>> From the Library of Congress, in Washington, D.C.
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>> Levon Avdoyan: I have the pleasure of introducing someone who did research in the African and Middle Eastern Division.  I also have the pleasure to introduce someone who, if we were giving an award for innovative titles, would no doubt have won it today.  To a Professor -- Assistant Professor of History at Skidmore is going to speak to us about "Biceps and Balls, Physical Culture in Late Ottoman Bolis."  And for those who -- of you who don't know what Bolis is, Bolis -- Polis is the Armenian word for Istanbul, Constantinople, and it brings me great pleasure to introduce Murat Yildiz.
>> Yay.
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[ Applause ]
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>> Murat Yildiz: Levon, you're too -- too kind.  So before I begin, I would like to thank Levon and the Library of Congress for organizing this amazing conference that really -- I think, we can all attest to this -- that reveals the breadth and richness of Armenian history and culture.  It's an honor to be here.  My talk today, as Levon mentioned, is entitled "Biceps and Balls, Physical Culture in Late Ottoman Bolis."  Okay, so in fall 2010, I started to conduct research for my dissertation project in Istanbul.  I initially envisioned the dissertation as a study of the intersection of sports, nation building, the body, and gender during the late empire and early Turkish republic.  And more specifically, what I wanted to do was, I wanted to investigate the ways in which the bodies of young men served as a central site of nation-building.  Like many Ottoman historians, I started in the [foreign word], or the Ottoman archive for the Prime Minister's office, which basically -- which serves as the -- as the primary repository for state archival documents in Turkey related to the Ottoman Empire.  So my searches resulted in me sifting through government reports on physical education, and team sports in schools, government programs, and voluntary associations.  They offered a number of insights into the burgeoning interest in sports throughout Istanbul during the time.  However, they left me dissatisfied.  They left me dissatisfied for the following reason.  The documents created the impression that the Ottoman government was the central actor in spreading, institutionalizing, and popularizing sports.  And in order to complicate this narrative, I sought to diversify my sources, and explore the representation of sporting activities and institutions in the expanding public sphere.  And in order to do this, I turned to the press.  Magazines and newspapers written in Ottoman Turkish from the period offered a rich set of textual and visual coverage, and discursive framing of team sports -- mainly soccer, gymnastics, competitions, and sports clubs.  The Ottoman government wasn't absent in these conversations.  However, it was de-centered from the narrative.  In other words, the Ottoman government emerged as one of many actors, albeit an incredibly powerful one, contributing to the spread and popularization of sports in the center of the empire.  And I found myself asking what was the significance of these different representations of sports.  In order to answer this question, I decided to bring these sources and archives into dialogue.  And I did so by reading magazines in the morning, and files from the Ottoman state archives in the evening.  Now, this methodological exercise revealed a number of insights, one of which was that some non-government institutions were represented in certain places and not in others.  Specifically, I noticed some clubs that emerged in government reports were absent -- were absent from discussions in the press.  Now, for example, this report -- this report from the Interior Ministry is a list of voluntary associations, written in Ottoman Turkish, which included, but was not restricted to sports clubs.  Now, I was familiar with some of these clubs from the sports press, and others less so.  I was familiar with some -- others less so.  So one of the clubs, which I hadn't come across in the press, was the -- and this is the Ottoman spelling, Artivasat Gymnastique Gymnyeti [phonetic].  And I'll say something about the spelling in a second.  This was the spelling in Ottoman Turkish.  This is around -- a couple from -- a couple -- maybe one, two, three, four, five from the bottom.  Like all experienced researchers -- and this is a joke -- I turned to the all-knowing web for answers.  I appreciate that [laughter].  Did not figure into my table of contents.  So these searches led me to the work of Hayk Demoyan, who was at that -- then, and now, the director of the Armenian Genocide Museum in Yerevan.  Now, at the time, Demoyan had recently organized an exhibition at the museum, and published a book on Armenian sports in the empire.  Now, these project reveal -- these projects reveal to me that Artivast Gymanstique Gymyeti [phonetic] had another name, more than likely a more commonly-used one during the time, and that was Cruchesmeh Marnamasagan Artivast Ugumph [phonetic].  Now, why hadn't I encountered this club in other places, is the question that I ask?  Were there other clubs, and more specifically, were there other Armenian clubs and figures excluded from the documents that I had been reading?  And if so, what was the significance of this seemingly-separate sporting world in late Ottoman Istanbul?  Now, I asked myself whether early 20th Century sports enthusiasts writing in Ottoman Turkish knowingly excluded Armenians from their discussions.  In other words, were they unaware of Artivasts [phonetic] and other Armenian sports clubs' activities, or were they knowingly ignoring them?  Now, an image of three sportsmen seemed to indirectly provide the answer.  Now, this titillating image featured three men posing and flexing their divine -- defined bodies.  That was a slip, but it was actually very enlightening [laughter].  Until that point, what had captivated my attention about this and similar images was the presentation of a gendered athlete that was modern, strong, beautiful, and also exotic.  The text, however, now offered a whole new layer of meaning.  Now, at the top of the page, the top right part of the page, the text reads "our robust bodies, [foreign word]."  Now, the three men are [foreign word], or the naval officer [foreign word], or the gymnastic instructor of Galatasaray club, and who was a major, [foreign word], and the [foreign word].  Now, together, the text and the images conveyed a number of points to readers.  First, these were robust, beautiful bodies.  Second, these Turkish male bodies were cultivated in sports clubs.  They're connected to -- these figures are connected to institutions.  And third, these bodies belonged to a group of people, not just themselves.  Okay?  So I asked, who were claiming these bodies?  Was it the magazine?  Was it its readers, a broader collective, a fan club?  Was there a difference between these different communities -- communities of readers, the magazine, or a broader collective?  Now, I concluded that the Ottoman Turkish sports magazine, through this image and others, was projecting an exclusive reading of sports in Istanbul, one in which Ottoman Turks were the main, if not the sole actors, okay?  And in doing so, what the magazine was doing -- it was erasing the presence of some Armenians -- excuse me, some Ottomans, and foregrounding the presence of others in the world of sports in the city.  Now, this conclusion haunted me, because of its implications.  Like the magazine, at that time, I was contributing to the historical erasure of many Ottoman citizens -- more broadly, and more specifically, Armenians.  
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Now, I asked, could I write an alternative history that accounted for, but did not reproduce, this erasure?  And if so, what would this history look like?  Was it different than the project that I had set out to study as a graduate student?  So I concluded that the answers were yes, I could write an alternative history.  However, in order to do so, I needed to expand my analysis of the historical actors, spaces, and institutions that made up physical culture in late 19th and early 20th Century Constantinople.
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What did this require?  This required an expansion of the project's archives, sources, as well as the languages that I used.  And it was at this point that I began to study western Armenian with a tutor, a very kind, generous, and lovely tutor, and consult Ottoman Turkish, but also Armenian sources.  Now, this proved to be an immensely challenging, but also rewarding exercise.  Now, the new methodological approach offered exciting insights into the ways in which Ottomans, from a plethora of different ethno-religious communities, shaped the defining contours of sports as a shared civic culture in Istanbul.  As a result, this approach fundamentally reconfigured the scope of the dissertation.  And now, the metamorphosis of the project enabled me to build on the insights of a new body of scholarship that graduate students and junior scholars of Armenian and Ottoman studies were producing over the past decade, okay?  Now, bringing together sources written in a diverse array of languages, investigating spaces, and transformations across ethno-religious divisions, and refusing to treat communal boundaries separating Armenians as Turks as historically static and impenetrable.  This new body of literature has produced what historian Lerna Ekmekcioglu refers to as an entangled history of the late Ottoman empire.  And in doing so, this scholarship has made significant contributions to both fields, but also helped challenge this -- basically, this divide between -- a firm divide between Ottoman and Armenian studies.  So what I'm going to do now is -- and this is what I'm going to do for the remainder of the project.  I'm going to focus on the ways in which sports can serve as an under-studied lens through which we can write an entangled history of the period.  And specifically, I'm going to examine the ideal masculine characteristics that Ottoman Turkish and Armenian sports enthusiasts worked out in a variety of spaces in late Ottoman Constantinople.  Now, Ottomans from a variety of professional stripes and interests contributed to discussions about the ideal man and his antithesis.  Novelists, journalists, intellectuals, as well as modernists, all offered views on the defining characteristics of this new type of man in the capitol more specifically, but also other urban centers of the Ottoman Empire, and the broader region.  Now, a major contributor to these discussions was the physical culture enthusiast.  So during the late 19th and early 20th Century -- centuries, advocates of physical exercise and team sports argued that it wasn't sufficient for a modern, middle-class man to study secular subjects in school.  This in and of itself was a debate.  But it wasn't enough to just study secular subjects in school, learn western languages, work in an office, frequent social functions, and dress in dapper clothes.  He had to develop athletic acumen, regularly exercise, and maintain a healthy and robust body.  Now, some of the earliest contributors to discussions about the importance of physical exercise in the construction of the ideal man were educators in a variety of Ottoman schools.  It was during this period that educators introduce and gradually institutionalize physical education into the curriculum of a number of different type of schools -- civil and military, foreign missionary, and a diverse array of non-Muslim communal schools -- Armenian, Greek, as well as Jewish.  Now, two leading institutions were Mekhtibi Sultani [phonetic], or the Imperial School, and this is an image of young men posing from the Imperial School, and Robert College.  Now, Robert College was founded as an American college, while Mekhtibi Sultani was based on the French lysee model, and was a government institution.  Now, Turkish and Armenian students at both institutions were exposed to the idea that they needed to perform physical activities in order to develop strength and athletic prowess, build character, cultivate mental and physical disciplines, as well as acquire a competitive toughness.  Educators asserted that by exercising and cultivating these characteristics on campus, students would develop into physically, morally, and spiritually sound young men.  According to supporters of sports, the regular performance of gymnastics in particular offered multiple benefits.  One of the primary ones was a strong, defined, and healthy body.  There's no debate there.  Lifting weights, stretching, and exercising helped students develop a firm body, and to fight off different types of diseases.  And this is the type of language that is used in a variety of different sources.  This hygienic, beautiful body was envisioned as a modern one.  Okay, so what we're doing here -- this stands -- may stand out as a beautiful body now, but what we're seeing is the historical production of that idea.  And it was deemed to be a modern body because its development required work, discipline, and effort.  Now, while gymnastics were deemed an important physical activity at Mekhtibi Sultani and many private minority schools, school officials at foreign institutions such as Robert College were more concerned with encouraging team sports, and forming school teams.  This is the Istanbul Dodgers.  That's a bad joke.  It's a baseball team from Robert College.  Educators believed that team sports, such as baseball, soccer, and basketball, even moreso than gymnastics, helped students build trust in each other, cultivate a respect for rules, and develop a commitment to teamwork.  Soccer and basketball's popularity did not catch on -- excuse me, basketball and baseball's popularity did not catch on, while soccer, on the other hand, did.  Okay.  Now, another space that advocated a distinction vision of the relationship between physical exercise and masculinity was the sports club.  So during this period of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, clubs -- sports clubs mushroomed in different neighborhoods around Istanbul as spaces where young men could exercise.  Now, upwardly mobile Armenians and Turks, as well as Istanbulites from various different backgrounds -- ethno-religious backgrounds, created and joined these clubs.  And this -- the emergence of sports club is part of a broader transformation, and that transformation was the creation of voluntary associations.  Now, sports clubs were predominantly, although not exclusively, spaces of male sociability.  And what they did was, they represented crucial sites where historically-novel male subjectivities were formed, negotiated, and performed.  Now, what these spaces did was, they attracted young -- likeminded and like-bodied young men by offering them a private space where they could spend their leisure time training their bodies, performing sports, socializing, and building homosocial bonds.  So what you're also seeing is the creation of leisure time as a space that needs to be filled with moral, productive activities, and the sports clubs provided this.  So what sports clubs did was, they served as a testing ground, a testing ground of an emerging middle-class masculinity in Istanbul where new conceptions of the self, defined in relation to the body, physical agility, a distinct look, and one's ethno-religious community came into being.  Now, to a large extent, these clubs embraced a shared civic vision of the defining characteristics of middle-class masculinity.  Young men needed to regularly exercise, compete on the pitch, maintain a well-defined physique, regularly bathe, shave their cheeks, wear neat and dapper attire, attend social functions, and also read.  This is a litany of different things that they needed to embody and to perform, and the sports clubs provided the space in which they accomplished this.  So at this -- but the same time, these clubs also projected an exclusive ethno-religious understanding of masculinity and sports.  So sports clubs were established along ethnic and confessional lines, and attracted members from a specific ethno-religious community.  And they served as spaces where young men built ethnic-based solidarity around a popular activity in the city.  Now, clubs conveyed their shared civic and exclusive ethno-religious reading of masculinity in a number of ways.  So the main language and symbols used, and the eponyms that organizations adopted projected a distinct ethno-religious identity.  So some clubs explicitly adopted names -- religious names, excuse me, while others were named after a heroic or mythological figure of the club's respective community.  So for example, the Maccabee Jewish Gymnastic Society [assumed spelling], the Hercules Gymnastics Association [assumed spelling], and the Armenian Dork Club [assumed spelling].  Now, in doing so, club founders sought to construct an awareness of the idea that the club served as a modern fraternity of young men who were inheritors of a deep history, a history of their community's corporeal strength, robustness, and valor.
