It is a fundamental principle of International Law that a nation's borders are sacrosanct, and they cannot be redrawn without the nation's consent. Thus, though The U. S. and Western Europe created and sponsor Kosovo, most of the rest of the world does not recognize it. Of course, this is a rule devised by the strong for the benefit of the strong. The problem with International Law is that there is no democratic way to change the law. Ethnic minorities are at the mercy of the government of the ethnic majority in the country in which they find themselves. Thus Great Britain created Sudan arbitrarily out of African territory, and when it granted independence, the black Christian and Animist population found itself at the mercy of the Arabic Muslim North. When the Nethrlands granted independence to Indonesia, the kept the western half of New Guinea, but after years of international pressure, they ceded their half of the island not to the newly independent eastern half, but to Indonesia, even though the inhabitant had no ethnic connection to the latter, except that they had been part of the Dutch East Indies.

Most problems have come about when the Colonial empires of Britain, France, and the Netherlands broke up and the new nations were invented using the political boundaries that served the interests of the imperial powers but had little to do with the ethnic and cultural realities of the people involved. A second set of problems have arisen as Yugoslavia and the Soviet unin broke up. Yugoslavia had five constituent republics, which have gone their separate ways. but there was no local reason why Kosovo, with its Albanian population should have been a region within Serbia and not a constituent republic, excpet that historically the Serbs were senitmentally attached to the place where the Ottomans defeated the Serbs, in Kosovo, and created Ottoman Serbia. When the Serbs began slaughtering the Albanians, America and Western Europe stepped in and forced the independence of Kosovo. Now Europe and America have sponsored an independent Kosovo, over Serbia's objections, but the lrest of the world, led by Russia, have not, on the basis of the principle in international law of the territorial integrity of Serbia. Likewise, the Soviet union consisted of The constituent Republics, and autonomous republics and regions within Russia itself and the constituent republics. Russia let the republics go without bloodshed, even though the actual consistution of the repulics as not negotiated. for instance, Kruschev gave the Crimea to the Ukraine many years go, even though the Crimea had never been part of the ukraine, and does not have a Ukrainiand majority. And it has fought a bloody war to retain Chechnya, even thought the Chechins have cause to wonder why Georgia and Azerbaijan were cinstituent republics while Chechnya was not.

The Armenian question goes back to the decisions made by the Soviet government at the beginning of the Union. Azerbayjan was awarded Nakachavan, between Armenia and Turkey, and the predonimantly Armenian Nagorno Karabagh. Teh armenian population left Nakavajan, but the Armenians of Nagonro Karabagh have been pressing for incorporation into Armenia fromthe very beginning and fought a bloody and successful war in 1988-1992 to gain their point. But Azerbaijan claims a soverign right to the territory, now entirely cleansed of Azeris, on the basis of International law. Russia gave Armenia military support during the war over Nagorno karagagh, and has been an ally of Armenia ever since, but has not taken a specific stand about Nagorno Karabagh. It is hard to imagine how Azerbaijan could retake the region short of far mor overwhelming military superiority than it now posesses or conceivably will posess, and what it wold do with the region, short of wiping out the present population, which has demonstrated its unwillingnees to live under Azeri soverignity.

Meanwhile, Turkey has supported Azerbaijan's claim against Armenia on the basis of International Law, while at the same time supporting the independence of Turkish Cyprius, even though the Turks of Cyprus have less claim to autonomy that the Armenians of Nagorno Karabagh.V

Meanwhile, Russia, which has resented Georgia's turn to the West, has now supported the independence claims of the Georgian regions of Abkasia and South Ossetia, a policy directly at odds with its own policy in Chechnya.

How does this affect the situation in Nagorno Karabagh? Well, it doesn't really because no matter what the principle of Internaitonal law may be in the abstract, everything comes down to power politics. Regions with the power to seceed, do. Those without the power, dont.

