A majority of Armenia’s population still lives in Soviet-built apartments; many have worn-out Soviet automobiles, television sets, refrigerators, washing machines, gas stoves, faucets and locks.

For many years the bits and pieces of these decaying and no longer existing machines have been found particularly next to marketplaces and at the Vernisage. Usually they are spread about on the concrete pavement and asphalt. In the mid-1990’s these items took up a lot of space but over the years both their quantity and variety have diminished. This is understandable since even the possibility to freely spread these “products” about the land is lessening. These days, the prices of these units of land are increasing at much faster rates.

It might seem that the breakdown of these Soviet items, the spontaneous and unorganized exodus of their pieces, signals the final disintegration of the Soviet system, of stripping away the allure of the Soviet secret. But for me, this transformed circulation of Soviet items in the form of bits and pieces is more a sign of the continuity of the Soviet, a sign   that the Soviet continues on in new and unexpected forms.

But in fact doesn’t the same thing take place in the humanities and education, in the field of the transference of knowledge, in university classes, the textbooks and literature used, in lectures. If these have been changed as well, then, as a rule, they still carry traces of Soviet ideology; they’re full of fragments of Soviet language and thought, which continue to circulate perhaps in more lively and vital ways. This is clearly evident in the print and electronic media outlets. Look at how even the youngest journalists speak and write about cultural issues. It’s practically the same language used in Soviet times but absent the more glaring pieces and manners of ideological rhetoric. And it’s understandable that this cannot change since there still doesn’t exist a new language. Is it unfortunate or rather comical, when the youngest of people employ that worn-out language, when they “discover” 30-40 year-old idioms, in an attempt to talk about modern-day cultural realities. Here, it is ignorance that’s the danger. If the older generation at least knows where such language stems from, the behavior of the young people lacks such awareness. Is all this sufficient enough to make a claim for the imperceptible (but also evident) longevity as well as demand of the Soviet (Soviet-Armenian)?

When speaking about Soviet Russian popular culture, Svetlana Boym observes that, “ Nostalgia is at the core of the popular culture in general that flirts with fashion and newness but in fact remains faithful to traditional forms and stories. What is recycled in popular nostalgia is a certain narrative of homecoming, of returning to origins. Popular culture is driven by longing for familiarity, for something repeatable that reminds one of the mythical stability of home. If in the 1970’s and 1980’s popular culture in the Soviet Union was permeated by dreams of escape, Russian popular culture of the 1990’s features many stories of return. The encounter between Russia and the West often culminates with the return of the prodigal son…” (To make this quotation more understandable let me remind you that the word nostalgia is comprised of the Latin words “nostos (home) and “algia (fervent desire, longing).

In Armenia, rabis music can serve as an example of the “prodigal son” phenomenon. During the Soviet period it was despised and banished from all public spaces (electronic media outlets, concert halls) and survived in much narrower circles and spread through bootleg recordings. During the past years, however, Tata, one of the most beloved and popular singers, has offered up a blend of Soviet Armenian rabis and ‘estrada’ (popular) music. It’s difficult to find any new western or other type of influence in his songs. Herein lays his “originality” and the secret to his huge popularity - the ‘new’ in the form of the returning ‘old’. In addition, rabis shouldn’t be confused with national music in the traditional sense or to consider it as one of its corrupted forms (remembering the word “popular”). The word rabis (defined as ‘workers’ art” by its Russian abbreviation) was one of the manifestations of urban culture; in other words, it was a creation of the Soviet era even if it did have national, but not necessarily Armenian, roots. It’s enough to remember that rabis was never performed with national instruments but only with the clarinet, accordion and later on, the violin. Rabis music is one of the results of the modernization of society, in particular the urbanization of Yerevan, the creation of an urban working strata (in which the influx of rural inhabitants to the city played a role), and from a scholarly point of view is not at all a cultural manifestation to be despised.

In the same manner the wide popularity of all types of Russian mass culture in Armenia, including that enjoyed by Russian pop singers, old and new, is also understandable.

One can conclude that the search for the national or traditional in Armenia today isn’t necessarily directed at pre-Soviet culture but more often at the Soviet-Armenian, as well as at the reestablished and reconstituted forms of the “Armenian national” culture of the Soviet era.