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Now, club uniforms, which often featured different scripts, ethno-religious symbols, and/or posters conveyed the idea that this was an ethnically and religiously exclusive fraternity of young men.  So here we have the Besiktas Ottoman Gymnastics Club.  We have Ottoman Turkish being used, and actually, in the back -- this is a fascinating image -- there's a verse from the Quran with a bulging bicep as well.  Obviously, you all have this poster at your house [laughter].  And here's an image of the Armenian Dork Club.  The -- for -- the title doesn't carry the same resonance that it does in Armenian, and in English, obviously.  Those Armenian speakers, you can appreciate that.  Now, a young Turkish and Armenian man became a member of an athletic club by agreeing to abide by the club's internal regulations.  Here are internal regulations of the Dork Armenian Physical Training Union, and the Galatasaray Physical Training Club.  And paying regular membership fees.  Now, after becoming a member, what happened?  He received an identity card, which featured his name, and the date in which he was registered.  So what you're seeing is a cultivation of -- cultivation, production, and the performance of a self here, but also that's part of a broader community, right?  Community of the Besiktas Club, or the Armenian Dork Club, right?  Now, what did membership provide?  It enabled young men access to the various amenities that the clubs provided, such as a gymnasium, a full set of gymnastics equipment, and a shower, as well.  And this is some of the ways in which clubs distinguished themselves from others, right?  Who had the best shower?  Who had the best gym?  I hear people laughing, but, you know, this is serious stuff [laughter].  How do you choose your gym?  Now, these were things that, you know, Bulsahais [assumed spelling] and other community members were grappling with at the time.  Now, membership also enabled young men to perform their athletic dexterity in newly constructed spaces throughout Istanbul.  So basically, new, cool spaces where people would gather, such as stadiums, gardens, and theaters.  Soccer matches -- more properly, football matches, but we're not talking about the pigskin.  We're talking about the global sport -- athletic competitions, and gymnastics exhibitions attracted large crowds of spectators.  It facilitated both intra- and inter-communal social interactions, and what it did was, it celebrated the appearance of young men wearing club uniforms and performing novel and physically challenging activities.  Now, many of the athletic events, such as the Armenian Olympics, or [foreign word], Maccabee's annual gymnastics tournament, as well as other shows and competitions, were all organized in the same space.  And this was the main space.  Oh, that's of the Armenian Olympic games, but that's in the same venue as this.  This is the Union Club.  And a number of these activities maintained striking similarities as well.  So sports clubs, therefore, served as spaces in which young men cultivated distinct notions of the self.  Now, central to this identity was the commitment to a distinct understanding of the body.  Now, Turkish and Armenian members deployed photography as a means by which they recorded their commitment to a shared corporeal look.  Members had their photographs taken while dressing in dapper suits, starched shirts and ties, but also as well as posing bare-chested in order to highlight their sense of style and beautiful physique.  Now, there are two images that I want to show you.  So these images -- and they're part of a broader kind of sportsmen genre.  The one on the right, but also the left -- and I think of them as two sides of the same coin, that young men -- upwardly mobile young men had taken of themselves, and also shared as tokens of friendship, and potentially more.  Now, these images provide basically visual representations of these two interconnected tastes and looks of the gentleman athlete, which club members celebrated and promoted.  The one on the left is Ali Sami [assumed spelling], of the predominantly, although not exclusively, Turkish Galatasaray Physical Training Club.  And I should note, because this is being recorded, that I'm not a Galatasaray fan, necessarily [laughter].  I appreciate that.  As well as Yetvart [assumed spelling], on the right, Shahonazar [assumed spelling] of the exclusively Armenian Artivas Physical Training Club, okay?  Now, sports clubs served as one of the main spaces in which Istanbulites contributed to a broader discussion about middle-class masculinity.  However, these were not the only sites in which young men experimented with these novel ideas.  The press, for example, was the more public -- was a more public space than the actual association.  Now, the growth of literacy and the mushrooming of reading rooms throughout Istanbul and other urban centers of the empire ensured that a wider array of the citizens -- excuse me, of the empire's citizens.  Not just members of athletic associations, were visually and textually exposed to the view that young men should regularly exercise, perform gymnastics, and participate in team sports.  So to rephrase, I mean, think about it.  You didn't have to be a member of a club in order to see men performing in the stadium, the theater, and the garden, but also, you could read about that in the press.  And these were becoming increasingly common, both in terms of the publication of these ideas in daily newspapers, but also specialized magazines, okay?  And now, what these publications did, or what they constituted, at least in my estimation, is a public forum that provided Istanbul's growing reading public with articles focused on particular sports, scouting, and other sport-related leisure activities, but also on a wider array of issues of health, hygiene, and lifestyle.  And what these discussions did was, they offered this aspiring middle class with instructions and guides on how to become young, modern men by playing sports, having fun, exercising, and training their bodies.  Now, while the physical culture press embraced shared masculine ideals, like clubs, they also conveyed exclusive ethno-religious ties.  And this is accomplished both through the languages that are used, as well as addressing its reader, all right.  So the fact that Turks are addressed in an Ottoman Turkish publication as the reader, or Armenians, and specifically Armenians from Constantinople, suggests that the ideal reader is from this community, right?  And so, what you're having is the construction of an ideal Armenian self, or an ideal Turkish self in these publications.  So written by educators, leading members and administrators of sports clubs, doctors, as well as government officials, these publications insisted on the idea that young men needed to regularly exercise.  And they needed to exercise not just at the gym -- and this is what's fascinating about it, that you can exercise at the gym, in a school, but also at home.  So what you're having is the broadening of the spaces in which you can cultivate a new self.  Now, the sports press regularly ran guides, and here's an example of a guide.  An illustration in text and image on the defining characteristics of the ideal male body -- proportionality, strength, and health were all treated as interconnected.  A person who maintained a proportionate and defined body was considered strong, healthy, attentive, and disciplined.  Now, in addition to indicating acumen and competency, the proportionate, flexible, and defined male body was treated as beautiful.  And this is a really interesting point, how the term beautiful is not -- it's -- we're seeing it being gendered, but it's also applying to men here.  And you see both the Ottoman Turkish, [foreign word] being used, and [foreign word] being used in Armenian, okay?  Journals soon created entire sections for photographs of semi-nude young men run as regular features.  Here are two examples.  The portrait -- photographs published in these magazines included captions, and this is what's interesting, right.  Without the captions, these are just -- these are bodies that you can't necessarily identify whom they belong -- to whom they belong.  But because they're collated with text, what you're having is the inscription of confessional difference on these bodies, okay?  So here is a body of Jervat Bey [assumed spelling] on the left, and Wailim Safhibay [assumed spelling] on the right, both identified as Ottoman Turks.  
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This is an image of Krikor Hagopian, and again, you have the inscription on that body as an Armenian body with the Armenian text.  In addition to this, there's a description of that body.  Here's -- and the description is the following.  It refers to Levon Hagopian [assumed spelling] and his brother.  His brother's image doesn't make an appearance next to his, and the description is the following.  "They are among the few Armenian youth who take care of their bodies and glorify the Armenian name through their bodies, will, and muscle," end quote.  That's an intense sentence.  So together, what these images are doing is, they're establishing that these bodies -- and again -- and I haven't really talked about this yet, but this is a global phenomenon at the time, in the late 19th and early 20th Century.  Levon is raising his hand.  He's agreeing with me.  No, he's not.  But these -- this image of Levon Hagopian [assumed spelling] -- and Levon is a beautiful Bolsahai [assumed spelling] man, but that -- Levon can be found in Paris, in New York, right, in upstate New York -- hat's where I currently live.  Saratoga Springs, Los Angeles -- but it can also be found in Bolis.  And now, because that body is identified in Istanbul as a beautiful body in the imperial capitol, it's global, but it's also imperial.  With the text and the publication of that body in this publication, it's also confessional.  So simultaneously, that body is rendered global, imperial, and confessional.  Now, while educators in the sports press treated physical exercise as the primary means to construct the defining characteristics of the ideal man, other voices promised quicker and less conventional ways.  Istanbul's multi-lingual daily press is replete with advertisements for pills, which promised to provide men with vigor and muscle.  So an early 20th Century advertisement, for example, addresses, quote, "those who have lost the strength of youth," end quote.  So these are pills that promise to provide people strength, okay?  Now, other products sought to help men who were impotent.  Strong, beautiful, and healthy men were supposed to have a strong sex drive.  So -- I know it's a shock to all of us here.  Here's an a-historical statement that I'm making.  Impotence was a sign of weakness, okay?  Now, Amrita [assumed spelling] -- this is a publication -- excuse me, a type of -- an ad, and a product, served as one of the most well-known products that promised to restore the virility to all impotent men of all ages in the capitol who, quote, "conduct a regular life, but silently suffer from the mistakes of their youth."  And we can hear dun, dun, dun.  Amrita ran identical advertisements in Ottoman Turkish, Armenian, Greek, and French daily newspapers in order to reach these poor souls in the -- in the capitol, who were all afflicted by these -- who were all afflicted by impotency.  And here's the -- here are the ads.  Now, these two advertisements publish an identical caricature of an dapperly dressed gentleman and the following headline.  "Only for men, an important announcement for those who have lost the strength of the body."  Now, the advertisement is -- you know it opens a really interesting question about, you know, marketing.  I don't know how successful they were, because there's a lot of text here, but the text is very rich, in terms of what it -- it goes on to talk about how people actually become impotent, what are some of the immoral activities that they engage in.  Alcohol is one of them.  Gambling is one of them, and, I should warn you, dark and thick tea -- and tea as well, according to Amrita.  So if you have had a lot of tea and coffee today, you may want to look into Amrita [laughter].  Okay?  According to the product.  Now, it goes on.  It says, "I have prepared a miraculous and effective pill that will give hope and joy to those who are afflicted by impotency.  This pill that I have invented will heal the health of those men who have been completely weakened because of bad practices, or have been under the infrequence of unfavorable circumstances."  Keeps that kind of broad.  "This cure that I have invented is a blessing for everyone.  It gives everyone health and strength."  Now, what's going on here?  At first glance, gymnastics guides and advertisements for pills and tonics published in Istanbul's multi-lingual press seem to be fundamentally different.  However, I would argue they maintain striking similarities.  They all -- they're all concerned with helping men rejuvenate their bodies.  And as a result, they provide an insightful window into the diverging approaches that educators, writers, manufacturers, and advertisers proposed that the ideal man adopt in order to be a strong, beautiful, and virile body.  Now, moreover, these conflicting approaches constituted an emerging market, which treated the body as a central site of male subject formation.  Now, in conclusion, the writings of educators about sports, physical culture, the activities of club members -- they all demonstrate that young men articulated and performed their gendered identity by cultivating a defined body and regularly exercising, and were reading about exercise in late Ottoman Istanbul.  Together, sports, sports clubs, and the press served as spaces where Istanbulites from a variety of backgrounds, including Armenian and Turkish, experimented with new conceptions of the self.  Now, while I have demonstrated that Ottomans espouse similar views about the importance of physical exercise, techniques of the body, and athletic acumen, I have also attempted to highlight the fact that Ottomans worked out these ideas within spaces that projected exclusive ethno-religious ties, and that were firmly divided along confessional lines.  Thus, these clubs and the press might've embraced the share masculine ideal, but they also cultivated an exclusive ethno-religious identity among their readers and members.  Now, this, I want to stress, should not be interpreted as contradictory, at least in my estimation.  On the contrary, I think it invites us to examine -- and I'm speaking to all historians of the time period, really.  It invites us to examine the ways in which Turks and Armenians experimented with and shaped the defining contours of other novel practices, beliefs, and norms within the boundaries of ethno-religious communal spaces in a late imperial session.  Thank you for your attention.
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[ Applause ]
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>> Levon Avdoyan: Thank you, Dr. Yildiz.  Our next speaker is a dear friend of mine, and a colleague of many, many years, Theo van Lint, who is the professor of Armenian studies at Oxford University.  He has chosen one of my favorite poets of the 20th Century -- as a matter of fact, one of my favorite Armenian poets ever.  His talk is on "Poetry, Patria, and Pedigree, Eghishe Charents' Monuments and the Muse's Discontent."
>> Theo marten van Lint: Thank you, Levon, for organizing this wonderful gathering.  I am sorely tempted to do 10 pushups before I -- [laughter] before I start [laughter].  From the poetry of the body to the poetry of the Muse's Discontent, so -- [laughter].  Thank you very much.  Yes, so you see, friendship blossoms in many ways, and leads to all kinds of things.  "Poetry, Patria, and Pedigree, Eghishe Charents' Monument, and the Muse's Discontent."  A poem rarely exists entirely on its own, revealed by divine inspiration without any cultural context.  Almost every aspect of it exists thanks to a network of conventions, applied and tweaked anew in a never-ending flow of creative activity.  These carefully-chosen conventions carry particular meaning, and their application by poets through space and time is potentially very powerful, as they place their work both in a tradition and in their own contemporary context.  My contribution today addresses this double phenomenon of conventionality and contextualization through a poem by the Armenian modernist poet, Eghishe Charents.  It was the poem that triggered these considerations, not the phenomena addressed.  For me, the source of the study of literature is the text, from which all else follows.
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In January 1934, Charents finished a poem called "Monument" in Armenian, which is a first indication that something particular is going on.  So "Monument" -- the poet could have called it [foreign word], the usual and indigenous Armenian word.  Why use a word that had clear western and ancient overtones?  In fact, it hails back to a famous poem by the Latin poet Horace that is [foreign word], written just over 2000 years ago.  Its opening line is [foreign word], "I erected a monument more durable than bronze."  The connotation with classical imperial commemoration is visually present as well, as you can see.  The date is in Roman letters, in literally monumental capitals.  They are not Armenian ones, which are used to indicate numbers as well, as you know, or Arabic numbers, as is common in the western world, and as it was also in the Soviet Union, where Charents wrote his poem.  Yet, the reference is not direct.  It does not bridge 2000 years without intermediary, because the opening words of Horace's poem, [foreign word], are the motto of a famous Russian poem Eghishe Charents knew very well.  It was written in -- a Century earlier, in 1836, by Russia's national poet, Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin.  This is its opening line.  [foreign word], "I erected a monument for myself, not made by human hands."  What's going on here?  I'd like to spend the time allotted to this talk trying to suggest some answers to this question.  First, let us look at the poems.  That's always the most fun.  Latin, Russian, and Armenian -- I began with the Armenian one.  So here it is, "Monument."  