Meanwhile, Turkey wishes to play a stronger dimplomatic role on its western frontier, but it can't if a good portion of that frontier blongs to a country with which it has no relations. So it has been moving cautiously toward reaproachment with Armenia. The president or prime minister (one of the two) of Turkey recently attended the Turkey-Armenia football match in Yerevan. National self-interest goes on.

THE WAY THINGS ARE

I guess it's time to tell about some Armentian customs and way of life. Many years ago, when I was working at the May Company on Wiltshire Boulevard in Los Angles, in the bedding department, we used to keep a supply of blanket covers for the large Middle European community that had settled in the Fairfax District. I never understood why those people so prized their blankets that they wanted to protect them with blanket covers, which are basically bags that the blankets fit in.

Then when I went to Poland, I discovered what they are for. The custom in Middle Europe and the Soviet Union was not to have a top sheet, but to have a blanket cover as the top sheet. That is, the blanket is put into a cloth bag, which lies directly over the sleeper. So the cover and the bottom sheet are changed every week or two, as we would change our sheets. The cover either has an opening on the side or a diamond-shaped opening on the top side into which the blanket is stuffed.

I say "blanket" but it is really a thick comforter, which may not be quilted and is simply a bag of stuffing. The preferred stuffing in Armenia is raw wool (cleaned, of course) which must be periodically fluffed and pounded back into shape, and is also periodically hung over the balcony rail or clothesline to air in the sun. I have even seen the wool stuffing removed, and speread out on the ground to fluff and air.

This makes for remarkably hot sleeping in summer, which the Armenians don't seem to mind. Some Peace Corps Volu8nteers scandalize everyone by insisting on sleeping under the blanket cover with the blanket removed. (It being September 1, my hostess offered me the winter weight, comforter, but I'm just barely getting to tokerate the lighter one, so I declined. I may never want enything more, but she gave me a woolen blanket (real blanket) to put over me in case it gets cold. I have a notion Armenian houses are not heated at night in winter.

Because the comforter must be periodically fluffed and beaten, it is a tradition in Armenian and other places that use this bedding, that one does not sit on the bed or lay anything on it, or lie on it on top of the comforter. But of course we Volun teers, who have only a small room to retreat to, are not going to forbear using our bed as we would a home.

Luckily my present hostess has quilted somforters that do not need so much fluffing and pounding; but she had a satin embroidered spread that was too nice to lie on. So I bought for myself a throw to put on the bed and to lie on when I want to during the day.

Which brings us to Part 2 of this chapter, Armenian Living Room Furniture. The typical Armenian living room has a divan and two armchairs so overstuffed that they look like relics from the 1930's Not that you ever actually see them, because they are covered up with throws, the way we used to use slip-covers. But these throws are simply light-weight rugs made to cover divans, tables and other furniture. So I went out and bought a throw for my bed. I wasn't too good at eye measurements, and what I bought just covers the top surface of the bed. but I guess that is enough. It came with two smaller throws, for the arms, or perhaps for what I am using them for. One covers the table I use for a desk, and the other covers the top of the "dresser."

I say dresser advisedly, because Armenian furniture customarily uses doors where we would use drawers. And much of it is so flimsily made, that if it is like mine, though there are magnets to hold the doors in place, they inevitably don't hold, and the doors are usually standing open.

Armenian Television has its own version of American Idol, and the difference shows an interesting difference between cultures. I don't know how many contestants they started with, but there were 11 last Saturday night, and my hostess tells me they will go on eliminating one each week until one is the Armenian Idol, or whatever they are going to call him or her. But here's the difference. The orchestra consists of traditional Armenian instruments, and the singers sing either folk or art songs from the Armenian tradition. They keep showing members of the audience mouthing the words, so I suppose the songs are all well-known. And there are no pyrotechnics, just good singing. There are four judges, who take turns criticizing, but as far as I can tell they like everything. I can't tell how much "constructive" crticism they get. Right now they are pretty evenly divided between young men and young men. An Armenian Priest sits between the two pairs of judges.

