Making Armenians Lebanese: The 1957 Election and the Ensuing 1958 Conflict

Chapter 4 investigates Armenians’ stance in the 1957 elections and in the ‘general’ Lebanese and the intra-Armenian mini-civil war of 1958. Armenian parties participated in, and contributed to, political tensions in Lebanon. Simultaneously, they used their position in the Lebanese political system to jostle for power within their own community – a development that turned violent and ended only in December 1958, almost two months after the Lebanese mini-civil war had ended. This tension and violent confrontation between Armenian parties and their armed men had a crucial spatial effect: it unprecedentedly territorialized certain neighborhoods of Beirut. Whereas parts of Lebanon were organized by sects and classes, by relative contrast, it was according to political party affiliation that in 1957/1958 many Armenians of Mar Mikael, Sin el Fil, Bourj Hamoud, and Corniche el-Nahr were re-sorted and relocated, often by force. Lebanese Armenians aligned along the right-left fault lines that divided Lebanese politics and society— more than other confessions, indeed. Vice versa, the Lebanese state was Armenianized, as it were, in that it started to pay more attention to Armenian matters than before, intervening directly and by military force in Armenian neighborhoods in order to finally end the internecine Armenian confrontation.

Cold War, Bottom-up: The 1956 Catholicos Election

Chapter 3 examines the 1956 Catholicos election in Lebanon.While the excitement and success of the repatriation movement was a public relations victory for the USSR supported by local Armenian institutions and assisted by Lebanese and Syrian governments, this election became a site of contestation by Cold War powers and by their state and non-state allies and proxies in the Middle East. This analysis allows us to look at the Cold War in the Middle East not from the top down, through the eyes of Washington or Moscow (or Lebanon’s or Egypt’s state authorities, for that matter) during flash points like the 1958 U.S. intervention in Lebanon or the U.S. and Soviet reactions to the Tripartite Aggression against Egypt in 1956. Rather, in that election, Armenians made use of Cold War tensions to designate a leader of the Armenian Church who was seen to suit the community’s interests. That story also expands our understanding of Lebanon’s Armenians: from refugees and outsiders in national politics to true participants, whose own internal politics, moreover, were of interest to Lebanon’s authorities and who by now felt free to invade and use public spaces beyond their own neighborhoods to make political statements.

The Homeland Debate, Redux: The Political–Cultural Impact of the 1946–1949 Repatriation to Soviet Armenia

Chapter 2 deals with the 1946-1949 Soviet repatriation drive to collect all worldwide Armenians and “return” them to the ASSR and, specifically, the Lebanese Armenian political-cultural understandings of it. I explore how that initiative formed a chapter of Lebanese (and other Middle Eastern) Armenians’ renegotiation of national belonging in early post-colonial times. And although about a third of all Armenian repatriates travelled via Beirut, I also look at those who remained in Lebanon and in other countries in the Middle East. The emerging Cold War was more than a backdrop to this story. Heating up, the Cold War – and the very divergent readings of, and responses to, the repatriation initiative among Lebanese Armenians – reinforced tensions between Armenian rightists and leftists. Armenians’ response to repatriation did not simply reflect their extant political-cultural positions. Rather, repatriation sharpened those positions. Responses to repatriation echoed issues on the changing Lebanese/Syrian/Armenian identity complex at the dawn of the post-colonial nation-state. The responses to repatriation included a retelling and a reconstitution of the history of the tragedy of the genocide. They also automatically triggered questions about the location and nature of the Armenian homeland, adding fuel to the division between Dashnaks and Armenian leftists.

Introduction

The Introduction contextualizes the Armenian population in Lebanon. It distinguishes between Armenians who lived in Lebanon prior to the division of the Ottoman Empire, in the wake of the Armenian Genocide, and after the establishment of French and British mandatory rule in the Levant. In addition, it outlines the ecclesiastic, class, linguistic, and political gamut of the Armenian population in Lebanon. It analyzes how Armenians organized themselves according to the villages and centers in the Ottoman Empire that they hailed from and reformed their political ideologies, affiliations, and ecclesiastic connections resulting in the establishment of mini-enclaves within Armenian-populated neighborhoods in Lebanon. The introduction also positions the book within four fields: histories of Armenians, Lebanon, the Cold War in the Middle East, and the Diaspora Studies. The innovation of linking these fields together through the themes of identification, belonging, and articulating citizenship produces fresh readings of the time period. This intervention draws attention to experiences that established scholarship does not adequately tackle, increasing the possible ways and methods to study and approach the region, its inhabitants, and historical time frame.

Conclusion

The conclusion returns to the need to reexamine the history of Lebanon and its Armenian population. To understand Lebanon in the years following independence one must engage deeply with their Armenian inhabitants and explore how they fashioned and refashioned belonging in the everyday in a variety of spheres: social, religious, cultural, and political. To understand Armenians one does not have to consider them as part of a larger diaspora, but rather as active local inhabitants engaged in layered power struggles. To grasp the complexity of the Cold War in the Middle East, one must examine not only how American and Soviet powers and state proxies engaged with one another, but also how this environment was used and manipulated by societal actors. Taken together, all this demonstrates not only the importance of studying Armenians in Lebanon but also the very necessity of doing so. Armenians Beyond Diaspora pushes Armenians from the margins into the center, not to insert them artificially into a larger history that has already been written, but into a space that calls for additional explorations of marginal populations, power struggles, changing notions of belonging, and the adaptability of the nation.

Repositioning Armenians in Newly Post-Colonial Nation-states: Lebanon and Syria, 1945–1946

Chapter 1 investigates Lebanese Armenians’ triangulations and balancing acts vis-à-vis the Lebanese state, its wider Arab environment, and the Armenian Socialist Soviet Republic (ASSR) around the time of Lebanon’s independence in the mid 1940s. I pursue this inquiry by closely analyzing Armenian language newspapers published in Beirut. These often ideologically opposed newspapers, the leftist Ararad, the communist Joghovourti Tzain, the capitalist yet supporter of the Armenian Socialist Soviet Republic (ASSR) Zartonk, and the firmly right-wing nationalist Dashnak Aztag reflected the issues of interest of the day. I explore four themes. The first is Armenians’ position in and vis-à-vis the Lebanese polity as well as vis-à-vis Syria. A second concerns language, and specifically the multiple roles of Arabic and its relationship with Armenian. The next one has to do with the ambiguities of spaces relevant for Armenians in and beyond Lebanon, including the ASSR. And a last one concerns the fascinating political positioning of the church that, although conservative, felt forced to support communist Armenia and the USSR as the ASSR’s protector.