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[ Speaking in Foreign Language ] 
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Twelfth of January, 1934.  In English -- whoops, this is the young Charents, more or less, returned from the fighting around Van in 1915.  This is Charents as he may have looked when he wrote the poem.  And this is the English translation.  "I erected a monument for myself in a difficult age --" in a fraught age, perhaps -- "when everything was going to ruin around me, that for many years, for centuries, had stood, and had seemed immortal in the world.  I wove my monument out of songs profound and complex, from thoughts that are red hot anew, that carry life in themselves, that can flow in gushing forth from the fiery heart of my age.  I was born in Kars.  However, in my soul, the song of Iran was always a flame, like an old native yearning unquenched, but the native land of my soul became the entire world."  This is an image of the Church of the 12 Apostles in Kars, with the elevated castle in the background.  You can just about see it.  Now we go back 2000 years.  This is a newspaper photograph of Horace declaiming his poem in front of his audience.  I will read this in Latin in a very approximate meter, I must say.  It's not simple to follow this.  So I will make mistakes.  Let it be recorded.
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[ Speaking in Foreign Language ] 
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And this is another 19th Century impression of Horace, you see, wearing the laurels of the poet king.  The English translation here, which will give us some more insight, is by Ted Loker, taken from the all-present internet.  "I have created a monument more lasting than bronze, and higher than the royal site of the pyramids, which neither harsh rains nor the wild north wind can erode, nor the countless succession of years, and the flight of the seasons.  I will not entirely die, and a large part of me will avoid the grave.  Constantly renewed, I will grow in the eyes of posterity so long as the Pontifex and the solemn Vestal visit the Capitoline.  Where the River Aufidus roars, and where Daunus in the dry summers, ruled his rural folk, I, risen to greatness from humble beginnings, will be renowned as the first to adapt the Aeolian verses to Italian meters.  Take the well-deserved pride, Melpomene, and freely grant me the wreath of Apollo for my crown."  Personal fame and prowess as poets are central to Horace's poem.  Horace is one of the most-quoted classical authors in western civilization.  The Dutch big dictionary has 250 quotations from his work that phonated into 21st-Century Dutch.  The reason for his fame, however, does not lie in the fact that he was the first to put Greek verse into Latin meter.  That is of less importance to us than it was to him.  To trace the itinerary of Horace's work of almost two millennia is not my intention here, nor can I trace the particular root the Horace reception took in Russia.  But through 18th Century ground tours and enlightenment context, including the strong presence of French literature, as well as their school curriculum, well-educated youngsters like Alexander Pushkin -- or Sasha Pushkin, as he would've been then -- would have gained knowledge of the classics.  And here is Pushkin.  
^M00:47:02
^M00:47:07
And he is again, without Getty.  
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[ Speaking in Foreign Language ] 
^M00:48:26
And [inaudible].  "I've raised myself a monument not made by human hands.  The path of the people to it will never grow over.  Its insubordinate hat has risen higher than the Alexandrian pillar.  No, I shall not fully die.  The soul in my faithful lyre shall survive my dust, and shall escape putrefaction, and I shall be famous wherever in the sub-lunar world even a single poet lives.  Tidings of me will go out over all great Rus --"  Russia -- "and every tribe in every tongue will name me, the proud descendant of the Slavs, the Finn, the Tungus who is now savage, and the steppe-loving Kalmyk.  And for long shall I remain loved by the people, for awakening noble feelings with my lyre, because in my cruel age, I have celebrated freedom and called for pity to the fallen.  Oh, muse, be obedient to the command of God.  Do not be fearful of abuse.  Do not demand a crown.  Accept both praise and slander with indifference, and don't dispute with fools."  This is Pushkin, what he may have looked like in 1836, by Pyotr Sokolov.  The translation of this poem is by Catriona Kelly, professor of Russian at Oxford, who makes it a central pillar of her admirable, very short introduction to Russian literature.  One may wonder, what binds these particular three poems together, so wide apart in time and space?
^M00:50:01
The interrelationship between poems mentioned at the opening of this presentation and the trivial fact of temporal sequence give partial answers.  Charents built from Pushkin, who built from Horace, while Charents was, himself, part of the Russian-language reception of Horace.  Charents, the communist Armenian poet, was raised on the Russian and western European culture, apart from the Armenian one.  The Latin poetic tradition does not have a strong reception in Armenian literature, quite in distinction to the Greek one, which is overwhelmingly present from the beginning of the Armenian written tradition in the fifth Century.  It was only from the early modern period onwards, through the highly successful and culturally savvy Armenian merchants, as we have seen, and the Catholic Armenian Methodist fathers that [inaudible] and post [inaudible] European classical reception entered Armenian literature.  In the poems, a set of binary oppositions seem to present themselves -- poet and patron, poetry and politics, native region and the wider world, and the direction from local to world-encompassing.  And two more construed ones, perhaps, fame versus civilization, and the combination of poetry with freedom over against empire and oppression.  The latter opposition makes itself more clearly heard in Pushkin and Charents than in Horace.  The life and work of all three poets was defined, to some extent, by a patron, with all the shades that word can muster, Maecenas.  This literally was the name of the protector-become-friend of the down and out Horace, who was superbly gifted but financially broke after he had sided with the Republicans in the Civil War following the murder of Caesar -- Julius Caesar.  Horace had received the best possible education in Rome, and then in Athens among the elite of the empire.  Horace was then introduced by Virgil, the other great poet, to Maecenas, who gave him a villa, and thus the leisure to write quietly.  I would like that [laughter].  Ere long, Augustus, the emperor, offered him a position as his personal secretary, which he refused.  He also kept intrusions into his independence by Maecenas at bay.  This is a paradigmatic example of the way artistic independence is maintained in the need of patronage, and how recognition can be an even greater threat to it.  Being Augustus' personal secretary would've left him neither the leisure to write, nor, one must assume, the freedom to choose his own themes.  I mean, this is 2000 years ago.  It's still very actual.  Directly comparable are the cases of Pushkin and Charents.  The latter was embraced by the socialist system with state and art patronage.  Pushkin was a small aristocrat of mixed heritage.  He also received the best possible education, the elite lysee of [inaudible], followed by a life dedicated to poetry and court cavorting, or carousal.  However, Pushkin's outspokenness soon earned him exile.  Then, his poetic career took a turn, evoking Horace's fate.  Following the Decembrist uprising of 1825, Pushkin was interrogated by the Tsar in person.  The poet came out with honor intact, but had to accept the favor of the emperor's personal censorship.  In practice, this meant subjection to Count Alexander Benckendorff, founder of the secret police, precursor of the KGB, to the an institution that might lend him another term of exile, or worse.  We find echoes of this in one line in Pushkin's poem.  You may wonder which one.  [foreign word], "in my cruel age, I have celebrated freedom."  This line recurs, in fact, in the opening line of Charents' poem.  Nothing here about the quality of the monument, as in Horace's more durable than bronze, and Pushkin's not made by human hands, which by the way is a reference to ikons, that are not made by human hands.  But "I erected a monument for myself in a difficult age," followed by the devastating, dystopian lines allowing for an interpretation denouncing the revolution he had so enthusiastically embraced two decades earlier, as well as mourning the genocide of 1915.  "When everything was going to ruin around me that for many years, for centuries, had stood, and that seemed immortal in the world" -- the end of tradition, the end of immortality.  Does Charents predict his own immortality instead?  The last minutes allotted to me, I would like to spend on Charents' trajectory -- in particular, a brief consideration of the state of the art of poetry, and by extension, but flowing from it, the value of the word in today's society.  Where we stand, there seems ample reason for caution, seeing the value of the word in politics here in the United States, in the United Kingdom, and in my native Europe.  Where it is difficult to find people capable to unite the remnants of humanistic culture based on the Greek Judeo-Christian tradition into a vision for the continent in danger of caving in once again to ignorant populism and rampant nationalism.  Here, the muse's discontent comes to the fore in full force, as it had in Pushkin's and Charents' poems.  For we must be aware of the fact that both our disenchantments of Horace's triumphant proclamation of a victory of poetry over politics, and more generally, of culture over politics -- after all, he had erected a monument more durable than bronze, the stuff emperor's statues are made of.  He might just as well have mentioned the word marmer -- marble.  Moreover, if Pushkin's laconic final advice to the muse, and to himself, [foreign word], "and don't' dispute with fools," betrays a trust in rational persuasion, in Charents, we find a completely different emphasis, one that in my view is now more actual than it has been for some time.  [foreign word], "the native land of my soul became the entire world."  This is both a return to Goethe's ideal of [foreign word], world literature, and one to socialist -- to the socialist international, if you want -- an overcoming of nationalism and limiting origins in a forward-looking movement towards a better world.  Much could be said about this, as it represents a typical Charentsian paradox, in particular in his later years.  The communists denouncing totalitarianism, and the cosmopolitan atheists returning to the religious great of his native Armenian tradition, [foreign word], even more appreciated by him.  Possibly an understandable preference, given the free poet's temperament, but this is not the time and place to go into that.  What does need to be noted is the seemingly veering away from poetics to psychology.  Charents gives pride of place to the soul.  In fact, what happens here is, on the one hand, a consequence of the socialist realist forging of new souls, interpreted, one is tempted to say, without the encumbrance of ideology.  Of that, Charents had, by now, become more than a little wary, of which the opening stanza of the poem eloquently bears witness.  On the other, it is a consequence of the power of the alternative to the ideology of nationalism, the dire consequences of which he had witnessed in a genocidal attempt by the Ottoman Turkish government at the annihilation of his people under cover of World War I.  Precisely how the whole world became the native land of his soul is intriguing, because that is through the poetry, through the power of the word.  Therefore, no veering away, in fact, from poetry after all, but the strengthening of the bond between poetry and personality.  The last years of Charents life, in particular, bear eloquent witness to this.  He set out on a journey of absorption and creative expression while his life was in constant peril.  His work was taken away from him, as were his wife and children, and soon, his health and freedom as well, followed by death in prison.  The pressure must have been unbearable.  On 28th March, 1937, he writes, in quiet recognition of the fact that he turned 40, and had been a poet for 25 years, "I am celebrating my double jubilee, alone, and persecuted, a poet exiled in his own fatherland."  The late Charents awaits deeper exploration, and offers both pearls and cups of bitterness.  The philological situation of his later work is very, very difficult, due to the fact that it had to be buried in the ground, and we don't have anyone to tell us how he would have liked to have eventually edited it.  And so we have various editions of his work that bear no relationship to one another, nor a real account -- accountability of how these are represented.  There is a parallel with the work of Osit Mumbo Schtum [assumed spelling].  However, Osit Mumbo Schtum's widow knew everything by heart, and knew what he had wanted to do with it.  So there was a big difference there as well.  In 1937, Charents was somber about what he proclaimed in his monument.  It had been -- despite the clearly disillusioned tone, at least been partially triumphant.  So he says, and there are five separate lines published together, in one case with the fifth one lacking --
^M00:59:48
[ Speaking in Foreign Language ]
^M01:00:16
-- "you were born null and void, like a number with a zero overlooked.  In Kars, you may have been born, but the world was your fatherland.  Kars, and Maku [assumed spelling], and the world -- which was your land, poet?  Kars, and Maku, and the world -- all of it was your land, poet.  Woe to you, Charents, either way.  Neither your song nailed it, nor your life."  Charents' restlessness in his final years does not seem directed at the realization of a political ideal.  It has become clear that the communist experiment is both a farce and drenched in blood.  The poet's remaining energy is directed at two areas of life, it seems, and this needs checking -- poetry, and the exploration of religions, always engaged for the good of humanity.  What the conclusion has to be about the relationship between poetry and politics is unclear so far, for me.  A political system that murdered poets by the dozens clearly took the poet word extremely seriously, feared it, and tried to kill poet and destroy poetry itself.  Poetry is a means to find truth, to insist on honesty in life and society, forms part of the wider endeavor to speak truth to power, beginning with oneself -- truth to oneself.  Dire experience stripped Charents of all pretense, and in the end, what remained was the word, the word that had also been there in the beginning.  A contemporary of Charents, W.H. Auden, in January 1939, commemorating the death of William Butler Yeats, wrote three poems, in the second of which the following movement occurs.  "Poetry makes nothing happen.  It survives in the valley of its making, flows on south from ranches of isolation and the busy griefs, raw towns that we believe and die in.  It survives, a way of happening, a mouth."  Auden finishes the third and final poem as a blind song, in assured way keeping intact a belief of the power of the word as life-creating, and as a life-giving gift.  You probably know it.  It's a fantastic poem.  "Follow, poet.  Follow right to the bottom of the night.  With your own constraining voice, still persuade us to rejoice.  With the farming of a verse, make a vineyard of the curse.  Sing of human unsuccess in a rapture of distress.  In the deserts of the heart, let the healing fountain start.  In the prison of his days, teach the free man how to praise."  Such was the monument erected.  Did Charents seek to fathom similar deep wellsprings?  Thank you.
^M01:02:58
[ Applause ]
^M01:03:07
>> Levon Avdoyan: Thank you, Theo.  Please do not break your leg.  Yes.  We should've had stairs on this side, too.  Again, my thanks for that wonderful talk on Charents, and now we go from friend to friend and scholar to scholar.  And a denizen of Washington, D.C., and the director of analytical support and production staff in the Bureau of Intelligence and Research of the Department of State, Robert Krikorian, who will speak on the "Re-appropriation of the Past, History and Politics in Soviet Armenia, 1988-1991."
