. The author condemns Suny for “perverting”and “corrupting” Armenian history and thereby (the author claims) underminingArmenia’s national security. Similar criticism is also made concerning Suny’s viewson the conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh and his exploratory forays into the lit-erature on the Armenian Genocide. The second section explores Western scholar-ship on Armenian “ethnogenesis” and the status of classical Armenian texts.Subsections are devoted to Movses Khorenatsi’s controversial History of Armeniaas well as Yeghishe’s History of Vardan and the Armenian War and Pavstos Biuzand’sEpic Histories. Aivazian’s targets here include Robert Thomson, Nina Garsoïan,James Russell, and Levon Avdoyan—all specialists of classical and medieval Ar-menian history. This section also discusses Armenian demographic statistics forthe period leading up to the Russian annexation of Eastern Armenia in 1829;here George Bournoutian is singled out for censure. The book concludes with asurvey of Western scholarship on various facets of medieval Armenian cultureand their “distortion” or “perversion” in the works of Robert Hewsen, Peter Cowe,and John Greppin. On the whole, having read Hayastani Patmutian Lusabanume,the uninformed reader is bound to get the impression that the only Westernscholars of Armenia worth reading are Louise Nalbandian, Vahakn Dadrian, MaryKilbourne Matossian, David Marshall Lang, Christopher Walker, Ina Baghdiantz-McCabe, and Rouben Adalian. The rest are either Armenian-hating revisionistsor “commissioned” agents of Ankara or Washington.

Like most observers of the Armenian academic scene, I am well aware thatmuch of the Armenian-studies scholarship produced in the West is in need ofreassessment and vigorous debate. Such reassessment, it goes without saying,should be made in a constructive and critical spirit, indicating certain archivaland theoretical shortcomings in the works in question and thereby clearing theway for alternative and potentially more engaging ways of figuring the Arme-nian past.

So it is quite a disappointment that when an attempt at criticizing the field asa whole has been finally made, it has come not as a scholarly engagement withthe texts but as a politically motivated sweeping indictment that undermines itsattempts to challenge the shortcomings of the field.

3Aslanian “The Treason of the Intellectuals”

My aim in this essay is to read Aivazian’s work as a symptomatic text of anew ethos surrounding nationalist history in Armenia.4 This ethos is character-ized by the principle that historiography should be an appendage to nationalsecurity. In other words, its principal aim should be, on the one hand, to gener-ate and maintain national identity, and, on the other, to defend the security inter-ests of the nation-state.This view first emergedduring the 1960s in thecontext of heated “paperwars” against Turkishand Azerbaijani revi-sionism, though it waslimited to some seg-ments of the historicalprofession and operatedunder the strict guide-lines of Soviet national-ity policy. In the aftermath of the Gharabagh conflict and the independence ofArmenia, it has come to dominate nearly all discussions (both public and aca-demic) of national history in Yerevan. Here, despite claims to having brokenwith the Soviet past, certain parallels and continuities with Soviet practices arenoteworthy. Much as the official discourse of Marxist historiography was seenas an extension of state policies, so now nationalist historiography has come tofulfill the same role. Criticism is seen as politically dangerous and is thereforeeither discouraged or repressed. Soviet historiography repressed dissent in thename of defending the proletariat in the fight against imperialism and so-calledbourgeois/capitalist/Trotskyite tendencies.5 In a similar fashion, nationalist his-tory, particularly Aivazian’s version of it, represses dissent in the name of de-fending the nation in the struggle against Turkish-Azerbaijani revisionism. Thoughit sometimes pretends to have academic grounds for dismissing the argumentsof its adversaries, its ultimate appeal is to national security interests and the needsof the nation-state. Thus, in its view, findings that do not further the interests ofthe nation-state are treasonous and must of necessity be avoided. It condemnsany view that does not fit into its nationalist vision by labeling it revisionism. I

4 Two extensive reviews of Aivazian’s book have already appeared in the Armenian diaspora, both of which arein Armenian. See Vartan Matiossian, “Hayagitutiune Miyatsial Nahangneru mej” (Armenian Studies in the UnitedStates), Bazmavep 2000, pp. 247–95; and Ara Sanjian’s critical review in Haigazian Armenological Review 2000, pp.457–79. I have benefited from the excellent points raised by both authors. In addition, see Levon Avdoyan’sbrief commentary in Haigazian Armenological Review 2000, pp 480–82. For reviews published in Armenia, see theconclusion of this essay.

5 Compare Sanjian’s perceptive comments in his Haigazian review, pp. 462–63. See also Matiossian, “HayagitutiuneMiyatsial Nahangneru mej,” p. 252.

Under ReviewArmen Aivazian

Hayastani Patmutian Lusabanume AmerikianPatmagrutian Mej (The history of Armenia aspresented in American historiography)

Yerevan: Artagers Publications, 1998


shall characterize this strategy as the “blackmail of revisionism.” Within this over-all context, I will focus below on three aspects of Aivazian’s criticism of Arme-nian studies in the West. First, I will examine Aivazian’s dismissal of Suny’s claimsthat Armenian national identity is a modern construct. Second, I will explore histreatment of Khorenatsi’s classical text and its interpretation in the West. Third,I will probe his views on Armenian ethnogenesis and its representation in West-ern historiography.

Before looking at these points, let us first examine Aivazian’s program forthe writing of national history and how the scholarship of Armenian studies inthe West fits into this program.

Politics of H istory and National Security

“Armenian history is the inviolable strategic resource of Armenia,” writes Aivazian inthe Introduction of his work. (p. 8, emphasis in the original) From the outset, theauthor makes it evident that history writing is not merely an academic or schol-arly pursuit. It should be carried out with a clear program for shaping nationalidentity and should enlist its services to the political task of nation-state forma-tion. Based on this premise, the most reliable gauge for good scholarship is notwhether a work of history is firmly grounded in source criticism, or informed bysensible theoretical conclusions derived from the archives. Rather, it rests in thehistorian’s ability to promote the needs of the nation-state. Aivazian explainsthe importance of this view in the context of Armenian history:

[Armenian history] contains an amazingly sound foundation for build-ing a durable state and society, that is, the four-thousand-year old Ar-menian civilization and the mighty and markedly singular identity itproduced. In the event that they are correctly appraised and “intensivelyexploited,” national civilization and identity are truly worth more thanoil, natural gas, gold, and other exploitable mineral resources. The lat-ter are capable of providing for the secure and successful developmentof any state only temporarily, for a short historical period. Meanwhile,the spiritual wealth provided by national civilization and identity is in-exhaustible. (p. 8)

Since national history is the bedrock upon which nation-states are built, it wouldfollow that those nations lacking this basis will be prone to political crises. Indeed,the author argues that most developing states (including those “endowed withrich natural resources”) lack “spiritual-cultural resources” and therefore founderduring the process of state formation. In the absence of a monumental past, theirfuture will be marked by social and political uncertainty. That this might also bethe fate of the newly established Republic of Armenia if its historians are not


vigilant about guarding their national past is enough to sound the alarm bells forthe historical establishment in Yerevan:

We too . . . will stumble in the labor of finding correct solutions to thedifficult problems of the nation-state if we do not lay claim to our pastand its spiritual wealth and fail to value their importance for Armenia’snational security. Consequently, the scholarly examination of Arme-nian history and the accessible presentation of its findings to the do-mestic and foreign public are not purely academic enterprises; rather,they are indispensable and productive means for consolidating the newlyestablished Armenian state. The only way of securing the patriotic-civileducation of the Armenian new generation and unifying and consoli-dating the nation is through a profound and correct knowledge of ourroots. (p. 9)

For Aivazian, this task of “correctly” understanding the nation’s roots andprotecting its past becomes even more urgent in the face of revisionist offensivesby Armenia’s traditional foes, Turkey and Azerbaijan. As he points out, histori-ans working to promote the interests of these states have long been engaged in acampaign of falsifying and “plundering” Armenian history. The Turkishgovernment’s denial of the Armenian Genocide is a case in point. Revisionistssuch as Esat Uras and Kamuran Gürün have not limited themselves to denyingthe veracity of the Genocide; they have resorted to spurious scholarship in aneffort to discredit the entirety of Armenia’s classical and medieval history.6 An-other example mentioned by Aivazian is the attempt of Azerbaijani historians torewrite the medieval history of Gharabagh. Here, again, historical work has beenmotivated by territorial claims. The argument that Gharabagh’s culture and his-tory were not the products of Armenians (as the Armenians claim) but rather ofthe Caucasian Albanians (whom the Azerbaijanis claim as their direct ancestors)is, of course, historically dubious. It also demonstrates the extent that Azerbai-jani writers are willing to go to lay claim to this “disputed ownership of history.”7

6 Esat Uras, The Armenians in History and the Armenian Question (Ankara: Documentary Publications, 1988). Thefirst Turkish edition was published in 1950. Kamuran Gürün, The Armenian File: The Myth of Innocence Exposed(New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1985). For an interesting review of the Turkish position on Armenian history, seeClive Foss, “The Turkish View of Armenian History: A Vanishing Nation,” in The Armenian Genocide: History,Politics, Ethics, ed. Richard G. Hovannisian (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1992).

7 The dispute over the medieval history of Gharabagh and the role of the Caucasian Albanians (Aghvank inArmenian) in this history began in the 1960s with the publication of Ziya Bunyatov’s Azerbaijan from the VII to IXCenturies. This dubious work provoked an immediate reaction from Armenian historians, especially A.Mnatsakanian, and led to a historians’ paper war over the historical status of the disputed enclave. The polemicthat ensued, which was initially confined to a narrow circle of historians, was popularized and mobilized in thelate 1980s with the emergence of the Gharabagh movement and laid the discursive terrain for the subsequentconflict. What is of interest to us here is that Bunyatov and his school (which includes Azerbaijani historianssuch as Farida Mamedova) are universally reviled in Yerevan, to the extent that “Bunyatovism” has become ahousehold term of abuse signifying historical falsification. For a survey of the historians’ dispute, see RobertHewsen, “Ethno-History and the Armenian Influence over the Caucasian Albanians,” Classical Armenian Culture:Influences and Creativity, ed. Thomas Samuelian (Chico, Calif.: Scholars Press, 1982); Nora Dudwick, “The Caseof the Caucasian Albanians: Ethnohistory and Ethnic Politics,” Cahiers du Monde Russe et Soviétique 31, no. 2-3(April-September 1990), and her unpublished paper “The Pen is Mightier than the Sword”; and Stephan Astourian,


Aivazian’s preoccupations here with the dangers of Turkish-Azerbaijani revi-sionism are well founded. Most scholars in the field of Armenian studies in theWest share these concerns.

But this kind of vulgar revisionism is not what primarily perturbs Aivazian.After all, the historical branch of the Academy of Sciences in Yerevan, from the1960s to the late 1980s, conducted vigorous paper wars with their counterpartsin both Turkey and Azerbaijan.8 Instead, what really concerns him is a new vari-ety of revisionism, one that is less obvious, more sophisticated, and for thatreason all the more nefarious. This revisionism, which Aivazian refers to as the“false school of Armenian studies,” has gone undetected by the historical estab-lishment in Yerevan because “many of its proponents are Armenians by birth”(p. 15): they are “one of us.” They occupy the leading chairs of Armenian studiesin North America or are otherwise prominent scholars in the field. This fact has“deeply disoriented and perplexed the intelligentsia in Armenia, for it is difficultto believe that [Armenians] consciously, and sometimes complacently, wouldserve and do serve neither Armenian studies nor the interests of the Armeniannation.” (p. 15) Their anti-Armenian political agenda is characterized as follows:

(a) To destroy the historical-legal foundation that can enable the Arme-nian people to once again become owners of historical Armenia, thenative territories confiscated from them by means of genocide, or atleast part of those territories (thus the falsification of Artsakh’s[Gharabagh’s] history is now in high gear).

(b) To weaken the moral-psychological and ideological commitmentand ties of diaspora Armenians and then also of Hayastantsis to Arme-nia, to Armenian culture, and to the vital interests of the Armenian na-tion.9 In other words, to blunt and once and for all destroy the capacity,

“In Search of their Forefathers: National Identity and the Historiography and Politics of Armenian and Azerbai-jani Ethnogeneses,” in Nationalism and History: Essays on Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia, ed. Razmik Panossianand Donald Schwartz (Toronto: Univ. of Toronto, 1994). I have elaborated on the political uses of the histori-ans’ paper war in my “Whose Past? Whose History? Historians and Ethnic Conflict in Transcaucasia,” unpub-lished paper. For a sensible critique of Bunyatov’s work by a historian from Yerevan, see H. Anasian, “Une miseau point relative a l’Albanie caucasienne (Aluank),” Revue des etudes armeniennes 6 (1969). For an interestingdiscussion of Bunyatov’s deliberate falsification of primary sources, see George Bournoutian, “Rewriting His-tory: Recent Azeri Alterations of Primary Sources Dealing with Karabagh,” Journal of the Society of ArmenianStudies 6 (1992).

8 For a critique of Turkish revisionism published in the 1960s, see E. Sarkisian and R. Sahakian, Hay zhoghovrdi norshrjani patmutian nengapokhume ardi turk patmagrutian mej (The falsification of the history of the Armenian peoplein the modern period in contemporary Turkish historiography) (Yerevan, 1963). A more recent example isManvel Zulalyan’s Hayots patmutian kheghatiurume ardi turk patmagrutian mej: hin yev mijin darer (The distortion ofthe history of the Armenians in contemporary Turkish historiography: Classical and medieval periods) (Yere-van, 1995). Unfortunately, I have not been able to consult these works. As far as the paper wars against Azerbai-jani revisionism are concerned, one of the most important works was A. Mnatsakanian’s Aghvanits ashkharhigrakanutian hartseri shurj (Concerning Albanian literature) (Yerevan, 1966). It should be noted, as stated earlier,that this book, and the many articles that followed it, were intended for a narrow audience of specialists andhigh-placed officials in Moscow and Yerevan. For bibliographic references, see Dudwick, “The Case of theCaucasian Albanians” and Astourian, “In Search of their Forefathers.”

