Reflections on a Trip to Tavoush
Tavoush, a province northeast of Yerevan, is one of the greener and more mountainous marzes of Armenia. Tavoush has an area of 2,704 square kilometers, representing 9.1% of Armenia’s total territory. With a population of 134,300 people, Tavoush represents only 6.23% of Armenia’s total population. However, despite its small population and size, it holds a disproportionate percentage of Armenia’s raw beauty.
The road to Tavoush was a colorful exhibition of Armenia’s natural attraction. It was an endless path that meandered through valleys, over hills, and along fields. Tavoush’s mountains were painted green, purple, and orange with the region’s blossoming vegetation. A drastic contrast from Yerevan’s towering brown, tan, and grey colored buildings that stand on a relatively flat plain. In the midst of all that vegetation, atop the hills of Tavoush, could be seen clusters of villages dispersed along the brim of the mountain. In order to approach the villages, our driver had to deviate from the main paved road onto a relatively rocky and rugged path. As we got closer to those villages we saw the behemothic ruins of Soviet factories. These enormous structures had obviously been abandoned or had remained unused for years.
We visited the villages of Khashtarak, Lusadzor, Agnaghpuir, and Ditavan. Along the side of the road, some of the villagers could be seen tilling their fields and watering their crops. As we advanced, the villagers looked up at us with stares of curiosity and bewilderment. Their eyes were fixated on our van, full of people whose look and dress was completely foreign to them. They were no less foreign to us. These people had dark, tired visages. They wore thin and tattered clothing. Rather intimidating were the large scythes they held in their hands, reminiscent of the Grim Reaper. As the van continued forward, we saw other villagers herding their cattle. Sheep, cows, chickens, pigs, and horses were also not commonplace in cities like Los Angeles. It was like visiting the LA zoo, but without the bars that separated the animals from us.
We entered the villages, and there the people seemed better dressed. They wore dress shoes, black slacks, and long sleeve shirts. Some of them drove cars, and a lot of them had cell phones. We got out of the van to meet the individuals who had walked up to greet us. I grabbed their large, rough hands, which was followed by a firm, sturdy shake. Their strength was evidenced by their handshakes, a strength that was probably a result of their demanding village tasks. The manifold wrinkles on their faces stood as one of the many testaments to their difficult lifestyles. The bored village children, tired of the drudgery of mundane farm work, decided to follow us, the newly arrived strangers, wherever we went.
The mayors of the respective villages welcomed us as we entered. We told them that we were from the government and had come to help develop the rural areas of Armenia. They gave us a quick tour of the village followed by a summary of the village’s history and a list of their complaints. The complaints of the villages seemed to transcend their individual boundaries because each villages’ complaint was a reiteration of the ones before. The foremost complaint among all the villagers was the lack of job opportunity. Apparently, during the Soviet era, the communists encouraged the local villagers to abandon their traditional lifestyle of animal husbandry and agricultural cultivation, in exchange for factory work. The Soviets provided the villagers with agricultural exports from neighboring Azerbaijan, which consisted of crops that they had once grown on their farms. Most villagers, spurred on by Soviet incentives and seeing a chance to escape the difficult and limited life of a farmer, chose to pursue an occupation within the newly constructed factories nearby. After the fall of the Soviet Union, all the factories surrounding the villages had been shut down. This fact helped explain all the decaying factories I had seen along the village roads. The closing of the factories had led to massive unemployment. The villagers, who had abandoned their traditional vocations, were forced to relearn the same methods of farming that their grandparents had used prior to the Soviet era. This was particularly undesirable for the younger generation. Many refused to readopt the out-dated farming practices of their elders and, instead, chose to leave their native villages in pursuit of greater opportunities. According to the villagers, many left the villages for cities like Yerevan, however, many more left Armenia completely, settling in countries like Russia and Georgia. Those who chose to readopt the village livelihood, found it very difficult to cultivate the land as their fathers had done due to a lack of modern tools and machinery and an increase in foreign competition. The scythe I had seen earlier, a tool used in Medieval Europe, was only one example of the lack of modern equipment. The exodus of the younger villagers, coupled with the decline in birth rates, has led to a significant depopulation of all the villages.
An ever increasing problem was the lack of opportunity for their youth, which, in part, can be attributed to job shortages, but, more notably, to an inadequate education. Some schools were made of aluminum, which led to unbearably hot classroom temperatures in the summer and oppressively cold classroom temperatures in the winter. The schools that were not made of aluminum were poorly constructed and rapidly deteriorating. The libraries hardly had any books, and the books that they did have were archaic tools of propaganda left behind by the old Soviet regime. The 8 and 9 year old children following us around could hardly comprehend the writings of Marx and Lenin, let alone find them interesting. I’m almost sure the teachers themselves were not very educated because most had never left the village, and I don’t even want to describe the state of their “sports facilities.” The village elders told us that the children would hang around in the streets all day because they lacked any recreational activities. Suddenly, the disappearance of individuals was no longer a mystery. How could one convince these people to stay in a village that offered them nothing except a life of herding cattle?
Another issue was the lack of churches and community centers. According to the village elders, the Soviets had converted many of the churches to barns or cinemas in an attempt to erase any trace of religion in an atheistic communist society. An example of this policy is the name of one of the villages that we visited. Katchtarak, which means “place of the cross,” was renamed to Khashtarak in order to rid the village’s name of the word “khatch,” meaning cross. In addition to a lack of churches, was a general lack of community centers. The people of the various villages did not have a specific building where they could all gather and interact. Those that claimed to have such a place, pointed to a tiny room, which could hardly hold a population of 500-1,500 villagers.
The last problem that I found particularly disturbing was the apathy expressed by most villagers in regards to the betterment of their respective villages. Most wanted change, they asked and beseeched us for a variety of things, but some seemed hesitant or even opposed to undertaking remedies for the problems they had outlined. It was almost as if they had lost hope, as if they had forgotten the strenght in themselves. It seemed to me that they wanted the government to come in and fix all their problems for them. Perhaps this too was a remnant of a failed Soviet policy that had trained people to be dependent on the government. Some even expressed a distaste for work, choosing, rather, to live off government welfare or the generosity of wealthy family members abroad. It was clear to me that left to their own devices these villages would be left in the same ruined condition as those Soviet factories we had seen along the road.
I left the villages of Tavoush asking myself a series of questions. What sort of issues did the problem of depopulation pose for the marz of Tavoush? What was the government doing to help bolster the province’s economy and to encourage individuals to remain in the region? If the government did choose to develop the villages, would the villagers themselves actively participate in that development?
July 5th, 2007 at 10:09 pm
Alex
Very thought provoking! You bring up very good points and very good questions.
Enjoy, learn, teach, and influence.
Seta Eyvazian
July 24th, 2007 at 8:05 pm
[…] “The last problem that I found particularly disturbing was the apathy expressed by most villagers in regards to the betterment of their respective villages. Most wanted change, they asked and beseeched us for a variety of things, but some seemed hesitant or even opposed to undertaking remedies for the problems they had outlined. It was almost as if they had lost hope, as if they had forgotten the strength in themselves.” Alex Giragozian - “Reflections on a Trip to Tavoush” “At this moment, I felt a rush of emotion come over me and realized why I am so proud to be Armenian and to be a Christian. Everyone in the church no longer was Beirutzi, Hayastanci or Bolsahye but ARMENIAN. All one in the same coming together to share in our culture’s religion and history.” Sarah Mergeanian - Etchmiadzin […]