The

Contradictory 60s: Empire and Cultural Resistance

Hrach Bayadyan


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The South Caucasus, formerly Transcaucasia, is a Russian-Soviet legacy in the sense that, the
region began to take shape as a geographical unit simultaneously with the Russian empires
southern expansionist drive; in the context of continuous and complex relations with Iran and
th
especially Turkey, as well as with the West, albeit sometimes indirectly. During the entire 19
century, Russias relations with Turkey, often on the battlefield, were vital for the former. This
was a time when the Russians sought to redefine their identity using Western concepts, to
present themselves as a modernizing nation in the Western sense, as a country that was a part of
Europe. In this case, a Westernizing Russia saw that Orient in Turkey, from which it wanted to
distance itself. Thus, within Russias self-definition, Turkey was presented as Russias, and in
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general, the civilized worlds oriental Other. Russia looked at the Empires eastern and
southern peoples with a Western perspective. Here, the Caucasus was viewed as an intermediate
zone, a passageway between West and East, as a civilizing East through Russian mediation.

Accordingly, the notion of Russias civilizing mission was established; a notion fully appropriate
from the point of view of justifying the Empires expansionism and colonialism. This was the way
a large segment of the Russian intelligentsia thought. They believed that Russia was bringing
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enlightenment and civilization to the Caucasus . It must be added that there were people in the
Caucasus who viewed the Russian presence in this way as well. This was also the case with the
Armenian intellectual elite, including such pivotal figures of contemporary Eastern Armenian
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literature as Khachatur Abovyan and Hovhannes Tumanyan. During the first half of the 19
century, many saw the only possibility of liberating eastern Armenians from Persia, defending
against Turkish threats, and coming into contact with the Western process of modernization,
with the Russian empire.

This means that from the very start, the idea of Eastern Armenias modernization was born and
took shape within the parameters granted by the Russian civilizing mission; first as a Russian-
Armenian and later, Soviet-Armenian project. Of course, the desire to become Westernized,
already existing in the Caucasus, increased the possibility for the so-called Russian orientation
to take hold, especially if the alternatives were Iran and Turkey. At the very least, Russian rule
would be accepted by Armenians as their salvation, salvation via a certain kind of self-
colonization. However, on the other hand, Russia itself was viewed in Europe as half-eastern,
half-Western, as a transitional expanse between the West and East.

Even though the status obtained by nations within the Soviet Union (S.U.) could be regarded as
some sort of partial decolonization, nevertheless, Russian orientalism, modified and reshaped,
continued to function, albeit in more subtle ways, in the S.U. as well. After the collapse of the
Soviet empire, the South Caucasus (Transcaucasia) as an invented region (invented during
the process of Russias civilizing mission and later, during implementation of the Soviet
modernizing project) gradually lost its distinctiveness. However, it seems that the first noticeable
shifts began prior to this, in the 60s, and the transformations that occurred in those years are
imparted with new meanings when viewed from the prism of current realities.

1
This article was written on the basis of a series of lectures I gave on the subject of Russian-Soviet orientalism during
seminars sponsored by the Art and cultural studies laboratory (November, 2008). These lectures were subsequently
published in a series of articles entitled The question of cultural decolonization (in Armenian) that appeared in Hetq
(http://old.hetq.am/arm/culture/8665)
2
See, Iver B. Neumann, Uses of the Other: The East in European Identity Formation, Minneapolis: University of
Minnesota Press, 1998.
3
See, Susan Layton, Russian Literature and Empire: Conquest of the Caucasus from Pushkin to Tolstoy, Cambridge:
Cambridg University Press, 1994.

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 The Contradictory 60s: Empire and Cultural Resistance
Hrach Bayadyan

The 60s: years of contradiction

The terms Thaw and the 60s generation are the most well known expressions defining the
cultural awakening that took place in the Soviet Union in the late 50s and continuing in the 60s.
Despite the sharp ups and downs of Soviet cultural policy over the years, the comparative
freedoms and renewed restrictions and repressions that followed one another, it was also a
unique time for the Soviet national republics in terms of the development of national cultures
and the formation of national consciousness. It was a process paradoxically accompanied by
unprecedented efforts aimed at the Russification of nations and the shaping of a united Soviet
people. Just as in the Russian empire, so too in the SU, the assumption held sway that Russian
culture and the Russian language were superior to the cultures and languages of other nations.
During the Stalinist era, the superiority of the Russian people took form within the big brother
little brothers context. This ensured the basis for the systematic and continuous Russification
being carried out in the S.U.

