1965 Yerevan demonstrations

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1965 Yerevan demonstrations
Medal created in Soviet Armenia (Armenian Genocide Memorial in Tsitsernakaberd).jpg
Medal created in Soviet Armenia. Obverse: "Eternal Memory to the Martyrs of the Holocaust" in Armenian. Dually dated 1915 and 1965. View of the Armenian Genocide Memorial in Tsitsernakaberd. Reverse: Flame in urn, 1915/1965 to upper left
Date24 April 1965
Location
Yerevan, Armenian SSR, Soviet Union
GoalsCommemoration and recognition of the Armenian genocide
Calls for unification of Nagorno-Karabakh and Nakhichevan with Soviet Armenia [1]
Resulted inConstruction of Tsitsernakaberd
Parties
Protesters
Lead figures
Number
100,000+

The 1965 Yerevan demonstrations took place in Yerevan, Soviet Armenia on 24 April 1965, on the 50th anniversary of the Armenian genocide. Historians of Armenia regard the event as the first step in the struggle for the recognition of the Armenian genocide of 1915. [2]

Contents

On 24 April 1965, 100,000 protesters held a 24-hour demonstration in front of the Yerevan Opera Theatre on the 50th anniversary of the start of the Armenian genocide. [3] They demanded that the Soviet government officially recognize the genocide of 1915. [4] [1] To the shouts of "our lands, our lands," [2] many also called for a "just solution" to the Armenian question and for the unification of Nagorno-Karabakh and Nakhichevan with Soviet Armenia. [1]

The demonstrators' demands encouraged Soviet Armenian authorities to complete a memorial honoring the 1.5 million Armenians who perished in the genocide. The memorial was originally planned for completion in 1965 but finished in 1967 at Tsitsernakaberd hill, just in time for the 53rd anniversary of the beginning of the genocide. [5] The building of the memorial at Tsitsernakaberd was the first step in honoring important events and figures in Armenia's long history. [6]

The 1965 events were the first such demonstration in the entire USSR, [7] and marked a major awakening of Armenian national consciousness. Since the day of the protests, Armenians (and many people from the post-Soviet space and all over the world) visit Tsitsernakaberd to honor the millions of Armenians who died in the genocide. [6]

See also

References

  1. 1 2 3 Lehmann, Maike (Spring 2015). "Apricot Socialism: The National Past, the Soviet Project, and the Imagining of Community in Late Soviet Armenia". Slavic Review . 74: 9–31. doi:10.5612/slavicreview.74.1.9.
  2. 1 2 Panossian, Razmik (2006). The Armenians: From Kings and Priests to Merchants and Commissars . New York: Columbia University Press. pp. 320–323. ISBN   978-0231139267.
  3. ↑ Beissinger, Mark R. (2002). Nationalist Mobilization and the Collapse of the Soviet State. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press. p. 71. ISBN   9780521001489.
  4. ↑ Shakarian, Pietro A. (2025). Anastas Mikoyan: An Armenian Reformer in Khrushchev's Kremlin. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. p. 36. ISBN   978-0253073556.
  5. ↑ Saparov, Arsène (2018). "Re-negotiating the Boundaries of the Permissible: The National(ist) Revival in Soviet Armenia and Moscow's Response". Europe-Asia Studies. 70 (6): 862–883. doi:10.1080/09668136.2018.1487207. S2CID   158299827.
  6. 1 2 Suny, Ronald Grigor (1993). Looking toward Ararat: Armenia in Modern History. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. p. 186. ISBN   978-0-253-20773-9.
  7. ↑ Conny Mithander, John Sundholm & Maria Holmgren Troy (2007). Collective Traumas: Memories of War and Conflict in 20th-Century Europe. Bruxelles: P.I.E.P. Lang. p. 33. ISBN   9789052010687.
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