Three Republics of Armenia: The Soviet Past and the Politics of Memory in Post-Soviet Armenia (1991–2018)

Deciding how to relate to the Soviet past is a key question in the politics of memory for the societies and political elites of the post-Soviet countries. Throughout the post-Soviet decades Armenian political and intellectual elites tried to form a complex attitude to the Soviet past, neither rejecting, nor appropriating the Soviet legacy completely, but assimilating it within the paradigm of national history. Within this paradigm Soviet Armenia is viewed as a stage in the development of Armenian nationhood, as “the second republic”, which links the first “attempt” at building a nation-state, “the first republic” of 1918–1920, to the “3rd republic”, i.e. the post-Soviet state of Armenia. This paradigm, in which the Soviet past is neither completely rejected, or accepted, but certain elements of it are integrated into the national history narrative, is optimal for post-Soviet Armenia, given both the peculiarity of Armenia’s historical experience (particularly the role played by Russia/USSR in the context of Armenian-Turkish relations), as well as the current geopolitical setting, in which Armenia and Russia are formal allies. This attitude, which can be described as “mnemonic ambiguity”, allows the assertion of an independent and sovereign Armenian state as legitimate, while at the same time avoiding a confrontation with an ally in the realm of memory politics.