The 2014 Sochi Oympics in Russia are due to start just a week from this Friday. Yet, when I was in Yerevan recently, I was somewhat surprised to see a total absence of discussion on the upcoming games. After all, Yerevan is located only 500 miles away from Sochi. Would not the Armenians stand to…
The culture of Soviet Armenia and the Soviet Caucasus was more than just a culture of film, literature, posters, and agitprop. It was also a culture of sound and music. The renown Aram Khachaturyan was Soviet Armenia’s most famous composer, sharing the position as one of the USSR’s top composers alongside Sergei Prokofiev and Dmitri…
From all of us here at the Abovyan Group, merry Christmas and happy holidays! It should be noted that Armenian Christmas is typically celebrated on January 6, though New Year’s is generally a bigger deal in Armenia, Georgia, Russia, and much of the former USSR. An annual viewing of the 1976 Soviet comedy film Ирония…
During Soviet times, the cinema industries of Georgia and Armenia proved to be veritable powerhouses not only within the USSR but internationally as well. Great filmmakers such as Tengiz Abuladze, Sergei Parajanov, Artavazd Peleshyan, and Otar Iosseliani and performers like Sofiko Chiaureli and Frunzik Mkrtchyan effectively put the Caucasus on the map as a major…
On the last day of 2013, I would like to raise my glass to a few groups of people, comrades sans arms, who cross the borders of the South Caucasus to facilitate an invaluable, irreplaceable process: peace dialogue. Open dialogue, built of open minds, is essential to any peace process; after the peace process —…
The Hoover Institution at Stanford University, founded in 1959 on Herbert Hoover’s ideas on American government and enterprise, is a remarkable resource for giddy scholars everywhere. Besides enabling research in the social sciences, the Institution also has a rich archive, the gem of which (to me!) is a collection of more than one hundred thousand…
“Heavy Metal Motherland.” Historian Nina Tumarkin coined this term in The Living and the Dead to describe the woman-as-nation statues that rose across Soviet republics during and after World War II. Best known and often recalled are Kiev’s “Mother Motherland” (1981) and Volgograd’s “Motherland Calls” (1967), two gargantuan figures crowning memorial centers to the Great…
by Sergey Sargsyan Well, this is my first article here and I’m very excited as I write about geopolitics – a word that I have learned at a relatively late age, so please don’t judge too harshly. The focus of my piece will be the ongoing tug-of-war between Russia and the European Union over the…
40 years ago today in 1973, history was made in Armenian soccer/football. On that day, in the Luzhniki Stadium in Moscow, the Armenian football team Ararat smashed one of the strongest teams in the entire USSR – Dynamo Kiev from Ukraine. Levon Ishtoyan kicked two goals and Armenia won the Soviet Cup 2:1. The monumental…
“Making people laugh, even if it’s just a little, is a psychological need for comedians. I seek to satisfy this need.” When speaking about civil society, it is important to mention the people who help forge this environment in Armenia today. One such individual is Sergey Sargsyan, co-host of the ArmComedy Project (the Armenian version of…
The Abovyan Group (Աբովյան խումբ) 