Some of the prerequisites for the expected fusion of Soviet nations and nationalities were a high
level of education, where Russian was the lingua franca for all peoples, equal opportunities for
economic development for all nationalities and regions, geographic and social mobility for the
populace, etc. The other important defining characteristic of the Soviet empire was that there
didnt exist an insurmountable line of demarcation that in Western empires separated the
colonizer from the colonized. Along with the implemented restrictions regarding ethnic identity,
in contrast to classical colonial systems, real opportunities for participation and advancement
were afforded to the Soviet peoples.

In the implementation of similar policies, an important role was reserved for the native elites.
The factor must be taken into account that the widespread collectivization carried out by the
Soviet regime, and the industrialization and urbanization parallel with it, allowed for the severing
of the Soviet peoples, all rural-based, from their traditions. At the same time, traditional local
elites either broke down or were destroyed. Subsequently, the Soviet system prepared new
native elites of professionals and intellectuals ready for collaboration in return for certain
rewards and advancement possibilities. Being linked with official institutions and having the
administrative-political apparatus at their disposal, they were more inclined to frame their
demands and reach their goals (including national ones) within the Soviet system rather than
aspire to separate themselves from it. Simultaneously, contacts within various professional
circles (writers, scientists, etc) that violated ethnic borders were being supported, seeking to
create supra-ethnic forms of cooperation. These communities both embodied and symbolized
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the concept of a unified Soviet people.

Analysts claim that the nationalism manifested by certain Soviet titular nations in the 60s was not
a rebirth of pre-Soviet nationalism but rather a new type of nationalism, although unpredicted,
formed during the process of the Soviet modernizing project. The national tradition being
reconstructed under Soviet rule and the cultural identity being formed, were unavoidably taking
shape as a national-Soviet hybrid.

A few issues will be discussed related to the period covered in this article taken from two texts
written in the 60s the Russian writer Andrei Bitovs Lessons of Armenia and Armenian writer
Hrant Matevosyans Hangover read in tandem.

Dialogue: two texts

Matevosyan and Bitov came to the fore during the Khrushchev Thaw years. They became
acquainted during the mid-60s when they participated in the two-year Advanced Course for
Scriptwriters in Moscow. These works were written in the years that followed. Hangover was

4
See, Philip G. Roeder, Soviet Federalism and Ethnic Mobilization in Denber, Rachel. The Soviet Nationality Reader: The
Disintegration in Context, Oxford: Westview Press (1992), pp. 147-178.

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completed in 1969 and is based on the authors impressions of that course. Lessons of Armenia
was written from 1967-1969 and is a result of Bitovs ten-day journalistic mission to Armenia (he
was sent to write an essay about Armenia for a Russian journal). The book was first published in
the monthly magazine Druzhba Narodov in 1969 and was later translated into a number of
languages and became one of Bitovs most noted works. Lessons of Armenia is not just a mere
travelogue, as Andrei Belys impressions of Armenia, or a semi-novella, as Mandelstam
describes his Journey to Armenia, but rather a real piece of artistic prose.

What follows, in a nutshell, is the subject matter of Hangover. People from all
national republics, basically writers, were to attend the Advanced Course for
Scriptwriters organized at the Moscow Cinema House. The work portrays one
day in the life of the attendees at the course; the conversations of
Mnatsakanyan, the narrator, with various individuals, recollections of his
native Armenia, especially village life, etc. Each of the participants was
expected to write a screenplay to be eventually turned into a film.
Mnatsakanyan writes a screenplay dealing with problems in the Armenian
villages industrialization, crumbling rural communities, etc. Vaksberg, the
course director, proposes that changes be made to the screenplay, but
Andrei Bitov and Hrant Matevosyan (photograph Mnatsakanyan refuses. Their conversation practically rises to the level of an
kindly provided by the Hrant Matevosyan Foundation argument. In all likelihood, theyll expel him from the class.

The two texts are the result of the stimuli received by the authors from their experience
attending the Advanced Course for Scriptwriters. Both, albeit in different ways, talk about this
significant period of the Soviet empire. At the same time, both deal with Soviet Armenia. In
Lessons of Armenia the friend, often evoked by the narrator, is none other than Matevosyan.
Bitov lived in his house during those days. In Hangover, Bitovs name is mentioned. Matevosyan
and Bitov were members of the intellectual community shaped during that course. In addition,
one can find numerous other commonalities between these two texts, implicit and explicit
connections that can certainly be called dialogue.