Why is there so little music on American TV, network or cable, either one?

A note about Armenian customs. Where I live outside Spitak is served by both a bus and mini-busses called marchrutnis. The latter seat 10-12. This is the common local transportation, and even cities that are served by busses to Yerevan also have marchrutni service. On a bus or Marchrutni, The women ride up front, and the men go to the back. Of course if a man and woman are traveling together, they will sit together wherever there is room. But men will move on back if there is room and a woman comes aboard. Men don't invariably give up their seats for women, but both men and women will give up their seats for older women, and I have had both men and women give up their seats for elderly me. (That was welcome when I had leg troubles, but I am over that and also 20 pounds lighter, though I confess it doesn't show that much yet.) I should say though the separation is a custom, it is not rigidly enforced, and when a bus is full, people get packed in together indiscriminately.

Another interesting observation is that boys and young men are more casually affectionate with each other than seems permissible in the United States. They will put their arms around each other, and will walk arm in arm, even hand in hand. In Gugark, boys played in the street, while girls stayed home, so it looked as if there were more boys than girls, but I did see girls out together mingling with boys in the evening. I haven't experienced school, but my understanding is that there is considerable classroom democracy. Of course, in English, girls have a natural linguistic advantage. The university English programs are overwhelmingly female.

On Sunday, August 19, I attended the Armenian Apostolic Church in Spitak. It is convenient to the bus line. I never was able to attend a complete service while living in Gugark. It last two hours. I was told it started at 10, but it started at 10:30, so I was early and was able to see some things I would have missed. As I was walking around the building, I saw a man stuffing a sheep into a burlap bag. I presume he brought it to be ritually slaughtered. That is a custom the Armenian church inherited from the Zoroastrians and were reinforced in by their Muslim neighbors, who have a similar ritual. Inside, the priest blessed a loaf of bread and a bottle of wine for two families. The second family also had alittle crock which I presume held honey. div> He was wearing a black cassock and a pointed headdreass which made him look to American eyes a little like a Ku Klux Klan Functionary. The blessing took place over to the side, where Catholics would have had a side altar, but there seems to be only one altar in Armenian churches. They did face an icon of the virgin, which was hanging on the side wall of the side wall, if that makes any sense. The priest was very hil-fellow-well-met, when not actually giving the blessing. Then two families brought children to be blessed (not baptized). One was aobut four and seemed terrified to be in church, no just confronted by a priest with bushy beard. The kid screamed and howled and struggle to run away the whole time. He had them sit in the heavy carved brocaded chairs that faced the chancel in front of the pews, but were otherwise unused during the service. At another point before the service started, everybody got up and went up front and faced the back of the church. I thought it was just something for women, but a couple of the women urgently motioned me to join them. They saw I was a stranger and made sure I knew what to do from then on. When the service started, there was an organ up in the loft over the front door, and a few women singers who sang the responses. div> When the service started, the priest had donned a fancier vestment with a crown, and sometimes he had the crown off to show that he had a close-cropped haircut down to the sideburns and from there down a bush black beard. He was assisted by a man whose duties before the service included filling the flower vases with water and lighting the altar candles. There were three teenage boys helping, one of whom waved the incense burner around while the other two assisted in various ways. Sometimes the man and one of the boys each shook a device that was a golden circle on top of a long pole, the edge of the circle being hung with small bells, so that they jingled when shaken. div> At opne point everybody shook hands with everyone else, and then I was instructed by the ladies, to come to the end of the pew and face outward while the principals made a circuit of the church. One of the boys preceded the priest with a banner which he offered to be kissed, and the priest offered his pectoral cross to be kissed. When he got to me, he leaned forward and asked: "Hay ek?" (Are you Armenian?) I replied "Americassi" I hope to get acquainted with him some time. div> after about an hour, the other man brought a lectern down in front, and the priest delivered the homily. I thought at first he was hardly going to be heard, but once he got started he got very passionate. I have no idea what the sermon was about, but the word "Hayastan" (Armenia) cropped up several times. After the homily came the communion. I didn't take it, but a visiting American couple did, so i guess it is all right. I couldn't tell, but I guess the priests dips the bread or a paten in wine and places it in the communicant's mouth. Several people had written out petitions for prayers and placed them on the chancel, so the service sort of petered out as the priest read the petitions. div> I should mention that the chancel is about as high as a stage above an auditorium, and there are steps up to it on either side. Twice during the service, a curtain was drawn across the chancel. I don't know what that signifies. Something I had not seen before, sometimes when the people crossed themselves, they first reached down and touched the ground and then crossed themselves. The congregation was not large, and did not include those who had come for special blessings. Armenian piety does not include regular church attendance. But I intend to attned regularly enough that the priest knows me by sight, at least.div> The american couple and thier daughter turned out to be teachers at the American Univeristy of Armenia in Yerevan, who were visiting students in Spitak. They are from Arkansas.

