History Camp 2022 in Armenia: “Uncovering Soviet Propaganda”
The History Camp “Stronghold of Friendship and Happiness? – Uncovering Soviet Propaganda” took place from 25 to 28 October 2022 in Yerevan, Armenia. Seventeen young prize winners of the Arminian and Moldovan EUSTORY History Competitions 2021/2022 critically discussed Soviet propaganda in everyday life and approached the topic through creative group activities, lectures and site visits.
The teenagers, aged 14 to 19, came from the post-Soviet countries of Armenia and Moldova and were all born long after the collapse of the Soviet Union. They knew the Soviet times only from their parents’ and grandparents’ stories.
Day 1
The History Camp started with a kind of time travel, namely a visit to the Soviet Club in Yerevan. Founded by the Armenian photographer Hayk Bianjyan, the Soviet Club assembles a great variety of everyday items used in all Soviet countries.
Day 2
The second day of the History Camp offered artistic approaches to Soviet propaganda through literature and by watching Soviet cartoons – which were very popular at the time.
By working in groups on famous Soviet cartoons the participants also detected other propaganda messages transported by the animated pictures.
In the session with Armenian writer Armen Hayastantsi, the History Camp participants learned to work critically with texts and pay attention to the way something is told and from whose perspective. At the end of this workshop day, the teenagers took Hayastantsi’s statement home with them: “I never felt nostalgia for the USSR because right there the most important thing – freedom – was lacking.”
Day 3
The first half of the third workshop day was dedicated to an explosion of artistic creativity in the midst of Soviet repression – a visit to the Sergey Parajanov Museum. Parajanov, a famous Armenian-Georgian film director, used whatever he could get his hands on to create art, even while being kept under inhospitable and inhumane conditions in prison. The guided tour “Freedom in Arts in Times of Soviet Propaganda in Arts” by Levon Abrahamyan and the encounter with Parajanov’s various works made a great impression on the young people (“I was impressed by Parajanov’s talent to rearrange broken things, making art out of rubbish.” – “He used everything – even his body – to create art. This was very impressing.”) and prepared them for their final assignment within the History Camp: the creation of a collage.
Creating collages
Participants were asked to create collages which should deal with the History Camp’s topic of “Uncovering Soviet Propaganda” and contain a message chosen by the participants themselves. Each participant could decide whether to do the collage on his or her own or together with other participants in big or small groups.
The presentation of six amazing collages, showing personal and creative approaches, was another highlight of the History Camp and took place in a seminar house outside of Yerevan in the beautiful landscape close to the Sevan Lake rather high up in the mountains of the “little Caucasus”.
The History Camp 2022, organised and hosted by DVV International Armenia and the Armenian NGO Hazarashen for the prize winners of the national history competitions, forms an integral part of the cooperation project “History Competitions in Armenia, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine 3.0” which is implemented by DVV International in cooperation with Körber-Stiftung and with the financial support of the German Federal Foreign Office.
Initially the History Camp 2022 was planned to be held in Berlin but due to strict entry requirements caused by the pandemic it was rescheduled to Armenia. Due to the continuing war in Ukraine and the unresolved situation of the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict neither teenagers from Ukraine nor from Georgia could take part in the History Camp. The Georgian prize winners were invited to a two-day History Camp in Georgia.