The journey

In a conversation, Bitov noted that during his life he thrice had the good fortune to turn up in a
favorable environment, and that one of these was the imperial environment of the Advanced
Course for Scriptwriters. Why imperial? It would appear that the course, with the participation
of those selected from each of the national republics, reflected the federative structure of the
country. On the other hand, the creation of elite communities transcending the inter-ethnic
borders was one of the aims of Soviet rule. Simultaneously, certain imperial pretensions were
ascribed to the course as well to succeed in the cultural and ideological struggle against the
West, in which a decisive role was reserved for the cinema. In passing, all this is covered in
Hangover.

Yes, the environment of the Advanced Course for Scriptwriters, where Andrei Bitov closely dealt
with the Armenian theme for the first time, was imperial, but also imperial were the journeys of
Russian (Soviet) writers to the Caucasus and the production of related texts starting from the
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1820s. By the first half of the 19 century, in the writings of Pushkin, Lermontov and others,
certain themes were taking shape; stereotypical forms and metaphors that represented Caucasia
as an expanding peripheral territory of the Russian Empire, thus assisting in the colonization of
the Caucasian peoples and the establishment of Russian cultural domination.

Ever since Edward Saids Orientalism, it is well known that cultural representations play a central
role in the colonization process of countries, and particularly, that literary texts are tied to
imperial and colonizing practices in various ways. Thus, writers also contribute to the crafting of
that general point of view that accepts an empire as something taken for granted, while literary
texts construct and distribute, and, in essence, legitimize modes of representing the conquered
lands and people from positions of domination.

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Bitovs Lessons of Armenia must be seen as an addition to the late period of the literary
Caucasus, particularly when it is included in the list of texts created as a result of the journeys to
Armenia by Russian and Soviet writers. The first of these is Pushkins Journey to Arzrum
travelogue (1835), written on the basis of dairy notes during an 1829 journey to the Caucasus.
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Studying the issue of the relationships between 19 century Russian literature and the conquest
of the Caucasus, Susan Layton singles out two poles little orientalizers in full complicity with
imperialism and old Tolstoy holding a diametrically opposite position (Hadji Murat). In the middle
ground were a young Pushkin (A Captive of the Caucasus), Bestujev-Marlinsky and Lermontov,
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who, in certain ways assisted, and in certain ways were opposed, to imperialism.

It is understandable that a Soviet writer of the 60s had to closely align with the middle position. If
Soviet ideology up till the 30s was equated with the crude forces of empire building of Pushkin
and the Decembrists, and Pushkins Caucasian poems were regarded as examples of colonial
literature, then, in years to come, the great poets were separated from tsarist authority.
Furthermore, in the guise of progressive Russia, they came out in opposition to official
conservative Russia. Nevertheless, as I will attempt to show, in comparison with the middle
orientalist position, Bitovs approach was much more complex and sensitive.

Also evident is the difference of Lessons of Armenia from similar texts written by Andrei Bely and
Osip Mandelstam in the late 20s and early 30s in the Soviet Union. A century had passed since
the travels of Pushkin. True, by 1828, after their victory over the Persian forces and their
conquest of Yerevan, the Russians took a large number of manuscripts back to Petersburg with
them, but the systematic study of cultures of the peoples in the Russian empire begins with the
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mid 19 century. Excavations at the medieval Armenian capital of Ani began at the end of the
century and Valery Briusovs Poetry of Armenia collection was published in 1916. During this
period, conceptions of nation and national culture, of relations between different cultures, had
also dramatically changed.

Briusov, in his preface to Poetry of Armenia, regards Armenia as a mediator between the West
and East, a place where those two cultures are reconciled and deems Armenian medieval poetry
as an exceptionally rich literature that comprises Armenias valuable contribution to the
treasure trove of humanity. In his opinion, In the pantheon of international poetry, the
creations of Armenian genius must take their rightful place alongside the literary works of the
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peoples of Japan, India, ancient Greece, Rome and Europe. Bely and Mandelstam were also
going to the Orient, but at the same time, for them Armenia was a cradle of history (Bely),
which due to its geographical position and its historic and cultural links with the ancient world,
allowed one to get close to the world cradle of culture (Mandelstam).