According to what we have been told in our peace Corps lectures, Armenia is working hard to develop democratic institutions and the legislation to sustain them. Inevitably there is still a lot of nepotism, and corruption, petty and otherwise. The inevitable problem is that public officials from policemen to judges, etc. aren't paid much, so it is tempting and easy to supplement one's income. One volunteer going home said he was not going to donate his equipment to the school he had worked at because the Director had taken the television home on the grounds that it needed repair, and somehow the needed repair never got done, and the TV remained at the director's house. Parents and relatives routinely pressure the Director to pressure the teachers to raise grades, and sometimes the grades are raised without the teacher's consent or even knowledge. Getting into the university is notorious for the graft.

But they are trying. There is a series of public announcement spots for children explaining people's rights--to be heard, to have freedom of speech, to have gender equality, etc. So they are making a serous effort to get people to understand how to act in a democracy. On thing the Peace Corps and other oganizations try to do is teach people how to act together as citizens to get what they want and not just wait for officialdom to make the decisions for them. The work goes on.

I want to tell about an excursiou we made to a medieval monastery NE of Vanadzor near the border with Georgia. I didn't bring the names so I'll have to fill them in later. We went on down the river gorge to the town of A_____. There are two monasteries within sight of each other, but because of the complication of the mountain route, we only had time for one. It is Shamian, and the other is H____. They were both recently put on the UNESCO list of World Heritage Sites. The name of the latter means, "The one with the big wall," and the name of the former means, "The older one." Obviously not what the builders called them. Shamian was built in the Tenth Century next to a church from the centry earlier. It is not a ruin, but gives the impression of being long abandoned. It consists of two churches side by side, each with an antechamber as large as the church, a domed library which might as well be a church, a bell tower, a round chapel and some old mausoleums. The architecture is not as large but certainly as impressive as the great Ottonian churches along the Rhine of the same century: Worms, Mainz, Speyer. Armenian churches traditionally are domed, and the domes covered by the traditional conical roof, so that the dome is not so impressive from the outside. The dome has an eye open to the weather. I don't know if it was always allowed to rain in. They did not go in for much light from the walls. For two centuries the complex was a major religious and educaitonal center, and a major producer of illuminated manuscripts.

While we were there a tour bus full of Italians arrived. We asked the driver if it was a tour coming down from or going up to Georgia. He said no, it came from Yerevan and was going back to Yerevan.

The complex sits on the edge of a rather drab industrial town, with old soviet-style high-rise apartments. The setting is spectacular, with not one industrial city, but several smaller ceters, some down on the floor of the gorge, and some up on the plateau above the sheer cliffs of the gorge. In Soviet times, this was a major copper mining and smelting region, but when the Soviet Union broke up, the smelter shut down. But it has been started up again, and the gorge itself is smog-filled, and a huge colum of white and yellow smoke rises above the rim of the gorge. I suppose it is a matter of economics. Production for the moment trumps clean air.

