April - June 2001 Main Exhibit Area Great upheavals took place recently in Armenia even before the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. The rise of the Karabagh movement in late 1987 was followed by a war to protect Nagorno Karabagh's independence during 1992-94. A massive earthquake in December 1988 in northern Armenia took the lives of 30,000 people and orphaned thousands of children. Following the breakup of the Soviet Union, Armenia established itself as a republic in May 1991, and its leaders, who had little political and diplomatic experience, faced the challenges of building a market economy and finding solutions to the Azerbaijani and Turkish blockades. Among the new republic's leaders were many writers and intellectuals who had been at the forefront of the struggle for freedom; one of them, Levon Ter Petrossian, became the republic's first president in October 1991.

With Soviet censorship removed, writers and artists produced works that reflected a range of reactions, including pain, despair, hopelessness, the struggle to survive, and other social and psychological crises. New periodicals and newspapers featured work by new artists, and journals also devoted extensive amounts of space to the work of foreign artists. Much classical and contemporary foreign literature was translated into Armenian. And filmmakers with financial support from abroad produced films, such as Vigen Chaldranian's feature film "Kyrie Eleison." The World Conference in Contemporary Armenian Literature, organized by the UCLA Narekatsi Chair for Armenian Studies, took place on April 7-8 in UCLA's Rolfe Auditorium. This two-day conference brought more than 30 poets, writers, and critics from various countries, including 15 from Armenia. Among the questions discussed were: What were the causes of the recent explosion of Armenian art and literature? What are the themes of the literature? What is happening to the language? What is the quality of the work? What is the current state of poetry, prose, and drama? And what is the nature of Armenian diaspora literature? In the course of history, Armenia went through long periods of political powerlessness during which culture played the crucial role in maintaining the continuity of ethnic tradition; has this been true in the last decade of the twentieth century? What is the role of the writer/artist today in Armenia and the diaspora? These themes are also explored in the exhibit in the surrounding cases. The UCLA Library's outstanding Armenian collection, developed over more than 30 years, is the source of the books on view, and the original art objects have been generously loaned to the Charles E. Young Research Library for the exhibit.

Back