Thus, Khrushchevs Thaw and subsequent years can be called the second period of travels to
Armenia, of which Lessons of Armenia is the most famous of texts. It would seem that Bitov
steps onto the shaky soil of the rich tradition of writings on Russian oriental journeys, fully aware
of the dangers of such an act. It seems that Bitovs A Captive of the Caucasus collection,
comprised of Lessons of Armenia and Georgian Album, can be viewed, in a certain sense, as a
self-reflection of literary Caucasus, a reexamination of traditional approaches, or at least
questioning them, something that shouldnt appear surprising for that time period when they
were written. Here, not only are canonized texts referred to (i.e. Pushkins Journey to Arzrum,
Mandelstams Armenia series of poems) and traditional themes (A Captive of the Caucasus), but
also established approaches and evaluations are reviewed. Furthermore, in the first pages of
Georgian Album he openly discusses the existing imperial roots of the Caucasian theme of
Russian writers (Pushkin, Lermontov, and Tolstoy). On the one hand, there is This traditional

5
Susan Layton, ibid, pp. 5-10.
6
(.), , ,
. . , , 1916 (:
, 1987), p. 9.

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Russian capacity to be penetrated by an alien way of life (Pushkin, Lermontov, Tolstoy...), but,
on the other, it is also clear that there is surely an element of conquest and appropriation there.

Attempting to find a similar context for Hangover, we can recollect different types of travels and
dislocations that were occurring in the S.U. from the periphery to Moscow and generally across
the entire empire; for example, with the aim to study in Moscow or to perform various seasonal
work in some far-flung corner of Russia Those participating in the conquest of virgin lands,
student work battalions sent to Russia during the summer holidays, young people off to serve in
the Soviet ArmyThey all wound up in multi-national communities where the Russian language
and Soviet culture dominated, where the feeling of all-union belonging was cultivated. Inter-
ethnic contacts, the continuous experience of joint living, and later on, continued friendly
relations, written and oral histories, etc., assisted in the formation of the Soviet people as an
imagined community.

Like many others, the author of Hangover went to Moscow to study. But his experience gave
birth to a text that was exceptional in its attempt to reverse the gaze of the observer from the
Center to the periphery, to represent the gaze of someone from the periphery towards the
Center. On the part of the participants of the Advanced Course for Scriptwriters, the advance of a
group transcending ethnic boundaries, that was a part of a much wider community of same
generation writers (artists) was portrayed: They are my friends in their presence for me a
warm climate of safety is being knitted: it is pleasant to feel their existence from Yerevan to
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Moldavia, Tbilisi, Leningrad. But, just as Matevosyan has already clarified later on in post-Soviet
years, their group paradoxically embodied both the collective Soviet belonging of those coming
from different republics and the quite evident anti-Soviet, anti-imperial solidarity that, in
particular, could have been expressed with the recognition of the difference of the ethnic identity
and culture of each participant.

The map

In one of the diary entries of Walter Benjamin, written during the last days of 1926 during his
two-month stay in the Soviet capital of Moscow, he reflects on the prominent role that the map
began to play for Soviet ideology. Seeing a pile of maps being sold in the street, and noticing that
the map had entered not only the daily life but also the culture of Soviet man, from theatrical
performances to the propaganda film One-sixth of the world, he concluded that the map, just
like Lenins portrait, was becoming a new Russian center of visual worship. Truly, the vast
landmass of the Soviet Union, highlighted in red on the world map, along with its assumed
momentum of continual expansion, was one of the visual symbols of the empire.

However, ever since the 60s, when, in the on-target expression of a scholar, Soviet nations were
also allowed to have a history, maps, as influential means of the visualization of history, could
also become powerful tools in the construction of national identity, as well as spurring
nationalism. If we follow the assertion of Benedict Anderson, one can then assume that the
Soviet national republics appearing on the map, with their borders and capitals, could already
have shaped the imagination of the population. As regards to historical maps, then, Through
chronologically arranged sequences of such maps, a sort of political-biographical narrative of the
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realm came into being, sometimes with vast historical depth.

Forty years later, yet another traveler, Andrei Bitov, this time in Soviet Armenia, also meditates
upon maps. He describes the attractive power that an atlas of historical maps of Armenia has on
his friend and friends brother, the way the atlas sucks them in and they are submerged in map
reading. Bitov then adds: Here, green and round, Armenia extends to three seas. Here, to two.

7
Andrei Bitov, A Captive of the Caucasus: Journeys in Armenia and Georgia, translated from the Russian by Susan
Brownsberger, London: Harvill, 1993, p. 155.
8
Hrant Matevosyan, Tsarere. Yerevan: Sovetakan Grogh, 1978, p. 128.
9
Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, London: Verso, 1991,
p. 175.

