Apricot Socialism: The National Past, the Soviet Project, and the Imagining of Community in Late Soviet Armenia

In April 1965, an illegal demonstration brought an estimated twenty thousand people to the streets of Yerevan to call for the official recognition of the Armenian genocide of 1915 and the return of Armenian lands. While this event is traditionally seen as dissident and anti-Soviet, in this article I draw attention to the demonstration's particularly Soviet character, as it followed rules and practices central to Soviet rituals and the official revolutionary narrative. Party officials and petitioners expressed similar views on past national suffering and its implications for the Soviet community and the communist future, all of which were in turn to be affirmed by the construction of the first genocide memorial ever built on Soviet soil. These local reinterpretations of the Soviet project do not just point to developments that help explain the Soviet system's longevity. They are also a reminder that the constant reimagining of communities not only pertains to the nation but also concerns and often intermingles with the reimagination of other communities, such as the Soviet one