History

Recent History

Kocharyan was re-elected in 2003, but accusations that the vote was rigged were widespread. A wave of demonstrations in Yerevan in April 2004 protested the results and the country's continuing economic difficulties. Kocharyan, the wily and battle-hardened veteran, survived the pressure.

Though the Turkish and Azeri economic blockade is ongoing and the Karabakh issue has not been settled, the 1700th anniversary of the Armenian church in 2001 marked something of a turning point in the country's fortunes. Since then, the economy has been growing at over 12% each year, the level of severe poverty has dropped from 20% of the population down to around 6%, and rising remittances from Armenians overseas are supporting more and more relatives back home. Wealthy Armenian philanthropists from around the world have chipped in to improve schools and hospitals and get local businesses running. Tourism is also doing particularly well, with visitor numbers growing to 300,000 in 2005. Although poverty is still common and Azerbaijan continues to issue dire warnings about another war over Nagorno-Karabakh, Armenia can barely recognise itself from its former state 10 years ago.

Modern Day History

Ironically, the 1905 Russian revolution, and even more ironically, the Young Turk revolution of 1908, raised Armenian hopes for the chance to build a nation in their historical homeland. Those hopes were dashed as the Ottoman and Russian Empires came to blows during World War I.

The new regime in Constantinople planned the extermination of Armenians in Turkey, and took advantage of WWI to unleash the first mass extermination using modern technology, from telegraphs to bureaucratic files, to uproot and destroy western Armenia. Hundreds of thousands of Armenians (mostly men) were massacred in the process, the rest (mostly women and children) were marched to Syria in great privation. However, this event still remains highly contentious. The genocide is denied by Turkey today but the inescapable fact is that between 1915 and 1923, up to 1.5 million Ottoman Armenians died.

In 1916, Russia took Ottoman Armenia but had to hand it back temporarily, since WWI had knocked the stuffing out of its military. The independent state of Transcaucasia was quickly declared, but it lasted a grand total of one month and four days. Local differences split it into Azerbaijan, Georgia and Armenia. Turkey immediately jumped back in and stole a chunk and the Russians, under the brand new banner of the Soviet Union, came back and took control by early 1921. They fooled with local borders, sowing seeds for later discontent, but the Soviet apparatus of control kept a lid on Armenian/Azerbaijani tension for nearly 70 years. When glasnost peered under the lid and then threw it away, the stage was set for another round of violence.

In December 1988 an earthquake struck northwestern Armenia, killing around 25,000 people and leaving half a million more without shelter. It also destroyed about 10% of the nation's industrial capacity and housing. Meanwhile, Nagorno-Karabakh, the Armenian Christian enclave in Muslim Azerbaijan, voted for unification with Armenia. The Soviets had placed it into Azerbaijan in a classic act of wobbly cartography. Violence soon flared in Sumgait as dozens of Armenians were killed. Hundreds of thousands of Azerbaijanis and Armenians, suddenly finding themselves on the wrong side of the border, fled. Battles broke out between Armenian and Azerbaijani militias and there were more Armenians massacred in Baku, the Azerbaijani capital, as the Soviet Union stumbled. The Soviet army finally fought its way into Baku and restored its version of order, and while Azerbaijan voted communist at the 1990 elections, an Armenian nationalist president, Levon Ter Petrosian, managed to restore control in Armenia. The Soviet Union would soon be history anyway, and Armenia voted for independence in 1991.

By 1993, Armenia controlled over 15% of Azerbaijan, including nearly all of Nagorno-Karabakh. The warring parties signed a ceasefire in 1994, and have maintained an uneasy truce ever since. The military campaign drained resources from the new republic, the country had practically run out of fuel and Turkey also imposed an economic blockade.

A large part of the historical Armenian heartland, including Mt Ararat, now lies in Turkey, but Armenia has more or less dropped its claims there. 'To aspire to Ararat is more noble and exciting than to reach Ararat', wrote an Armenian poet. Nagorno-Karabakh is still nominally part of Azerbaijan, but accessible only from Armenia and patrolled by Armenian troops. This situation strained the weak economy further, and a conflict in Georgia cut off supply routes, squeezing even more sap out of it. Levon Ter Petrossian was booted out of office and returned to academia, and was replaced in the 1998 elections by Karabakh war hero Robert Kocharyan.

Pre 20th Century History

Armenia has been the mouflon in the sandwich between warring nations and factions for millennia. They've been shipped or fled back and forth across burning deserts with shifting borders at the whim of empire builders in far flung capitals. National borders - historic and present - tend to waver depending on who you're talking to, but what is certain is that the isthmus between the Black and the Caspian seas has long been a who-what-where pressure cooker of ethnic migrations, competing religions, jostling international egos, envy, ethnic hatred, warring armies, grand victories and devastating losses.

The first empires and kingdoms that encompassed parts or all of present day Armenia were the Urartu (originally under King Argistis, who built a fort at present day Yerevan), the Persian Achaemenian, Alexander the Great's Macedonian Empire, the Seleucid, the Roman and the Byzantine. The Persians threw a punch around 428 AD, and when they tried to impose the Zoroastrian religion in 451 they sparked a revolt that eventually won Armenians a degree of political and religious freedom.

Muslim Arabs ventured north in the 7th century AD, and local big shot Ashot Bagratuni came to power and launched a period of prestige for his line. But in the 11th century the Byzantines expanded into the region again, and scarcely had the dust settled than the Turks marched in. Before the end of the 12th century came Egyptian Mamluks and European crusaders (who didn't rule but managed to bring in a few Western-style reforms and leave some French words). The Persians; the Ottoman Turks were the next to come to blows in the region, and the Ottomans managed to cling on to most of Armenia for the better part of 400 years. The Armenian reinvented themselves as one of the great trading peoples of Eurasia, setting up colonies from Palestine (they still have a quarter of Old Jerusalem) to Ukraine, India and as far as Singapore.

From the 18th century, Armenians within various empires agitated for reform and political and cultural self-determination. Armenian literature, art, religion and education boomed under the Ottoman and the Russian Empires, and this eventually led to the formation of Armenian political movements. During the early 19th century, Russia gained control of Yerevan and an area that encompassed parts of present day Turkey, leading eventually to the Russo-Turkish War of the 1870s. Armenians in Turkey were massacred - an early form of ethnic cleansing - as local nationalist movements grew, and hundreds of thousands had been killed by the 1890s.