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Here, to one. And here not even to one. So swiftly does Armenia diminish from the first map to
the last, always remaining a generally round state, that if you riffle quickly through the atlas, its a
movie: it captures the fall of a huge round stone from the altitude of millennia. The stone
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disappears into the depths, diminishing to a point, or, if you flipped through the pages in the
opposite direction, it expanded.

The part that talks about the atlas can give rise to different interpretations. From the past to the
present, during the entire course of history Armenia continues to get smaller, reaching the edge
of disappearing altogether; a fact which makes it more appealing to look through the atlas from
the opposite direction, until one reaches the map, Armenia: from sea to sea. These were the
years of the reawakening of nationalism. However, one can also ponder that it was only due to
the Russian-Soviet Empire that Armenia was saved from total disappearance. From this point of
view, the past was defined solely as a period of loss; the present, secure and safe, while the
radiant future to come could only be socialist. In any case, it seems that Andersons
observation above is helpful in clarifying what Bitov describes.

During these years, one could find maps of historic Armenia in the homes and work places of
many. And this wrested opportunity to remember and commemorate the past, first and
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foremost, dealt with the 1915 Genocide. Permission to mark the Genocide's 50 anniversary and
to construct a memorial on the occasion wasnt easily obtained: Their latest war is the war for
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their own history. Thus, it is not by accident that the subject of the genocide appears in the
pages of Lessons of Armenia and in Hangover. It was from Bitovs works, which had previously
been published in one of the largest circulation literary journals in the S.U., that wide segments
of society, for the first time, read about that event. Not only was it unprecedented that the
genocide issue was brought to public light, or there was a chance to write about it, but also the
fact that the meaning and importance of pre-Soviet national history was recognized. This was
something that underscored the uniqueness of national destiny, its difference, as opposed to the
unity and commonality of socialist nations being cultivated.

Of course, this does not mean that pressures and restrictions had disappeared. In Hangover,
during the conversation between the Armenian participant of the Advanced Course for
Scriptwriters and the course leader, the genocide is discussed as a possible screenplay theme. Its
rejection comes in the form of an advice: not to go digging up old graves or not to yield to
local nationalism. The permission to make a film about the genocide was much harder to obtain
than the permission to write about it.

In the next section of the article, the issue of representation is discussed and, in that context, it
must be at least noted that the authors mentioned were obliged to deal with ideological
pressures, in particular, censorship. Matevosyans and Bitovs writing were crudely censored and
sometimes altogether banned. There were two faces to Soviet censorship. There were
restrictions and banned themes, but, at the same time, there were declarations that had to be
stated, to be constantly repeated. On the other hand, the restrictions and prohibitions were
diverse. As I have shown, primarily on the basis of Hangover, the more influential means of
cultural expression in the S.U. (cinema), that created possible contemporary forms or styles of
imagination, were mostly being used to mold the Soviet people into an imagined community.
All the while, their availability for the ethnic cultures was clearly restricted. Put another way,
even during the period of nationalist awakening, fairly strict restrictions were operating in the
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S.U. regarding the cultural representation of ethnic identities.

10
Andrei Bitov, ibid, p. 43.
11
bid, p. 44.
12
See, Hrach Bayadyan, Soviet Armenian Identity and Cultural Representation in Tsypylma Darieva, Wolfgang Kachuba
(eds.), Representations on the Margins of Europe: Politics and Identities in the Baltic and South Caucasian States,
Frankfurt/New York: Campus Verlag, 2007, pp. 205-219.

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Difficulties of representation

In totally characteristic fashion, one of the prominent themes in Lessons of Armenia is the issue
of representation, with all its different aspects. The first of these is the optical difficulty; the
visual incapacity of the narrator-subject. In Geography Lesson, he notes, And I pursue that
image as a method. With the naked eye I see nothing one has to be born here, and live here, in
order to see. Through the binoculars I see large objects, for example, a watermelon and nothing
but the watermelon. The watermelon blocks out the world. Or I see my friend and nothing but
my friend.... Every time, something blocks out the world. I reverse the binoculars the
watermelon zooms away from me, like a nucleus, and disappears over the horizon. In the
unimaginable depth and haze I see a small round country with one round city, one round lake,
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and one round mountain, a country inhabited by my friend alone.

