Iconography of Armenian Identity: The Memory of Genocide and the Karabagh Movement (Volume 1)

Harutyan Marutyan's imaginative study of Armenia traces the shift from an identity based on victimhood to one based on strength and resilience. The role played by memory of the Armenian Genocide (1915-1923) during the Revolution of 1988-1990 forms the central focus of this volume. Also known as the Karabagh Movement, those events arguably constituted the first of East European revolutions. The Genocide had remained an unspoken collective sorrow for most of the Soviet period, to emerge as a revolutionary factor in the accelerating developments unleashed by Perestroika. By the time Armenia became an independent state, the "genocide factor" had helped transform old stereotypes and self-perceptions, contributing to a new national identity. Through an analysis of iconographic materials such as posters and banners, Marutyan offers readers a window on to the collapse of an empire and the birth of a national state.