That is one reason I put the trip on this page, and the other is that right down the street from the monastery is a museum and memoral to two brothers who grew up in the town, the Mikoyan Brothers. One was Persident of the Soviet Union longer than anyone else (not Permier) and involved with many important international negotiations. The other was an engineer who designed the MiG fighter plane. Their monument includes an MiG fighter under a canopy,and there is a museum that feathers many things from their childhood home, and things about their careers. .

The reason I put them on this page is that the Armenians have very mixed feelings about the Russians. In the first place, they recognize that the Russians rescued what is left of Greater Armenia from the Turks and Iranians (though they weren't very fair about the geography when the Soviet Republic was set up. And they were well regarded withing the Soviet Union and got more recognition than they could have managed as an independent county. And the Soviet Union gave them a measure of propserity, inefficient as the Soviet economy was. Today Russian remains the second language still taught in the schools (3 hours a week vs. two for English, and starting a year earlier) and understood by most adults. Many signes are still in Russian, and most of their pharmaceuticals and much of their other goods come from Russia. So they make a distinction between the Russians and the Communists, just as the Poles do.

My economic report at the end of training is that some economic activity is going on. When we were briefly in Yerevan some weeks ago, there was a lot of buiding going on, aqnd the streets were clogged with traffic. Here in Vanazdor, Armenia's second or third city traffic is not close to jamming, but there is some building going on, particuarly small shops, back in the area caled the Suq, or market, many small shops are being built, I suppose for people who now only have stalls. The second city used to by Gymri, west of here, but it was more damaged by the earthquake, and slower to recover. I haven't been there, but my permanent site is sort of half-way between the two cities. In Gugark, the May has been beautifying the ground around City Hall. Coity hall is a square pink stone building. The first phase was flower gardens in which are planted marigolds, dahlias, roses, snapdragons, and something that hasn't bloomed yet. That is on one side of the entrance. On the other, he has been bringing in huge slabs of concrete salvaged from ruined buildings (I hope in Gugark) and laying them down with a crane. They are bout the size of pattresses for single beds, and as deep as a matress and box springs. I wait to see how the plaza will be finished.

One might wonder why this project when the roads and the water system are so bad, But I suppose he doesn't havew money for them, but he does hav a little money, and this beautification provides some work and hopefully will encourage the locals with the beautification itself.

Last week we had an excursion to the home of Tumanian, Armenia's greatest modern writer (born 1869). We had to go down the canyon that hodls our local river, and then climb above it to where there were beautiful high rolling plateaus. I was thinking the was a good spot for a luxury resort hotel. There is room for a couple of world-class golf courses, and one or more hotels could be inserted discreetly into the landscape, and the weather is hot in the sund and cool in the shade in summer, with not too much rain, and there is snow and slopes for skiing in winter. That's one idea.