The same issue is presented, in another fashion, in a chapter relating to Lake Sevan: Such
authenticity and uniqueness does this country show you, again and again, that by now its
authenticity seems redundant ... It suddenly occurs to me that the birth of a brilliant painter
would be a paradox in this country. Nature here is so exact that it will suffer no transformation by
the artistic vision. To remain captive to this absolute exactness of line and color is probably
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beyond an artists power; no copy is possible. Later, he specifies: Now I catch myself: when I
said line and color, I was not being accurate. I was following tradition, rather than my own
15
awareness. I was paying tribute to Sarian, rather than to nature.

This reminds one of Bitovs sensitive attitude regarding local reality. He rejects the typical view of
the Soviet center towards the periphery, that would have seen a reality caught up in the surge of
socialist transformation - new buildings, factories, mass enthusiasm, etc. This view would have
proclaimed the blissful life of a people, once colonized for hundreds of years, and of a country
reborn from ruins of the past. This is a people that could rediscover its cultural tradition only due
to the progress and enlightenment brought by socialism. This rhetoric was often accompanied by
stereotypical elements of orientalism; old culture and exotica, stored values of the past, etc.

Elleke Boehmer, while discussing ways of describing a colonized foreign country and ways of
maintaining control through description, and the problems these engender, suggests: Rhetorical
strategies to manage colonial unreadability can be organized into broad groups. First, there was
the practice of symbolic reproduction already discussed, where the intention to characterize a
place expressed itself in defiance of the empirical evidence or conventional laws of association.
As did the Australian explorers, colonizers created a viable space by repeating names and
rhetorical structures from the home country regardless of their accuracy... what could not be
translated was simply not a part of the represented scene. Second, a development of the first,
there was the strategy of displacement, a device whereby the intransigence or discomfort the
colonizer experienced was projected on to the native.... Here the unreadable subject is
transformed into the sign of its own unreadability.... The native or colonized land is evoked as the
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quintessence of mystery, as inarticulateness itself.

On the surface, the quotes from Lessons of Armenia remind one of the second strategy, but it
seems that Bitov has other motivations and objectives. First, Armenia was explicitly different
from a colonized nation in the Western sense. Second, a continual tradition of representing the
Caucasus, especially Armenia, took form in Russian literature. In addition, there was the
established conviction that Russian writers possessed an unsurpassable capacity when it came to
representing others. Dostoevsky made the claim that only Russians were truly universal, and
could truly put themselves into the shoes of others, as it were. In his opinion, Russians are the

13
Andrei Bitov, ibid, p. 45.
14
Ibid, p. 53-54.
15
Ibid, p. 54.
16 nd
Elleke Boehmer, Colonial&Postcolonial Literature: Migrant Metaphors, 2 edition, Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2005, p. 90.

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only people capable of authentically representing others. And Bitov knew about this, as it
appears from the above quoted passage on the traditional Russian capacity to be penetrated by
an alien way of life. But, at the same time, what agitated him was the sensation that he was a
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foreigner, an outlander, an uninvited guest. The notion of the Caucasus as the Russians own
th
East, a concept that came to the fore in the 19 century, noticeably weakened in the 60s. For
Bitov, Armenia was not the Orient, as it had been for Bely and Mandelstam. Nevertheless, in one
of the first pages of the novella, Bitov quotes the following, said by his friend. Please, just dont
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write that Armenia is a sunny, hospitable land. Here, sunny and hospitable land is a familiar
stereotype of Soviet orientalism.

To all appearances, for Bitov, the naked eye was an eye unfamiliar with local cultural
conventions and codes: one has to be born here, and live here, in order to see. However, it
seems that Bitov also rejects the literary tradition of representing the Caucasus (and Armenia)
and, in particular, the entire repository of travelogues, whose mission was to describe the
conquered lands and make them recognizable. Bely and Mandelstam resolve this problem each
in his own way. In his journey notes to Armenia, Bely writes, Ive been viewing Armenia for two
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days now, but I saw it for the first time in the canvases of Sarian. In other words, in order to
see Armenia one must first visit a picture gallery. A foreign country becomes familiar and visible
only through the intervention of visual codes of Western painting. As for Mandelstam, in the
chapter The Frenchmen included in the book Journey to Armenia, he describes the experience
of viewing the works of French artists in the museum that becomes a training for the eye via
paintings. Afterwards, the real world appears to him as a painting. Viktor Shklovsky critiques
Mandelstam for that very formalism, when art becomes a medium to perceive reality. He
observes, When humans perceive natural phenomena through art, they are deprived of the
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opportunity of truly comprehending the object.

