FORUM SYNOPSIS:
Diaspora and the return to the Homeland

On Wednesday, December 5, Birthright Armenia invited Dr. Tsypylma Darieva, Anthropologist, and Research fellow at the Department of European Ethnology at Humboldt University, Berlin, Germany, to discuss “Diaspora and the return to the Homeland”.

Dr. Darieva began her presentation by asking the volunteers if she could interview them as part of her ongoing research, as to why the Diaspora, in many cases a second and third generation of people with Armenian heritage, has the urge to return to the land of its ancestors. The volunteers of course were more than willing to assist Dr. Darieva.

However, before starting her interview with the volunteers Dr. Darieva briefly touched upon the Armenia- Diaspora relations before Armenia’s 1991 independence. According to Dr. Darieva, the Diaspora did not have many links with Armenia during Soviet times. This however changed after WWII when, for various political and social reasons, the Stalin regime began a huge repatriation campaign, promising Diasporan Armenians land and beneficial social and political conditions in their homeland. By the end of the 1940s about 200.000 Armenians from the Middle East and some Western countries, attracted by Stalin’s campaign, repatriated to Soviet Armenia. However, the soviet ideology and the severe political and economic conditions did little to welcome and help integrate the repatriates into their new environment. Not surprisingly at the end of the 1940s, the Armenian re-settlers found themselves under the restrictive and repressive control of the authorities. In addition to the fear of punishment for having relations with these “strange” people, the visible cultural differences naturally formed a hostile relationship between the locals and the newcomers.

According to Dr. Darieva, the repatriates were not seen as worthy of social solidarity; on the contrary they were condemned to the category of a hostile “Diaspora” with a foreign bourgeois background. They were considered exotic and dangerous foreigners. In fact, after their arrival to Soviet Armenia many repatriates were arrested and deported to Siberia. Because of these political and social hardships, a large number of the repatriates emigrated from Armenia in the 60s - 70s. After this unsuccessful attempt at repatriation, returning to the homeland became a dream for diasporans, which turned into reality following the collapse of the Soviet Union. Today the Armenia- Diaspora relationship is stronger then ever, and with each year more diasporans come to their homeland, as tourists, as businessmen, as students or simply as repatriates.

Following the general introduction, Dr. Darieva went on to ask the volunteers a few questions such as: was their decision to come to Armenia primarily to volunteer or to visit Armenia? Was this their first visit? Had their parents ever been to Armenia? Was this visit an adventure? How was their relationship with the city and the locals? etc.

The volunteers answered the questions based on their individual backgrounds and experiences. However, to the question “Why are you here?” they responded unanimously: to explore their Armenian heritage, to get to know the language and the people, to give back to the country and community through volunteer work.

AVC volunteer Viktoria Simonyan from Washington DC stated that she had many reasons for coming to Armenia, but in one word, it was “the desire to return to a place unknown- to the homeland.”