9 Hayastantsi refers to Armenians native to the Republic of Armenia or the Armenian SSR.


the battle-readiness, and the resolve of Armenians to lay claim to theirhistory, their present, and their future. (pp. 227–28)

For Aivazian, all of this makes Armenian studies in the West not only a mouth-piece of Turkish-Azerbaijani revisionism but also, given its high level of aca-demic refinement, so much more effective in undermining Armenian interests:

From the perspective of Armenia’s national security (both internal/political and external/international), the Western school of falseArmenology is even more pernicious in its consequences than the Turk-ish-Azerbaijani school. It is the main foundation and a constitutive ele-ment of the international propaganda campaign against the interests ofArmenia. (p. 10)

Aivazian does not describe the coordination of this campaign in much detail,except to say that it was conceived during the early days of the Cold War whenTurkey was conscripted into the ranks of NATO. The conspiratorial implicationshere are clear. The West pursues its geopolitical interests of supporting Turkeyagainst Armenia not only by promoting vulgar revisionist works by Turkish andAzerbaijani authors (Uras, Gürün, Bunyatov, and others), but also, moreeffectively, by fostering historical revisionism under the guise of Armenian stud-ies in North America. Given this assertion, the reader may pose the question asto how, and in what capacity, the chairs of Armenian studies are collaboratingwith a NATO-led campaign. Are they paid agents for Ankara or the State De-partment in the manner, for instance, of Princeton University professor HeathLowry, who was on the payroll of the Turkish government to deny the Arme-nian Genocide?10 Aivazian does not make this accusation directly, although heinsinuates on a number of occasions that Ronald Suny and Robert Thomson, inparticular, were “commissioned” by either Ankara or Washington to write theirbooks. (p. 21 for Suny and 131 for Thomson) By “distorting” Armenian history inthe service of NATO-Turkish-Azerbaijani revisionism, these scholars, forAivazian, are “betraying the nation.” Theirs is a typical case of the “treason ofthe intellectuals.”

Having outlined his political agenda and his views on the correct method ofwriting national history, Aivazian then turns his attention to the scholarship ofthis “false school.” We shall examine his strategy of unmasking evidence of be-trayal below. Suffice it to say for now that it consists of (a) placing these workswithin the context of Turkish revisionism in ways that are quite crude and sim-plistic, and (b) drawing parallels between them and vaguely similar ideas foundin the writings of Turkish and Azerbaijani revisionists. Often this involves dis-torting or misrepresenting passages from the works of Armenian historians in10 For the Lowry case, see Roger W. Smith, Eric Markusen, and Robert J. Lifton, “Professional Ethics and the

Denial of the Armenian Genocide,” in Remembrance and Denial: The Case of the Armenian Genocide, ed. Richard G.Hovannisian (Detroit: Wayne State Univ. Press, 1998), pp. 271–95.


order to force them onto a procrustean bed of revisionism. It also entails dis-counting the validity of academic arguments not on scholarly grounds but basedon their supposed political implications or uses. The resulting “blackmail of revi-sionism” leads to the following consequences: If one’s views as a scholar of Ar-menian history resemble, however remotely, some of the revisionist work

produced by Turkish orAzerbaijani historians,then one is also a revi-sionist. Moreover, anystatements one makeson the particularities ofthe Armenian past will

constitute an act of treason if these statements can be hijacked by revisionisthistorians and turned into political weapons against putative Armenian inter-ests. We shall come to this later, but let us now turn to Aivazian’s treatment ofRonald Suny.

The Nation and its Modern Past

The first half of Aivazian’s book (almost one hundred pages) is devoted to Suny’sLooking toward Ararat. The reason this work is selected for special treatment isthat it is regarded as the cornerstone of the “false school of Armenian studies.”Many of its central assumptions, according to Aivazian, are also found in otherworks that belong to this school. Moreover, Suny’s book is arguably the mostwidely acclaimed work on Armenian history published in the West. Unlike mostaccounts of Armenian history, it has received accolades from the academic com-munity at large, thus making its “false” views all the more detrimental to Arme-nians. Since Aivazian’s account of Suny’s work is tendentious and oftendeliberately distorting, it is necessary for us to first provide a brief summary ofLooking toward Ararat.

The series of essays that make up Suny’s text are exploratory attempts atpresenting Armenian history in a new light.11 Indeed, what gives them an air ofnovelty is their insistence on posing certain questions that have gone unexam-ined by conventional practitioners of Armenian studies. These questions, whichconcern the social construction of national identity and nationalism, are com-mon fare in the social sciences and particularly in the works of such theorists ofnationalism as Karl Deutsch, Ernest Gellner, Benedict Anderson, and Anthony

11 As Suny notes, though, “this small book is no substitute for the fundamental archival and interpretive workthat must be done by scholars in order to reconstruct a critical historiography of the Armenians, the essayscollected here are an attempt to rethink the modern history of the Armenians and to promote an integration ofthe somewhat isolated historiography of Armenia into more general theoretical and historical concerns.” Suny,Looking toward Ararat, pp. 2–3.

Suny’s book is arguably the mostwidely acclaimed work on Armenianhistory published in the West.


Smith.12 In the last two decades, theoretical insights from this scholarship havemade significant contributions to the writing of various national histories.13

Suny’s work must be placed in the context of this rapidly growing body ofliterature. Following these works, Suny takes as his point of departure the viewthat nations (and their identities) are not primordial entities or “corporate actors”in history but are rather social constructs whose origins are deeply connectedwith modernity. With this perspective, he devotes his book to examining theformation of modern Armenian nationalism and the shaping of Armenian na-tional identity. To accomplish this task, he confronts the inherent weaknesses ofthe nationalist genre of history (not just for Armenians but also for others) andits attempts to write essentialist and teleological narratives of the past from theperspective of legitimizing the present. Well aware of the risks inherent in such aproject, he writes:

An essentialist view of Armenians—that as a people they have alwaysand everywhere possessed a core of discernible, ethnically determinedqualities—has been for political nationalists the basis for their politicalideology: the continuous existence of the Armenians as a historic people,their origins in the Armenian plateau, arms them with the right to self-determination, nationhood, and a historically sanctified claim to theterritories that constitute Armenia. Because this view of Armenian his-tory plays such an important political role for Armenians (as homologousviews play for the Georgians, Azerbaijanis, Turks, and other peoples), anyattempt to dispute it, to decompose the collection of beliefs that makeup this reading, must be done with care and sensitivity, with full aware-ness that such an investigation may be perceived as an attack on thevery soul of the nation.14

As an alternative to nationalist history’s version of a unified Armenian spiritor subject unfolding through history (a view that cannot be sustained under his-torical scrutiny), Suny proposes to search for the meaning of “Armenianness” inwhat he calls a national tradition. He defines the latter as “a cluster of beliefs,practices, symbols, and shared values that have passed from generation to gen-eration in constantly modified and reinterpreted forms.”15 From this perspective,

12 See Karl Deutsch, Nationalism and Social Communication: An Enquiry into the Foundations of Nationality (New York,1953); Ernest Gellner, Nations and Nationalism (Oxford: Blackwell, 1983); Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communi-ties: The Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, 2d ed. (London: Verso, 1992); and Anthony Smith, TheEthnic Origins of Nations (London: Blackwell, 1988).

13 See Prasenjit Duara, Rescuing History from the Nation: Questioning Narratives of Modern China (Chicago: Univ. ofChicago Press, 1995); Partha Chatterjee, Nationalist Thought in the Colonial World: A Derivative Discourse? (London:Zed Press, 1986); and idem, The Nation and Its Fragments: Colonial and Post-Colonial Histories (Princeton: PrincetonUniv. Press, 1993)

14 Suny, Looking toward Ararat, pp. 4–5. The emphasis is mine. Aivazian quotes this passage but leaves out thehighlighted segment, which is crucial to understanding Suny’s project. See Matiossian, “Hayagitutiune MiyatsialNahangneru Mej,” p. 252.

15 Suny, Looking toward Ararat, p. 5.


Armenians’ nationhood is not a result of genetics or the vitality of some myste-rious national essence or spirit, as nationalist historiography often claims. Rather,an explanation must be sought in the versatility with which Armenians haveconstantly reinvented and reselected their cultural memory, even in a state ofdispersion and despite the polycentric and fragmented nature of their historicalexperience. Suny explains:

In the Armenian case, history has been a broken trail, and many loststories and traditions had to be recreated or replaced. No nations, noteven those like the English whose traditions seem to have survived overlong periods of time and where archaic institutions appear still vital,have in fact preserved their history without loss and recreation. Memoryis fallible even in situations where state structure, archives, and officialhistorians help preserve the written record. Armenians were an extremeexample of a people that had lost touch with previous phases of theircivilization as states fell or fell apart, as populations migrated or weremoved. In the absence of the state, continuity was maintained by theliterate clerical elite. Yet the national literature was known to only afew, even as it continued developing in isolated monasteries, and Ar-menia as an idea or living concept was lost at times for the mass of theArmenians.16

Given this fragmented picture of Armenian culture and history, Suny sug-gests that what ordinary Armenians in the eighteenth century knew about Ar-menian history and literature was at best limited. The works of the classicalhistorians were inaccessible and for that reason unknown. The monastic centersand manuscript copying were at low ebb. The classical language, grabar, used bythe religious literati was in need of standardization and reform. The local ver-naculars were disparate and often heavily infused with borrowings from thelanguages of the dominant peoples amidst whom Armenians lived (vernacularTurkish—which itself had many borrowings from Persian, Arabic and even Ar-menian—in the case of Western Armenians, and Persian for Eastern Armenians).In short, following two centuries of political instability, warfare, and massivepopulation displacements on the Armenian plateau, “all but a rudimentary senseof being Armenian had been lost for many (if not most) Armenians.”17

In this context of “social backwardness, cultural annihilation, and politicalimpotency,” Suny points out that the torch for the revival of Armenian culturewas carried by the first modern generation of Armenian patriots.18 The cultural

16 Ibid., pp. 5–6.17 Ibid., p. 55. For an excellent survey of Armenian history during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, see

Edmond Schütz, “An Armeno-Kipchak document of 1640 from Lvov and its Background in Armenia and in theDiaspora,” in Between the Danube and the Caucasus, ed. Gyorgy Kara (Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó, 1987), pp.247–340. See also Dickran Kouymjian, “From Disintegration to Reintegration: Armenians at the Start of theModern Era,” Revue du Monde Armenien 1 (1994), pp. 9–18; and Hay Zhoghovrdi Patmutiun, vol. 4.



enterprise of the Mekhitarist congregation, established on the island of SanLazzaro in Venice in 1717, was crucial for this revival. These Armenian Catholicmonks “developed the nascent art and craft of Armenian printing” and “beganissuing new editions of the ancient Armenian historians in multiple copies, aswell as more strictly religious texts.”19 They organized a network of schools inArmenian communities (in both the diaspora and the homeland), wrote manualsof grammar (vernacular 1727, grabar 1730, 1779) and geography (1791; 1802–17), introduced the Armenian reading public to the vernacular periodical (1799–1802; 1800–1820; 1843–present), and issued a two-volume Haikazian Dictionaryof the Armenian Language (1749 and 1769).20 More significantly, they publishedthe first modern history of Armenia, Mikayel Chamchian’s History of the Arme-nians (1784–86), which laid the basis for the national imaginings of Armeniansduring the nineteenth century.21 “The importance of this recovery cannot be ex-aggerated. Though its effects turned out to be far different from the originallyreligious mission of the Mekhitarist monks, their work did nothing less than laythe foundation for the emergence of secular Armenian nationalism.”22

Aivazian’s polemic with Suny simultaneously operates on two levels. First,he questions Suny’s academic competence as an Armenian historian by pointingout that he consistently disregards the relevant archival evidence and is unawareof a large corpus of secondary literature, mostly published in Soviet Armenia. Asa result, Aivazian asserts, much of the depiction of eighteenth-century Arme-nian cultural life in Looking toward Ararat is inaccurate if not entirely distorted. Anexample of this is Suny’s statement that “knowledge of Armenian history had

19 Ibid.20 For schools, see Barsegh V. Sargisian, Yerkhariuramia krtakan gortzuneutiun Venetko Mkhitarian Miabanutian (Bi-

centennial educational activity of the Mekhitarist congregation of Venice), vol. 1, 1746–1901 (Venice, 1936). Forthe historical/religious context of the Mekhitarist enterprise, see Boghos Levon Zekiyan, “Armenians and theVatican during the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries: Mekhitar and the Armenian Catholic Patriarchate, theChallenge of Mechitarian Ecumenism and Latin-Roman Loyalty,” Het Christelijk Oosten 52 (2000), no. 3-4, pp.251–67. For an extensive treatment of the literary work of the Mekhitarists, see Barsegh V. Sargisian, Yerkhariuramiagrakan gortzuneutiun yev nshanavor gortzichner Venetko Mkhitarian Miabanutian (Bicentennial literary activity andacclaimed activists of the Mekhitarist congregation of Venice) (Venice, 1905); and Sahag Djemdjemian’s MkhitarAbbahor hratarakchakan arakelutiune (The publishing mission of Abbot Mekhitar) (Venice, 1980).

