Journal of Power Institutions in Post-Soviet Societies (May 2013)
Амшенская деревня в годы Великой Отечественной войны: без идеологических купюр [Hamshen Villages during the years of the Great Patriotic War : Without Ideological Cut]
Abstract
The town of Tuapse, on Russia’s Black Sea Coast, has recently been granted the status of “Gorod Voinskoi Slavy” (town of military glory). This pronouncement has created space for public discussion and civic activity regarding the contribution of the Tuapsinskii district (a part of Krasnodarskii Krai) to the war effort, a subject about which there is a lack of academic literature. As official discourse doesn’t indicate the role played by ethnic minorities during the war, the Tuapse Armenian Community (a division of Soiuz Armian Rossii – Union of Armenians of Russia), which represents local Hamshen Armenians, has decided to erect at least three monuments dedicated to Great Patriotic War heroes of Armenian descent: Admiral Isakov of the Gornii village, and three heroes from the Shaumian village – Melkonian, Snoplian, Shalzhiian. With this community activity bringing memories of the war to the forefront, the authors have chosen to draw on the experiences of the actual participants in the war, some of which are still alive and can readily give first-hand information about the situation. The authors have conducted in-depth (biographical) interviews, as well as an analysis of the existing Soviet and post-Soviet literature on the topic. Preliminary review of publications has shown ambivalence or even misrecognition of the contribution of non-Russians groups to the victory over the Nazis. The article focuses on Hamshen Armenian villagers’ everyday life in the context of the 1941-1945 war in order to address the gap in scholarly literature through extracts from the collective memory. The authors apply both history and anthropology and by putting them together transgress the disciplinary borders. The questions this research raises are: Is our understanding of the war effort important to our understanding of the Hamshen community? Do we need to counter mainstream "grand narratives" with local knowledge?