Our group living in Gugark had a formal meeting with the Mayor last Tuesday (July 18). It was interesting. We were exploring possible projects and asked about trash collection. He pointed out that even if there was a trash collection, the village has no truck to haul it away in. We thought that might be a project: Helping the town find funds to buy a truck. The mayor told us that funds for the village come from local, provincial (marz) and national resources. The problem on the local level is that a lot of homeowners simply don't have any money, and there are no funds to hire collectors. He said it's like anywhere else: The pensioners are more apt to pay their taxes than those who can better afford to. He also pointed out that the town has a complex structure of family relationships, and as a politician, he can't afford to offend people, even in the best of causes. He has been mayor for a year and a half and is elected for a four-year term with no term limits. He said things have been worse. But at least now they have natural gas, which they didn't have for a while. They would dearly love to have better roads, but that is an enormous project for the country as a whole, not just the village. They are doing well to keep the main road network in repair. And the problem is compounded by the fact that the bad roads are nut just dirt tracks, they were once paved streets, with sidewalks, and the broken pavement can't just be graded. There are two forlorn traffic light posts in the center of town with forlorn shells of the lights still up there. It's hard to imagine this town with enough traffic ever to have needed a traffic light. Gugark, by the way, is more of a town, since there about 1500 homes for a poulation of about 7000. Before Soviet times it was the head of the Marz, but there is nothing in town that would indicate that. I asked what he envisioned as eventual work that owuld bring all those men home from Russia. He said that there is beginning to be more construciton work in Yerevan, the capital, and he hopes that since they have mostly gone to find construction jobs, thaey will be able to find work there. Which doesn't sound very optimistic for the region. But there does seem to be more construction opening up in Vanadzor, the local capital, and a city of about 150.000. But on the west side, going out toward Spitak is mile after mile of abandoned factories that will never be rebuilt. Also, he explained that the huge sewage disposal system just north of town and downstream from Vanadzor was wrecked by the earthquake before it was ever finished. Gugark lost about 25 people killed in the Earquake, not much compared to Spitak at the center, but a lot in absolute terms. Armenia is going to have to depend in the future more on its education and technical know-how than on the heavy industry of the Soviet period, whihc was here more because Armenia had a reputaiton for turning out excellent engineers than because it was ever strategically located in the Soviet Union. I asked how the general mood was among the people, and the Mayor thought that people were optimistic at seening some progress. Every year the town has a little more in its budget from the State. Yerevan looks as if money is flowing into the country, but it takes time for that money to flow out to the provinces.

Whatever we might think of Iran, for Armenia, it is her lifeline. Their natural gas comes from Iran, and exports mostrly go through there. Georgia is a friend, but at the moment just not reliable. Georgia has its own problems because it is ethnically diverse. Iran has a sizeable Armenian minority, and in fact my hostess Tamara's mother came from Armenia (or her family, anyway). There are family photos of their visit there some years ago.

Speaking of natural gas, the towns have it, and some of the villages, like Gugark, but the pipes are not buried, at least outside of Yerevan. They run along the side of the street on stilts, mostly, and go up over the side streets and driveways. There is a meter box outside each house, and at least my family is careful about using it.>

Unless I'm misreading the signs, gasoline seems to be only a little over a dollar a liter, which seems cheap.

The first rule one must remember in foreign relations is that self-interest comes first and respect bows to power. For instance, we defer to China's claim to Tibet and Taiwan. And though Kosovo will never return to Serbian control, big countries do not reocgnize its independence because it is their self interest always to respect "established borders." So the Christian South of Sudan must remain part of Sudan. Likewise, Kurdish Iraq can not be independent because that will upset our "friend" Turkey, who do not have a good record with their own Kurds.

Speaking of Turkey, one has to understand the history of Turkey and the Ottoman Empire if we are to understand maodern Armenia. The Ottoman Turks put together a consider empire in the late Middle Ages. It was the Turkish menace to Constantinople that was the cause of the Crusades, when the Emperor appealed to the Pope for help against the Turks, who had established their capital at Nicaea just across the Bosporus, to be in a good position to attack that city. They finally got it in 1453, after conquering much of the Balkans. They had already conquered the Armenians. At their height in the 17th Century they captured Budapest, and were at the gates of Vienna.

The Turks were a minority in their own empire for the duration of the empire. They controlled not only the territory of modern Greece, but the eastern fringe of the Aegean was mostly Greek right up till the great exchange of populations that took place after World War II. In Europe they controlled Bulgaria Serbia, Albania, Bosnia, Rumania, and off and on Hungary, thought my history of the region is hazy. In Anatolia, the Armenians were the majority in much of the area, and to the south were Syria, Iraq, and those parts of Arabia that actually mattered.

The Ottoman empire began to weaken after the failure of their campaign against Vienna, and in the early 19th Century what is now southern Greece managed to break away. The handwriting was on the wall.

