One of the first ships to take candidates for repatriation from Marseilles to Armenia leaves port on 6 September 1947, with four thousand hopeful repatriates on board (Collection Michel Paboudjian/ Paris).
THE REAL BASIS FOR THE "NERKAGHT" AND THE POSITION OF THE AGBU
The Red Army’s overwhelming victory over the Wehrmacht as well as the Soviets’ territorial gains in Eastern Europe went a long way towards convincing international public opinion that the USSR was invincible. Armenian circles, too, were on the whole well disposed toward the Soviet Union. The USSR’s authority among Armenians of the diaspora was further enhanced when, in 1945, Moscow officially demanded that Kars and Ardahan be ceded to Soviet Armenia, a move that gained it the support even of erstwhile bitter detractors. To be sure, this one-upmanship on the Armenian Question was a foretaste of the nascent Cold War between the Soviet bloc and the Western world. A few years later, after the “nerkaght” had come to a halt, Soviet leaders again laid claim to Kars and Ardahan – this time, however, on behalf of Soviet Georgia. The Kremlin’s objective was to step up pressure on Turkey in order to prevent it from joining the camp of the United States, a leading world power by war’s end. Obviously, the aggressive Soviet challenge to Turkish territorial sovereignty was also intended to garner support from diasporan Armenians, whom Moscow now invited to settle in large numbers in Soviet Armenia. Read all
“Repatriation”and AGBU’s Cooperation with Soviet Armenia