Aiding Ties

From the MT:
"Moscow's Armenian Community Marks 100th Anniversary of Genocide"

Ahead of President Vladimir Putin's visit to Yerevan on Friday to attend the centennial commemorations of the Armenian genocide, an atrocity that molded family histories and continues to fuel contentious political debate, Moscow's Armenian community convened to remember its victims and thank those who selflessly saved their relatives' lives.  Friday marks 100 years since the Ottoman Empire embarked on a series of massacres and deportations of its ethnic Armenian community that resulted in the deaths of more than one million people. Ottoman leaders, according to some historical accounts, accused Armenians — a Christian community of some two million living in what is modern-day eastern Turkey — of sympathizing with Russia, the empire's World War I foe.

Russia was and remains a pivotal country for the Armenians who fled their homeland to escape the genocide. The country is home to 1.18 million ethnic Armenians and 60,000 Armenian nationals, according to the 2010 census. According to Moscow's official statistics service, there are more than 100,000 ethnic Armenians in the capital alone.  Russia is also among the score of countries that have officially recognized the Armenian genocide. Turkey, the successor state of the Ottoman Empire, vehemently rejects the term "genocide" to describe what happened to its Armenian population during World War I.  The State Duma adopted a resolution in 1995 condemning the "perpetrators of the extermination of Armenians" and declaring April 24 a day of remembrance for the victims of the genocide. More than 2,000 events are being held across 640 Russian cities to mark its 100th anniversary, according to Russia's Union of Armenians.  The Duma's resolution on the genocide states that through Russia's leadership, the great European powers of the First World War had in 1915 labeled the Ottoman Empire's actions against its Armenian community a "crime against humanity."

Russia's assistance to Armenian refugees went far beyond ideological support or religious affinities, according to Yury Navoyan, president of the Russian-Armenian Association.  Navoyan claims that some 200,000 Armenian refugees had sought refuge in the Russian Empire's North Caucasus by the summer of 1915, and that in total, more than 300,000 Armenians, among whom were many women and children, fled to Russia to escape the genocide. The tsarist government, according to Navoyan, provided Armenian refugees with two million rubles in financial assistance and assisted in their resettlement.  Many of the Armenian refugees died as they fled, according to various scholarly accounts of the events. A local newspaper from the period quoted by the Russian-Armenian Association reported that out of the 70,000 refugees located near the city of Echmiadzin (the modern-day Armenian city of Vagharshapat), 700 were dying each day from exhaustion, hunger and disease.

"Thanks to the Russian soldiers from the tsar's army, many Armenians who would have otherwise perished were saved," Archbishop Ezras Nersisyan, head of the Nor-Nakhichevan and Russian diocese of the Armenian Apostolic Church, told The Moscow Times earlier this week. "There is a famous picture from the time showing a Russian soldier cradling an Armenian baby. That baby is someone's grandparent today." Just as nearly every Russian has a personal story about World War II, the family histories of Moscow's Armenian community are intrinsically tied to the events of 1915. At the opening of the Armenian Museum of Moscow and Culture of Nations on Wednesday, descendants of genocide survivors, with forget-me-not flower pins on their lapels, recalled the horrors of the past. The director of a Moscow publishing house, Artur Artenyan, said that his great-grandfather was the only survivor of an extended family of 46 who fled the Ottoman Empire. Artenyan's great-grandfather had bribed an Ottoman soldier, hoping that he would spare his life. The soldier obliged but killed the man's brother with one shot to the back.  Even those who did not necessarily lose relatives in the Armenian genocide — like 57-year-old shopkeeper Nazani Oganesyan, who moved to Russia from Yerevan in 1999 in search of work — are brought to tears by their people's historical baggage.  "We have a legend according to which Armenians used to have blue eyes but their sorrow turned them black," she said, her bloodshot chestnut eyes welling up.  But on Wednesday, as it inaugurated a new 2,000-square-meter high-tech museum equipped with a 3-D movie theater and interactive exhibitions to honor the victims of the genocide, Moscow's Armenian community did not mope or wallow in collective self-pity. Its message was clear: Armenians had benefitted from other nations' largesse, but they have returned the favor and will continue to do so.  Speakers at the opening ceremony recalled the role of Armenians in the Soviet armed forces during World War II. According to Yury Bulatov, a faculty dean at the Moscow State Institute of International Relations, the Soviet Army's 89th Rifle Division, composed primarily of Armenians, played a key role in the Battle of Berlin, which gave the final blow to Nazi Germany in 1945. The Allied victory over Nazi Germany, whose 70th anniversary Russia will mark with great pomp and ceremony on May 9, is attributable in part to the Armenians who fully embraced the country that had accepted them in their time of need, Bulatov said.  "There are only something like 10 million Armenians on the planet. But it feels like there are many more," Stanislav Govorukhin, chairman of the State Duma's culture committee, said at the opening ceremony of the museum, enumerating world-renowned ethnic Armenians such as French chanson star Charles Aznavour and Soviet composer Aram Khachaturian.

^ Russia the United States have the highest percentage of Armenians outside of Armenia. Russia did do a lot to aid the Armenians fleeing for their lives during and after World War 1. Many went to the Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic but they also went to other parts of the Soviet Union. That refuge and aid shouldn't be forgotten regardless of any new political disagreements. ^

http://www.themoscowtimes.com/news/article/moscows-armenian-community-marks-100th-anniversary-of-genocide/519671.html