Located at the crossroads of Europe, western Asia and the Middle East, Armenia has endured a past that’s proven nothing if not eventful. Alternately divided and conquered by the Romans, Persians, Arabs, Mongols, Ottoman Turks and Russians over the centuries, Armenians have had to work hard at retaining a national identity – the offshoot of which is an avid patriotism that permeates every dimension of national life. The country became the world’s first Christian country back in 301 AD, had developed its own alphabet barely 100 years later and suffered the 20th century’s first genocide (in which it is estimated up to one and a quarter million of its population were killed).
Following a short-lived taste of independence from 1918 to 1922, the country submitted to Soviet rule under the Bolsheviks. A brief period of stability ended when Stalin started widespread purges of the populace and the persecution of the church. After Stalin’s death, Krushchev brought an era under which the country flourished technologically and economically. But these reforms weren’t enough to placate the Armenian population, who were among the first to let their dissatisfaction be known with the advent of glasnost. Following some demonstrations and violent clashes in 1991, the country became the first non-Baltic republic to declare independence and secede from the Soviet Union.
Today, Armenia is a stable country with a democratically elected leadership.