In general, the critiques of Mandelstam on this issue complement each other: What interests
Mandelstam is not knowing the country or its people, but rather, the capricious amalgam of
words, Lamark, Goethe and Czanne are mobilized in order mask the absence of the real
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Armenia, That is a journey via grammatical forms, libraries, words and citations. The author
of the last observation is also Shklovsky. Naturally, the undamaged process of seeing and
describing, the apparent accessibility of otherness, is conditioned not only upon the possibility to
dissolve Armenia in the world cultural context (when Armenia becomes an almost transparent
mediator between the poet (Mandelstam) and his cultural origins), but also with the Russian
political and cultural domination in Armenia.

As it appears from the above cited passage Bitov is also cognizant of the trap of using Sarians
painting and in general fine arts as a medium. He continues to ponder And where had I
acquired, what had generated within me, the image of a certain celestial land, a land of real
ideals? ... Simply, a land where everything was what it was ... Where all the stones, herbs, and
creatures had their own corresponding purposes and essences, where primordial meanings
would be restored to all concepts... The land was nearby, and I alone was not in it... Under what
circumstances had I left this land? ... I found the word authentic and settled on it ... This is a land
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of concepts.

Bitov discovers the countrys utopian image, cleansed of all historical traces, where, instead of
the cradle of civilization, what arises before us is pure Nature. The unattainable other
discovered in the alleged homogenous body of the Soviet people, is finally recognized as the

17
See, Katya Hokanson, Literary Imperialism, Narodnost' and Pushkin's Invention of the Caucasus, Russian Review, Vol.
53, No. 3 (Jul., 1994), pp. 336-352.
18
Andrei Bitov, ibid, p. 57.
19
Ibid, p. 22.
20
, , : , 1997, p. 35.
21
, , , , 2, : ,
1990, p. 431
22
See, ibid, pp. 420-421.
23
Andrei Bitov, ibid, p. 63.

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authentic. The characterization a land of concepts reminds one of Andrei Belys enunciation
regarding Martiros Sarian: He paints the East in general, his paintings are proto-typical, raised to
24
the level of schematic-pictures. In other words, the Orient is always and everywhere the same
and its unchanging essence can be located via certain concepts and schematics. In the cited and
other passages, fragments of an orientalist discourse are obvious reminders of the East as a place
of pilgrimage, of oriental mans platonic being, of the inability of the Orient to represent itself,
of the Orients consistency and homogeneity, etc.

Meanwhile, we find a completely different Armenia in Hangover. The screenplay written by the
novellas protagonist, the Armenian writer Mnatsakanyan, which was rejected by the director of
the course, is about the disintegration of the Armenian village community, the population influx
to the cities and the emptying of villages, the alienation of the villager from work and the land,
the fall of morality. Generally, these are the basic literary themes of Matevosyan. According to
him, during the long history of colonialism, the village community was the prime mode for the
survival of the Armenian people and its ethnic resistance, and its dissolution could have severe
consequences. In Hangover, the co-optation of Armenia by the Soviet tourist industry that
accompanied the disastrous consequences of the new wave of industrialization and urbanization
of the 60s is discussed. The expression, Armenia is an open-air museum, was quite widespread
during the Soviet era, and the theme of tourism directly deals with the approach shaped in the
S.U. to equate national culture with the past, with ancient monuments and museums, while at
the same time, to equate the process of the modernization of nations with socialism.

On the other hand, there is no description of Moscows urban environment in Hangover, except
for the scene visible from the window of the dormitory overlooking Dobroliubov Street, together
with the colossal Ostankino TV antenna looming in the distance. Instead, the imperial
environment of the Advanced Course for Scriptwriters is described in detail. To look, turn ones
gaze towards the Center, in this case means to question, primarily through the use of irony, the
forms of (self)representation of the Center and forms permitted or assigned by the Center, the
dominant modes of cultural expression, that, to all appearances, was a prohibited action.
Furthermore, the criticism of the ideological rhetoric was accompanied by the offering of ones
own narrative, the short story being written by Mnatsakanyan in Moscow. The novella begins
with a segment of this story and the claim, repeated several times throughout, that The story is
25
falling into place