21 Patmutiun Hayots i skzbane ashkarhi minchev tsam tiarn 1784 (History of the Armenians from the beginning of theworld until the year of the Lord 1784), 3 vols. (Venice, 1784–86). References below are to this edition. Chamchian’swork was one of the most widely read, and certainly one of the most controversial books of Armenian historyduring much of the nineteenth century. An abridged version in one volume was later published under the titleKhrakhchan patmutian hayots (Banquet of the history of the Armenians) (Venice, 1811), and was translated intoEnglish by Johannes Avdall as The History of the Armenians: From B.C. 2247 to the Year of Christ 1780, or 1297 of theArmenian Era (Calcutta: Baptist Mission Press, 1827). Chamchian also published another abridged version of hisHistory, written in the Turkish language with Armenian characters (Venice, 1812). Reissued at least on two otheroccasions (1850 and 1862), this edition was not merely a translation into Armeno-Turkish of the Armenianabridged version, but an entirely new work of its own. For the controversial reception of Chamchian’s work,see Sahag Djemdjemian, Mikayel Chamchian yev ir Hayots Patmutiune (Mikayel Chamchian and his History of theArmenians) (Venice, 1983) and the same author’s “H. Mikayel Chamchiani ‘Patmutiun Hayots’i ardzagange”(The echo of Father Mikayel Chamchian’s “History of the Armenians”), Bazmavep, 1992.



been effectively wiped out, except among a small group of monks who copiedand recopied the ancient texts.”23 As Aivazian points out, this is an obvious exag-geration that overlooks the fact that from 1512 to 1760, approximately 570different Armenian titles were printed in Armenian presses across Europe andeven in the Middle East. (p. 46) Moreover, he points out that Suny’s accountgives the false impression that the Mekhitarists in the 1750s were the first toconduct a revival of letters. In reality, Aivazian notes, a previous generation ofscholars and activists had been not only reissuing old classics, but also writingoriginal works, including manuals of grammar, dictionaries, and philosophicaltracts. On the whole, some of Aivazian’s remarks here, despite his inflammatoryrhetoric and narcissistic tone, are welcome modifications or adjustments to Suny’sscholarship.24

But Aivazian is not content with correcting Suny’s errors. For him, Suny’sview that most ordinary Armenians had lost all but “a rudimentary sense ofbeing Armenian” and hence lacked a coherent national consciousness before thenineteenth century is tantamount to treason. As proof of Suny’s revisionism,Aivazian reproduces excerpts from the works of the leading Turkish revisionists,including Kamuran Gürün and Esat Uras. Like Suny, the revisionists take apartArmenian nationalist myths. But does this indicate that Suny’s scholarship sharesthe same logic and intention? Aivazian does not address this question. Whereasthe Turkish revisionists seek to destroy Armenian history, Suny’s explicit goal indeconstructing the national narrative is to uncover different ways of figuring theArmenian past, ways that are suppressed or displaced by the essentializing modesof nationalist historiography of which Aivazian’s is one extreme example. Inother words, Suny’s project is to deconstruct Armenian national identity and notto destroy it.25 It is to question the dominant ways in which national identity hasbeen formulated in order to open up alternative possibilities of conceptualizingit. Instead of exploring this dimension of Suny’s work, Aivazian simply reducesit to the crude revisionist attempts at rewriting Armenian history in the serviceof denying the memory of the Genocide and advancing Turkish or Azerbaijaniterritorial claims.

What about Aivazian’s claim that Suny’s statements on the absence of a uni-fied national consciousness and the fragmented nature of Armenian culture andhistory are historically baseless and testify to his “charlatan practices” as a scholarof Armenian history? The evidence that Aivazian himself presents (especially

23 Ibid., p. 56.24 It should be noted that the author never misses an opportunity to claim that Armenians were culturally more

“advanced” than the other peoples in the Middle East, as though this has any real bearing on Suny’s work or onscholarship in general.

25 Compare Sanjian’s Haigazian review, p. 474.


the publication of grammars and historical works in the seventeenth and eigh-teenth centuries), as well as the archival record from the period, buttress Suny’soverall claims and theoretical orientation. Document after document that hascome down to us testifies to a general concern with the fragmentation and “cor-ruption” of Armenian culture. The Mekhitarist response to this fragmentationwas to initiate a general project of assembling and “totalizing” the available ar-chives. This project resulted in the collection of scattered and otherwise inacces-sible manuscripts from monasteries in Armenia. The philological examination ofthese manuscripts yielded several grammar manuals and especially the monu-mental Dictionary.26 That the Armenian literary elite of the period also perceiveda “crisis of historical memory” further reinforces Suny’s claims. Consider, forinstance, the following missive sent to the Mekhitarist congregation from Con-stantinople in 1761:

Many people are imploring you to send them a history of our Arme-nian nation, which they say will bring glory both to the nation and toyour Congregation. Your Congregation was elevated by the publica-tion of the Haikazian Dictionary . . . but how much greater would itsstature be if you were to compose a book through which all shall beenlightened concerning what our nation once was and how it origi-nated. We are reading Khorenatsi and we do not understand him. Weread Arakel and he refers us to Agatangelos. . . . As you did for the Lifeof the Illuminator, by assembling documents from everywhere, so do thesame for our Armenian nation in a simple narrative. . . . I have onlyconveyed to you in writing what people here have been saying con-cerning this book that will recount our history.27

As this letter indicates neither the work of Movses Khorenatsi nor that of theother classical or medieval historians (despite being available in print) were re-garded as sufficient sources for an understanding of Armenia’s past and its placein history. This was especially the case for the chronicle of Arakel Davrizhetsi.The publication of Chamchian’s monumental History of the Armenians was pre-cisely aimed at remedying this situation.28

26 See the foreword to Bargirk haykazian lezvi (Dictionary of the Armenian language), vol. 1 (Venice: AntoniBortoli, 1749), especially pp. 6 !., for Abbot Mekhitar’s extraordinary commentary on the “forlorn” and “disor-dered” state of the Armenian language (both grabar and particularly the spoken dialects) and on the need to“recover” its the pure (fifth-century) form by recourse to the original archives and manuscripts. For an excellentdiscussion of this “totalizing” project and its vital role in the Mekhitarist enterprise, see Marc Nichanian, “En-lightenment and Historical Thought,” in Enlightenment and Diaspora: The Armenian and Jewish Cases, ed. RichardG. Hovannisian and David N. Myers (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1999), pp. 87–123. On the construction of theMekhitarist archives, see Sahag Djemjemian’s brief discussion in Mikayel Chamchian yev ir Hayots Patmutiune(Mikayel Chamchian and his History of the Armenians) (Venice, 1983), p. 19.

27 Letter of Hakobos Chamchian, Constantinople, to Vrtanes Askerian, Venice, 12 February 1761. A segment ofthis valuable letter is reproduced in Djemjemian, Mikayel Chamchian, pp. 14–15.

28 I have relied here on Nichanian’s discerning analysis. See his “Enlightenment and Historical Thought.”


Even more damaging for Aivazian’s case is the fact that Armenian scholarsand activists in India in the eighteenth century were making more or less thesame claims as Suny. The most glaring example of this comes from Nor Tetrak vorKochi Hordorak (A New Book called Exhortation), published in Madras in 1772.“Composed for the awakening of the Armenian youth from the timid and apa-thetic drowsiness of the sleep of slothfulness,” this astonishing text offers a diag-nosis of the crisis of Armenian historical memory.29 The same need to fill theabsence of historical works and to construct a usable historical memory lies atthe heart of this work. The author explains:

Although there exist some rare history books, and even these in theirabridged forms, or ultimately some authentic histories or even philo-sophical tracts or manuscripts of rhetoric, they are only available to thevery few because they are preserved in remote and inaccessible places.For that reason, there are many among us, especially today, who havenever thought about or have never even heard about the history of ourgreat men, of our valiant and conquering kings.30

Besides, the very idea of a renaissance (veratznund), a category self-consciouslyused by Armenian activist scholars of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuriesand one that is axiomatic in the formation of nationalist thought, presumes theneed to revive a cultural tradition that is perceived to be corrupted, fragmented,and dispersed.31 As we have seen above, the Mekhitarists in Venice character-ized and justified their cultural interventions on this ground, and so did scholarsand activists in other diaspora centers including Madras and Calcutta. Even themost stalwart nationalists of the nineteenth century lamented the “adulterated”and almost moribund condition of Armenian life before the “national revival.”Mikayel Nalbandian, for instance, described the state of Armenian culture afterthe fall of Cilician Armenia in 1375 as one where “day after day ignorance becameeven more severe, the darkness even more dense, and the nation in its entiretyfell into a deathlike sleep . . . until the beginning of the eighteenth century.”32

Aivazian cannot account for any of this simply because, given his politicalagenda, admitting that Armenians were not always imbued with a nationalconsciousness would be tantamount to embracing Turkish-Azerbaijani revision-ism. The irony here is that the notion of slumbering through history (with its

29 Nor tetrak vor kochi hordorak (Madras, 1772). I have relied here on the Eastern Armenian translation by P.Khachatrian (Yerevan, 1991). The quoted material is actually the subtitle of this text.

30 Ibid., p. 54.31 For excellent treatments of this issue, see Presanjit Duara, Rescuing History from the Nation, chaps. 1 and 2, and

Aziz Al-Azmeh, Islams and Modernities (London: Verso, 1996), chap. 5.32 Mikayel Nalbandian, “Mkhitar Sebastatsi yev Mkhitariank,” in Yerkeri liakatar zhoghovatzu (Complete collec-

tion of works), vol. 2 (Yerevan: Armenian Academy of Sciences, 1980), p. 230. Nalbandian’s contemporaries,such as Raffi, also lamented the “decadent” state of Armenian culture until the “renaissance” of the eighteenth/nineteenth centuries.


attendant tropes of cultural degradation and corruption followed by a period ofawakening, or zartonk in Armenian) is at the heart of most nationalist discourses.33

Evidently, even this nationalist premise has to be sacrificed in the name of com-bating Turkish-Azerbaijani revisionism and its purported representatives in thefield of Armenian studies.

Although Aivazian makes much of Suny’s disregard for archival work andsome of the secondary literature in the field, his own indiscriminate handling ofsources jeopardizes whatever constructive criticism he might have to offer. Arevealing instance of thisproblem is found in hissavage assault on Suny’suse of Joseph Emin’s TheLife and Adventures of Jo-seph Emin. 34 Emin, whowas raised in India andwent to England in thesecond half of the eigh-teenth century, dedicated his life to liberating his compatriots from Muslim rule.The episode that Suny cites from this work, the one that enrages Aivazian, con-cerns Emin’s journey to the highlands of Armenia in 1759 and his encounterwith Armenian villagers in Jinis. After narrowly escaping a beating from the vil-lagers, who are troubled to hear a mounted horseman address them in Arme-nian, Emin pretends to be a Turk and confronts the village headman with thefollowing question:

“You, Christians, what is the reason of your objecting, if any of yourcountrymen should take a fancy to be a warrior? And why are you notfree? Why have you not a sovereign of your own?” The answer theymade was, “Sir, our liberty is in the next world; our king is Jesus Christ.”Emin said, “How came that about? Who told you so?” They answered“The Holy Fathers of the Church, who say, the Armenian nation hasbeen subject to the Mahometans from the creation of the world, andmust remain so till the day of resurrection; otherwise we could soondrive the Othmans out of our country.” Emin said, “Now, my friends, Iwill reveal a secret to you, if you will swear by the Holy Gospel, not tobehave as you did before.” . . . Then taking out of his pocket the Geo-graphical History of Moses Khorinesis, he sent for a priest that couldread a little, shewed the genealogy of the kings of the Armenians.35

33 See works cited in footnote 31 as well as Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities, chap. 10, for the emblem-atic tropes of “slumbering” and “awakening.”

34 Joseph Emin, Life and Adventures of Emin Joseph Emin 1726–1809, Written by Himself, 2d ed., ed. Amy Apcar(Calcultta: Baptist Mission Press, 1918). The first edition was published in London in 1792 as The Life andAdventures of Joseph Emin, An Armenian, Written in English by Himself. All references here are to the second edition.

35 Ibid., pp. 141–42. Emin’s autobiography is written in the third person.

Even more damaging for Aivazian’scase is the fact that Armenian scholarsand activists in India in the eighteenthcentury were making more or less thesame claims as Suny.


This event occupies a pivotal place in Suny’s reflections on the cultural crisisof the period and leads him to the following conclusions:

1. Part of the effectiveness of Muslim rule over Armenians stemmedfrom Armenian conviction that this subjugation was in some sense jus-tified, was ordained by God, and that liberation would come either inheaven or only after 666 years (according to ancient prophecy).

2. The passivity of the Armenians was in many ways a rational responseto their relative weakness vis-à-vis the Muslims. Yet at the same time itwas encouraged by the leading authorities among the Armenians, par-ticularly the clerics.36

Suny also concludes from this passage that Armenian peasants suffered from an“abysmal lack of awareness” concerning the ancient history of their nation.