>> Robert Krikorian: Thank you very much.  As a government employee, I have to start with my standard disclaimer that my views do not reflect those views of the U.S. government, and that will probably come as no surprise [laughter].  Let me first really give a most sincere thank-you to my dear friend, Levon Avdoyan.  Levon has been a friend and a mentor for 32 years now, having met in 1986 when I first made it down to Washington, D.C.  So I have learned a tremendous amount, both from him personally and from all the wonderful programs that he has put on through the Library of Congress, so thank you.  Thank you, Mary Jane.  What I would like to do today is tell a few stories, and some of the stories that I will tell, some of you have lived through.  And some of you have helped me with my research, like my dear friend, Nerses Hayrapetyan.  So what I am going to do is to look at the role of history, how history is remembered, and the role that played in undermining communist legitimacy in Soviet Armenia from the years 1988 to 1991.  This is part of a much larger project that I undertook, but what I would like to do for today for a few minutes is extract the parts that relate to how the first Republic of Armenia was remembered in Soviet Armenia.  Because this is being the 100th anniversary of the Independent Republic of Armenia, I thought it might be a good pairing.  In terms of context, let me just say that I had the extraordinary good fortune of living in Soviet Armenia from 1988 to 1991, during the last three years of soviet rule.  I got to Soviet Armenia through a program that the soviet government had organized for all ethnic Armenians abroad to get an education in Soviet Armenia.  Now, I did not need a soviet education.  I had an American education that I was perfectly satisfied with, but I did not speak Armenian.  So I went to learn Armenian, and it so happened to coincide with the -- really the renaissance of the Armenian nation.  And so, for three years, I got to witness.  I got to participate.  I got to observe, and I got to gather lots and lots of material along the way that I was never quite sure what I was going to do with.  But I knew that what I was witnessing was important, and so when I went back to graduate school later in life to write a doctoral dissertation, I used a lot of that material to try to make sense of what had happened in Armenia in those three very short, but very, very intense years.  Right?  We have a sweep of Armenian history that goes back millennia, but in that very short period of time from 1988 to 1991, the whole world changed.  Not just Armenia, but the whole world changed.  No one predicted the collapse of the Soviet Union, except for someone named Andrei Amalrik, who wrote a book ^IT Will the Soviet Union Last Until 1980 -- Survive Until 1984 ^NO.  Unfortunately, he died before that, before the Soviet Union fell in 1991, so he didn't even get a chance to see that.  What I would like to do is talk a little bit about -- again, to contextualize about historical narratives, and the role that they play.  They're really the -- kind of the cornerstones of anyone's identity, right?  We have narratives in the United States, right?  The words we use matter.  They connote either where we stand socially, economically, or politically.  Interestingly, in the Soviet Union, history was one of the first things that the soviet state appropriated.  Imagine 1917 to the -- you know, when the revolution broke out, and then the following years of civil war, foreign intervention.  The soviet state -- the Bolshevik party was fighting for its very survival.  Yet, it devoted very limit -- its very limited resources -- it devoted a considerable amount of resources to making sure that it controlled the historical record.  It created something called [foreign word], a party committee devoted to history, and devoted to making sure that the narrative supported the ideological goals of the state.  So what that means is that, in the Armenian case, Armenia inherited the soviet system, the soviet ethos, if you will, but they never accepted it wholeheartedly.  And there was always a little pushback, right?  There was always a little tension between what the soviet central authorities wanted, and what the Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic actually did.  So I think there are two quotes -- and we don't have the makeup artist here to try to dampen the moisture, but hopefully that won't come out too badly on film.  There's two quotes that I would like to use.  In the Soviet Union, every profession had a professional journal.  If you were a tractor driver in Ufa, you had your own journal.  If you were a tube player in Krasnoyarsk, you had your own journal.  Well, the historians had their own journals, too, right, and one of them was called [foreign word], "Problems or Questions of History."  And every issue started with an editorial, right, and that kind of laid out what the party line would be for that issue, and kind of where soviet history stood.  
^M01:09:49
So there's a wonderful quote from 1960, and it says, "The study of history has never been a mere curiosity, a withdrawal into the past for the sake of the past.  Historical science --" and everything for them was a science, so -- "historical science has been, and remains, an arena of sharp ideological conflict."  Now, perhaps more indicative of this approach would be from Nikita Khrushchev, who had a reputation, let's say, for being somewhat more earthy in his pronouncements, and he declared that "Historians are dangerous people.  They are capable of upsetting everything.  They must be directed."  So that is the backdrop for what I will now present, and I have my clock here.  Tell me, what time would you like me to stop?  It is 2:26.  Okay.  So, the reassessment of history at the end of soviet rule in Armenia -- it didn't take place in isolation.  It occurred simultaneously with and as an integral part of unprecedented political, economic, social, and intellectual changes that were taking place, a result of Gorbachev's policies of Glasnost.  Developments in any one of these spheres -- political, economic, social, intellectual -- influenced the nature and pace of change in the others in an interconnected process that culminated in the collapse of soviet power in Armenia, and the reestablishment of an independent state.  These processes, in turn, were deeply influenced by events in other parts of the Soviet Union and eastern European.  Mikhail Gorbachev's policy of Glasnost gave the initial impetus to a more open discussion of the problems facing soviet Armenian society.  These early discussions, which focused on topics of contemporary relevance, such as the environment, the state of education in the republic, the status of the Armenian language, Armenian culture, also included an important historical component, as Armenians strove to understand the origins of the problems affecting their society.  The search for the roots of environmental, educational, and cultural questions in Armenia inevitably involved the study of history.  For example, environmental degradation was traced back to the industrialization policies of Stalin, which led to a closer look at Stalin's other policies in Armenia, including the drawing of borders and the loss of Karabakh and Nakhchevan to Azerbaijan.  The exploration of these issues soon gave way to a more broadly-based reevaluation of the soviet and pre-soviet Armenian historical experience.  The emphasis on historical issues was of more than just academic interest.  It had political implications as well.  Historical interpretation in Armenia was given relevance in February of 1988 with the spontaneous formation of a mass social movement throughout Armenia agitating for the secession of the Nagorno-Karabakh autonomous district from Azerbaijan, and its unification with Armenia.  The borders of Nagorno-Karabakh were established in the early 1920s with the direct participation of Stalin, who arranged for the region to be placed under the administration of soviet Azerbaijan.  It was this perceived historical injustice that mobilized the Armenians into action, with the hope that under Glasnost, a rectification of borders might be possible.  Using history as a means to demonstrate the justice of their cause, Armenians began to draw wider historical lessons from their experiences in the pre-soviet and early soviet periods, which steadily led to the undermining of soviet legitimacy in Armenia.  In order to increase their chances of resolving the Karabakh issue to their satisfaction, Armenians turned to history to demonstrate that the region was historically Armenian, and should be placed under the control of Yerevan.  They pointed to the involvement of Stalin and the injustice that had occurred under soviet Azerbaijani administration throughout the years.  This instrumental use of history by the Armenians in 1988 was just the beginning of a full-fledged historical reassessment of Armenia's past, the outcome of which would have profound implications for the entire nation.  The process of historical reassessment was fundamentally altered by the February-March pogrom against Armenians in the Azerbaijani industrial city of Sumqayit.  That event, more than any other, changed the course of events in soviet Armenia.  It broke a tacit social contract between the soviet state and the Armenian people, which had been in place since the early days of soviet rule.  This social contract assured Armenian acquiescence to soviet rule in exchange for the physical security and protection from the Turks, Armenia's most serious security threat.  Although this might not seem like much of a bargain, it must be viewed in the context of the atrocities perpetrated against Armenians in the Ottoman Empire in 1915.  Despite the atrocities committed under Lenin and Stalin, they never reached the same level of intensity.  This geopolitical reality allowed Armenians to come to terms with soviet rule in their country.  The memory of 1915 was kept alive throughout the years of soviet rule by survivors, by scholars, and by the intense feelings of the general public.  The persistent denial by successive Turkish governments only served to deepen the importance Armenians attached to their national tragedy.  The events at Sumqayit had a profound impact on Armenians, and resurrected painful historical memories and images.  The close ethnic and linguistic ties between Azerbaijanis and Turks only served to reinforce the connection between the two events in the minds of most Armenians.  Sumqayit occurred so close to the beginning of the democratic movement in Armenia that it is impossible for this event not to indelibly mark the course of the movement from the outset.  Thus, from the very beginning, the struggle over Karabakh, and the creation of a national democratic movement in Armenia, perception of current events was colored by an understanding of the past.  And conversely, a particular reading of the past influenced the ways in which the present was seen and understood.  History and politics, inextricably linked in Armenia in the years leading up to the dissolution of the Soviet Union, and the interconnection between the two played a leading role in the determination to secede from the USSR and reestablish an independent state.  The interpreters of the Armenian past were not just historians, but intellectuals more generally.  And their deconstruction of the soviet narrative, so laboriously fabricated over 70 years of communist control, would prove decisive in the process of redefining Armenian national identity, and laying the groundwork for a post-soviet Armenian identity.  Through the use of the mass media and publishing houses, Armenian historians and other intellectuals reshaped popular perception of the past, which in turn influenced the present.  The reassessment of history in Armenia was neither completely elite-driven, nor did it emanate exclusively from below.  Instead, it was a symbiotic process, in which historians and other intellectuals commenced with a wide-ranging debate about the past at the same time that the general reading public was getting excited about the fresh interpretations made possible by Glasnost.  Popular interest in the past meshed with a renewed interest and renewed spirit of scholarly inquiry, as historians began the dismantling of soviet revisionism.  This resulted in nothing less than a revolution in thinking among soviet Armenians about themselves, and their place in the world.  Having become accustomed over the years to be skeptical of the heavy-handed soviet approach to history, the Armenian reading public greeted Glasnost warmly, and showed great interest in the new interpretation of their past.  Armenian skepticism, in part, was a result of the clumsy nature of soviet revisionism.  It was also the result of the extensive use of oral history in Armenia as the elder generations passed down to the younger generation memories of a pre-soviet and non-soviet past.  Discussion of the independent 1918 to 1920 pre-soviet Republic of Armenia was closely connected to and occurred simultaneously with reinterpretation of events such as the liberation movement, the Armenian Genocide, et cetera.  This was understandable, as many of the leading figures of the liberation movement went on to play leading roles during the independent republic.  And of course, the foundation of the republic occurred in the midst of war and revolution.  Armenia became a soviet republic in December 1920, as a result of a joint soviet-Turkish assault.  The new Bolshevik rulers inherited a devastated and exhausted country, and needed to quickly establish their legitimacy and consolidate their rule.  One method of legitimizing their rule was to employ a tactic perfected throughout all the lands of the former Russian Empire.  This was to discredit and delegitimize the rule of the predecessor regime -- in this case, the Armenian Revolutionary Federation.  
^M01:20:02
As Marxists, the new soviet leaders found the ideology of the Armenian nationalists anathema, and they lost no time in leading the -- in labeling the dashnaks as, quote unquote, "bourgeois nationalists, imperialist lackeys, narrow-minded chauvinists, and irresponsible adventurers."  They blamed the dashnaks for the loss of independence, and credited the Bolsheviks with, quote unquote, "saving Armenians from the destruction at the hands of the Turks."  By thus discrediting the previous regime, the soviets were able to gloss over the uncomfortable fact that they had allied with the Turks who were responsible for massacring Armenians, and then jointly invaded and occupied an independent state.  The Bolshevik alliance with the nationalist forces of Mustafa Kemal was completely ignored in soviet historiography, while the alleged voluntary reunion of Armenia and Russia was stressed instead.  The soviets portrayed the leaders of the independent republic as inexperience bourgeois nationalists who understood nothing about governance, and who were blinded to the reality of Armenia's dire situation by the promises of the western capitalist powers.  They accused Armenia of being an outpost of imperialism that was used to weaken and undermine the socialist revolution in Russia, and drive an artificial wedge between the working classes of Armenia and Russia.  It's probably important to note that Armenia really didn't have a working class at this point, but we don't have to digress too far to see the contradictions.  The lack of information and supression of knowledge in Armenia regarding the independent republic served soviet interests in several ways.  First, it allowed the soviets to present the republic as an experiment that failed because of the inexperience and immaturity of its leaders, and their inability to prevent the hostile takeover by Turkey.  According to the soviet version of events, the adventurous dashnaks had initiated a war against the Turks, which ended with the defeat of Armenian forces.  Only the timely humanitarian intervention of the Bolsheviks prevented the complete destruction of the Armenian people.  This version also served the interests of the communist party in Armenia by portraying the Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic as the culmination of Armenian national aspirations, thus increasing their own legitimacy.  This recounting of the events of 1918 and 1920 was an important part of the soviet grand narrative for Armenia, which was reinforced over the years through constant and sustained propaganda, both in the schools and in the public sphere.  The information that was publicly available about the Independent Republic of Armenia was almost uniformly negative, stressing the nationalist and thus evil character of the fledgling state.  Dashnak became synonymous with bourgeoisie nationalist, and the ultimate political pejorative, as were the terms Musafatist [assumed spelling] in Azerbaijan, Bazmachi [assumed spelling] in central Asia, Menshevik [assumed spelling] in Georgia, and Banderite or Pepurst [assumed spelling] in Ukraine.  During Glasnost, however, this soviet narrative came under sustained criticism in Armenia by both intellectuals and the public, as a vigorous and open debate developed on the nature and significance of the independent republic.  This was the first independent Armenian state that had been created since the fall of the Mediterranean Kingdom of Cilicia in 1375.  The previous lessons transmitted to the population by Moscow through soviet Armenian historiography were challenged by new interpretations.  These interpretations stress the important symbolic value of the republic as an independent Armenian state.  This debate on the independent republic opened slowly at first, as historians and the public were hesitant to openly discuss the subject of independence.  There seems to have been fear among certain circles of intellectuals and the public that discussion of the independent republic would be seen by Moscow as a sign of disloyalty and possible separatism.  Armenians were already being accused of these things because of their support for Karabakh, and did not want to exacerbate tensions further.  The only consistent calls for independence came from the Armenian Self-Determination Union, and the supporters of the dissident Paruyr Hayrikyan.  At a public rally on May 28th, 1988, which was the 70th anniversary of the declaration of Armenian independence, a telegram was supposedly sent to the Supreme Soviet, asking for that date to be declared Armenian Independence Day.  This group had not yet been able to win over the mass public support for the idea of independence, though, and throughout most of '88, the subject of the independent republic was not on the public agenda.  But as the conflict over Karabakh intensified, and an acceptable political resolution seemed far-off, attitudes began to change.  This change of opinion about independence was escalated in the aftermath of the December '88 earthquake, and the soviet Armenians -- excuse me, the soviet authorities proved incapable of alleviating the suffering of the people.  Disillusionment with the authorities was heightened by the active participation and organizational skill of members of the Armenian Democratic Movement.  Thus, from '89 on, more emphasis on the independent republic became discernible in the public sphere.  This was most noticeable at the regular mass meetings that were held in Yerevan, as symbols of the old republic began to appear.  The red, blue, and orange tricolor of the independent republic was in evidence.  It was considered a great honor to be the chosen flag-bearer by the organizers of the mass meetings.  Some of my young friends at the time made sure they got there as early as they could, and got to know the organizers so that they would have an opportunity to hold the flags.  And they would be willing to hold them for hours and hours in the blazing sun, and they thought that that, for them, was a great honor.  Buttons, pins, and other paraphernalia related to the Independent Republic of Armenia were also produced in large numbers by activists, and distributed at the rallies, or sold along the route.  Public curiosity about this previously forbidden aspect of the Armenian past was mirrored by an increase in scholarly interest.  One of the more prominent historians of this new approach, who's representative, but by no means exclusive, was Goodrik Sardariyan [assumed spelling], who wrote extensively in the mass media on the formation and development of the republic.  He developed the idea that Armenia's most pressing problems were the result of its lack of statehood, also noting that Armenians needed to be more realistic in their approach to political life, and understand that having a just cause was not enough to ensure victory.  Sardariyan turned to the history of the Republic of Armenia in an effort to understand the problems and experiences of an independent state.  He criticized those embraced the idea of an independent Armenia without understanding the full implications of such independence.  Although he supported the idea of independence, he feared the consequences of precipitous action.  He concluded that without a sober assessment of history and Armenia's current situation, Armenians would end the 20th Century in the same way that they started it.  This stark warning for caution was echoed in other quarters as well, but in the atmosphere of escalating violence against Armenia and Karabakh, most people concluded that independence would be a better option than continued membership in the Soviet Union.  In recognition of the symbolic importance ascribed to the Republic of Armenia by soviet Armenian intellectuals, the Academy of Sciences elected Richard Hovannisian, the foremost scholar of the independent republic, to be a member of the Armenian Academy in 1990.  This was one of the very few times that a foreign member was inducted into the academy, and was the first time that a foreign historian of the modern period was allowed in.  This was a clear signal that Hovannisian's work on the Independent Republic of Armenia was considered indispensible for a fuller and more accurate understanding of modern Armenian history.  There was much talk among historians for the need to have Hovannisian's work translated into Armenian as soon as possible in order to prepare the country for renewed independence, renewed statehood.  The new positive image of the Independent Republic of Armenia presented Armenian historians -- presented by Armenian historians was enthusiastically adopted by local nationalists and used as a symbol of local autonomy and sovereignty in their struggle against Moscow.  Thus, discussion of the independent republic carried an anti-soviet connotation from the outset.  This was mirrored by many local Armenian political activists, who identified themselves as dashnaks, although very few of them actually knew what the ARF's political position was, or the party's platform, or the party's goals beyond a free and independent Armenia.  They were nevertheless calling themselves dashnaks, because to them, that was the symbol for a free and independent Armenia.  In the highly charged political atmosphere of Armenia, for most people, that meant anti-soviet, and being anti-soviet, in some quarters, became increasingly equated with being pro-Armenian.  In this new spirit of defiance, there was a reassessment of the foundational battles of May 1918, the battles of Sardarabad, Bash Abaran and Karakilisa, in which Armenians were able to stop Turkish forces from invading the eastern part of Armenia, and finishing the job that they had started in 1915.
