Armenian News

London Evening Standard
First chance to buy brandy that Stalin served Churchill
Jonathan Prynn, Consumer Business Editor
<http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard-home/jonathan-prynn-consumer-busines
s-editor>



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Drinking buddies: Joseph Stalin and Winston Churchill at Yalta,
where the prime minister first tasted Ararat..
Stalin later sent him 400 bottles a year

23 March 2012
Sir Winston Churchill's favourite Armenian brandy — said to have played a
key role in the shaping of postwar Europe — has gone on sale in Britain for
the first time.
The prime minister developed a taste for the ArArAt brandy when it was
served by Stalin at the Yalta conference in February 1945. After the Second
World War, the Soviet leader arranged for Churchill to be sent 400 bottles
every year.
However, it was not available to the British public because the Soviet
government only allowed a small number of spirit brands, such as
Stolichnaya, to be exported. Most supplies of ArArAt were reserved for the
Communist Party elite.
Now, more than 20 years after the collapse of the Iron Curtain, East
European drinks distributor Vinorium has brought 10,000 bottles to London,
to be sold from Monday in the city’s specialist wine merchants, such as
Gerry’s of Soho, priced at about £29.
[Also available through Ara Petrosyan, London]
Vinorium’s Laszlow Puskas hopes eventually to sell ArArAt throughout Britain
and Ireland if it proves a success. He said: “Everyone seems very surprised
that it is finally coming to the British market. Liquor shops told us they
were getting regular requests for it, but nobody knew where to get it.”
The company is also bringing other “lost” Eastern European spirit brands to
Britain, including Ruskova vodka.
The brandy, which was also a favourite of Agatha Christie and Frank Sinatra,
has been made in the Ararat Valley since 1887. The brand is now owned by
French drinks giant Pernot Ricard.

Armenian Weekly
Garbis: Notes on Emigration
Posted by Christian Garbis
on March 22, 2012

Emigration is the single most detrimental threat to the Armenian
nation today, even more so than governmental corruption. The
National Statistics Service insists that the population of Armenia
is still 3.2 million, a figure it has maintained since 2001 since
the last census was taken. Meanwhile, behinds closed doors rumours
are heard that there are barely 2 million people actually living
in the country today. A new census is slated for this year, but
its findings will be unpromising. Untold thousands leave the country
every year as permanent emigrants.

Emigration is increasing for several reasons. The main one is, of
course, a lack of jobs and persistent mass poverty. Perhaps the most
effective way to address this problem, while keeping the youth from
leaving, is for the government to attract more investment in the IT
sector. The overture to give tax breaks to technology companies doing
business in Armenia is still not aggressive enough. The IT sector
needs to increase four-fold. Technology centres need to be
established across the country, from Kapan to Alaverdi, and new
talent must be continually cultivated.

In the meantime, as part of a mass rural development plan, entire
villages are being uprooted and transplanted to remote regions of
Russia, where people are offered free housing and employment.
According to the National Statistics Service, the total number of poor
increased from 27.6 percent in 2008 to 35.8 percent in 2010, despite
the tens of millions being pumped into the country in foreign aid
packages, investments, loans, and remittances. During the same
period, there was about a 10 percent increase in poverty in rural
Armenia. The 2010 poverty line was set at a monthly income of 33,517
dram, or about $90, per adult.

There are also problems related to sustaining small businesses. Rents
are going up, and small stores find it hard to compete, especially with
the chain supermarkets that are branching out across the city. Higher
rent and prices for imported goods mean less profit when customer
loyalty dwindles. The lower middle class—the core of Armenian society
–has less and less to spend.

The third reason is attributed to bad attitudes and pervasive apathy.
I still hear statements like, “The country’s not a country,” and “Is
Armenia even a country for you to come here?” as if it were all a big
joke. A defeatist dissatisfaction with everything and blind indifference
to the general state of affairs are suppressing the vital strengthening
of society. The only segment of the population that has the genuine
right to express a feeling of hopelessness is the poor/very poor. Many
of Armenia’s destitute populace have no choice but to leave for Russia
or elsewhere to find work.