Aivazian rejects these “shocking” conclusions and blames Suny for menda-ciously selecting part of Emin’s account while leaving out significant portionsthat would lead to the opposite conclusion. He spends over twenty pages exten-sively quoting from Emin’s text and then offering his own interpretation. Yet theonly insight gleaned from this long digression is that Suny has overlooked acrucial reference by Emin to a millenarian tradition. According to this so-calledliberation legend, about which Ashot Hovhannissian wrote in his classic work,the royal house of Armenia would be reinstituted as a result of outside help froma Christian state, variously associated with one of the crusader states and subse-quently Russia.37 In Emin’s account, the legend appears in the form of a messianicprophesy attributed by the village priest to a certain “Saint Nerses the Great”who is said to have predicted the liberation of Armenia in 666 years (of which638 had already expired) through the instrument of Emin himself.38

But Suny’s failure to refer to this liberation legend does not fundamentallydiscredit his interpretation, as Aivazian contends. Had Aivazian read Emin’s au-tobiography carefully, he would have realized that the priest’s millenarian

36 Suny, Looking toward Ararat, p. 56.37 Ashot Hovhannisian, Drvagner hay azatagrakan mtki patmutian (Episodes from the history of Armenian libera-

tion thought), 2 vols. (Yerevan, 1954). For a synopsis of these views, see Hay zhoghovrdi patmutiun, vol. 4, pp. 90–94. For a perceptive discussion of the liberation legend in English, see Avedis K. Sanjian, “Two ContemporaryArmenian Elegies on the Fall of Constantinople, 1453,” Viator: Medieval and Renaissance Studies, Volume 1 (1970),especially pp. 229–39. As Sanjian points out, “the primary objective of the Armenian prophetic literature was toinstill and perpetuate among the Armenians the hope for the restoration of their political independence. Thisliterature took the form of visions, often combined with predictory or prophetic pronouncements, attributed tosome well-known Armenian Church leader . . . the agents of this liberation varied in conformity with theactual historical developments.” Ibid., pp. 229 and 238.

38 Emin, Life and Adventures, p. 143–44. The historical identity of Saint Nerses of the legend remains obscure. Hecould be Nerses Shnorhali of the twelfth century, but he is more likely to be Saint Nerses the Great, a contem-porary of Kings Arshak and Pap in the fourth century. In the latter case there would be a chronological discrep-ancy as far as the 666 years are concerned, but this should not pose any historical problems since we are dealinghere with a millenarian or prophetic tradition and not with historiography. I thank my anonymous reviewer forthis observation.


response hardly constitutes historical awareness of Armenia’s past.39 Besides, thepassage that Aivazian quotes at length, albeit selectively, fails to indicate that thevillagers of Jinis were familiar with the “liberation legend”; quite the contrary,they seem to be puzzled with the priest’s esoteric references to the prophecy of“Saint Nerses the Great.”40 Be that as it may, eighteenth-century Armenian popularculture may have been defined by such messianic or millenarian traditions, butthe latter do not indicate the presence of “national consciousness” or historicalawareness in the modern sense of the term. Moreover, Aivazian’s tirade againstSuny’s assertions that the Armenian Church during the seventeenth and eigh-teenth centuries was “notoriously corrupt” and encouraged “passivity” amongits followers does not hold up against the historical record.41 In short, apart frompointing out Suny’s oversight concerning the liberation legend, nothing Aivazianwrites in his long digression on Emin challenges Suny’s interpretation.

Aivazian also compromises his claims against Suny by his own careless read-ing of Looking toward Ararat. Consider his reaction to Suny’s references tonineteenth-century Russian and Georgian stereotypes of Armenians as “clever,”“calculating,” “wily,” and “huckstering.” Suny makes these references in the con-text of a thickly described chapter on “Images of Armenians in the Russian

39 See the interesting commentary of Benjamin Braude, “The Nexus Between Diaspora, Enlightenment and theNation: Thoughts on Comparative History,” in Enlightenment and Diaspora, edited by Richard Hovannisian andDavid Myers.

40 Immediately following the sermon concerning the prophesy of “Saint Nerses the Great,” the priest is inter-rupted by certain members of the audience who seem to be baffled by this new line of preaching. Here is whatEmin recounts: “The landlord [the “burgomaster” of the village], with several others, started at the priest, andsaid, ‘What was that you pronounced? or why are we kept in ignorance?’ He said, ‘My dear people, whatsignifies pulling off shoes and stockings before we reach the bank of the rivulet; everything in good time:besides, the holy prophecy is for 666 years to be fulfilled; during that period, we must continue as in subjec-tion.” (Life and Adventures of Joseph Emin, p. 143.) At the end of the sermon, the villagers commend the priest:“Good father, you never before preached so well in your life to us.” (Ibid., p. 144) These passages are omittedfrom Aivazian’s lengthy excerpt, whose principal goal is to show that (a) Suny has mendaciously distortedpassages from Emin’s text, and (b) that the villagers of Jinis were well aware of Armenia’s historical past,including the existence of the liberation legend. I am not arguing that the liberation legend was unknown to theArmenian masses in general, only that in this case, the evidence seems to suggest (contrary to Aivazian’s asser-tion) that it was not widely available to the villagers in Jinis.

41 To get a brief glimpse of how corrupt the Armenian Church was during the eighteenth century, one has toconsider that “by the second half of the seventeenth century, the office [of the Armenian patriarch in Constan-tinople] had become a vehicle of corruption and graft for various Ottoman officials. . . . From 1660 to 1715there were thirty-four patriarchs.” Dickran Kouymjian, “From Disintegration to Reintegration,” p. 14. For ageneral survey of this matter, see Hay zhoghovrdi patmutiun, vol. 4, pp. 116–22. See also Matiossian, “HayagitutiuneMiyatsial Nahangneru mej”; Siruni, Polise yev ir dere (Constantinople and its role), vol. 1 (Beirut, 1965); andKevork Bardakjian, “The Rise of the Armenian Patriarchate in Constantinople,” in Christians and Jews in theOttoman Empire: The Functioning of a Plural Society, vol. 1, ed. Benjamin Braude and Bernard Lewis (New York,1982). Aivazian reacts to the charge of corruption by relativizing it in light of the history of the Catholic Churchand its role in the Inquisition and auto-da-fé, a response that has nothing to do with Suny’s academic discus-sion. He also tries to minimize the passive nature of the church by referring to a few clerics who were unusuallyactive in the “liberation movement” of the period, ignoring the overwhelming evidence to the contrary. What isironic here is that Emin, whom Aivazian glorifies as a national hero, never ceases to condemn the Church andits sycophants for their corruption and for “praying day and night to prolong the sovereignty of the Mohamedans.”See Life and Adventures of Joseph Emin, p. 157.


Empire.”42 His aim is to explore representations of Armenians in light of the ex-isting social division of labor between the commercially dominant Armenians inTbilisi and the economically declining Georgian nobility. Ignoring this context,Aivazian writes:

Naturally Suny has refused to quote [any of] numerous positive ap-praisals of Armenians made by foreigners, the existence of which musthave been well known to him. Apparently, Suny perceives the Arme-nians through the same Armenian-hating categories. (pp. 205–6)

The underlying assumption in this passage is that a historian of Armenian originlike Suny should do everything to avoid leaving the “foreign public” with anunfavorable impression of Armenians.

In the same paragraph, Aivazian upbraids the author of Looking toward Araratfor “blaming the Armenians of the medieval period for all the miseries they en-dured under foreign rule.” As proof he cites the following passage in a paper bySuny: “The group of merchant activists in Madras wrote political tracts that shiftedthe blame for the Armenian condition from their own sinful past onto the despo-tism of foreign rulers.” (p. 206) The suggestion here is that Suny actually believesthe Armenians had a “sinful past” that he holds responsible for the loss of theirstatehood. But this misreading is truly astonishing! Even a cursory glance at Suny’stext reveals that he is not making a normative statement here. Rather, he is de-scribing how the Madras group sought secular explanations for the loss of Arme-nian statehood by rejecting earlier ecclesiastical accounts that attributed this lossto Armenia’s sins against God. Needless to say, the practice of blaming Arme-nians for the collapse of their states has a long intellectual pedigree in the Armeniantradition stretching back to the medieval historians and culminating in the workof Chamchian.43 It was also a common practice in pre-Enlightenment European

42 Suny, Looking toward Ararat, chap. 2.43 This point is also raised by Ara Sanjian in his Haigazian review, pp. 474, 475–76. For Chamchian’s ecclesiastical

reading of history as providential intervention, see his History, vol. 1, preface. Of course, Chamchian’s work ismuch more than a traditional “ecclesiastical” history. From the point of view of the modern system of docu-mentation that festoons his erudite and enormous undertaking (see his elaborate discussion on sources in thepreface and the extensive bibliographical commentaries at the end of each book), his History is an heir to theEnlightenment tradition of critical historiography. It is also modern because of its national conception. How-ever, the absence of a modern (essentially secular) notion of historical causation and Chamchian’s tendency ofattributing historical change to providential intervention prevents his work from being considered an entirelymodern (i.e., Enlightenment-inspired) historiography. It was precisely this aspect of Chamchian’s history thatdrew criticism from Armenian secular intellectuals such as Nalbandian and Raffi in the second half of thenineteenth century. Mikayel Nalbandian, for instance, in his polemical broadsides against the religious orienta-tion of the Mekhitarists and particularly Chamchian, characterized the History as a narrative brimming withdescriptions of “Yazgerds, Timur Lengs, Tatars, Greeks and other foreign nations plundering Armenia if onlybecause Armenians had incurred the wrath of God.” (Nalbandian, “Mkhitar Sebastatsi yev Mkhitariank,” p.273; See also Nalbandian, “Haghags haykakan matenagrutian” (For Armenian literature), in Yerkeri liakatarzhoghovatzu (Complete collection of works), vol. 2, pp. 36–37. For a discussion of Chamchian’s “modernity” andhis use of documentary sources, see Nichanian, “Enlightenment and Historical Thought.” For the history ofmodern documentation and the pivotal role of the footnote in the constitution of modern historiography, seeAnthony Grafton, The Footnote: A Curious History (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press, 1999).


historiography, which attributed the fall of empires and states to providentialintervention motivated by human sin.44

Another instance of Aivazian’s dubious reading habits concerns Suny’s (andother Western Armenologists’) claim that “only once in their past [that is duringthe reign of Tigran the Great, 94–66 B. C. E.] was the entire Armenian plateauunified under a singleArmenian ruler.” (p. 36)This assertion is alsotaken to task for its sup-posedly revisionist andtreasonous implications.According to Aivazian,Suny is repeating here“one of the well-knownTurkish falsifications.”(p. 36) After all, doesn’tKamuran Gürün make a similar statement? But what does this really prove—especially if the statement he is repeating is true?45 Aivazian challenges the ve-racity of the statement by writing that “in reality, for several centuries, Armeniacontinued to be one of the strongest and biggest states in the Near East; and inthe days of the Armenian Artashesians and Arshakunis, nearly the whole of theArmenian plateau was unified under an Armenian state that carried significantinternational weight.” (p. 37) The relative significance of the Armenian state ishardly relevant and “nearly the whole of” is not the same thing as “entirely uni-fied.”46 The fact remains that what Suny states is a historical truth.

In any event, even if the whole of the Armenian plateau were to have beenunified under a single state during the Arshakunis, this would still leave Suny’soverall thesis (that Armenian nationhood is a relatively modern phenomenon)intact. For what is essential in this context is the fact that even during periodswhen Armenians exercised statehood, they were far from being politically andculturally unified. Indeed, the nakharar social structure, which underpinned therise and fall of states in the region, rendered these states fragile and fissiparous.(A similar situation prevailed in European “feudalism” up until the rise of abso-lutist states.) Its centrifugal tendencies often pitted one nakharar family againstanother, thereby exhausting the crown’s ability to bring the various estates under

44 Peter Reill, The German Enlightenment and the Rise of Historicism (Los Angeles: Univ. of California Press, 1972),especially chap. 6. See also Peter Gay, The Enlightenment: An Interpretation, vol. 2 (New York: Knopf, 1969).

45 Gürün actually states that the only time when the Armenians exercised independence was between 94 and 66B.C.E., which is an entirely different assertion than Suny’s. See Aivazian, Hayastani Patmutian Lusabanume, p. 36.

46 Matiossian, “Hayagitutiune Miyatsial Nahangneru mej,” p. 256.

The underlying assumption in thispassage is that a historian of Armenianorigin like Suny should do everythingto avoid leaving the “foreign public”with an unfavorable impression ofArmenians.


its centralized rule.47 Moreover, the Armenian states of that period (under theArshakunis, the Bagratunis, or the Hetumians), like other states before the sev-enteenth or eighteenth centuries, were not nation-states but monarchies whoselegitimacy stemmed not from the concept of national or popular sovereignty

(which is a hallmark ofnationhood) but from acombination of divineright, power, and tradi-tion.48 In this context,where conflicting feudalinterests as opposed tothe abstract notion ofnational identity andpopular sovereignty de-termine political loyal-ties, it would be anach-ronistic to speak of na-

tionhood in the modern sense of the term. Nations, despite the claims ofnationalist historians, are more the products of modernity’s drive for culturalstandardization or homogenization and its concept of popular sovereignty thanthe natural entities of segmented, premodern agrarian societies, although, to besure, they are selectively constructed/“imagined” on the basis of premodern“ethnies” and their mythomoteurs.49 Rather than examining these issues and, ifneed be, contesting Suny’s account on theoretical grounds, Aivazian retrospec-tively projects modern understandings of national identity and nation-state intoclassical Armenia. The result is a presentist account of classical and medieval

47 For the classical formulation of the nakharar system, see Nicholas Adontz, Armenia in the Period of Justinian,translated with partial revisions, a bibliographic note, and appendices by Nina G. Garsoïan (Louvain, 1970); seealso Cyril Toumanoff, Studies in Christian Caucasian History (Washington, D. C.: Georgetown Univ. Press, 1963)and Hakob Manandian, Feodalizme hin Hayastanum (Yerevan, 1934).

