MARNEULI, Georgia — Although eight year-old Zveyada Mamedova has been living in Georgia since the day she was born, she is an Azeri who speaks fluent Armenian. Zveyada’s father, Tofik Mamedov, graduated from the local Armenian primary school and knows perfect Armenian like all other Azeris of Mirzoyevka. Zveyada’s mother, Svedlana, has also graduated from an Armenian school in the Armenian Amasya region.
Many would find it hard to believe, but it is a fact that Azeris in Mirzoyevka attend Armenian school and are first introduced to the Mesrobian alphabet. For some of the Azeri families in the village, living among Armenians and sending their children to Armenian schools goes back to the Soviet era.
The majority of the inhabitants of the Marneuli region, which shares a border with Armenia’s Tavush marz, are Azeris, although there are also about ten thousand Armenians in the region who live in Azeri territories like the city Marneuli and the villages Sadakhlo, Imiri and others, as well as in Armenian villages like Shahumian, Karmir, Akhkyorpi, Chanakhchi etc. Mirzoyevka lies about twenty kilometers from the Georgian capital Tbilisi; the Yerevan-Tbilisi highway and the railway that connects the two countries passes in the vicinity of the village.
Elmira Tarzian came to Mirzoyevka from the Armenian Catholic village Heshdya in Javakhk. She has been teaching Armenian language and literature at the local school for decades. She accompanied me to the classrooms where Armenian children share desks with twelve Azeri and a few Assyrian students. In Mirzoyevka, Azeris prefer to receive local Armenian primary education and later attend Russian or Azeri secondary schools, since the closest Azeri school is three to four kilometers away. The Azeris, Armenians and other nationals living in the region know a couple of languages and the most important thing is that almost all know the others’ languages.
“There are no bad races, only bad people,” said Elmira Tarzian before bidding farewell.
Mirzoyevka was previously an Armenian-Assyrian populated village. According to the residents, the village lands belonged to the Baku-based Armenian magnate of petroleum Mirzoyev, who had agreed to allocate territories to the Assyrians who had emigrated from the north of Iran along with the Armenians; Azeris also settled in the village later on.
The casual and neighborly relations between Armenians and Azeris in these regions were sustained even during the peak of the Karabakh conflict. Although the local Armenians were afraid for their compatriots as the Azeris were for Azerbaijan, both refrained from ethnic clashes in a third country.
Karmir is a neighboring Armenian village which, is separated from the Azeri Dashdapa village by only a road. Before the Soviet regime, Mirzoyevka bore the name Mantashovka as a token to the great Armenian magnate of petroleum and benefactor Alexander Mantashov who owned most of the village lands. In the twentieth century, these lands were later given to the Armenians who came from Western Armenia and Tabriz.
In the late 1980s, following destructive floods, Muslim Ajars settled in this region and some of the Karmir lands were given to the newcomers. According to some Armenian and especially Azeri media publications, Tbilisi officials settled some demographic issues by relocating Muslim Ajars and mountain-based Svans in this region. Although these media publications may bear some truth in them, the Marneuli region continues to be predominantly Azeri populated with its ethnic Armenian minority and almost non-existent Georgian population.
The Armenians and Azeris of the region know very little Georgian since the main interaction is with Azeris, according to Zourab Kasparian, a Karmir resident.
“During the Karabakh war, the relationship with the Azeris did not get tense although both parties were avoiding direct discussions of the topic. In the early 1990s, when chaos and anarchy prevailed in Georgia, the Armenians and the neighboring villages united to fight against the attacks of the armed Georgian gangs,” said Kasparian.
Vardan Sayadian has been the principal of the secondary school in Karmir for years. To illustrate the good relations between Armenians and Azeris, he spoke about the Mirzoyevka secondary school and brought examples of the predominantly Armenian populated village of Khojorn, where the local Azeri minority attends the Azerbaijani sector of the local Armenian school, and the predominantly Azeri populated village of Dzopi, where the Armenian minority has an Armenian sector at the local Azeri school.
“The commonly established notion among some Armenian and Azeri circles, that the peaceful coexistence of Armenians and Azeris is not possible, is absurd. There are seven neighboring Azeri villages surrounding our village and there are absolutely no problems between us; we share their joys and their woes,” said Sayadian.
Karmir is very close to Armenia and the interaction with the homeland is strong, so is the association between the Azeris and Azerbaijan, however, sometimes certain problems arise; the Azeris of Georgia go to Armenia freely and visit the neighboring villages mainly for trade, and when they try to go to Azerbaijan, they face serious problems with the authorities because of the Armenian stamps in their passports. The Baku authorities with their anti-Armenian propaganda and attitude do not tolerate such behavior on the Georgian Azeris’ part, since they are cooperating and trading with the “enemy.” The Armenians of Georgia thus avoid going to Azerbaijan.
The Armenians of Karmir live well; the soil is fertile and the weather is warm, thus they can harvest in early spring and sell the crop for high prices. However, the Armenians complain about not being able to get their goods to Armenia as before, since they face problems at the customs. Armenians of the neighboring villages could transport their goods tax free into Armenia, however the new tax law applies to everyone, and there’s a charge of about forty dollars for every entry to Armenia which is a rather high price for the villagers.
The Armenians of Marneuli who suffer as a result of poor quality soil and scarcity of agricultural lands are the ones who are most irritated by the difficulties posed while entering Armenia. There are a couple of villages that are faced with this problem, for example, the village of Shahumian which, was the administrative center of the Borchalou region during the Tsarist era when the Caucuses were part of Russia.
The village of Shahumian was established 300 years ago by Armenians from Artsakh. To date, when the rest of the Armenian villages of the region speak somewhat formal Armenian; in the Araratian dialect, the villages of Shahumian speak the Kharabakh dialect. Even ethnic Armenian customs that were lost while Artsakh was under Khan’s and Azerbaijan’s rule were preserved in Shahumian.
During the Soviet years, the residents of Shahumian were well known suppliers of caviar and an expensive fish called Asetrina to Georgia, which they brought from Baku.
True, Soviet law did not allow individual entrepreneurs to engage in open trade and those who disobeyed were punished in accordance with the criminal code of the union but there were exceptions. Especially during the 1980s when the stores of the Soviet Union were empty and only one kind of a sausage or only poor quality clothing was available, one could acquire expensive Czech crystal, Slovenian shoes and other commodities from Shahumian, which at the time was considered to be a great luxury for millions of Soviet citizens.
Shahumian has now become weak and unbelievably poor; only four thousand of the previous ten thousand residents are left in this city-like region; those who were used to making good money have gone to other countries, very few have come to Armenia. Today, the inhabitants of Shahumian are mainly agrarians and animal keepers. The pineapple grows well in Shahumian; however, the villagers sell the crop for low prices to the salesmen who go to Shahumian because of the difficulty of transporting crop to Armenia.
Alexander Babajanian, said that Soviet Armenia was more considerate towards Shahumian than the current independent Armenia. Babajanian especially complained about the civil servants at the Bagradashen customs check point who are absolutely indifferent towards the nationality of the people entering Armenia.
“Many more families would leave if it were possible; today we survive one way or another through trade with the neighboring Azeri villages and we have very good relations with them, we know Turkish and they know Armenian. The Georgians do not oppress us but lead us towards indifference,” said Babajanian.
by Tatul Hakobyan
This article first published in 2008 in THE ARMENIAN REPORTER
See more on topic – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PdC-7CIZvYw
