Bulletins and News Discussion from May 6th to May 12th, 2024 - The Nagorno-Karabakh Nosedive - COTW: Armenia

From the great Soviet encyclopedia.

Earliest formations of the states that would later form the Soviet Union,

In Transcaucasia, by the turn of the first millennium B.C, many tribes had already reached the stage at which the clan tribal system was disintegrating and a class society was ready to emerge. In the eighth century B.C. what is now Armenia became part of the state of Urartu, whose capital was located at Lake Van. King Argistis I of Urartu annexed southern Transcaucasia and built several fortress-cities to serve as strongholds. The ruins of one such fortress, Erebuni, have been uncovered on the hill of Arin-berd in Yerevan; another, Argistikhinili, was located near what is now the village of Armavir, in the Ararat Valley. With varying success, the kingdom of Urartu warred against Assyria and northern nomadic tribes, the Cimmerians and Scythians. The fortress of Teishebaini, located on the hill of Karmir-Blur, near Yerevan, became very important in the seventh century B.C, when Urartu flourished anew. Excavations at the fortress have revealed many workshops, storage rooms, granaries, wine cellars, vessels, weapons, and decorations.

The struggle against the Urarteans helped the local Armenian tribes consolidate, but they remained too weak and disunited to found an independent state. Between the sixth and fourth centuries B.C the area inhabited by them belonged initially to the Persian Achaemenid state and later to the Seleucid state. The formation of a unified Armenian nationality was completed at this time; class relations developed, based on slaveholding and the exploitation of dependents still at the primitive communal stage. The important state of Greater Armenia was formed in the late fourth and third centuries B.C The city of Artashat, founded circa 176 B.C on the Araks River, became its capital. The state flourished in the late second and early first centuries B.C, when King Tigran II extended his possessions to the Mediterranean Sea. Tigran then joined King Mithridates VI Eupator of Pontus against Rome; he was defeated and his state disintegrated in 66 B.C, and only the regions in Armenia proper were left. In the first centuries AD., Armenia, which was ruled by kings of the Parthian Arshacid clan, became the object of a struggle between the Roman Empire and Parthia. After the fall of the Parthian Empire and the weakening of Rome, Armenia fell under the sway of the Sassanids in the third century AD. The decay of slaveholding relations and the formation of feudal relations took place in Armenia at this time.

Transcaucasia and Middle Asia from the first half of the first millennium A.D. to the 13th century.

Feudal relations were established in Armenia, Caucasian Albania, and Georgia by the mid-first millennium A.D. The peoples that settled these territories inherited the stable traditions, in various areas of material culture, of the slaveholding states of Transcaucasia. The formation of feudal relations in Transcaucasia was accompanied by the struggle of the peoples of Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia against foreign aggressors: Iran, the Byzantine Empire, the Seljuk Turks, and the Arabian Caliphate.

In Armenia early feudal relations arose in the first half of the first millennium A.D. In 301, Christianity became the state religion. From the fourth to sixth centuries, Armenia warred against Iranian aggressors. The Byzantine Empire, which had aided Armenia in the wars against the Sassanids, itself tried to seize Armenia. In 387 the Byzantine Empire and Iran divided Greater Armenia between themselves. From the fourth to ninth centuries the liberation struggle of the Armenian people—the formation of the Armenian nationality had been completed in the fourth century B.C.—was combined with class struggle and extensive dissemination of heretical doctrines, notably by the Paulicians.

The Arabs conquered Transcaucasia in the first quarter of the eighth century, and the development of feudal relations in Armenia was slowed. Uprisings against Arab rule took place in 703, 748–750, 774–75, and 850–55. The rule of the caliphate was thrown off for good in the late ninth century. The liberation struggle of the Armenian people was depicted in the epic David of Sasun. In the ninth century, most of the region was ruled by the Armenian Bagratid dynasty; the territory under its control was known as the Ani Kingdom. At the same time that such cities as Ani, Dvin, and Artsn developed and large feudal estates were created, the country underwent feudal fragmentation into semi-dependent kingdoms and principalities. As the economy became increasingly based on large patrimonial estates, the personal dependence of the peasants became greater. The exacerbation of the class struggle was reflected in the Thondraki movement.