The History of Modern Armenia to the Present Day

During the Middle Ages, Armenia endured the domination of Byzantium and its Christian identity was consolidated, as told in our history of Armenia from antiquity to the Middle Ages. At the end of the 15th century, crushed between the Persian empire to the east and the Ottoman Empire to the west, a large part of the Armenian population fled the country, and the diaspora scattered between Isfahan and Constantinople, among other places. But new periods of upheaval awaited Armenia.

Tensions between Ottomans and Armenians

At the end of the 18th century, Armenia was divided between the Ottoman Empire and Iran. On the pretext of wanting to liberate the Christian peoples oppressed by Muslim powers, Tsarist Russia carried its conquests towards the Caucasus and reached eastern Armenia in 1813. Fifteen years later, in 1828, it won against the Iranians and reconstituted the Armenian state.

During the first half of the 19th century, the reorganisation of the region led to the crumbling of the country and the dispersal of its population. Wars followed one another, notably the confrontation between the Russians and the Ottomans. Independence and revolutionary parties stirred and perpetuated the massacres, including that of the Armenians by Ottoman troops between 1894 and 1896, which caused more than 200,000 deaths.

Tensions between Ottoman Turks and Armenians were at their peak. The Armenians wanted their independence, based on territory but also on the religion that retained a fundamental role for the Armenian people.

The Armenian genocide by the Turks

The Armenians were regarded by the Turks as an “infidel” and alien minority. Any rebellion was followed by massacres. In the province of Adana, they killed several tens of thousands of people.

The First World War aggravated the dissensions, for the Armenian territory lay between Russia and the Ottoman side, which were opposed during the Great War. Thus the Armenians were accused of collaborating with the Russians, giving a pretext for the worst massacres. From 1915, the Turkish government put in place the measures that inexorably led to genocide: the soldiers were executed, then the elites. Adult men were systematically murdered, and the Muslim population was encouraged in these massacres by Ottoman imams. The rest of the population was deported to the Syrian desert, in the most appalling conditions, thus causing their death.

Between 1915 and 1916, more than a million Armenians were massacred, their only crime being that they did not share the same religion. The genocide is today recognised by many states, as well as by the European Parliament. The chosen date of commemoration is 24 April 1915, when 650 Armenian intellectuals were arrested and deported. Turkey still refuses to officially acknowledge the genocide.

A new and short-lived independence

For the first time since the 14th century, Armenia was once again recognised as independent, on 4 June 1918, by the Treaty of Batum signed by the Ottoman Empire. The country, led by the Dashnak party, stretched over ten thousand square kilometres around Yerevan, which became its capital. During this very brief independence, Armenia granted women the right to vote in 1919.

In 1920, the Treaty of Sèvres granted a portion of the east of present-day Turkey, multiplying Armenia’s surface area fivefold, but it had to give this up after the war waged by Kemalist Turkey. The country was then invaded by Bolshevik Russia. It became one of the fifteen Soviet socialist republics that made up the USSR from 1920.

Armenia during the Second World War

As the Eastern Front never reached the southern Caucasus, despite Hitler’s wish to seize the oil fields of Azerbaijan, Armenia did not experience the devastation of the western USSR. It provided notable assistance in industry and agricultural production.

Belonging to the USSR, Armenian soldiers had to fight for the Soviet Union’s army. General Hovhannes Baghramyan took command of the Baltic front in 1943. He was the first non-Slav to command an operation of this scale. Thanks to the recapture of the Dniester, he was elevated to the title of Hero of the Soviet Union.

Between 300,000 and 500,000 Armenians served in the war, of whom half never returned. The war was the only period during which Stalin gave the Armenian Church a little respite.

The return to independence

From 1920, the country underwent communist collectivisation and central planning. Moscow attempted to annihilate the Armenian Church but failed. Opponents of the Soviets were sent to the gulag and the economic situation was catastrophic, as everywhere the communists held sway.

It was not until the death of Stalin, in 1953, that the country regained a little of its colour, thanks to an agriculture that benefited from a favourable climate and to industry that developed with the extraction of raw materials such as metals and minerals (copper, diamonds).

Within the country, national sentiment was always very strong, and even communism failed to muzzle its expression. On 24 April 1965, a demonstration commemorating the genocide was organised in Yerevan, and the people dared to attend in large numbers. In 1966, a clandestine nationalist party was quietly formed, the National Unity Party.