^M01:30:14
Soviet historiography had tended to portray these battles as important instances of self-defense which saved the Eastern Armenians from the same fate.  They were not viewed, however, in the context of the founding of an independent state.  Given that Armenian independence was declared immediately after these battles, it seemed an odd omission, but one completely in keeping with the ideological needs of Communist Party.  As Soviet legitimacy was called into question, these battles took on an added significance.  In addition to their importance as self-defense battles, they were also presented by historians and accepted by the public as foundational events in the process of restoring Armenian independence.  They ascribed new significance to all this as the conflict of [foreign word] continued to worsen.  In Moscow, increasingly -- was increasingly seen in Armenia as unwilling or unable to be an honest broker between Armenians and Azerbaijanis, the reestablishment of an Armenian state was discussed more frequently.  It was in the context of current events that the legacy of the republic came to be viewed.  Part of this reassessment consisted of trying to draw lessons as to the root causes of failure.  In conclusion, the historians identified three main causes for the failure of the Republic to survive.  The first cause was directly related to 1915 with the destruction of Ottoman Armenians still occurring at the time of the foundation of the Republic and the territory of the fledgling state flooded with refugees, the establishment of independent state was viewed as an astonishing feat in and of itself.  The second major factor in the defeat of the independent republic was the attitude and behavior of Lenin and the Bolshevik Party, including Stalin.  Bolshevik collusion with Kamala's Turkey and the dismemberment of Armenia only served to delegitimize Soviet rule even further.  And the third factor, identified by Armenian historians, was the indifference and contradictions among the great powers.  The promises to end Ottoman oppression extended to the Armenians during the war led many Armenians to believe that their hour of liberation was at hand.  These promises went unfulfilled, however, as the interests of the great powers took precedence over any moral obligation they have -- may have felt for the plight of the Armenians.  So at the end of the Soviet period Armenians were faced with a choice.  And for most, independence was not the first choice, right?  The choice was to try to renovate the Soviet Union to make it work.  But the way events evolved, the Armenians had to rethink.  And so by -- in rethinking their position, they looked to history, not just to the Republic.  They also looked to the ancient and medieval period where they were able to show the continuity of Armenian statehood from pre-Christian era to the present.  They looked at the Liberation Movement.  They looked at our cultural inheritance, our connections with the West.  And all of those things together helped delegitimize Soviet rule in Armenia and laid the foundations for independence.  And, hopefully, that will be a nice segue to my friend and colleague, Nerses.  Thank you.
^M01:33:39
[ Applause ]
^M01:33:46
>> Levon Avdoyan: In 1994 I met a young librarian here in the United States.  And that was my first exposure to the new library world in Armenia.  I want to say a few words about librarians in Armenia if I may.  As far as I'm concerned they have been in the forefront since independence of building a new Armenia, and actually in the forefront of diplomatic efforts with all -- between the three states of the caucuses, and I have nothing but high praise for the libraries and librarians that I have seen.  Now, when I first visited in 1996 after independence, the conditions were not very good.  There was no heat, there's obviously no air conditioning, the - so please don't complain anymore [laughter].  The salaries were nonexistent or very low.  These people went to work under conditions that most of my colleagues would probably have resigned years ago.  And so all this to say that I have nothing but respect for all librarians and especially for the two librarians with us today.  I call both of them friends.  And Nerses is not only a friend; he's a [foreign word], he's a brother of mine.  And I would like to introduce to you one of the founders of the Armenian Library Association, former Assistant Director of the National Library of Armenia, the Director of the Informa -- an Information Resource Center at the United States Embassy in [foreign word], who has been actually, as a side duty, regulating the exchanges of Armenian libraries with the Library of Congress, and a specialist on book arts and history in Armenia.  And Nerses Hayrapetyan will be speaking about [foreign word] and the emergence of the contemporary Armenian press. Nerses.
^M01:35:59
[ Applause ]
^M01:36:03
>> Thank you, Levon.  It's an honor to be at the Library of Congress.  Exactly 24 years ago I first -- my step was, first step to the Library of Congress was in April 30, '94.  And I shall start -- before starting my official presentation, I should like repeat the same sentence like my friend Robert told that my disclaimer that my opinion not necessarily, you know, is the same like the U.S. government.  So -- but I'm talking -- my topic is rather interesting.  I was dealing with the Armenian new periodical press or -- during those [inaudible] movement years, and little by little collecting information.  Mostly bibliographic information at that time.  If I knew that it is so important to collect pieces also because at firstly there is not any library in Armenia that has this all, you know, rich collection of -- some [inaudible] data now traditional press.  What is the -- ah, we have it.  Okay.  Some is that originated from the dissident movement in Russia.  The Russian [foreign words] coined the version of the term in 1952 when he typed copies of his poems and included the not some [inaudible] is that.  "Myself, by Myself" publishes on the front page.  The individuals reproduced censored and underground publications by hand or printed on semi-professional printing presses and passed the documents from reader to reader.  Russian dissident and prominent figure, Vladimir Bukovsky summarized it as follows.  "Some is that.  I write it myself, editi it myself, censori it myself, publishi it myself, distribute it myself [laughter], and may get imprisoned for it" [laughter].  The history of Armenian [inaudible] is that started I should say in '60s.  And in the Russians, some is that rose as an underground movement to create and distribute literary texts.  The Armenian sum is that, was the political protest for a national unity and independence.  The roots of Armenian [inaudible] is that are closely tied with the 1965 year [inaudible] demonstrations.  On April 24, 1965, 100,000 protestors held a 24-hour demonstration in [foreign word] on the 50th anniversary of the commencement of the Armenian Genocide.  Around that movement, the first legal political partisan groups were established.  The National United Party was founded in 1966 on April 24 by Haykaz Khachatryan, Stepan Zatikyan and Shahen Harutyunyan.  The Party issued and distributed the first issue of its periodical ^IT Paros, Lighthouse ^NO in October, 1967.  In 1968, they published and distributed another journal titled [foreign words], in the name of the homeland.  
^M01:40:01
And, lastly, in 1969, National United Party published its third journal, [foreign word].  When the founders were imprisoned in 1968, Paruyr Hayrikyan became head of the party.  After the arrest of active members, the National United Party, until the late '80s, until the perestroika and glasnost period, only one issue of the Armenian [inaudible] is their publication was published.  In 1981, [foreign words] published the last, fourth issue of ^IT Paros Newspaper ^NO.  The Armenian [inaudible] that was reborn in 1987 when the Union for National Self-Determination Party was established by Paruyr Hayrikyan.  UNSD published the ^IT Independence Weekly Newspaper ^NO, starting from October 24 of 1987.  The ^IT Independence Weekly ^NO was the first alternative political periodical not only in Armenia but one of the firsts in the entire Soviet Union.  The ^IT Independence ^NO had chosen [foreign words] or Armenian people, your only salvation is in your collective power lying as your epigram.  
And you can see it on the first -- on the left side.  The self-published was of small scale.  Only 85 [inaudible].  In the beginning, ^IT Independence ^NO looked very simple.  Only text without any illustrations.  In the state of being a self-publishing, the front page would often feature the national emblem of the Republic of Armenia.  Later, also the NSDU emblem.  The final pages presented the sponsors of the newspaper -- of course, with their permission.  Not only ^IT Independence ^NO did so, but also other self-published newspapers as that [inaudible] et cetera.  It is worth nothing that the newspapers were printed by the personal means of the publishers and with the support of individuals.  The materials were in a row without any illustrations, typewritten.  The plot was rich though.  The newspaper's priority was the self-determination of the Armenian Nation.  The idea of independence of Armenia and those were constantly vacant consciousness in the civil society.  The materials related to this topic were very many in the self-published.  [Inaudible] we and our fight article appeared in the very first number of the newspaper where he spoke of the necessity of national self-determination, mentioning that some people are suffering from [inaudible].  He wrote that there are no ever-lasting enemies in [inaudible] lives.  Yesterday's enemy may become tomorrow's ally.  He highlighted the idea of national self-determination, the nation's imperative to control its own destiny, and considered any intervention on [inaudible] illegal and non-human.  Offering to create [inaudible] National Armenia through a referendum, the author thinks that this very idea can bring the nation together.  The ^IT Independence ^NO was one of those few periodicals that was keeping a chronological record of the events connected with our [inaudible] moment in 1988.  The Soviet Union official press was either silent on the event or was presenting them distorted in the light favorable for the authorities.  The official press was presenting the leaders of the [inaudible] growing movement as national extremists, while the criminal persecution against them as fight against  crime.  It is obvious that there was a political presentation against the leaders and activists of the movement.  In the history of the newest Armenian periodical press, the self-published independencies, the first to preach firmly the idea of rebuilding Armenia's independent statehood and deny any other solutions like becoming a member of the renewed Soviet Union or Confederation.  The first sum is that publication in 1988 was [inaudible].  Bi-monthly which was published by the Union of Difference of Armenian Cause.  Several months later UDAC started the [inaudible] publication, [foreign words], Armenian Cause in Russian.  And the same year in May, the National Self-Determination Union started its new publication, [foreign words], Motherland.  [Foreign words] was a national political publicist journal which was repeat by [foreign words], one of the founding members of NSDU and national hero.  In total in sum is that period in 1988/1991, 11 issues of ^IT [Inaudible] Journal ^NO was published.  It covered wide range of subject areas.  For example, national materials of the fifth issue of 1988 are divided in the following chapters -- call to [inaudible] or All Armenian National Movement, opalescence of history, truth without borders, thinking loudly, human rights defender, and is the [inaudible] documents and Armenian freedom fight.  Letters were more [inaudible] were published in 1994/'98 and 2000.  Although first independent periodical, the newspaper [foreign words], was published on October 24, 1987.  The evolution of some is that really began in February, 1988 with the movement for the reunification of Nagorno-Karabakh and Armenia, generally referred to as the Karabakh Movement.  The most influential periodical [inaudible] and [foreign words] published by the NSDU [inaudible] of the same [inaudible].  Publications of the Karabakh Committee and all Armenian National Movements including the [foreign words], Bulletin, [foreign words], Speaker, and [foreign words], Et Cetera.  