The Russians had taken Western Armenia from the Iranians, and had annexed much of Armenia in the 19th Century. Britain was more interested in maintaining trade routes than the welfare of their fellow Christians in Armenia, and they allied with the Turks against the Russians in the Crimean War, and forced the Russians to give up Armenian Territory to the Turks. They were more interested in a strong Turkey as a bar to Russian southern expansion than they were in the welfare of the Christian Armenians.

They did require or urge the Turks to sign a treaty guaranteeing the civil rights of the Armenians, but the only country that could have put any pressure on the Turkes was Russia, and for the moment they were out of the picture. So the Pasha knew the treaty wasn't worth anything and acted accordingly. There was a program against the Armenians toward the end of the century (I'm sorry I'm hazy on dates). I once obtained a book published in America in about 1898 about the late persecution of Armenians in Turkey with lots of steel engravings, but at the time I could not have guessed I would have any personal interest in Armenian and gave it to an Armenian-American friend.

So the British endorsement of a meaningless treaty had its share in the responsibility for what happened to the Armenians in 1915. Having lost Greece, Serbia, and Bulgaria, the Turks were determined not to lose territory in the heart of Anatolia. But the Armenians kewn they could not depend on either the old regime or the Youg Turk moement that was tkaing power to guarantee any Armenian Civil Rights, so there was a rebellion.

The Turks reacted with overwhelming force. They forced the Armenians out of their villages and sout toward the Syrian border where it was expected that they would either perish in the desert or be eliminated by hostile Syrians. Prisons were opened, and criminal bands set upon the defenseless Armenians.

Whether what happened consituted a genocide, is perhaps a matter of semantics and of naitonal pride on both sides. The fact ramains that the turks will hear no discussion of the matter, and were quite put out when the French brought it up in their Parliament. It is semantics that keeps the Turkish-Armenian border closed and relations frozen.

We volunteers are told that we can hardly help discussing the matter with our Armenian friends, because it is central to their national consciousness, and mentioning it to the folks back home. But we are urged to avoid the G word in blogs and not get into confrontations. Rumor has it tht the last ambassador was sent packing because he had the indiscretion to use the G word in public. Karabagh is also something of a sore point, since established governments do not like borders changed except by mutual consent, no matter what the reasons.

But the woman in charge of our introduction to Armenian culture and way of life pointed out that to ignore the issue is to ignore a central issue of the Armenian sense of self. She pointed out that her father was born in Van, a city under Turkish control that she can't visit, and her mother was born in Karabagh, a city Peace Corps Volunteers are forbidden to visit. She pointed out that for many, perhaps most, Armenians, there is the Republic of Armenia, which you can find on the map, and Armenia, which you won't find a map of. It is significant that in the classroom where We are doint our practice teaching there is a rather crude painting of a man escorting his mourning mother away from Mount Ararat.

Armenia is a very old country, though, surrounded by more powerful states, its independence has been fitful. It claims to be the first Christian nation, having adopted Christianity in the early 300's shortly before Constantine put the Roman Empire on the way to being Christian. About 400 AD the Armenian alphabet was invented so that the Scriptures and other works could be written in the language. Not long after that, Armenia was divided between The Roman Empire and Persia. Modern Armenia is more or less what the Persians got.

Exactly what constitutes historical Armenia is hard to figure, because the on-line histories and guides talk about cities and places not on modern maps, but at one point it spread "Fron Sea to Sea" from the Caspian to the Mediterranian. The heartland was Lake Van and Mount Ararat.

> Peter the Great took most of what is modern Armenia from the Persians in the early 18th Century, and the Russians managed to grab Karabakh about 1825. They also occupied what is now part of Turkey including the city of Kars.

For a short time after World War I, present day Armenia was independent, but the Communists managed to incorporate it into the Soviet Union as a constituent Republic, constitutionally free to seceed, but in practice not. The Soviets thought Turkey was going to go Comunist, so as a good-will gesture they gave back Kars and the territory they had occupied. At the same time they gave territory Armenia considered its own to Azerbaijan, also to ingratiate the Turks. The Azeri are effectively Turks who ended up in the Persian empire and later partly in imperial Russia. The Karabakhians demanded to belong with Armenia, but the Soviets gave them to Azerbaijan, giving then status of autonomous region. But they removed Armenians from the strip between and from that detached part of Azerbaijan between Armenia and Turkey. I'll say more about Turkey and the Armenian Diaspora later.