Urban Entertainment in “Our Village”

Armenia’s mass culture of today doesn’t satisfy all of society’s segments. One of the reasons is economic and as such Armenia is similar to many other post-Soviet countries. As researchers of post-Soviet Russian culture have observed, the peculiarities of Russia’s economy are transforming the mass culture into the sole property of the elite. Mass culture as a style of life (entertainment, clothes, etc) isn’t generally accessible to many. This paradoxical relationship between the “high” and the “low” is one of the oddities of the post-Soviet landscape. Let us remember that the issue of high and low cultures was one of the pivotal problems of Soviet cultural politics. The division of culture into strata reflected the divisions in the society at large and since the aim of the Soviet system was the creation of a classless society it follows that culture had to be unified, of high standards and accessible to all. This was the major factor involved in the persecution of rabis music in Soviet Armenia - the working class (proletariat) couldn’t have its own, separate culture. But it was denied and attacked because it was “low-brow”, “vulgar”, etc, arguments which, viewed from the perspective of today, appear quite strange.

The natural variety of preferences, the plurality of tastes, could have possibly been considered as the second reason, if such a thing existed in Armenia. In reality the accepted norm here is “not to lag behind” others; in other words, duplicate rather than diverge from. In all cases however, it is not everyone that can identify with a Eurovision Armenian participant or the star of a Latin American soap opera.

The making of a certain rural landscape into a national symbol is characteristic of many nations and especially in the case of European countries it’s tied to the romantic tradition according to which the village itself is the essential place of all that is national. Here is where the nation is born and it’s there where the national spirit continues to exist. I have difficulty recollecting such an underlined idolization of the village or rural life in the Armenian context. Perhaps I’m mistaken, but it seems that for centuries on end our people have pursued the urban dream, together with the desire to identify the national existence with the capital city. But this is an aside, despite being connected to the next theme of the article.

There’s a restaurant called “Our Village” which is located at the beginning of Sayat-Nova Street on the basement level in one of the buildings. It’s not clear who the ‘our’ refers to or what ‘village’ we’re talking about. Neither is it clear who are the intended patrons of the restaurant - foreigners (as the first consumers of ethnic exotica everywhere), or local residents who go there out of some longing for the Soviet past? I am not one of the latter group and wound up at the restaurant by chance when, on the advice of a friend, I invited my overseas guest there for dinner. That was about two years ago so my impressions of the place aren’t all that fresh, but I’ve held on to some notes I made of the occasion. 

The menu included a number of national dishes and drinks and the waiters paraded around dressed in national costumes. But what struck me the most was the small group of musicians and the singer who was accompanied by the musical strains emanating from a few national instruments. The impression I got was that these musicians were former members of the Soviet Armenian Folk Instrumental Ensemble. It was their professionalism, the quality of their playing and their repertoire that led me to this conviction.

If it is possible to somehow picture the village’s connection to any type of costume rehabilitated through ethnographic measures, then it’s much more difficult to see the link between the village and an ensemble playing national instruments, as well as between the ‘ashough’ (troubadour) songs of the Soviet era and the similarly rearranged pre-soviet ashough and folk songs. An ensemble of folk instruments, even if comprised purely of national musical instruments, was a totally Soviet phenomenon, with a structure intended to resemble a symphonic orchestra, and with the aim of elevating the national and folk culture on par with that of Soviet ‘middle-brow’ culture. That’s to say the national and ashough music of the Soviet years was in fact wholly the result of a conscious policy to   modernize the culture of the Soviet nations, unlike rabis music that was an unintended and spontaneous creation of that process. During the Soviet years similar performances of these songs didn’t take place in restaurants but rather in the best concert halls, on T.V. and radio. And the purpose of all this, certain attributes of the village lifestyle, variety of dishes, national dress and Soviet Armenian music, was to exhibit Armenian cultural authenticity. 

It’s obvious that this “village paradise” isn’t intended for villagers but more for a citizen of a certain social class and age. The night I was at the restaurant there was a man of about 40-45 years old sitting by himself at a table placed in front of the musicians. His gaze rarely strayed from them and he often sang along with the singer. It was as if the group was performing solely for his benefit. This was a nostalgic trip back to the “family home” of the Soviet years which no longer exists and perhaps never really did. In the realm of nostalgia the recreated home is unavoidably idealized, especially due to the selectivity of ones memory. And it appeared that this man was fully reliving his lost identity without reservation as well as experiencing his national belonging. Let’s again turn to Svetlana Boym to help us shed some light on the matter, “ Nostalgic recreations of the past acquire particular importance at a time of historical cataclysm and sometimes function as ‘defense mechanisms’ that help survivors cope with major historical changes.”