^M01:47:13
^M01:47:19
The other and official self-publication was ^IT Mashtots ^No.  It began to be published on  April 8, 1988,  The editors were [foreign words].  In fact, [foreign words] was the literary nickname of the famous journalist and publicist, [foreign words].  By the way, [inaudible] recently -- he's working on different documentaries and the link in the bottom you can find on Twitter.  It's about the Armenian and Russian [inaudible] and you can find several interesting interviews with those people who published in Armenian [inaudible] is that newspapers.  ^IT Mashtots ^NO have published 20 issues.  It was also of scale more like brochure, but the scale was inconsistent.  If the second issue published in 1989 had 61 pages, the third could have 38 pages.  The third published was also typewritten on a plain A5 format paper.  The pages were bound and enumerated.  It highlighted those pictures of Karabakh Committee members, the historic loopholes of the First Republic of Armenia, especially those that during the Soviets were kept in secrecy.  For instance, in the May, 1989 issue the memoirs of the Prime Minister of the First Republic of Armenia, Hovhannes Kajaznuni, were published.  These topics were not only a closed door for the Soviet press, but also many of the political figures of the first republic were considered anti-Soviet, and topics about them were not permitted by the censors.  And that time, I was a Deputy Director of the National Library, and our closed talks for political reasons, it had like a 57,000 different items.  Could you imagine how much was the, you know, censorship taking over the library.  In the fifth number of ^IT Mashtots ^NO, self-published, brought it out in September, 1989.  A well-known historian and linguist, Raphael [foreign word], the law of excluding the third force article was published. 
^M01:50:06
Later on, it was republished in [inaudible] Daily and got a lot of public attention in Armenia and Diaspora.  Moreover, according to historian [foreign words], this was the article that made ^IT Mashtots ^NO self-publication prominent.  It wouldn't be an exaggeration to claim that the article served as a guideline for the Karabakh Movement as the author called on to rely only on own forces.  Why in solving the problems with neighbors highlighted the importance of eliminating the third party, as the third parties have their own interests.  It is worth to note that for the first time in 70 years, the people living in Soviet Union were not only listening about becoming independent from Russia, but also a call to solve the problems on their own.  This was not accepted without [inaudible] though.  In autumn, 1989, most of the official newspapers were under strong influence of Armenian revolution.  In October/November [foreign words] and ^IT Avant-Garde ^NO, those are newspapers published in Armenia, started publishing news and articles to highlight the activities of the All Armenian National Movement.  During the [inaudible] a new -- a few newspapers and few issues of periodicals were still being printed in the established press in the traditional number.  The sum is that period of an official period because ended with the first issue of the [inaudible] newspaper published on November 2, 1989, on the occasion of the All Armenian National Movement First Congress.  Since January, 1990, [Inaudible] continued its regular uninterrupted publication in a last run.  In 1989, there were three unofficial publications which were published at state printing houses.  However, the sum is that period because did not disappear, and the competition between all the new periodicals entered a new stage.  The years 1990/'91 began a new phase which we have defined as the Period of Transition.  We have used the term transition because the official press at long last did not withstand the competition and collapsed, clearing the road for the new one's while the -- at the same time, new global changes had started, from the past to the present, from forced to self-determination, toward independence.  In 1991, the traditional political parties, namely [foreign words] Armenian Revolutionary Federation --
^M01:53:18
[ Speaking in Foreign Language ]
^M01:53:23
-- Democratic Liberal Party of Armenia, Social Democrat and [foreign words], Social Democrat [inaudible] Party, were reestablished and subsequently began publishing activities on [inaudible].  On February 16, 1991, the first issue of --
^M01:53:42
[ Speaking in Foreign Language ]
^M01:53:46
-- was published, although the [foreign word], the founders, were five council members -
^M01:53:50
[ Speaking in Foreign Language ]
^M01:53:56
-- and others.  But their fact rate was the organ of Democratic Liberal Party of Armenia.   
Within the course of years, [inaudible] among the pioneers that brought the cultural Western journalist practices in Armenia.  The other influential publication was [foreign words], ^IT Homeland ^NO.  An official of Armenian Revolutionary Federation [foreign words].  Central Committee of [foreign words].  In mid-1993, the [foreign words] daily reached to 55,000 which was the largest opposition [foreign words].  The Armenian Revolutionary Federation established its own printing house [foreign words], that was the only alternative print house to the [foreign words] owned [inaudible] publishing house.  Their periodical press was printed either by [foreign words] or [foreign words] printing houses.  And at the end of 1996 the Republic of [inaudible] the Minister of Justice have reduced it already 54 political parties and sociopolitical organizations of which almost half have or had their own organ print newspaper.  
^M01:55:15
^M01:55:21
Among the core topics of discussion, in sum, is that periodicals.  Those are the Armenian [inaudible] issue which direction to follow.  Either keep them ordering if they're not Armenian or return to the language roots and implement the classical Armenian.  Many [inaudible] is that -- many [inaudible] is that periodical [foreign words] as a modern supplements --
^M01:55:53
[ Speaking in Foreign Language ]
^M01:55:56 
-- were published solemnly in classical Armenian.  It was kind of back-to-the-roots movement and the language reform was among the mainstream of changes.  
^M01:56:06
[ Inaudible Speaker ]
^M01:56:10
-- indicated their titles and subtitles in classical Armenian.  The issues of unification of the Armenian language has been considered as one of the directions of greater consolidation of Eastern and Western Armenia.  In the bottom part, in the middle, you can see there is a announcement in the first issue of [foreign word] Periodical that they -- in the future they going to print their newspaper in classical Armenian which never happened, by the way.  In order to stress their independence, many periodicals used various terms to stress their status, such as independent, non-governmental, free, alternative, democratic, et cetera.  It is difficult to precisely define some [inaudible] when it became possible to reduce all periodicals without any difficulties.   Some publishers, in order to show the independence, refused to reduce the publications.  In this manner, stressing and expressing their autonomy.  The majority of these periodicals were typewritten and produced by photocopying, almost always the word of polygraphical design and illustrations.  Yet they had a great advantage over the official periodicals.  They were preaching in the language of truth and freedom.  
^M01:57:44
^M01:57:49
As the first tip, many official periodicals were renamed a good read of their Communist stamped names.  Like every Armenian newspaper, they had that "Workers of the World Unite."  As a first fine of change, these, you know, epigram disappeared from all the newspapers.  And even -- 1990s a very interesting year because in mid-'90, I believe in May, the first parliamentary elections were in Armenia where the Communist monopoly -- they lose their power in Armenia, so many newspapers starting like the, you know, changed their appearance like there was -- every newspaper had a Lenin medal or something like that.  And they -- first they lose their medals, the [speaking in foreign language], but still -- see, this is a newspaper.  Only one issue was published in 1990 by ^IT [Inaudible] Literary Journal, Literary Journal and Newspaper ^NO.  And the first issue -- still it had --
^M01:59:06
[ Speaking in Foreign Language ] 
^M01:59:08
-- like the publishing house of Central Committee of Party.  
^M01:59:19
^M01:59:26
I have another journal.  You see it in -- on the top.  Not journal, sorry.  A newspaper.  It is interesting.  It -- this was also published in '90, but never gone to -- for dissemination because it was censored by the new, you know, new government of Armenia.  Still for the political reasons.  Obviously you see [inaudible] and you see the Turkish-Armenian side [foreign words].  
^M02:00:01
So all, you know, print run was kept somewhere.  I don't know.  But I have 10 copies, so these copies are for the Library of Congress.  You can keep it.
^M02:00:11
[ Applause ]
^M02:00:19
Not only in Armenia, but in, let's say, in the Diaspora in Soviet Republics, several Armenian newspapers in Russian, in Armenian, appeared in many countries -- in  republics including Russia, Estonia, in Georgia, in Ukraine, in Kiev --
^M02:00:47
[ Speaking in Foreign Language ]
^M02:00:51
So these changes were happening everywhere.  And to summarize my presentation, and to [inaudible] is the differences to emergence of the contemporary Armenian press, I can sum up that 1987/1990, we saw a rise of those periodicals approximately about 15 known traditional journals and newspapers appeared.  Their role as [inaudible] of the establishment of new Armenian media can't be over-estimated.  And this is the first issue of [foreign words] official.  Many independent journalists and they criticized at that time our new government because what does it mean to have official newspaper?  So you are continuing the same traditions like in Soviet times.  It was a [inaudible] has done.  Now you have under your control [inaudible].  What's the difference?  On October 8, 1991, the Supreme Soviet of Republic of Armenia passed a law on periodicals and other mass media.  Therein emerged the legal framework of regulations of the periodical press and its activities.  Some [inaudible] because either transfer it into official publications or [inaudible] you to mass media environment changes.  Time to time, when due to political tensions and turmoil, media was on under government attack.  We witnessed a new kind of [inaudible] papers and flyers.  For example, during the '94 ban of Armenian Revolutionary [inaudible], party government forced to close not only [foreign words] weekly, but also several literally women's cultural and youth publications, and this newspaper or [inaudible] was published 99, just 99.  They were indicating 99 copies and they could publish it, you know, without any registration.  This is end of my presentation.  And thank you.
^M02:03:20
[ Applause ]
^M02:03:31
>> Levon Avdoyan: I must add that Nerses knows very well that I love getting donations to the collection, so [laughter], if any of you would like to leave donations on your way out, we would be glad to accept them.  
>> I'll do it.  
>> Levon Avdoyan: Yes.  My colleague, Dr. Paul Kergol, will be glad to take them from my hands and make sure that they are catalogued and made available to you if I like you.  No [laughter].  Whether I like you or not.  I have the great honor to actually introduce another friend and great librarian.  He's presently the President of the Armenian Library Association.  He is the Director of the National Library of Armenia.  And I have to tell, Tigran, before you go up, I have to tell a story.  The first time I did this, the only place I could find a book that a researcher needed was in the National Library.  So I wrote to Tigran and I said, is it possible?  How can you get a copy?  And he says, well, I'll look into it.  And I think it was two days later, maybe three days later, I had in my hands to hand onto this researcher a complete digital page-turner copy of that book.  This is what kind of a librarian he is.  
^M02:04:48
[ Applause ]
^M02:04:52
So I am going to introduce Tigran Zargaryan who will speak on the Pan-Armenian Digital Library in Action, Connecting the Diasporas, Bridging Knowledge.  .
>> Tigran Zargaryan: Thank you.  And, Levon, I want to thank you for organizing such a wonderful event.  Very useful.  One correction.  I have never been the president of a library association, never -- so, just a small correction.  And such is my presentation will be about the technologies and how -- this a bookmark.  I will put after my presentation there.  Some weeks thereafter you can think, keep them, and you can use and share with your colleagues.  
^M02:05:34
^M02:05:39
So political culture and economic life of each nation is connected with a geographic place which carries the name of that nation, a place that has been populated by the majority of the given ethnic group for centuries, where they lived and flourished, and transferred their unicultural [inaudible] to the next generations.  As for the Armenians, the situation's a little bit different.  During its centuries of destroying despite the fact that [inaudible] they took, Armenian nations established communities, built churches, opened schools and [inaudible] colleges all over the world.  They created and passed on to the next generations a huge number of treasures and masterpieces including manuscripts, Armenian relevant early prints which are preserved in the different libraries [inaudible] centers, private and family collections worldwide.  This resulted in the creation of a [inaudible] network under the name spiritual Armenia, from a single [inaudible] Constantinople [inaudible], from Amsterdam to [inaudible], from Italy to [inaudible] and Transylvania.  All the centers for spiritual Armenia were connected with each other and had one common goal -- to protect Armenian language to reestablish statehood.  The Armenian National Council declares their independence with Armenia on 28th of May, 1918.  One of the first decrees of the government was about the National Library of Armenia which was established in June 5, 1919.  Since that time, the National Library of Armenia has been collecting and preserving Armenia prints published worldwide.  The Armenian collection has about one and one million items.  Amongst their titles are the first Armenian printed book, the ^IT Friday Book ^NO.  Fifteen prayers [inaudible].  It's the first Armenian periodical [inaudible] ^IT The Herald ^NO, produced in [inaudible].  The first Armenian printed bible, the first Armenian printed map, and many other unique publications.  During the past 100 years, the Library, being the largest repository of the Armenian language publications in the world, has become one of the central nodes of the Spiritual Armenian Network.  And as their major cultural hub is actively bridging values for us.  We teach other and with Motherland.  The Repository of Ancient Manuscripts -- Matenaduran, Mother See of Holy Echmiadzin Library, Mechitarist Congregation or [inaudible] Library of the Armenian Patriarchates of Constantinople, the Goodman [inaudible] Library of the Armenian Patriarchate of Jerusalem, the Library of the Armenian Catholicosate of  Cilicia, Holy Savior and Catholic Library in [inaudible] function of important centers of the Spiritual Armenian Network.  
^M02:08:49
^M02:08:54
Materials belonging to the Armenian rich and heritage are scattered all over the work in different cities whereas some of these places have thriving Armenian communities in the past such as [foreign words] in Transylvania, [foreign words] in India, [foreign words] in Russia, [foreign words] the Ukraine, and [foreign words] in Crimea.  In these communities there still are Armenian unique book collections forgotten and abandoned, that are awaiting to be cleaned from the death, catalogued, and preserved in normal library conditions.  It is important for scholars to have access through their primary sources which include historical and legal documents, eyewitness accounts, statistical data, pieces of creative writing, [inaudible] recordings, speeches, and artifacts.  With all of librarians is to open such primary sources to the researchers by preparing bibliographic bibliographies, as complete as possible.  
