UC Irvine

In the late 1980s, the people of Soviet Armenia, like many populations of other Soviet republics, sub-republics, and territories, experienced increasing dissociation from the Soviet Union as the USSR steadily crumbled under the weight of corruption, lukewarm reforms, and rising nationalism among its ethnic populations. Concurrently, the Armenian-populated Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast (NKAO), which had been granted to Soviet Azerbaijan decades before, pressed to join Soviet Armenia because of continued unsafe conditions and persecution under Azerbaijani control. It was under tempestuous, shifting circumstances – the First Nagorno-Karabakh War (1988-1994) erupting between the people of Azerbaijan, Nagorno-Karabakh, and subsequently, Armenia; the devastating 1988 earthquake in Northern Armenia; and the impending collapse of the Soviet Union – that caused a large wave of Soviet and post-Soviet Armenian refugees and migrants to emigrate out of Soviet Armenia to join the seemingly ever-present and polarized Armenian diaspora. Further, these events led to mass mobilization in Armenia and the diaspora. Although numerous works exist about the large and intricate Armenian diaspora, most focus on Armenian diasporas from Western Armenia (Eastern Anatolia) that became displaced by the 1915 genocide. There is little scholarship about the transformative impact of late 1980s developments on US-USSR relations, Armenia-diaspora relations, or Soviet and post-Soviet Armenian migration to Los Angeles County.Utilizing Los Angeles-based US and Armenian newspapers, this thesis explores the conditions, settlement, and experience of Soviet and post-Soviet Armenian migrants and refugees in the United States. This study contributes to our understanding of Armenian-diaspora relations and the impact of Armenian refugees and migrants on the history of California and Los Angeles County. It illustrates how Soviet Armenian migration and the subsequent Armenia-diaspora relations and mobilization broached the Iron Curtain, prompted travel and relations between the USSR and the US, altered the face of Los Angeles County, and reimagined and transformed the Armenian diaspora physically and symbolically. Through an exploration of Armenia-diaspora relations, this thesis argues that the strife and instability of the late 1980s and 1990s – the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict and war, the 1988 devastating earthquake, and the rising national independence movement – cracked the Iron Curtain that had severed relations between Soviet Armenia and the diaspora. They served as catalysts goading Armenia and the diaspora together, bringing the diaspora “home” and spurring a mass exodus out of Soviet Armenia. However, despite the diaspora reconciling with and mobilizing on behalf of Soviet Armenia, tensions and divisions, rooted in the early twentieth century, persisted within the complex and nuanced relationship between the Los Angeles County Armenian diaspora, especially between previously settled Armenians and the “new” Soviet Armenian diaspora.