The novella is full of citations and re-compositions culled from the most diverse types of texts,
linguistic and visual. Antonionis film and Salingers short story are retold and discussed, the short
story themes and versions of the screenplay are discussed, and typical examples of the rhetoric
of the cold war of the period are reproduced In the taxi on the way to the Cinema House to
watch Antonionis The Night, the participants of the course are flipping the pages of the daily
papers. Cited, or more likely retold, are two large excerpts, two examples of Soviet media
discourse, one of which is an ironic reference to the bourgeois press and bourgeois values
(very typical of the Soviet press). It begins, Even with its so-called omnipresence, the free press
has not been able, till now, to poke its nose onto the sail boat of Aristotle Onassis and Jacqueline
26
Kennedy and pry any details regarding the marriage of the century. (In all cases, since we are
talking about the Moscow papers, they are translated from Russian into Armenian and here I do
not have the luxury of discussing the language issue, a central theme in Lessons of Armenia and
Hangover.)

The Advanced Course for Scriptwriters was envisaged to assist the revival of the Soviet film
industry by, on the one hand, creating domestic commercial films, for example, Soviet
Westerns, and, on the other hand, assisting in the instruction of the generation coming of age
in a spirit of military-patriotism. The war hasnt ended, reminds Vaksberg, When was it that
Russia started to live through the culture of others? We have purchased seventy-five movies

24
, ibid, p. 35.
25
See, Hrach Bayadyan, ibid.
26
Hrant Matevosyan, Tsarere. Yerevan: Sovetakan Grogh, 1978, p. 11.

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from the Americans and we have sold them fourteen. What is this? They are winning the game by
27
a margin of sixty-one units. Note that the S.U. is being equated with Russia. Especially when
the issue being discussed is the clash between the S.U. and the U.S.A., the other Soviet peoples
are forgotten, and this was also typical of the West, which took Russian ethno-centrism for
granted.

Taking this decisive role which the cinema and photography played for Soviet propaganda into
account, I wish to pay specific attention to the critical commentary on samples of visual
representation carried out through ironic reproduction. In a more general sense, the changes
occurring in visual representation and comprehension were of interest to Matevosyan as
28
expressions of the overall cultural shifts. Heres one example. The narrator is in the restaurant
of Cinema House: In that old man, already wrinkled with age, I suddenly recognized the youth in
the war newsreels, the boy that was leading his company into battle, his chest thrust forward in
defiance, decorated with medals, his gun held high above his head, two-thirds of his face turned
29
to the photographer and one-third toward the enemy ahead. The essential elements of the
propaganda pictures rhetorical arsenal are reproduced in the one sentence, the pathetic and
infectious gesture of self-sacrifice reaching imprudence, and the award granted by the fatherland
encouraging and justifying it.

Conclusions

A new stage of consolidation of the Soviet people began in the 60s that was
paradoxically accompanied by the ethnicization of the Soviet nationalities.
This state of modernization was marked by the birth of nationalism in
republics, whose bearers were the hybrid (Soviet-national) intellectual upper
classes formed during the Soviet years. One of the descriptive expressions of
this period was the creation of all-union communities that transgressed ethnic
boundaries. This non-formal supra-ethnic solidarity nurtured in the
intellectual communities could have both been expressed as loyalty towards
the Soviet authorities and/or as resistance towards the empire. Such
resistance could have signified the questioning of the dominant types of
Andrei Bitov and Hrant Matevosyan (photograph cultural expression and established norms and values, in various forms,
kindly provided by the Hrant Matevosyan Foundation including the recognition of national cultures (and identities) as being
different and independent. In this sense, the imperialness of the Advanced
Course for Scriptwriters could also have signified the formation of a conscious
anti-imperial position.

As I have tried to show, the two works selected for discussion written by Russian and Armenian
writers of the same generation in the second half of the 60s, bear witness, in different ways, to
this important development that was taking place in the S.U. during the years following
Khruschevs Thaw.

The critical gaze of the Armenian writer towards the center, which, in the manner of its
performance is an unparallel action, at least in terms of Soviet Armenian literature, also
registered the divide between the Center and the periphery. This was coupled with the discovery
made by Andrei Bitov of the irreducible cultural difference and ethnic otherness of Armenia. This
is perhaps implicitly conditioned by the recognition by Bitov of the ability, in the persona of his
friend Hrant Matevosyan, of Armenias cultural self-representation.

Translated from Armenian by Hrant Gadarigian

27
Ibid, pp. 38-39.
28
See, , , , 65/66, 2007, . 85-96
(http://xz.gif.ru/numbers/65-66/grach-bayadyan/).
29
Hrant Matevosyan, ibid, p. 183.

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