^M02:10:00
Understanding the advantages of the printed bibliographies, being aware that information technologies and Internet are acting as key supporters in the knowledge bridging process, having grouped theoretical basis amongst the libraries and from the National Library of Armenia on developing digital libraries.  A working group often accepts publishing models and creative comments licensing schemas, and with [inaudible] prepares library staff to increment, maintain, induce [inaudible] products for building [inaudible] heritage institutions.  The National Library of Armenia, in close cooperation with the fundamental scientific library of the academia sciences in [inaudible] projects.  Development of book database, creation of the human catalog of Armenian continuing resources, coordinating Armenian libraries [inaudible] activities.  All these are good examples on connecting the [inaudible] digital libraries for building an Armenian digital library.  So, the first one.  Armenian book database.  Total number of bibliography records is 127,579.  Why I am just [inaudible]?  Because this is very close to what Armenians had produced unique titles from 1512, I think until 2016/'17.  This number could go up to 1000-30,000, but no match.  So we can state that Armenians have produced so much titles during their printing history.  More than 12,000 digitized books are attached to the relevant bibliographic records.  And this number is growing.  Main sources for having bibliographic records are [inaudible] and libraries' collections -- UK, USA, Europe-based libraries on [inaudible], digitized books from our products from [inaudible] to Jerusalem, New [inaudible] and Istanbul.  Although [inaudible] digitization activities for the books are carried out in the National Library of Armenia and even from the [inaudible] scientific libraries, several international projects are of [inaudible] for us, so those are the Europeana Project which is covering all Europe and the special national libraries.  UNESCO is [inaudible] program.  Google Books Project, the [inaudible] Digital Library [inaudible] verification for the research and the archiving of Armenian memory [inaudible].  This is from Marseilles, France.  Also some research institutions and universities in Armenia which have joined the Open Access Initiative and they're mounting their publications in the open access domain.  The European and [inaudible] Digital Library platforms are very useful.  In both we find early Armenian printed books which are not included in any of the bibliographies.  So thanks to the digital technologies, we were able to find in different European libraries a digital [inaudible] of 12 foreign language rare books containing Armenian text which were not included in their publication, ^IT The Armenian Book ^NO, in 1512, 1800.  The number of -- and this covered early prints is much higher.  Let's say last year our videographers visited the Istanbul Municipal Library and we found there 19 new book titles.  In the Armenian Patriarchate in Constantinople in their library we found 84 new book titles.  So these are titles which had never been included in any bibliographies.  So the Union Catalog of "Armenian Continuing Resources."  Total number of the bibliographic records is 5808.  This includes newspapers, journals, yearbooks, bulletins.  More than 3 million digitized pages are already fully accessible.  Again, our partners from [inaudible], Istanbul, Antilles, are not only participating in digitization activities, but are also providing us with new titles for [inaudible] you can see.  They are on the screen.  And you just -- Professor [inaudible].  He mentioned -- he [inaudible] I think newspaper around [inaudible].  I check now database and not any record for this.  So maybe this is --
^M02:15:05
[ Inaudible Speaker ]
^M02:15:08
-- material.  In any case, will be interesting just to discuss with you because still we find lots of -- a lot interesting titles for us.  So we don't know any information about that.  The database is a good of Armenian periodical, is a good resource for researchers and also for statistical data.  It is having very high hits from U.S., a lot of requests are coming.  Such as it is further down [inaudible] so -- especially [inaudible] center start using the data from this database.  So we can see that 5808 titles are divided by publication type in this way.  So, as you can see the numbers.  Another interesting source -- the last bibliography for the periodicals was published in Armenia in 1986 by [inaudible].  It covers the time period 1795, the first Armenian periodical was published, until 1980.  So you can see some of cities, not all.  And in red we indicate total number of periodicals published in those cities according to our database.  So we can see that in Boston, according to Babloyan, 46 titles; according to our database, 58.  In New York, according to Babloyan, 87; according to our database, 142, from which four are periodicals in Turkish with Armenian letters.  So in USA, seven periodicals were published in Turkish with Armenian letters.  Total number according to Babloyan is 298; according to our database, is 464.  So very big difference.  And these numbers still will be changing because of the [inaudible] first in a search and they are still finding new titles, new titles.  So cities, you know, US cities which were not included in the Babloyan's bibliographies -- so we can see Paramus, Morton Grove, Belmont, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.  
^M02:17:49
^M02:17:57
Now Armenian Libraries Union Catalog.  All solutions are based on Free/Open Source Software products.  Actually, Armenian Libraries -- we do not use any commercial products, from service solutions to the library systems.  Everything is based on free/open source.  So products in the systems are maintained by the librarians, which is very interesting.  So they are doing the maintenance of the systems, of those systems, with more than one and two million bibliography and [inaudible] and more than 5 million items.  This is a unit resource for researchers, students, library patrons worldwide.  Public, academic, community, and university libraries from Armenia are active participants of the project.  It's worth mentioning that the repository of ancient manuscripts and Mechitarist Congregation have also joined this project, which means that two important nodes of spiritual Armenia will be [inaudible].  We have finished our training courses with [inaudible], and now a lady from [inaudible] by the Mechitarist Congregation is passing training courses and after that she will start to compare and correct Mechitarist Congregation card catalog, now metaphonic form, which will be a huge help for all of us.  
^M02:19:26
^M02:19:30
So the weight of the U.S.-based universities and Armenian Studies Centers has a spiritual Armenian note, and for supplying the Armenian book and the Armenian Continuing Resources Data Business with information is becoming more and more important.  The Healthy Choice Digital Library Initiative wishes Armenian Collection is a real help for all of us.  The Library of Congress with its rich Armenian Collection could have to ask another note in the USA.  There are many unexplored private collections, a university library collection which should be examined.  And currently we're considering establishing professional relationships with these organizations.  By the way, we can supply our viewers' library electronic [inaudible] with Armenian script records with high-quality Armenian script records in [inaudible], so if anybody first time that they hear is interested on that, we can provide you freely with those records.  We are confident that much more unknown titles of books and [inaudible] because will be discovered.  Here we see, [inaudible] possibilities.  We saw a U.S. Diaspora.  So what's next?  Just as I mentioned, we now are organizing training courses for the Library [inaudible] and in Armenia and from our Diasporas, teaching them on modern technologies, on machine [inaudible] rules, and more.  And programming languages because now our [inaudible] are doing -- are developing some small software pieces for us.  As a result of military conflicts, immigration, economic crisis in our communities, we already have abandoned all forgotten libraries.   So if audience of here, you know also about such libraries, please keep us informed about existence of such libraries, or here in U.S. or in Europe or in Middle East.  And with the help of Minister of Diaspora, Minister of Culture, Minister of Foreign Affairs, we will try to organize transfer, transportation of those collections to the National Library of Armenia.  Now we are [inaudible] one very interesting project in preparation with the Poznan Supercomputing Center Institute for Informatics and Automation Problems of the Academy of Sciences of Armenia and the Fundamental Scientific Library -- Development of the Pan-Armenian Digital Library.  The system will enable to create professional repositories of digital documents and share them with interested people and systems on the Internet.  Data exchange is based on generally accepted standards and protocols.  And Pan-Armenian Digital Library will offer the users many powerful possibilities such as searching for content of the collected resources, searching bibliography descriptions using [inaudible] dictionary, grouping digital publications and navigating their structure.  The system will operate on virtual servers environment.  We have parallel computing features using the cloud solutions.  And I hope that you will come in two years.  We'll be able to develop an optical recognition engine for Armenian handwritten and printed characters using deep learning approach.  Here we are cooperating with some of our European partners.  So we are working, because this is really very, very important, very, very important topic for us now.  And I came with my presentation an African proverb saying that "if you want to walk fast, walk alone.  If you want to walk far, walk together."  So I think that now we have started to do a step together.  We do have very interesting findings with the help of our Diaspora partners, and I hope that we will continue our preparation on behalf of Armenian nation.  So, thank you.
^M02:24:11
[ Applause ]
^M02:24:17
So as I mentioned, here are the bookmarks.  Wait until you can pick them.  And just a small announcement.  So, Levon, can you join me please?  
^M02:24:27
^M02:24:32
This is a small surprise.  So, Levon Avdoyan is a great scholar, researcher, librarian, geographer, organizer.  So a person with many hats.  So in recognition of his work, let me to read this just.  "National Library of Armenia, Hakob Meghapart, or jubilee [inaudible].  Awarded to Dr. Levon Avdoyan, Armenian/Georgian [inaudible] Specialist Near East Section, African and Middle Eastern Division of the Library of Congress.  In recognition of his important contribution to the development of modern library system in Armenia, for [inaudible] input in the Armenian studies, and for [inaudible] connections between American and Armenian Library [inaudible]."  So, my friend, this is for you.
^M02:25:27
[ Applause ]
^M02:25:34
This is it.  I'll give you the medal.  So Hakob Meghapart first Armenian printer.
>> Levon Avdoyan: Thank you
>> Tigran Zargaryan: Oh, this is for you.  And this is a [inaudible], a small token of Armenian National Library [inaudible].  
>> Levon Avdoyan: May I say something?  Thank you.  
^M02:25:50
[ Applause ]
^M02:25:53
Thank you very much.  What Tigran doesn't know -- I'm greatly honored.  But what Tigran doesn't know is that as soon as I retire I am going to spend several months in Armenia.  And I might -- I'll probably spend many of them in this building.
>> Tigran Zargaryan: Is welcome.  You are --
>> Levon Avdoyan: Thank you very much.  
^M02:26:06
[ Applause ]
^M02:26:17
Unexpected.  But thank you.  Wonderful.  Oh, the Hakob Meghapart, in case you don't know, was the printer of that first Armenian book in -- I prefer 1512, but I know Sylvia [inaudible] 1511.  No truer words have been spoken than by Tigran, and Nerses, but the library community is so interconnected, you know.  Many people -- eyes glaze over when we talk about library science, but it is interconnected, and we do work together very well.  We are now on to our last talk, and we're going back to the 19th century.  And I did this purposely because there's a surprise at the end of this talk that I won't particularly tell you about.  About 10 years ago we procured a manuscript by Pietro Bianchini.  I won't say anything more about him because our speaker will certainly fill us in about him.  And there is something special about seeing something you have acquired come to life.  And this is what we want to have happen to all our acquisitions.  So, brilliant musicologist, composer.  I mean, I would -- whatever I have done in scholarship and librarianship I would trade to be able to be a musician.  People know that about me.  From the Czech  Republic, a great storyteller I have come to learn, Mr. -- Dr. Haig Utidjian, who will be speaking about sublime and celestial Pietro Bianchini and an ^IT Ode for the Patriarch ^NO.  
^M02:28:04
[ Music ]
^M02:29:47
>> Haig Utidjian: Thank you very much, indeed, Levon, for the I would say excessively kind introduction which nonetheless I appreciated very much indeed.  This is not the manuscript I intend to talk about, ladies and gentlemen. 
^M02:30:01
 I shall be talking about a particularly beautiful Armenian manuscript of an ode that has been in use during the Armenian Devine Liturgy for probably at least three centuries "[Inaudible], oh, ye chosen one of God," which Bianchini transcribed and harmonized.  Nonetheless, I thought that if I started with that manuscript which I will give it the bulk of the present talk, you would, of course, with justification, ask who on Earth Bianchini was, because he's not as well as known as he deserves to be, either in Armenian circles or in even internationally.  I was extremely fortunate in being able to locate a manuscript of this ^IT Sinfonia ^NO from which we just heard a soundbite recorded specifically by the [foreign words] Orchestra in Prague under my direction with the very kind permission of the procurators of the St. Marks Basilica in Venice for whose orchestra the piece was composed and performed in 1863.  Uniquely, we have permission to play this excerpt this afternoon and [inaudible] the time so I do feel privileged that I was able to present you this little fragment.  To give you a little idea of who Bianchini was.  He was an Italian Venetian-born musician described by various Armenians as --
^M02:31:38
[ Speaking in Foreign Language ]
^M02:31:45
He was a child prodigy as first composer and violinist.  He was prolific as a composer.  He has two masses, two requiems, a large number of orchestral pieces, chamber music, music for the [inaudible] instruments, some [inaudible] music, but very little of his artwork has been published at all.  And, indeed, what he's most remembered for is the fact that he published his own transcriptions of all the [inaudible] of the ^IT Armenian Divine Liturgy ^NO which he harmonized on the basis of the chance he had heard performed by the Venetian [foreign word] fathers in San Lazarof.  And that is what he may be remembered for at the moment, although he deserves to be known very much better both in Armenian circles and in others.  Now, there is, in fact, one piece that very many Armenians know, but without in fact knowing that Pietro Bianchini composed it.  And it is actually a piece that is very, very opposite to this occasion, given that I have the privilege of participating in the [inaudible] Lecture Series.  It is called [foreign words], a rousing song, a march, in which [foreign words] of the [foreign words] dynasty is rallying his troops so that they will take their vengeance for the [inaudible].  Now, this was a poem composed by --
^M02:33:28
[ Speaking in Foreign Language ]
^M02:33:30
-- monk, botanist, polymath poet, Father [foreign language] who was an almost exact contemporary of Bianchini's.  And I managed to find a very interesting historical recording of this piece made by none other than the Nightingale of Darron, as he was known, [foreign words], the Armenian tenor [foreign words] who was a friend of protege of [foreign words].  And I should like now, very briefly, to play you a little bit of [foreign words].  Many of you will have heard the melody without knowing that Bianchini composed it.  
^M02:34:09
[ Music and Singing ]
^M02:35:44
Time is short, but I did want you to hear a sufficient beat of the excerpt so that we could include the magnificent high notes with which he ended.  [Foreign words] was a soloist in ^IT La Scale ^NO in Milan and in -- at the Paris Opera as well.  And he was singing [foreign words] with the words by Father Ghevont Alishan, and music by none other than Pietro Bianchini, the author of the manuscript I'm going to talk about.  But one last thing before I start doing so -- just to give you a sort of feel about the circles in which Pietro Bianchini circulated.  I should like to invite you to consider three of the delicatees [assumed spelling] of his various works, manuscripts, publications.  They are none other than King Victor Emmanuel II, the King of Italy, for whom Bianchini composed an orchestral piece, [foreign words], to celebrate the annexation of Venice in 1866.  But the other two were no less formidable characters within the Armenian milieu.  The middle gentleman was Abbott General of the [inaudible] Congregation of Venice, Archbishop [foreign words].  A formidable personality himself, and a towering intellectual who would deserve a [inaudible] lecture in his own right if it were possible.  And the third is nonother than the Catholicos Patriarch Steven Peters, Step'anos Petros X Azarean, who was very distinguished, particularly as an ecclesiastical leader and ecclesiastical diplomat.  And he is the delicatee [assumed spelling] of the beautiful manuscript that is held by the Library of Congress to which I should now like to turn.  This is what the dedication page looks like.  It is hand-written by Bianchini himself, dedicated to the patriarch on the occasion of the latter's nameday which was St. Stephen's Day, the 26th of December, 1887.  Bianchini ends the letter by seeking the patriarch's blessing, approaching, figuratively, to kiss his hand, and declaring himself a "humble servant."  Pietro Bianchini.  And very importantly Maestro of the Congregation of the Mechitarist Fathers of San Lazzaro in Venice.  Bianchini spent many years working in San Lazzaro apparently directing the choir during the Divine Liturgy.  So, in addition to serving as Director of Music in a number of Italian cities, particularly Northern Italy, he performed this very valuable service to the Armenian Monks.  Now the ode in question, and [foreign words], chosen of God, is a composition not of Bianchini's.  Bianchini merely transcribed the traditional melody.  But it is a work that preoccupied Bianchini for several decades in the course of his career.  And we have various versions of it which he worked on.  The earliest that I know was published as part of a very slim booklet that is exceedingly rare.  Not only the Mechitarist fathers, not even the Mechitarist fathers in Venice in San Lazaro or even the Armenian National Library are in possession of a copy.  And you can see -- that is the extreme left-hand side corner.  It consists of two lines, the melody sung by a soloist, and a figured baseline as if it were a piece of baroque music, indicating one line and with little numbers, the chords that should be played by the organist or harmonium player.  The second version of it that we encounter is part of the entire complete Divine Liturgy chance.