48 See Braude, “The Nexus Between Diaspora, Enlightenment and the Nation,” pp. 32–33.49 Here I follow Anthony Smith’s definition of ethnies as communities that have a collective name, a common

myth of descent, a shared history, a distinctive shared culture, an association with a specific territory, and asense of solidarity. Ethnies have their own “discursive traditions,” equipped with “foundational texts” whichprovide their members with “mythomoteurs” or a “fund of cultural myths, symbols, memories and values” thatare transmitted from generation to generation. See Smith, The Ethnic Origin of Nations, chapters 1 and 2. See alsoJohn Armstrong, Nations Before Nationalism (Chapel Hill: Univ. of North Carolina Press, 1982). While Smith andArmstrong provide a powerful argument in favor of understanding modern nations as having significant tieswith premodern ethnies, they do not regard nations as communities that existed prior to the modern period.Such a “primordialist” account of nations as “essential attributes” of humanity was defended by the “foundingfathers” of nationalism as an academic discourse, Carlton Hayes (The Historical Evolution of Nationalism, 1933)and Hans Kohn (The Idea of Nationalism, 1944), but has lost its appeal in the academic community since the1960s when it came under intense criticism by Elie Kedourie, Ernest Gellner, Eric Hobsbawm, and later BenedictAnderson. See Anthony Smith’s discussion in “Nationalism and the Historians,” International Journal of Compara-tive Sociology 33, no. 1-2 (1992), pp. 58–78. For a recent attempt at pushing back the origin of nations to themedieval period, see Adrian Hastings, The Construction of Nationhood: Ethnicity, Religion, and Nationalism (Cam-bridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1997).

Armenian states, like other statesbefore the seventeenth or eighteenthcenturies, were monarchies whoselegitimacy stemmed not from theconcept of national or popularsovereignty (which is a hallmark ofnationhood) but from a combinationof divine right, power, and tradition.


Armenian society that might serve as “good” historical memory but poor histo-riography.

In short, from the scholarly perspective, Aivazian’s aspersions on Suny areunsustainable owing in large part to his anachronistic or presentist interpretationof the past. In addition, many of his arguments are based on tendentious ormisinformed views of Suny’s work. From the political point of view, his unsub-stantiated accusations that Suny is a commissioned agent of NATO-Turkish-Azer-baijani revisionism serve to foment an atmosphere of paranoia, intolerance andcensorship. They perpetuate a false view that there are only two modes of writ-ing Armenian history: nationalist and revisionist. Hence, those historians whochoose to write against the grain of nationalist narratives are blackmailed forindulging in revisionism and declared enemies of the people. In light of all ofthis, whether or not one subscribes to Suny’s account of Armenian history, it isdifficult not to credit him for having taken the first steps towards breaking downthis false dichotomy and introducing a much-needed critical apparatus into theexamination of Armenia’s past.

As we shall now see, Aivazian applies the same blackmail of revisionism toscholars such as Robert Thomson, Nina Garsoïan, and Levon Avdoyan, to namea few, and their work on the classical Armenian historians.

The Nation and its Spiritual Wealth

One of the central concerns in the second half of Aivazian’s book is the status ofArmenia’s classical and medieval historians. Since the author views these worksas the “spiritual wealth” of the nation (“worth more than oil [and] natural gas”),he regards any attempt by Armenian scholars in the West to contest their au-thority as “an attack on the very soul of the nation.”50 Let us examine Aivazian’sarguments on this issue by focusing on his discussion of the controversy sur-rounding Movses Khorenatsi’s History of Armenia. In any event, he makes essen-tially the same arguments regarding other classics of Armenian history.

Khorenatsi’s History has been arguably the most important text for definingthe Armenian tradition. Compiled sometime between the fifth and eighthcenturies, it was one of the first secular works to be printed by Armenian pub-lishers in the seventeenth century (first publication in Amsterdam, 1695). In thefollowing two centuries, the History was republished on numerous occasions andtranslated into several European languages. It served as the single most impor-tant inspiration (perhaps the axial-text) for Chamchian’s History, which in turnlaid the cornerstone for subsequent national histories, and fueled debates on

50 To quote Suny, Looking toward Ararat, p. 5.


nationalism in the nineteenth century.51 During the twentieth century, Khorenatsihas been at the heart of discussions on Armenian history and national identity.His towering reputation is summed up by his sobriquet, patmahayr, father ofArmenian history.

Yet the central place of Khorenatsi’s History in the Armenian tradition wasnot secured without controversy. The dispute surrounding this work revolvesmostly around the historical identity of its author and the date of its composi-tion. Until the nineteenth century, scholars accepted the “orthodox” view ofKhorenatsi as an author of the second half of the fifth century—a view advancedby the father of Armenian history himself, who claimed to have been a discipleof Mashtots (the inventor of the Armenian alphabet) and a contemporary to thelast phase of the events he was narrating. But this view came under intense scru-tiny in the 1890s by European and Armenian orientalists. Indeed, writing in anatmosphere charged by historicism and new methods of source criticism,Khorenatsi specialists such as Carrière, Khalatiants, Adontz, and others dismissedthe fifth-century periodization as untenable.52 They pointed out that many ofthe literary sources quoted by the author of the History were not composed untilmuch later than the fifth century, and that numerous geographical terms andhistorical events mentioned by him were not in existence at the time of his pur-ported floruit.53 As a result, Khorenatsi was declared a “deliberate mystifier” who“veiled his personality behind the masque of a writer of the 5th century” andwas instead regarded an author who flourished sometime between the seventhand ninth centuries.54 This “unorthodox” position was widely held as late as the1930s not only by Western scholars but also by Soviet Armenian historians suchas Leo and Hakob Manandian, who devoted an entire book to the topic.55

The “unorthodox” position was in turn challenged in the 1940s whenManandian’s colleagues in Yerevan (most notably Malkhasiants and Adjarian)reverted to the earlier date. In the following decades, two sharply divided schoolsof Khorenatsi scholarship emerged, creating a deep schism that separates schol-ars in Armenia from their counterparts in the West to this day. On the one hand,

51 For Khorenatsi’s central role in Chamchian’s work, see Marc Nichanian, “Enlightenment and Historical Thought.”52 See A. Carrière, Nouvelles sources de Moise de Khoren: Etudes critiques (Vienna, 1893); K. Khalatiants, “Movses

Khorenatsu noraguin aghbiurneri masin” (Concerning the latest sources of Movses Khorenatsi), Handes Amsorya,October-November-December, 1897; Nicolas Adontz, Armenia in the Period of Justinian, translated with partialrevisions, bibliographic note, and appendices by Nina Garsoïan (Louvain, 1970), and Adontz, “Sur la date del’Histoire de l’Arménie de Moise de Chorene: A propos de l’article de M. Hans Lewy,” Byzantion 11 (1936), and“A propos de la note de M. Lewy sure Moise de Chorene,” Byzantion 11 (1936).

53 For a summary of these points, see Hans Lewy, “The Date and Purpose of Moses of Chorene’s History,” and“Additional Note on the Date of Moses of Chorene,” Byzantion 11 (1936). See also Cyril Toumanoff’s elaborateaccount in his Studies in Christian Caucasian History (Washington, D.C.: Georgetown Univ. Press, 1963), pp. 330–34.

54 Hans Lewy, “The Date and Purpose of Moses of Chorene’s History,” p. 93.55 See Manandian, Khorenatsu areghtzvatzi lutzume (The solution to the riddle of Khorenatsi) (Yerevan, 1934).


a younger generation of Soviet Armenian historians and philologists (Sargsian,Ter-Petrossian, and Matevosian) began to reassess the patmahayr’s work in lightof new evidence. In the process, they defended the “orthodox” position (i.e., thefifth-century periodization) as the authoritative one for the intellectual commu-nity in Yerevan. At the same time, scholars working in the West further refinedthe Adontz-Khalatiants position. In this respect, Cyril Toumanoff’s Studies inChristian Caucasian History played a crucial role. Reinforcing the older argumentswith additional conjectures of his own, Toumanoff concluded that “the latterpart of the eighth century must be regarded as the epoch of the mysterious authorof Armenian Antiquities.”56 This “unorthodox” view of Khorenatsi as a late-eighth-century writer became the ruling consensus in the West with Robert Thomson’s“Introduction” to his English translation of the History in 1978 and with subse-quent works by Garsoïan and her students: Russell, Avdoyan, Cowe, and others.57

In his account of this controversy, Aivazian does not elaborate the complexphilological and historical arguments that led to the creation of both schools. Hesimply asserts that disputes over Khorenatsi’s floruit have been “100 percentsolved” in favor of the fifth century dating. (p. 151) Since this is declared a “solved”academic matter, it remains for Aivazian to discredit the proponents of theAdontz-Khalatiants thesis on political grounds. We are back to the “blackmail ofrevisionism” applied earlier to Suny’s scholarship. The argument entails framingthe revival of the Adontz-Khalatiants thesis within the context of the Cold War,the Truman Doctrine and the consequent alliance between NATO and Turkey.Thus, in customary fashion, Aivazian draws the reader’s attention to Esat Uras’sblatantly dishonest work, The Armenians in History and the Armenian Question, inwhich Khorenatsi is singled out as a target. Given the timing of Uras’s work(1950) and Toumanoff’s revival of the “unorthodox” thesis (1963), he concludes—thirteen years post hoc, ergo propter hoc—that this revival must have been directlyinfluenced by the Turkish campaign against Armenia. In this context, referringto Toumanoff’s work, he asks whether it was a “coincidence, then, that the Turkishpropaganda’s positions were ‘scientifically’ refined in the country leading NATO,the USA, during the Cold War, immediately after Turkey’s enrollment in NATO(in 1952).” (p. 125)

Having linked Toumanoff to “the new crusade against Khorenatsi, that is tosay against Armenian historiography and Armenian history,” (p. 125) Aivazianthen devotes more than thirty pages to subjecting Thomson’s scholarship to the

56 Toumanoff, Studies in Christian Caucasian History, p. 334.57 Moses Khorenatsi, History of the Armenians, translation and commentary on the literary sources by Robert W.

Thomson (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press, 1978). It is crucial to note here that not all scholars in theWest or in the Armenian diaspora share this view. For two prominent exceptions, see Giusto Traina, Il complessodi Trimalcione: Mouses Xorenac‘i e le origini del pensiero storico armeno (Venezia, 1991), and Boghos Levon Zekiyan,“L’‘idéologie’ nationale de Movses Xorenac‘i et sa conception de l’histoire,” Handes Amsorya, 1987.


same diatribe. He reproaches the latter for (a) embracing an antiacademic meth-odology (ignoring sources that directly challenge his views on Khorenatsi’s eighth-century provenance), (b) shamelessly placing his scholarship at the service ofTurkish revisionism, and (c) intentionally mistranslating and distorting passagesfrom the original in order to belittle its significance. In short, he accusesKhorenatsi’s English translator of “defaming” and “blackening” the patmahayr’sreputation with the deliberate intent of “weakening the national self-esteem ofthe Armenians, ‘making them pitiful,’ and ‘putting them in their place.’” (p. 132)That scholars in the West and the diaspora as a whole have celebrated Thomson’sachievements (not to mention the funding of his chair first at Harvard and laterat Oxford) is a testimony for Aivazian of the ultimate success of this anti-Arme-nian campaign.58 No less a respected academic than Richard Hovannisian is re-buked for falling under its intoxicating spell simply because of his efforts tomediate between Thomson and his detractors in Yerevan. (pp. 152–55)

It goes without saying that Thomson’s scholarship, like any historical work,is open to contestation, revision and debate. Indeed, several Khorenatsi special-

ists (both in the Westand in Armenia) have al-ready engaged Thomsonin a debate by pointingout some blind spots inhis methodology andthereby suggesting dif-ferent and potentially

more engaging ways of interpreting the patmahayr’s legacy.59 In contrast to thesescholars, Aivazian’s method of intervening from the pulpits of nationalism doesnot add any substance to this ongoing debate. His nationalist agenda and hisblackmailing strategy of disqualifying his opponents’ views on the grounds ofsupposedly promoting Turkish-Azerbaijan revisionism often render even his mostsensible comments suspicious. They are also bound to exacerbate the very

58 Aivazian seems to be under the impression that the funding of area studies chairs implies that the work carriedout in these chairs should reflect the interests of the funders. This view of academic “patronage” applies for theformer Soviet Union but it is not the case for the way academic and research institutions are run in the West. Ifthe same logic were applied consistently to Aivazian’s work, then his book should be a reflection of the Ameri-can State Department’s views since, as he states himself, he conducted most of his research while in the UnitedStates on a generous grant from Fulbright.

59 For a particularly sharp criticism from Armenia, see Levon Ter-Petrossian’s review article of Thomson’s trans-lation of Khorenatsi in Patma-banasirakan handes 1980, no. 1, pp. 268–70. Nowhere does Ter-Petrossian accuseThomson of Turkish-Azerbaijan revisionism. For sensible critiques from the West, see Giusto Traina, “MovsesKhorenatsi’i ‘dasakan’ avandutiune Hayots patmutian A grki 5rd glukhin mej” (The “Classical” Tradition ofMovses Khorenatsi in the Fifth Chapter of the First Book of the History of Armenia), Patma-banasirakan handes1992, no. 1, pp. 28–32, and Boghos Levon Zekiyan’s incisive discussion in “L’‘idéologie’ nationale de MovsesXorenac’i et sa conception de l’histoire,” especially pp. 480, and 483–84.