Mikhail Gorbachev’s glasnost and perestroika enabled Armenia to set up a Union for National Self-Determination in 1987. Large demonstrations took place on 17 and 18 October 1987 to push for independence. In 1988, the Azeri-held Nagorno-Karabakh was attached to Armenia.

More than a year before the fall of the USSR, on 23 August 1990, Armenia declared its sovereignty. Levon Ter-Petrosyan, a leading figure in the campaign for the annexation of Nagorno-Karabakh, embodied the nationalist aspiration.

A new parliament was elected and the Armenian National Movement, Ter-Petrosyan’s party, emerged victorious. On 16 October 1991, Ter-Petrosyan became the president of the Republic of Armenia, proclaimed independent on 21 September 1991, following the success of the coup against Gorbachev.

The conflict with Azerbaijan

The new republic went through a difficult economic period, aggravated by the armed conflict with Azerbaijan over the question of Nagorno-Karabakh, ongoing since 1988. At that point the region split, with the Russia–Armenia–Iran trio on one side and the Turkey–Georgia–Azerbaijan grouping on the other.

Despite a ceasefire signed in May 1994 over the question of Nagorno-Karabakh, the simmering conflict that remained forced Levon Ter-Petrosyan to resign in 1998, as he was judged too lenient. His successor, Robert Kocharyan, found a semblance of a way out, thanks to the support of Europe, whose council Armenia joined in 2000.

Armenia in the 2000s

The diaspora, solidly established abroad, enabled Armenia’s development by exercising its influence from afar, through a system of lobbying. In April 2008, Serzh Sargsyan was elected the new president.

The Armenian Apostolic Church, still as powerful as ever, reoccupied its seat at Etchmiadzin upon the proclamation of the Republic of Armenia. With more than six million faithful, it remains led by the Catholicos of All Armenians.

Since 2018, the president of the Republic of Armenia has been elected by indirect universal suffrage, that is, by the members of parliament, for a single, non-renewable seven-year term. The office of president of the Republic is honorary, as it is the Prime Minister who holds executive power, a role held since 2018 by Nikol Pashinyan.

The presidency has since passed from Armen Sarkissian, who resigned in 2022, to Vahagn Khachaturyan, elected the same year.

The importance of the Armenian diaspora today

Two thirds of the Armenian population does not live in Armenia! That is a population of 10 million Armenians, but only 3 million residing in their own territory. Since the genocide of 1915, and even before, the population has never ceased to flee the country.

The diaspora is mostly established in Russia (2.2 million), the United States (1.2 million) and Europe (600,000). The count is made by taking into account people born in foreign territory. This must, however, be put into perspective, as some countries, including France, refuse ethnic statistics.

France, the leading land of welcome for Armenians

Among European countries, France is said to be the leading host country, with 400,000 Armenians, according to the Committee for the Defence of the Armenian Cause (CDCA) and the Research Centre on the Armenian Diaspora (CRDA).

Marseille is the leading city of welcome. The diaspora then spread to the towns of the Rhône with Lyon, Valence and Saint-Étienne, before reaching Paris. The Armenians of Russia also came to France from 1917, to flee the communists, particularly the bourgeoisie who were being massacred.

The obvious reasons for such a diaspora

The turbulent geopolitical past, the genocide by the Turks (and never acknowledged since!), and the fall of the USSR are all factors that drove the Armenian people to flee their country.

Many Armenians who had settled in Syria have returned to their country of origin since the war that broke out there in 2011. However, many still flee the country, feeling that it is not modernising quickly enough.

As a result, the Armenian population is ageing and the country struggles to develop. Nevertheless, the diaspora, having succeeded well abroad, represents a major asset for the country, thanks to the dynamic exchanges between the two populations.

The 6th Diaspora Forum, held in Yerevan in September 2018, was entitled “Mutual Trust, Unity and Responsibility”. It brought together the Armenian population scattered across seventy-one countries.

Plan your visit

This long and turbulent history is best understood on the ground, among the monasteries, memorials and museums that keep it alive. Build your own itinerary or book an all-inclusive tour to experience it first-hand, and delve deeper into the country’s art, music and literature.