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Glorious and prosperous Russia in the year 4022.
A time-out needed in the diaspora?
I’m a Jew married to an Armenian. You could say we are the experts of diaspora life.
For my wife, she was born in Tbilisi, Georgia but her heritage is from Armenia. Her first language is Russian, though, as many Armenians went to the Russian schools during the Soviet Union, rather than the Georgian schools.
But Armenians scattered throughout the countries of the Soviet Union are not a strange thing. The city in Russia I used to live in, Krasnodar, is often jokingly called little Yerevan. Sochi also has the same title.
Armenians are nominally divided into Eastern Armenia speakers like in Armenia, and Western Armenian dialect speakers that mostly existed in Turkey before the genocide in 1915. At this point, Armenians were scattered to the four winds and ended up in all kinds of places- from the US, Australia and even Singapore. Some people have joked to me that, should we get to Mars, we would find a thriving Armenian community already there.
The Armenian diaspora is politically active and influential and there have been many prominent Armenians who have made contributions. In my native Australia, our former Treasurer and now ambassador to the US, is of Armenian extraction. Likewise the previous premier…