Another reason to leave is that it’s fashionable. The youth dream of
leaving the country and moving to more exotic places like the U.S.,
Canada, and Europe. It’s the cool thing to do. Even if someone has
a hard time making a go of things where they end up, emotionally,
financially, or whatever, the stigma that it is “shameful” to go back
inhibits their desire to return. So you have one group that is ecstatic
about living elsewhere in the world—anywhere but Armenia—and
another that regrets leaving in the first place, but won’t return to the
homeland.

The majority of Armenian citizens have a lot to be thankful for. Although
they may be blind to it, they presently have a relatively stable government
and economy. The government insists that the economy will grow by
4.2 percent this year and that it will meet its target in collecting about
$2.3 billion in tax revenues. Armenia is considered by the Heritage
Foundation (www.heritage.org/index/country/Armenia) to have a
“moderately free” economy—ranked 39th in the world ahead of Norway,
France, Turkey, and Azerbaijan—and is now implementing a revised,
amicable registration process for doing business. It benefits from the
support of the European community, the Americas, China, Japan, and
of course its big brother, Russia. Petty crime is not common in many
parts of the capital and arguably less so in the regions. There is little
to fear by walking the streets of the city centre late at night, and that’s
something that certainly can’t be said of many cities around the world.

And despite the beating of war drums by its oil-happy neighbour to the
east, there isn’t a clear sign of a possible resumption in hostilities. No
one in the international community, Armenia, or Artsakh seems to take
the rhetoric seriously. Moreover, Armenians have had the privilege of
living in a democracy for 20 years, enjoying the freedoms of casting a
ballot, thought, expression, and enterprise, all of which are taken for
granted. Emigration long ago became a national security risk for Armenia,
fuelled by boundless cynicism and apathy towards nation building. If it
continues unchecked, the emigration problem will instigate a severe,
harrowing depopulation of the only parcel of land the Armenian nation
can legally call its own. And ultimately, that will mean others will move
in to take their place. The exodus from Armenia needs to be curbed, and
that entails more than just evasive action taken by the Armenian
government. It will need the support and encouragement of the Armenian
Diaspora to ensure Armenia becomes a country that anyone returning
would never dream of leaving again. That has to happen now.




March 23, 2012
Discovering the Forgotten Holy Land
Overlooked Armenia is home to a complex culture and some of the world's
greatest religious shrines
By DENNIS K. BERMAN
<http://online.wsj.com/search/term.html?KEYWORDS=DENNIS+K.+BERMAN&bylinesear
ch=true>


Robert Harding World Imagery/Getty Images
ROCKS OF AGES | The Monastery of Haghpat

The Armenian man let loose a single musical note. It ricocheted between the
1,000-year-old stone walls of Haghpat Monastery, echoes transforming his
warm, lonely voice into a full symphony.

If time has a sound, it sounds like Haghpat, one of the world's greatest
religious shrines—and also one of the least explored.

Every year, millions of tourists flock to the predictable splendours of Rome
and Jerusalem, filling the Vatican and the Old City. Armenia, meanwhile,
hosted fewer than 100,000 visitors in 2009. It's understandable: On first
impression, this country of three million on the Caucasus does not feel like
a holy land.
Armenia's cities are filled with grim industrial buildings. Hundreds of
miles of barbed wire separate it from Turkey, from whom it is still awaiting
an apology for a 1915 genocide. Relations with neighbouring Azerbaijan,
which claims territory within Armenia, remain fractured. The bulk of
Armenian tourists are, in fact, Armenians, who scattered after World War I
and through later years of economic decay.
Enlarge Image