^M02:40:00
These were published in 1877 in San Lazaro.  And there, we find the entire ode complete with an organ or harmonium accompaniment.  But there are also various manuscripts that I have succeeded in locating in the San Lazaro archives in which Bianchini made various copies or arrangements particularly of the choral component of the ode typically with the verbal underlay written in Latin script suggesting that probably Italian professional singers would sing during the Divine Liturgies in San Lazaro, a fact that I found rather surprising initially.  And in one case and that's the undated manuscript that I'm showing you on the extreme right-hand side, he has a string orchestra accompaniment to almost the entire Divine Liturgy and it seems that he had second thoughts.  You see that he crossed out the orchestra from the first four measures, deciding that it should be sung by solo female voices alone, one soprano and one alto, before the chorus comes in on the fifth measure together with the strings.
But this is what the version in our manuscript looks like.  Again, it is the complete ode with the first two stanzas of the ode to be sung by a soloist accompanied by harmonium or some other suitable keyboard instrument.  And the remaining stanzas are included complete to be sung by a choir.
And after the music, the words on their own have also been beautifully copied out.  The first two stanzas in a kind of Armenian Gothic script with the word [inaudible] patriarch highlighted by being made larger because usually the words are [Speaking in foreign language], chosen of God, oh happy, holy priest.  But the word priest has been replaced by the word patriarch customizing the ode as it were for the person, to the person of the patriarch.  And the choral stanzas are written in a beautiful hand in another script which is characteristic of the period.  But the crucial thing is that the entire ode has been included and the music for it as well.
And the verbal text, we can find in another possession of the Library of Congress in the beautiful Constantinopolitan Breviary of 1768 where you see it starts at the bottom of the left-hand side page, continuing all the way along the page opposite.
The verbal text, the poetry is actually rather beautiful.  It makes allusions to the Book of Exodus from the Bible, the 28th chapter where there is a description of Moses preparing meticulously and beautifully woven garments, priestly garments for Aaron.  And the poet, whoever it was who composed the words of this ode, likens the celebrant about to serve the Divine Liturgy to the person of Aaron.  And in the words of the poem, it is Christ who today makes our celebrant appear under the same form as Aaron and seeks the intercession of the priest.
Now, this is full of polyvalent symbolism because if we consider the liturgical use of the ode, we find that in fact, the ode is to be sung during the particularly poignant moment in the beginning of the Divine Liturgy.  During those moments when the celebrant, being the bishop or of higher rank, is to fall on his knees and with overflowing tears -- these are not my words but those of the rubric, the instructions in the missal and I'm quoting from another beautiful Library of Congress manuscript, a missal from the year 1722 where you can see on the left-hand side the situation.  The celebrant is kneeling.  The proto deacon, the chief deacon has taken his miter away and the celebrant is to recite the very beautiful prayer by Saint Gregory of Narek in two parts, addressed to the Holy Spirit which he has to do quietly and inexpressively.  The Armenian word is [Speaking in foreign language] corresponding to the Greek [Speaking in foreign language] which in turn, harks back to the Book of Romans, chapter eight where Saint Paul refers to our own inability to pray properly but that fortunately, the Holy Spirit utters these inexpressible groans by way of interceding on our behalf to God.
So you can see there are all sorts of layers of associations.  The celebrant kneels.  He recites quietly this prayer during which time, someone has to sing this ode.  And if you were in the position of singing the ode, as I have been, you can never predict how long this is going to take.  How many stanzas of the ode you will require because the rubric in the middle of the prayer to the Holy Spirit says that the celebrant has to repeat the first part of the prayer as many times as it takes until such time as confidence in the upward contemplation of light be wonderfully revealed to the celebrant.
As you might imagine, one cannot predict in advance how long it will take for such confidence in the upward contemplation of light and the revelation of this light will take.  And so, Bianchini was very wise in providing the entire text with music just in case.  It is a very beautiful moment, the celebrant and the singer both kneel and usually these days, unlike this image where the celebrant is holding the missal himself from which to read the prayer.  Two deacons also kneel holding the missal on either side.
This is another illustration from Matenadaran missal of about the same period.  You can see the deacons behind.  One is holding the miter and the celebrant is kneeling and saying the prayer.  Rather more recently than the 18th Century, last October, I had the enormous pleasure of bringing this melody back to life by singing this Bianchini version of the ode in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem.  I was not, of course, singing from the beautiful Library of Congress manuscript itself but rather from an electronic scan of it very kindly made available to me by Levon.
Now, you might like to ask how old this ode is.  Since when did it come into existence?  It is a question that I have not been able to answer with certainty but I have tried my best.  We have the very great benefit that there is a fine catalog by the later Father [Inaudible], the former abbot of San Lazaro, where you can look up all the odes that are in all the manuscripts in San Lazaro, looking up their first lines.  And there are over 60 manuscripts that could include this ode which include odes and litanies.  And only a single one out of those 66 manuscripts, I think, if I'm right, includes the ode.  And it is a rather recent manuscript as Armenian manuscripts go, being copied out in the year 1663.  As it happens, in the Armenian Church of the Holy Cross in Venice, a stone's throw from Saint Mark's Basilica, as it happens.  Moreover, we read that the manuscript was discovered in the 19th Century by none other than the poet monk Father Lewond Alisan whose [Inaudible] we heard a moment ago to Bianchini's music.
This is what the manuscript looks like.  But alas, although other items in the manuscript have musical signs on them, this particular ode, the ode that interests us, does not bear musical signs.  But if we look at the [Inaudible] Monastery in Vienna, there is a manuscript from about the same period but it cannot be clearly dated as it does not have a [inaudible] which does bear musical signs known as neumes.
Now, that does not necessarily help us quite as much as one might hope because we are sadly unable to decipher the medieval neumes.  But we can tell various things by looking at the notation over the words.  We can see that the melody, whatever it was, must have been fairly simple because the density of the neumes is not particularly high.  And we mostly see rather simple signs.  But we can do a bit better than that.
^M02:49:40
We are extremely fortunate in that a very great genius and probably the greatest Armenian musicologist of modern times, the Constantinopolitan Church musician Elia Tntesean who belonged more or less to the same generation as Bianchini, carried out a lot of astute and meticulous detective work enabling him not perhaps to decipher the meaning of the neumes but to develop a conjecture, quite a convincing conjecture although it is not quite 100% water tight, according to which we can tell with reasonable certainty the metrical durations of particular syllables bearing some neumes or bearing no neumes at all.  And if we apply his conjecture to this manuscript of this ode, we find that there is, indeed, a very exciting rhythm as follows.
^M02:50:44
[ Speaking in Foreign Language ]
^M02:51:05
It continues like this but then in the middle of the ode, things get more exciting and the rhythm changes and it becomes --
^M02:51:11
[ Speaking in Foreign Language ]
^M02:51:19
And then it returns to the regular five-four sort of rhythm.  There is a sort of dance-like lilt to it, isn't there?  And I think that this is, indeed, the sort of meter that would have -- that the ode would have been sung to.
Now, none of the melodies that are available to us at present from various traditions correspond to the neumes because they are far more slower and ornate melodies with a lot of notes being sung to a single syllable.  But it is interesting to go back and see what perhaps this ode may have sounded like although alas, we are not able to reconstruct the melody, only the meter and the rhythm which we are able to do, thanks to the pioneering work of Elia Tntesean.
Now, let us turn to the melody that Bianchini was able to transcribe.  Before I do so, however, I should like briefly to refer to a little pink slip of paper that I found bound in the one of the Bianchini manuscripts found in the archives of San Lazaro.  On this occasion, as on other occasions, Bianchini was painstakingly leaving instructions to his singers, probably Italian singers, as to how Armenian sacred music ought to be performed.  And his instructions and by saying that if these chants are performed as they should, then the result renders them sublime and celestial and that one and the same time, most pleasing to our hearts and to our ears.
It is daunting having sighted these words to make a feeble attempt to sing a bit of the melody to you.  It is not my singing that will be sublime and celestial but I do hope that my singing notwithstanding the melody may perhaps correspond to such a description.  There would be only a little sound bite so that we do not miss the reception this evening.
^M02:53:35
[ Music ]
^M02:56:14
And it continues in this vein.  Time is --
^M02:56:18
[ Applause ]
^M02:56:26
I thank you for the applause which naturally, I take as being directed to three people, Bianchini who transcribed it, whoever composed the melody, and of course, the poet who composed the words.  But it is a privilege to serve as their advocate in my very small way.
Now, a question rose in my mind as I was preparing this lecture.  It was very clear to me from all the materials that I saw and from the meticulous and painstaking nature of the transcription of this beautiful manuscript and the general care that had been taken in its production on the part of Bianchini and it is abundantly obvious that this man was enamored of Armenian sacred music into which he had immersed himself in a very, very big way.  And although he had a very active and distinguished career writing a lot of pieces in the tradition of his day -- non-Armenian pieces, of course -- I wondered if there could be some means of finding any possible connections might he have been somehow influenced by his immersion into the sound world of these ancient Armenian chants and their modality in his compositions in a western style.
Alas, most of his pieces are unpublished and one needs to travel to all sorts of places in Italy and gradually uncover them, something that God willing, I should very much like to do in future years.  But upon conducting the Bianchini Symphonia of 1863 and remember, it was composed a year after Bianchini published this ode in a little booklet in 1862, only a year previously.  After having conducted the piece, I looked at the score and then I was struck by what one might refer to as a little oddity.  The melody that I sang of the ode, it has a very characteristic motif.
^M02:58:31
[ Music ]
^M02:58:41
And this occurs twice in the first stanza and another two occasions in the second stanza.  And it tends to linger in the mind, at least it stayed in my mind when I first looked at the ode.
^M02:58:54
[ Music ]
^M02:59:01
And yet, you will recall that the symphony that we heard, the Symphonia with which we started has the theme --
^M02:59:07
[ Music ]
^M02:59:13
Now, if we forget about the rhythm and just look at the notes and the skeleton --
^M02:59:17
[ Music ]
^M02:59:24
-- it is almost identical to that of the motif in the ode.  This is pure speculation on my part, ladies and gentlemen.  It might be just the fancy but I like to think that subconsciously possibly, this motif from [Inaudible] may have lingered in Bianchini's mind and somehow re-emerged as the theme of this Symphonia.  I don't know if this is indeed the case.  We're not in a position to ask the master but it's an intriguing thought nonetheless.
^M02:59:59
I should like to end by saying that this was an age of cultural titans, people like Lewond Alisan, [Inaudible], many others, Elia Tntesean -- Bianchini himself, I would also put in that category.  And it was an exciting era not only because of an awakening on the part of the Armenians but because of the very, very beautiful fruits that emerged as the result of the interaction between Armenian and European cultures.  And this happened not only in music.  It happened in terms of spirituality and theology.  It happened in literature particularly in poetry as we all know.  And this manuscript documents precisely that.  It exemplifies and embodies one of those fruits, a Venetian Italian music transcribing into western notation and harmonizing an ancient Armenian ode.  Had he not transcribed it, we would probably have lost it because this melody is not known to the San Lazaro monks at present.  And this manuscript is like a diamond that sheds light in all sorts of direction suggesting avenues for future research.  And I feel so very fortunate and blessed that this manuscript has been preserved and these kept at the Library of Congress for our own generation and future generations to study and to enjoy.  And moreover, it is here where it is really disseminated electronically to anyone who may care to have a look at it which is something that is of very great value and which the Library of Congress shares with the National Library of Armenia.
And I feel above all, a tremendous and profound debt of gratitude to Dr. Levon Avdoyan, thanks to whose excellent nose for such things and unerring instinct and his untiring efforts, this manuscript has been acquired by the Library of Congress.  So please accept my gratitude for this as well as many other things of which today's unique conference is but one.
In thanking Levon, I should also like to thank a number of other individuals and these institutions without whose generosity and kindness, this research would not have been possible.  Thank you very much indeed for your attention, ladies and gentlemen.
^M03:02:44
[ Applause ]
^M03:02:53
>> Levon Avdoyan: Alas, this day has actually flown by for me.  It's been a combination of several months of planning.  I would truly want to thank all of my speakers, our speakers, some of whom have come from long distances abroad and are going to leave sadly.  It is -- people who know me, I usually just say thank you if I'm not pleased.  What I am going to say is true in every single case which is each and every one of these papers has exceeded my expectations of what I hoped would happen.  And I hope those of you who have lasted all day, will go away with what I wanted you to feel which is Armenian history is extremely more than just a few isolated facts.
So thank you for attending.  Thank you for my wonderful speakers.  And I hope you will all attend the Smithsonian Folk Life Festival in the next two weeks and enjoy Armenian culture on a different plane.  Thank you.
^M03:04:00
[ Applause ]
^M03:04:04
^M03:04:22
>> This has been a presentation of the Library of Congress.  Visit us at loc.gov.
^E03:04:27