Aivazian’s method of intervening fromthe pulpits of nationalism does notadd any substance to this ongoingdebate.


weaknesses that he sets out to rectify. Let me provide several examples wherethis is the case.

First, why should historians care about the precise date when Khorenatsiflourished? For most scholars, chronology and historical context are importantmatters for academic reasons; they might shed light or conversely obscure ourhistoricist understanding of Khorenatsi’s work. For instance, if there are suffi-cient grounds to suspect Khorenatsi’s claim to being a fifth-century writer, thenhistorians (yes, even Armenian historians) have an obligation to express theiropinions and, if need be, to reexamine this claim. This is precisely what Adontz,Toumanoff, and Thomson have done. One can question their scholarship bypointing out that they have failed to examine all the available sources or haveconsciously suppressed or ignored evidence that vitiates their claims. If this isthe argument, then it is perfectly sensible, and scholars should give it the atten-tion it merits.

Aivazian occasionally leans in this direction when, for instance, he pointsout correctly that Thomson has disregarded the most recent literature from Yere-van and is working within the confining discursive framework laid down byAdontz and Toumanoff. (pp. 147–50) However, he compromises such claims byordaining that historians must tailor their work to legitimize the nation-stateand create “suitable” historical memories for its citizens. From this perspective,chronology matters not for contextual or historical reasons but because of politi-cal or nationalist agendas. After all, in the nationalist scheme of things, time is ofthe essence: the older or more ancient one’s claims, the more legitimacy theycarry. Given this logic, it is not surprising that the mere fact of suggesting thatthe father of Armenian history did not live in the fifth century but was a productof a later time is tantamount to high treason.60

Another example of Aivazian’s unsound logic concerns the authority ofKhorenatsi’s (or for that matter any other classical historian’s) text as a reliablehistorical document. It is one thing to criticize Thomson for his flagrant viewsconcerning Khorenatsi’s propensity to invent or “fake” his archives. For Thomson,Khorenatsi is a Borgesian storyteller of history:61 he fabricates myths, prevari-cates on almost every page, and even invents his sources and informants in orderto tell a persuasive story. Aivazian’s strictures on this score are quite legitimate,

60 As an aside, it should be noted that during the toponymic reforms in the early 1990s, Karl Marx Street inYerevan was renamed Khorenatsi Street—a telling symbol of the patmahayr’s historical stature in the new re-public. Thus, if in the Soviet era Marxism was the hegemonic doctrine for all historical writing, then in post-Soviet Armenia this function (for some, at least) is fulfilled by “Khorenatsism.” Just as Marx was a hallowedfigure beyond reproach, so Khorenatsi is now regarded as a sacred national icon whose status in the field ofArmenian history is unassailable. I am grateful to Razmik Panossian for having brought this to my attention.

61 The comparison with Borges is Jean-Pierre Mahé’s; see his preface to Histoire de l’Arménie par Moïse de Khorène(Paris: Gallimard, 1993). I thank Lena Takvorian for first bringing this to my attention.


if somewhat derivative, since others have made similar claims.62 Again, how-ever, he is not content with this point. He has to take his arguments to unwar-ranted extremes. According to him, the very idea of suggesting that Khorenatsi’snarrative may not be entirely trustworthy or even useful for historical research isa “sacrilege to the national idea.” Such criticism, he states, opens the way tosubverting the “strategic value” of Armenian history as it is represented inKhorenatsi and in the works of other classical historians.

To defame Movses Khorenatsi and his work in this manner and topresent it as an unreliable primary source is to mechanically strike blowsat the entirety of classical and medieval Armenian historiography, theconceptions of which about Armenian history, as well as its principlesand approaches to history, naturally bear the profound and munificentstamp of the father of Armenian history. By doing so, they try to declare,one after another, the other classics of Armenian historiography andtheir immense documentary material as historically worthless. (p. 122)

All Aivazian has to do to reinforce this reverential and nationalist posturetoward Khorenatsi’s text is to marshal some passages from the work of eitherGürün or Uras casting doubt on the patmahayr’s veracity. Since these Turkishrevisionists have already maligned Khorenatsi’s reputation, it means that anycontestation of his work by scholars in the West (regardless of their scholarlymotivation) also amounts to “revisionism.” In the end, it could be used to jeopar-dize the History’s “strategic value.” Are we then to assume that everything thefather of Armenian history wrote should be taken at face value, including theBiblical origins of the Armenians from Noah’s ark? This is evidently the upshotof Aivazian’s blackmail of revisionism. Thus, if a Khorenatsi scholar in the Westchides some popularizers of Armenian history for uncritically accepting this leg-end as historical fact, he or she deserves to be branded as an academic charlatanand revisionist. What about Khorenatsi’s claim that the Bagratuni kings weredescendents of the Hebrews? Like some of his other claims, this legend has beendiscredited by modern scholarship (including scholarship from Yerevan).63 Shouldwe then silence or repress this fact, as Aivazian’s logic would seem to imply,simply because it can be manipulated by Turkish revisionists and deployed todiscredit Armenian history and culture?

Aivazian also undermines his academic credibility by making preposterousassertions about the status of Thomson’s translation. In his view, Thomson’swork should not be judged on literary or philological grounds, as several respect-able Khorenatsi specialists in Yerevan had previously done, but rather for itspolitical implications. In other words, if the translation has any flaws these should

62 See footnote 59 above.63 See Toumanoff, Studies in Christian Caucasian History, especially pp. 306–36.


be attributed to the translator’s intention of distorting and corrupting the originaltext in order to perform certain political services “commissioned” by Ankara orWashington. (p. 136) Aivazian goes to great lengths in his attempt to prove thisassertion, often needlessly quibbling over the proper choice of terminology toprovide a literal (i.e., “authentic”) translation of Khorenatsi’s prose. (pp. 136–55)As a result, he delves into matters in which he is least qualified: renderingKhorenatsi into English verse. One upshot of his literary foray is his rendition ofKhorenatsi’s famous passage where “Although we are a small country” (Thomson)becomes “Although we are a small garden bed” (Aivazian).64 (pp. 136–43) Thesame can be said for many other passages, not only in Khorenatsi’s text but alsoin Pavstos Biuzand’s Epic Histories, where Aivazian “corrects” Garsoïan’s transla-tions in much the same manner. (pp. 200–204)

The Q uestion of Origins, or “Immigrants” versus “ Natives”

Protecting the “spiritual” works of the nation from the corrupting influences ofWestern scholars of Armenia is not Aivazian’s sole concern in the second part ofhis book. Just as sensitive is the question of Armenian origins and ethnogenesis.This issue goes to the heart of the kind of national self-image that Aivazian seeksto defend. To understand its importance in his work, we must briefly examinehow the question of origins and identity has been formulated since the emer-gence of Armenian nationalist discourse in the late eighteenth century.

Up until the modern period, the dominant view of Armenian origins was areligious one. According to this view, Armenians were the direct descendants ofNoah’s son Japheth and his offspring Torgom, Ashkenaz, and Hayk—the epony-mous ancestor of the Armenians. Formulated by Khorenatsi and other Armenianwriters of the classical period, this “Japhethian” tradition was popularized in theeighteenth century by Chamchian.65 When it was passed down to the historiansof the next century, its religious/Biblical veneer (along with the ecclesiasticalframework of writing history) was gradually stripped away and replaced by amore scientific account of Armenian ethnogenesis. Several factors played a crucial

64 The key term in this celebrated passage is atzu, which has a range of meanings from its literal definition of“garden bed” to “nation” or “people.” See Bargirk haykazian lezvi, vol. 2 (Venice, 1769) and New Dictionary:Armenian-English, prepared by M. Bedrossian (Venice, 1879). Thomson, as Aivazian himself notes, has mostlikely relied on the Nor bargirk haykazian lezvi (Venice, 1836), where atzu is also defined as a “small country.”Rather than treating the matter as a question of artistic license, an acceptable practice in the field of translation,Aivazian draws political conclusions from it. In his view, Thomson has deliberately chosen the term “smallcountry” for “pokr atzu” in order to diminish the geographical size of Historical Armenia in “accordance to theprinciples of Turkish historiography that he has adopted.” This is followed by a long digression on the geo-graphical dimensions of Classical Armenia. (Aivazian, p. 140)

65 See Chamchian, History of the Armenians, vol. 1, book 1, for the authoritative account. For a slightly earlierversion of this view and its role in the nationalist discourse of the Madras Group, see Nor tetrak vor kochi hordorak,chap. 5. For Shahamir Shahamirian’s letter to a certain James Anderson in which the Japhethian theory and thenotion of “chosen people” (Armenia as the cradle of humanity) is articulated, see Azdarar (The intelligencer), themonth of Tira, 1794, pp. 11–13.


role in this transformation. Prominent among them was the rise of the theory ofIndo-European languages with its assumption that the proto-Indo-Europeans musthave migrated from an original homeland (variously located in Central Asia, northof the Black Sea, northern Europe and the Balkans) to their ultimate destinations.The subsequent discovery that Armenian belonged to a separate branch of thislarger family was also a crucial development that shaped later debates aboutArmenian origins. So were the discoveries and the deciphering of Urartian cu-neiform inscriptions and the renewed interest in earlier references to Armeniansin the works of Classical Greek authors (Herodotus, Xenophon, Strabo, and oth-ers).66 By the end of the nineteenth century, a consensus had developed around a“migration theory” of Armenian ethnogenesis. According to this theory, Arme-nians were the progeny of Indo-European “Thraco-Phrygian colonists” who hadcrossed the Hellespont to Asia Minor and arrived in the Armenian highlandsaround the sixth century B. C. E., coinciding with the collapse of the kingdom ofUrartu. There they had intermingled with the local population of Hurrians,Urartians, and others, adopting many elements of their culture but leaving be-hind their language. Thus, by the 1940s most European and Armenian authorsaccepted as “irrefutably proven that the forefathers of today’s Armenians werethe Indo-European Armens who migrated to Armenia from Asia Minor in theseventh century or at the beginning of the sixth century B. C. E.”67

Two decades later the renowned Soviet linguist and historian of the ancientNear East Igor Diakonoff gave the migration theory another reformulation.Diakonoff identified the “Thraco-Phrygians” with the eastern Mushki, referredto in Assyrian documents, and pushed back the date of their arrival in the Arme-nian plateau to the twelfth century B. C. E.68 In his view,

66 For an insightful discussion on the discovery of Urartian cuneiform inscriptions and their role in shapingtheories of Armenian ethnogenesis, see Leo, Hayots patmutiun (History of the Armenians) in Yerkeri zhoghovatzu(Collected Works), vol. 1 (Yerevan, 1969), pp. 3–22. Leo also discusses the general intellectual climate thatallowed historians of Armenia to overturn the traditional Biblical account of Armenian origins.

67 Hakob Manandian, “Knnakan tesutiun hay zhoghovrdi patmutian” (Critical survey of the history of the Arme-nian people) in Yerker (Works), vol. 1 (Yerevan: Armenian Academy of Sciences, 1977), p. 13. Manandian wasonly expressing what was, until the 1940s, a widely shared view. See also Nicolas Adontz, Hayastani patmutiun(History of Armenia), trans. V. P. Seghbosian from the French Histoire d’Arménie (Yerevan: Hayastan Publication,1972), pp. 287–323. For Leo’s particularly lucid overview, see his Hayots patmutiun, vol. 1, pp. 246–62. It shouldbe noted here that the “migration theory” (defended by Manandian, Leo, and others) fell out of favor in the1940s and was replaced by an “autochthonous theory” influenced by Nikolai Marr’s work on language, whichrejected the Indo-European origins of the Armenian language. The principal representative of this theory wasG. Ghapantsyan, who argued that Armenian was an aboriginal language of the Armenian highland and wasonly partially influenced by the introduction of Indo-European elements during the seventh to sixth centuriesB. C. E. This theory, along with the work of Ghapantsyan and his followers, was officially discarded in 1950(thus yielding place for a return to the migration theory) when Stalin disapproved of Marr’s ideas. See Matiossian,“Hayagitutiune Miyatsial Nahangneru mej,” p. 272, and Astourian, “In Search of their Forefathers.”

68 Igor Diakonoff, The Pre-History of the Armenian People, trans. Lori Jennings (Delmar, N. Y.: Caravan Books, 1984),p. 112.


the old Armenian nation was formed in the Upper Euphrates valleyfrom three components—the Hurrians, the Luwians and the Proto-Armenians (the Mushki, and possibly the Urumeans). Moreover, theHurrians and later the Urartians constituted the main mass of the na-tion and determined the basic line of biological succession, while thelanguage of the nation, because of a certain historical situation, wastaken over from the Proto-Armenians. . . . This process began in the12th century B. C. and in the western part of the Highland was com-pleted by the 6th century B. C.69

While most scholars in the West admit that the question of Armenian ethnogenesis(like that of the ethnogenesis of other peoples) is clouded in obscurity and henceis far from being definitively resolved, they tend to regard Diakonoff’s formula-tion of the migration theory as the “state of the art in field.”70

In Soviet Armenia itself, the migration theory took several forms of whichthe most authoritative was the one outlined in volume one of The History of theArmenian People (1971). Here, the authors generally concurred with Diakonoff’sviews, but added two caveats. First, they argued that Hayasa, a second millen-nium B. C. E. state located to the northeast of Urartu, was also one of the ancestorstates of Armenia—a view that is not shared by Diakonoff.71 Second, they iden-tified the proto-Armenians with the Arims or Armes, a tribe originally from theBalkans and associated with the Thraco-Phrygians but with its own distinct lan-guage and identity.72 Nevertheless, despite these minor variations, the resulting“classical thesis” also emphasized the pivotal role played by the migration ofproto-Armenians in the formation of the Armenian nation.73

This “classical thesis” went unchallenged until the late 1980s when it cameunder attack by scholars affiliated with the Gharabagh movement. Led by RafayelIshkhanian, these scholars elaborated a new “autochthonous model” of Arme-nian ethnogenesis.74 To be sure, they based their work on the hypothesis of twoSoviet linguists, Thomas Gamkrelidze and Viacheslav Ivanov, that the originalhomeland of the proto-Indo-Europeans was not located in the Balkans, but in an

69 Ibid., p. 127.70 Levon Avdoyan, “Afro-Centrism, Armeno-Centrism and the Uses of History,” in From Byzantium to Iran: Arme-

nian Studies in Honour of Nina G. Garsoïan, edited by Jean-Pierre Mahé and Robert W. Thomson, (Atlanta, Geor-gia: Scholars Press, 1997), p. 90. Avdoyan presents a textured account of Diakonoff’s views and his status in theworks of most Western scholars of Armenia. See below for Aivazian’s misinterpretation of these views.

