Peace and Conflict Studies - Spring 2014

Peace and Conflict Studies Volume 21, Number 1 71 the total number of Armenian deaths at over two million, including deaths from the pogroms and massacres that began in 1894 and continued until 1922 (p. 9). Two key events after the genocide have had profound and lasting impact on Armenia and Armenians. One of these was the fate of the survivors. Their homelands became eastern Turkey: village names were changed and Armenian churches and monuments destroyed; even today, practically no Armenians live on this land (Hovannisian, R. K., 2003, p. 275). Some survivors fled east to what is now the Republic of Armenia, then under the protection of the Russian Empire and soon to be part of the Soviet Union. Others escaped and attempted to assemble the remains of their families and villages in communities scattered across the Middle East, Europe and North America. This formed the Armenian diaspora, which may number approximately eight million today. The population of Armenia itself is only three million (World Bank, n.d.). Studies of the diaspora have attested to a global, pan-Armenian identity, though, as a result of its wide dispersion, it exists in a necessarily fragmented and heterogeneous fashion (compare Bakalian, 1993; Kaprielian-Churchill, 2005; Kirkland, 1980a, 1980b; Schwalgin, 2004; Ziemer, 2009, 2010a, 2010b). Although few studies document the Armenian diaspora (Kaprielian-Churchill, 2005, p. xxvi), those completed indicate this collective diasporan Armenian identity is trapped as a victim of the genocide that created it. It is impossible to give any sense of Armenianness without serious consideration of the genocide; it is an inevitable part of modern Armenian identity (Theriault, 2003). This is particularly evident for the diaspora, which originally formed as a result of the genocide (Hovannisian, R., 2003). Examining the major studies published in English allows insight into the lasting impact of the genocide on diasporan communities. One American study describes the genocide as the Armenian “overarching cultural narrative” and presents some of the difficulties that arise from limited cultural knowledge of identity due to genocide (Manoogian, Walker, & Richards, 2007). Ethnographic fieldwork conducted in an Armenian community in Russia has also provided key insights into Armenian diasporan-consciousness. There, Ulrike Ziemer found that the genocide remains a significant factor influencing Armenian identity, both in the sense of the personal family narrative as well as the diasporan “collective identity” (2010a, p. 295). In her study of tensions between descendants of genocide victims and recent Armenian migrants to Greece, Susanne Schwalgin (2004) emphasizes a contrast between an imagined “pure,” pre-genocide Armenia and the present- day, impoverished, post-Soviet Republic of Armenia. This contrast is an indication that in