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, Armenia on 24 April 1965, on the 50th anniversary of the Armenian genocide. It is said that this event constitutes the first step in the struggle for the recognition of the Armenian genocide of 1915. [2]

Contents

On 24 April 1965, for the first time for any such demonstration in the entire Soviet Union, [3] 100,000 [4] [5] protesters held a 24-hour demonstration in front of the Opera House on the 50th anniversary of the commencement of the Armenian genocide, and demanded that the Soviet Union government officially recognize the Armenian genocide committed by the Young Turks in the Ottoman Empire, and build a memorial in Armenia's capital city of Yerevan to perpetuate the memory of the victims of the Armenian genocide. [1]

The demonstration marked a major awakening of Armenian national consciousness in the USSR. To the shouts of "our land, our lands," many protestors called for a "just solution" to the Armenian question and for the unification of Nagorno-Karabakh and Nakhichevan with Soviet Armenia. [1]

Taking into account the demonstrators' demands, the Kremlin commissioned a memorial for the genocide and the 1.5 million Armenians who perished. The memorial, located on Tsitsernakaberd hill, was completed in 1967, just in time for the 53rd anniversary of the beginning of the genocide. The building of this memorial to the fallen of the genocide was the first step in honoring important events and figures in Armenia's long history. Monuments honoring the Armenian victories in Sardarapat and Bash Abaran against the Ottoman Turks in 1918, among others, were later built one after the other. Since the day of the protests, Armenians (and people from many of the former republics of the Soviet Union and all over the world as well) visit the memorial and make protests around the world to gain acceptance of the Armenian genocide by Turkey and to honor the millions of Armenian deaths during this period of Armenian history.

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. ↑ Lindy, Jacob D. (2001). Beyond invisible walls: the psychological legacy of Soviet trauma, East European therapists and their patients. New York: Brunner-Routledge. p. 192. ISBN   9781583913185.
  3. ↑ 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.
  4. ↑ Shelley, Louise I. (1996). Policing Soviet society. New York: Routledge. p. 183. ISBN   9780415104708.
  5. ↑ Beissinger, Mark R. (2002). Nationalist mobilization and the collapse of the Soviet State. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press. p. 71. ISBN   9780521001489.

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