71 Hay zhoghovrdi patmutiun (History of the Armenian People), vol. 1 (Yerevan: Armenian SSR Academy of Sci-ences, 1971), pp. 189–202. For Diakonoff’s objections, see The Pre-History of the Armenian People, pp. 112–15.

72 Ibid., pp. 230–45. For the distinction between the Thraco-Phrygians and the Arims/Armes, see p. 243.73 For an incisive treatment of the classical thesis, see Stephan Astourian, “In Search of their Forefathers.” My

discussion here is indebted to Astourian’s account.74 For Ishkhanian’s views, see his Hayeri tzagume yev hnaguin patmutiune (The origin of the Armenians and their

ancient history) (Beirut: Altapress, 1984). Another version of this work was published four years later in Arme-nia: Hay zhoghovrdi tzagman yev hnaguin patmutian hartser [Problems concerning the origin of the Armenian peopleand their most ancient history) (Yerevan: Hayastan Publications, 1988).


area stretching from western Asia Minor to the Armenian plateau.75 On thispremise, the autochthonous theorists asserted that the Armenians were the de-scendants of the original Indo-Europeans who decided to “remain behind in theprotohomeland”76 when the rest of the population splintered into different groupsand migrated out of the region sometime between the seventh and sixth millen-nia B. C. E.77 They also claimed that, as aboriginal inhabitants of historical Arme-nia, the Armenians could trace back their own state to at least the third millenniumB. C. E. if not earlier. This meant that Hayasa and Urartu were Armenian statesand that their civilization and culture were by extension also Armenian.78

These views were not well received by the proponents of the “classical the-sis.” In fact, they created a domestic version of the “paper wars” waged betweenArmenian and Azerbaijani historians.79 In the polemic that ensued, the represen-tatives of the classical thesis dismissed Ishkhanian and his followers as “fast-writing” authors who pursued political objectives under the guise of scholarship.In their turn, the autochthonous theorists accused their classical counterparts ofbeing under the influence of Diakonoff’s views, which they dubbed the “immi-gration theory” (yekvorutian tesutiun).80 The latter, they claimed, was imposed onthe Armenian academic establishment by the Kremlin for certain political pur-poses: to deprive Armenians of their rightful claims as aboriginal inhabitants oftheir homeland. In this fashion, they called into question the patriotism of therepresentatives of the classical thesis and accused their “immigration theory” ofproviding justification for Turkish-Azerbaijani falsifications. For the autochtho-nous theorists, the idea that the Indo-European-speaking proto-Armenians hadimmigrated to historic Armenia implied that the Armenians were “interlopers”in their own lands—a view that reflected claims made by Azerbaijani and Turk-ish authors, who in turn were responding to similar claims against them byArmenian historians.

75 The Ivanov-Gamkrelidze hypothesis has a number of followers in the West but is far from being unanimouslyendorsed by the scholarly community. See Colin Renfrew, Archeology and Language: The Puzzle of Indo-EuropeanOrigins (London: Jonathan Cape, 1987). For the views of Ivanov and Gamkrelidze, see the English translation oftheir articles in Journal of Indo-European Studies 13. See also Thomas V. Gamkrelidze, “On the Problem of anAsiatic Original Homeland of the Proto-Indo-Europeans: Ex Orient Lux,” in When Worlds Collide: The Indo-Euro-peans and the Pre-Indo-Europeans, presented by T. L. Markey and John A. C. Greppin (Ann Arbor: Koroma Pub-lishers, 1990). In his enthusiastic endorsement of the Ivanov-Gamkrelidze position, Aivazian fails to inform thereader that this hypothesis is bedeviled by numerous problems and has yet to acquire the status of “normalscience” in the Kuhnian sense of the term.

76 Ishkhanian, Hayeri tzagume, p. 30.77 Ibid., p. 21.78 Ibid., p. 62.79 For an extensive treatment of this controversy, see Astourian, “In Search of their Forefathers.”80 Ishkhanian, “Hayots hnaguyn patmutiune tzur hayelu mej” (Ancient Armenian history in a distorted mirror),

Garun 1989, no. 4, p. 77. The author actually refers to Diakonoff’s theory as the “Immigration-assimilation-formation theory” (Yekvora-dzulumna-kazmavorumi tesutiun) and criticizes B. Arakelian, G. Sargsian, and G. Jahukianfor adopting this theory in their work, particularly in their book Urartu-Hayastan (Urartu-Armenia).


81 Leo consistently refers to the Armens or the “proto-Armenians” as yekvors and contrasts them with the bnik orteghatsi (native or local) population, whom he calls Hays. Referring to their admixture in the sixth centuryB. C. E., he writes: “The Armenian people were formed by the union of the Hays and Armens. . . . The Hayswere natives (bnikner) while the Armens were immigrants (yekvorner).” (Hayots patmutiun, vol. 1, p. 248. See alsopp. 257 and 262.) For Manandian’s use of the term yekvor to describe the Armens, see his “Knnakan tesutiun hayzhoghovrdi patmutian,” p. 29. The term yekvor is also used in Hay zhoghovrdi patmutiun to refer to the Arims/Armes. Interestingly, neither Leo nor Manandian (nor for that matter most scholars writing before the 1980s)thought that they were undermining Armenian claims to their homeland by using the term yekvor in referenceto the proto-Armenians.

As with his treatment of the controversy over Khorenatsi, Aivazian circum-vents the academic intricacies of these debates on ethnogenesis. Instead, he piv-ots his argument on the political significance of the English translation ofDiakonoff’s text (1984 and 1995) in the West. Based on the assumption thatDiakonoff’s work was politically commissioned by the Kremlin in 1967 to “deala ‘scholarly’ blow” to the then-popular Armenian territorial claims against Tur-key, he infers that its publication in the West is part of a larger NATO-inspiredTurkish-Azerbaijani conspiracy. (pp. 117–18) Having rigged the debate in thisfashion, he then reduces complex arguments into a Manichaean formulation:immigrationism (yekvorutiun) versus autochthony (bnikutiun). It is crucial to stresshere that these are not innocent labels exchanged in the academic corridors ofYerevan. They are laced with nationalist and political overtones as a result of theacrimonious polemics between Armenian historians and their Azerbaijani andTurkish colleagues and the domestic version of these polemics between the aca-demic establishment in Yerevan and the proponents of the autochthonous model.For instance, in the earlier discussions of ethnogenesis, the term “immigrant” or“yekvor” had an academic valence. Adontz, Manandian, and Leo, to name a few,used it to denote the migration of the proto-Armenians into the Armenian high-lands and to indicate that their Indo-European language was not indigenous toUrartu, where the spoken languages belonged to a non-Indo-European family.81

By the 1980s, however, the term had acquired a new political/hypernationalistictwist, coming to mean something akin to “interloper,” with the political conno-tation that the group designated as such did not have legitimate claims to itsterritory. This novel understanding of the term, injected into the debates byIshkhanian and his followers, had corrupted and politicized discussions on Ar-menian ethnogenesis to such an extent that some representatives of the classicalthesis felt obliged to qualify their own use of it. For example, criticizingIshkhanian’s views, Gagik Sargsian went out of his way to make a distinctionbetween “yekvor” and yekvor. When used with quotation marks, he pointed out,the term referred to the movement of the proto-Armenians from the Balkansinto the Armenia plateau and as such had a purely scholarly and scientific mean-ing. However, when applied without quotation marks, it meant that the peoplein question (Turks and Azerbaijanis) were actually interlopers or newcomers to


82 Gagik Sargsian, “Nakhahayreniki, zhoghovrdi kazmavorman yev Urartuyi masin” (Concerning the proto-homeland, the formation of a people, and Urartu), Patma-banasirakan handes 128, no. 1 (1990), pp. 23–40. In asection of his essay entitled “The problem of ‘immigrationism’” (‘yekvorutian’ khndire), the author accuses the“fast-writing” representatives of the autochthonous school of conflating the terms “proto-homeland” and “home-land” and their corresponding terms “yekvor” and yekvor. After drawing distinctions between yekvor and “yekvor,”he writes: “Should one remove the word ‘yekvor’ from discussions on historical matters? Of course not. It isonly necessary to remove the quotation marks and to employ the term in its true meaning. The peoples whospeak Turkic languages are yekvors in the Near and Middle East, as are the Hungarians in Europe. And why arethe latter yekvors and not the former [i.e., the Indo-European speaking peoples, including the Armenians, theGermans and Indians]? The reason is that during the period when [those speaking Turkic or Hungarian lan-guages] arrived to their corresponding territories, the local peoples were already organized or formed, and theseyekvors either annihilated them, forcibly removed them, or, subjecting them to their rule, they plundered themand imposed their values and language. But in the case of [the Indo-European peoples], their arrival to theircorresponding territories took place at a time when the ethnic-racial situation was, to a great extent, still in itsprimordial stages and which subsequently led to the formation of permanent peoples. . . . Here, a historicalapproach is necessary. Such an approach is trampled underfoot either maliciously, as for example is the casewith Turkish or Azerbaijani authors for whom it is a means of self-defense (that is to say, if we are yekvors, thenyou too are yekvors), or as a result of confusing ‘yekvorutiun’ with yekvorutiun, as is the case with our fast-writingauthors. By confusing these terms, the latter unwittingly reinforce the Turkish-Azerbaijani positions.” Ibid., pp.25–26.

their “homeland.”82 The point Sargsian was making was that yekvor should notbe used to refer to the migration of the proto-Armenians or, if it is, should beaccompanied by distancing quotation marks.

To delegitimate the views of Armenian-studies scholars in the West, Aivaziandeploys yekvor (without quotation marks) in much the same vein as Ishkhanianand his colleagues. Thus referring to their migration theory, he writes:

The political subtext of this thesis is quite clear: if the Armenians areimmigrants [yekvorner] to the Armenian highlands and arrived there toreplace other peoples, then their alienation from that territory in anotherhistorical period can be seen as almost a natural phenomenon. If werecall that certain Turkish authors have even accused the Armenians of‘committing the first genocide in history,’ that is of exterminating theUrartians, they will try to regard the Armenian genocide perpetrated bythe Turks at the beginning of the 20th century as, to a considerabledegree, justified, even as a sort of historical retribution. (p. 117)

Given this politicized reading of the term immigrationism/yekvorutiun (read“interloper”), the choice between it and autochthony (read “aboriginal and right-ful claimant of land”) becomes, for Aivazian, the ultimate litmus test of loyalties.Scholarly considerations (such as truth) are blithely shunted aside. Dependingon one’s position, one is either a revisionist or a nationalist, either an enemy ofthe nation or its defender. Hence, those scholars in the West who find elementsof the migration theory academically more persuasive are stigmatized as agents ofTurkish propaganda. This is because by indicating that the proto-Armenians mi-grated into the Armenian highlands three thousand years ago they are implyingthat the Armenians are interlopers there and hence do not have rightful claimsover their homeland. As we stated above, this is a conclusion one can draw from


the work of the Bunyatov school and that of Ishkhanian and his followers.83 It isalso the position consistently adopted in the pages of Hayastani PatmutianLusabanume, with the additional implication that the defenders of the yekvor theoryare actually providingjustification for the ex-termination of the Ar-menians. From thisperspective, Avdoyan’sstatement that “Arme-nians, whose dominanceover the land comes af-ter centuries of domi-nance by other peoples”84 is taken as a clear indication of an underlying “politicalsubtext.” (p. 120) This, despite the fact that Avdoyan presents a carefully tex-tured account of the different perspectives on ethnogenesis and specifically statesthat he is “not dealing here in answers but in challenges.”85 The same reduction-ist logic, with its academically and politically disturbing consequences, is ap-plied to Russell, who, in addition to being censured for referring to the “eastwardmigrations” of the “proto-Armenians” is also faulted for describing them as “colo-nists.”86 Thus Aivazian:

To refer to the Armenians in the Armenian highlands as colonists be-stows great satisfaction to the Turks since, apart from its meaning assettler [verabnakich] or colonist [gaghutabnak], that word also has obvi-ous negative connotations. The Urartians are declared natives (bnik)while the Armenians are immigrants (yekvorner). (p. 224)

Needless to say, the word “colonist” can only acquire “obvious negative conno-tations” when seen through a lens such as that of modern nationalism (whichincludes Azerbaijani and Turkish revisionism) and the experience of Europeancolonialism. However, back in the days of Herodotus (fifth century B. C. E.), inwhose spirit Russell uses the term, “colonist” did not have its modern, pejorativesignificance.87 In any case, Russell is not referring to the Armenians as colonistsand migrants, as Aivazian claims, but to the proto-Armenians.