As long as Armenia was part of the Soviet Union, the political divisions hardly mattered, since Moscow controlled things, and Armenians constituted a large minority in Azerbaijan, particularly in the capital, Baku.

The Soviets had a policy of tying the republics together economically, and Armenia, including Vanadzor, had a number of smelly,polluting, and uneconomical plants that produced basic materials for the rest of the Soviet Union.

As inefficient as the Soviet economy was, the Armenians lived fairly well, and had basic services and a good education system, though authoritarian and based on rote learning rathr than critical thinking.

> In 1988, Armenia suffered a devastating earthquake that destroyed cities and industries. The second and third largest cities in Armenia were both affected, Guymri and Vanadzor, Guymri worse than Vanadzor. (Spitak, where I will be going, was nearest the epicenter.) Downstream from Vanadzor is a huge sewage treatment facility wrecked and going back to wilderness. One wonders where the sewage of a city of 150,000 is now going. There are some high rise apartment towers, a community center, houses, and other buildings in Gugark, the town where I live, that were not rebuilt, and it is a shock to notice that the wretched streets of the village are not dirt tracks, but once paved streets. And there are the remains of traffic lights at the main intersection where it is hard to imagine a town that ever had more than two cars go through in ten minutes.

Shortly after the earthquake, the Soviet Union broke apart, and suddenly there was no more market for whatever foul and polluting factories survived the earthquake. When the Soviet Union broke up, the Armenians living in Ngorno Karabakh were determined not to belong to Azerbaijan, so they revolted. With the help of their Armenian brothers, and Russia in the form of equipment, they managed to carve out a territory that includes most of the old region, plus the strip between it and Armenia, and everything down to the Iranian border. Armenian maps show the territory, but it is hard to find on world maps because no country except Armenia recognizes independent Karabakh. (I may be spelling it wrong.)

It is inevitable that once an international settlement is made, Karabakh will unite with Armenia, and will constitute nearly a third of the country, but for now it is useful for Armenai to say, "It's not our problem. Karabakh is an independent country." Things would be worse in the region if they actually incorporated it. Volunteers, by the way, are forbidden to go there.

During the war, the Azeris slaughtered thousands of Armenians and drove them from Baku and other territory they retained or grabbed. About 500,000 were displaced on each side, quite a burden for a country of only 3-3.5 million dependong on how you count them.

> So Armenia was cut loose with a wrecked economy from the earthquake, the war and the loss of their Soviet markets. I heard that only now nearly 20 years later has Armenia returned to an economic level equal to that before the earthquake. Meanwhile a large proportion of Armenian men are working abroad in Russian and the Ukraine. Some villages request only women Peace Corps Volunteers because they don't want their unattached women preyed upon by Peace Corps men. The birth rate has also fallen dramatically because Armenian men either don't have jobs or can't see a stable future to afford a family.

The Soviet Union was notoriously great in what they offered children. The trouble was that they wanted everyone to stay children. One of the challenges of the Peace Corps, which the Armenian Government is aware of, is creating a democratic spirit, where people don't just wait for something to be given to them (as was done by both foreign governments and NGO's immediately after the earthquake and independence) but to learn to take the initiative. The Peace Corps and other aid agencies are developing techniques to train villages to assess their own needs, (and hopefully arrive at the same needs the agencies have assessed for them.) But of course politics plays a part in everything, including where the money goes. I don't have enough knowledge to say whether the last elections were truly democratic, and probably wouldn't say if I knew, but it seems to be the belief of the American Government, the Peace Corps, and other agencies that the government is committed to the work we are doing to help bring democracy to the country on a more fundamental than just on the electorial level.