Getty Images
Ancient archways at Haghpat

Yet it is this tangle of histories and enmity that makes Armenia such a
compelling place to visit, as my wife and I learned when we spent a week
there last summer. Men roast giant pots of corn by the roadside; Armani-clad
hustlers share streets with farmers wearing thick, Soviet-era suits. And
magnificent, soot-stained monasteries like Haghpat and Geghard, which was
carved into the side of a mountain, still preside atop green valleys.
Perhaps fittingly, a fine airborne grit—and surprisingly friendly gun-toting
guards—welcomed us to Armenia's northeastern border crossing with Georgia.
We were driven by a 48-year-old former architect who said he changed careers
because there is no work to be had designing new buildings. Old structures—
abandoned Soviet factories—still loom over the landscape.
But soon enough, crumbling concrete gave way to thick forest, spread across
a series of river valleys. The occasional ox cart appeared on the uneven
roads, slowing our progress. At a roadside restaurant, a few dollars bought
a lunch of fresh lamb, eggplant and hearth-baked bread.
The bucolic, shambolic setting only made the 10th-century Haghpat, in the
northeastern corner of Armenia, feel all the more remarkable.
With its gilded and vaulted spaces, the Vatican implores its visitors to be
inspired. Haghpat doesn't have to try so hard. It and sister monastery
Sanahin, which form a Unesco World Heritage site, are little visited on
Armenia's back roads. At Sanahin, only a wizened female caretaker was on
site. (And down the hill was a memorial to Artem Mikoyan, father of the
Soviet MiG, complete with a fighter jet.)


Tim E. White/Alamy
Vendors outside Geghard monastery

From the outside, Haghpat looks like a jumbled castle whose owners keep
randomly adding on wings and storerooms. About 500 years after King Vartan
Mamikonian made Christianity his nation's official religion, a monk named
Nishan set upon a hillside near the modern-day town of Alaverdi to build
Haghpat. The main two-story sanctuary was begun in 967 and was finished 24
years later. In the centuries that followed, descendants built scriptoria
and belfries, refectories and mess halls, chiseling many of their walls with
fine crosses.
Haghpat's monks formed a devotional, if paranoid, communal existence. Their
lives were short. Books and manuscripts were fiercely protected. Invaders
were so frequent that the windows were designed as narrow slits, which today
seem to concentrate the power of the sunlight that beams through them.
Nishan named the place more suitably than he may have imagined—"Haghpat"
means "strong walls" in Armenia's curled 36-letter alphabet. The blackened
stone walls have survived earthquakes and sackings, Muslim invaders and
atheist pedants, and convey fortitude where little has managed to endure. In
a country full of monasteries, Haghpat, which outlasted the Cilicians,
Egyptian Mameluks, Kurds, Turks, Mongols, Ottomans, Persians and Russians,
particularly inspires simply because it is still here.
THE LOWDOWN: ARMENIA


Getting There:
Russian airline Aeroflot flies to Yerevan, Armenia's capital, from Moscow,
but visa requirements mean it can be easier to take Lot Polish Airlines from
Warsaw.

Where to Stay: Avan Villa Yerevan Hotel, atop a hill just outside the city
center, is a welcome respite from the capital's hot, dusty streets (from
about $96 per night, tufenkianheritage.com
<http://www.tufenkianheritage.com> ). Options diminish near Haghpat;
consider staying in well-groomed Dilijan, about two hours away.
Where to Eat: Mercedes Benzes line up outside Dolmama's, one of Yerevan's
finest restaurants. Try the eggplant rolls with walnut and cream (dolmama.am
<http://www.dolmama.am> ).
Inside, towering arches are caked with a patina of soot, mold and plain old
dirt. Birds roam throughout the many rooms, their tweets echoing among the
stones. The sparse walls once held a series of religious murals and
paintings. Most were scrubbed off by the Soviets, though a few splashes of
red and blue peek through the grime.

There are also tracks of soot from a set of flickering candles. It's as if
you can see the centuries of invisible prayer that accumulated with each
lighted wick, making the ethereal into the tangible.

As we explored the complex, we trod on tombs and crypts laid down century by
century. Most feature the ancient Armenian script, surely describing the
pious and glamorous of the day. Some are simpler, depicting only the most
basic outline of an adult's body—or a child's.

To pray at Haghpat is to offer thanks for our short time here; to know that
our tombstones will one day be flooring; and to respect how a rock arch can
plant itself in the ground and not let go of the sky.