What about Aivazian’s use of the term “autochthony” or “indigenous”? Whatdoes it mean to say that the Armenians are “indigenous” to the Armenian pla-teau, and how is this claim substantiated? These questions are related to another

83 See footnote 82.84 Avdoyan, “Afro-Centrism, Armeno-Centrism and the Uses of History,” p. 89.85 Ibid., p. 90.86 James Russell, “The Formation of the Armenian People,” in The Armenian People From Ancient to Modern Times,

ed. Richard Hovannisian (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1997), p. 22.87 Compare Matiossian, “Hayagitutiune Miyatsial Nahangneru mej,” p. 276.

The choice between immigrationism(read “interloper”) and autochthony(read “aboriginal and rightful claimantof land”) becomes, for Aivazian, theultimate litmus test of loyalties.


issue, namely that of transmission and “national continuity.” While the majorityof academics in the field of ethnogenesis (regardless of which camp they belongto) would argue that “national continuity” is transmitted and is verifiable prima-rily through language and culture, Aivazian conceives of this continuum as aracial-genetic one.88 He mobilizes race, biology and the discourse of cranial shapesin the service of documenting the pure, uninterrupted presence of Armenians asan indigenous nation on the plateau that bears their name. Thus, referring to the“most modern scientific techniques” used for the measurement of crania unearthedin Armenia, he argues that the “facial reconstruction” of these skeletal relics fromthe first and second millennium B. C. E. “testifies to the strict genetic affinity be-tween ancient Armenians and their modern counterparts.” (p. 28) To anyonewho raises an eyebrow at such views and questions their significance in tracingArmenian identity and history, Aivazian has the following rejoinder to offer:

In reality, the genetic homogeneity of the Armenians has been one ofthe decisive factors in their national consolidation, national distinctive-ness, and national preservation. It is possible to say that it has been oneof the cornerstones of Armenian identity. According to the EncyclopædiaBritannica, “the Armenians have very characteristic and uniform physi-cal features. They are tall and dark; their eyes are large; their noses arelong, fairly narrow, straight or slightly aquiline, and often turned downat the tip; and they are extremely brachycephalic, the typical Armenianhead being short, with a vertical back rising straight up from the neck,so that the skull takes on a conical shape.” This description is whatmakes it easy for us to recognize an Armenian in foreign and distantlands. (pp. 27–28)89

Immediately after these lines, he informs the reader of the uncanny resemblancebetween the physiognomic sketch provided in the Encyclopedia article and therepresentation of kingly profiles on Armenian coins dating back to the first cen-tury B. C. E. (p. 28) With such specious reasoning on the part of Aivazian, it isdifficult not to question his scholarship. References to conical skulls and the con-figuration of nose bones as hard evidence for an uninterrupted Armenian genetic

88 It should be noted that Ivanov and Gamkrelidze as well as other proponents of the autochthonous model,including Ishkhanian, defend the linguistic approach to ethnogenesis.

89 Encyclopedia Britannica, 1962. The author of the quoted passage is a certain William Charles Brice, a lecturer atthe University of Manchester. Apart from its outdated nineteenth-century language, what is of interest aboutthis passage is the way Aivazian selectively handles it. The lines that are intentionally left out, and whichfollow the quoted material, read as follows. “This racial type, however, does not seem to be aboriginal inArmenia, for the skeletons of the Chalcolithic age excavated at Tilki Tepe by Lake Van belong to the robustEurafrican variety of the Mediterranean race. In fact, the Armenoid physical type, which is also found in partsof Anatolia and of the Balkans, appears to result from the mixing of round-headed Alpine and long-headedMediterranean stocks. There is not as yet enough evidence to say when this mixed race first evolved in Arme-nia, though the Phrygian colonization may have contributed to its formation. . . . Some Kurdish communitieswho live in this region are racially very like to Armenians.” (pp. 380–81) I cite this passage not to lend anycredence to its nineteenth-century logic, but to demonstrate that it actually contradicts Aivazian’s central argu-ment in favor of the autochthonous model of Armenian origins.


sequence invoke the so-called scientific debates of the nineteenth century andtheir toxic legacy to our century of genocide and ideologies of intolerance. Thefull implications of these debates seem to have been lost on Aivazian.90

Unfortunately, Aivazian is not the only intellectual in Armenia to engage insuch spurious scholarship. Racial discourse is experiencing new heights in Yere-van. Although it is mostly confined to marginal political parties or movements(such as Tseghakron or race-religion), it has also infiltrated into some segments ofthe academic community.91 In fact, one of the sources Aivazian frequently citesbears the revealing title, What Do Our Genes Tell Us?92 According to this curiouswork, there is an unbroken genetic trail linking present-day Armenians to the“aboriginal” population of the region four thousand years ago. Its authors arguethat “crania acquired from tombs dating back to the late Iron Age dug up inNoratuz do not significantly differ from the crania of contemporary Armenians.They are endowed with pronouncedly protruding and elevated nose bones andstrongly profiled facial skeletons.”93 Despite the “paucity of craniological data”from the period of Urartu, the authors confidently claim that it is evident thatthe Urartians belong to the “Armenoid type.” “Odontology” or “EthnicDentology”94 (the science of tracing back the genetic pool through the examina-tion of dental structure) and “Dermatoglyphics”95 (the study of palm prints totrace ethnic lineage) are also mustered to prop up this thesis. The result is a“biologized” version of the Ivanov-Gamkrelidze thesis. If autochthony is a pre-requisite of national identity, a kind of birth certificate or license for the nation,then nationalist historians like Aivazian will go to great lengths to furnish therequired proof. This is the case even if it means relying on questionable “scien-tific” theories and silencing critical scholarship on the pretext of weeding outrevisionism.

In short, rather than reflecting scholarly arguments concerning the vexednotion of ethnogenesis, Aivazian’s treatment of this issue (as with his discussionof other topics in Armenian history) reflects the current political climate in Ar-menia and how this climate has influenced “scholarly” debates about what itmeans to be Armenian. His text and its reception in Yerevan, in other words, aregood barometers of the heightened levels of nationalist discourse (fuelled by the

90 See Ernest Renan’s classic essay “What is a Nation?” trans. Martin Thom, in Nation and Narration, ed. HomiBhabha (London: Routledge, 1990). Renan warns against the use of the problematic notion of “race” in definingnational identity and spells out, with remarkable prophecy, the dangers of what he calls “ethnographic politics.”

91 For a critical discussion on racial discourse in Armenia, see Razmik Panossian, “The Past as Nation: Threedimensions of Armenian Identity,” Geopolitics, forthcoming.

92 Ruben Harutiunian and Nvard Kochar, Inch en patmum mer genere? (What do our genes tell us?) (Yerevan:Hayastan Publication, 1989).

93 Ibid., p. 55.94 Ibid., pp. 61–63.95 Ibid., pp. 63–80.


paranoia of revisionism) and its implications on the critical examination ofArmenia’s rich historical traditions.

Conclusion

Let us conclude by briefly examining the reception of Aivazian’s work in Arme-nia, and its impact on both the academic community and the general public.Unfortunately, the work seems to have created quite a commotion in Yerevan.Of the various reviews devoted to it, only one takes the author to task for hispoor scholarship and his blatant political agenda.96 The rest celebrate his accom-plishment, praising him for being the first to unmask the conspiratorial inclina-tions or intentions of Armenian-studies scholars in the West. Significantly, oneof these celebratory reviews was published in Patma-Banasirakan Handes, theflagship journal of the Armenian Academy of Sciences and one of the leadingforums for Armenian studies in Yerevan. More recently, Aivazian’s book was

declared a “work of greatvalue” by the Armenianstudies department ofYerevan State Univer-sity, which in addition topraising Aivazian, de-voted a special session todiscussing the issues

raised by his work and condemning certain Armenian studies scholars in theWest (and by extension their benefactors in the diaspora) for their “pro-Turkish”and “anti-Armenian” stance. Indeed, the Yerevan State University session passeda declaration stating that it “found the neutral stance of some scholars in thediaspora and Armenia towards false Armenian studies to be both unacceptableand a pernicious error.”97

The fact that Aivazian’s work haselicited such uncritical responsesmeans that it has tapped into areservoir of collective fear.

96 The critical essay is Karen Yuzbashian, “Amerikian hayagitutiune A. Aivaziani datastani arjev” (AmericanArmenology before the tribunal of A. Aivazian) Hayastani hanrapetutiun, 16 Oct. 1999. See also Armen Sarkisian,“Patmutian chisht chanaparhe” (The correct path of history), Hayastani hanrapetutiun, 27 Nov. 1999, which isdirected against Yuzbashian’s article; Vardan Devrigian, “Hayots patmutiune ibrev razmavarakan pashar” (Thehistory of the Armenians as a strategic reserve), Hay Zinvor, No. 7 (262), 20-27 February, 1999; Aelita Dolukhanian,“Hayastani patmutian lusabanman arajnahert khndirnere” (The principal issues in the elucidation of the historyof Armenia), Hayastan, 9 March 1999; and M. Zulalyan’s review essay in Patma-banasirakan handes 1999, no. 1.

97 The full text of the declaration, which was passed on 19 December 2001, can be found in Yerkir 20 December2001. Among the observations found in this text are the following:“(a) The anti-Armenian propaganda of the USA’s ally Turkey has had a profound influence especially on Ameri-can armenology, whose representatives have for quite some time openly distorted and falsified many impor-tant issues within practically all the stages—ancient and medieval, modern and contemporary—of Armenianhistory.“(b) With their ‘analyses’ and ‘conclusions,’ certain American ‘armenologists,’ not taking into consideration thedifficult and dangerous situation created at present for Armenia and the Armenian people, are filling water intothe water mills of the pseudohistorians and authorities in Turkey and Azerbaijan (Nina Garsoïan, James Russell,Ronald Suny, Robert Thomson, Levon Avdoyan, Robert Hewsen, and others). These individuals, guided by the


One could, of course, claim that these reviews and the Yerevan State Univer-sity declaration are not a fair basis of judging public or scholarly opinion. It isclaimed that, in private, people have reservations about Aivazian’s crusade butare not willing to come forward. Be that as it may, the fact that Aivazian’s workhas elicited such uncritical responses means that it has tapped into a reservoir ofcollective fear. It demonstrates how certain Armenian historians, who have longbeen confronted with revisionist campaigns, are now willing to blackmail theresearch of their colleagues on the grounds that it aids ever-present enemies andpromotes Turkish-Azerbaijani revisionism. Ironically, however, these same schol-ars have themselves promoted revisionist modes of thinking by inadvertentlyreinforcing its theoretical (i.e., essentialist and anachronistic or presentist) andpolitical (i.e., intolerant and nation-statist) positions. Who is to say if in the longterm this blackmail of history will not be as detrimental for Armenians as Turk-ish-Azerbaijani revisionism? Indeed, a principal lesson learned from readingAivazian’s book is that once the blackmail of revisionism is allowed into thefield of history, it will repress critical scholarship and foster jingoistic reactionsboth among the lay public and the intellectual community.

Let us then sum up our views on Hayastani Patmutian Lusabanume. While thiswork promises to unmask certain misconceptions that plague Armenian studiesin the West, its results are nothing less than disturbing. Academically, save forsome interesting factual corrections to the historical record, Aivazian’s mono-graph leaves much to be desired. It consistently misrepresents the views of theauthor’s adversaries, often by deliberately distorting passages out of their con-text. Its inflammatory rhetoric and sweeping denunciation, based not so muchon scholarly criteria but on political ones, actually prevents the author from criti-cally engaging with some of the real academic shortcomings of Armenian studiesin the West. It also compromises its findings by its theoretical point of departure,namely the view that historical work must be subservient to the strategic needsof the nation-state. Moreover, its references to the measurement of crania harkback to the nineteenth century’s racial or phrenological speculations on groupidentity that scholars have now thoroughly debunked and discredited. Politi-cally, while it sets out to “educate” the Armenian public about its own past, in

principles of ‘objective’ scholarship—in reality, the principles of political opportunism—amazingly have evenbegun to gradually adopt and preach pro-Turkish perspectives on the Armenian Genocide. And they are doingthis at a time when it is one of the priorities of the foreign policy of the Armenian state to have the bloodycrime of the Turks against the Armenians condemned by the international community.“(c) It is extremely odd that these American ‘armenologists’ are financed and promoted in every way by certaindiaspora institutions and individuals whose efforts are not rewarded.”The declaration also condemns the expansion of the “false school of Armenian studies” to Europe, Russia(where Karen Yuzbashian is singled out) and the Middle East (where Ara Sanjian is mentioned), and recom-mends the establishment of a fund for the support of Armenian studies and the creation of an internationalacademy for research in Armenian studies, which will be centered in Yerevan “free from foreign political influ-ences.”


reality it muzzles creative and critical work. Its intimidating tactics of brandingWestern scholars of Armenia as “national traitors” and its insinuations that theyare “paid foreign agents” are poor and dangerous substitutes for scholarly think-ing. Moreover, beyond their inherent political dangers, these tactics contributeto further isolating historical scholarship in Armenia both from the diaspora andfrom the academic community at large. In short, the sad outcome of this work isbound to reinforce the view that nationalist history, like its revisionist counter-part, leads to questionable scholarship and dangerous politics.

It is a shame that Armen Aivazian has channeled his erudition and learninginto a crude polemic against the field of Armenian studies in the West. Had henot done so, he might have provided a much-needed scholarly critique of thefield and generated a constructive debate between its practitioners in the dias-pora and Armenia. As it stands, however, this valuable opportunity has beensquandered.

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