| Titre | The alteration of place names and construction of national identity in Soviet Armenia | |
|---|---|---|
| Auteur | Arseny SAPAROV | |
 |
Revue | Cahiers du monde russe |
| Numéro | volume 44, no 1, janvier-mars 2003 Russie, Empire russe, URSS, États indépendants | |
| Page | 179-198 | |
| Résumé anglais |
The alteration of place names and the construction of national identity in Soviet Armenia. The Soviet practice of altering place names to serve political ends is well known. The Armenian SSR presents an interesting example of this practice, as it was systematically applied there, and at the same time served the nationalist agenda. Due to mass deportations of the Armenian population by Shah Abbas in the seventeenth century, most Armenian place names had already been replaced by Turkic toponyms when Armenia became a part of the USSR in 1921. The most prominent feature in the successive toponymic change is a practically complete reversal to the Armenian toponymic landscape in the Armenian SSR. The motivation for such a practice was nurtured by the anti-Turkish sentiments harbored by the Armenian society following the genocide of Armenians in 1915. Soviet authorities found these sentiments preferable to potential separatist and anti-Soviet tendencies. Nonetheless, at the same time the policy of place-naming remained closely controlled by Moscow bureaucrats and conditioned by the general ideological and political climate, under which the restoration of the original Armenian place-names became impossible due to their commonly religious character. As a result, the new place-names were frequently Armenian in form but Soviet in meaning. The article thus reveals a system of latent nationalist policies aimed at constructing a national identity acceptable within the Soviet ideological framework. Source : Éditeur (via Cairn.info) |
|
| Article en ligne | http://www.cairn.info/article.php?ID_ARTICLE=CMR_441_0179 |
