Armenia to fight historical negationism on international platform

The Historians Association of Armenia joined the International Committee of Historical Sciences in September as part of the nationwide efforts to seek an international support in fighting historical negationism.

The Committee has 57 members, including such countries as Russia and Japan. Among Armenia’s neighbors, Georgia and Turkey are represented in it; Azerbaijan is not a member, the organizations executive director, Mher Hovhannisyan (PhD candidate in history), told reporters on Monday.

“Membership in that structure is an opportunity for us to bring to light the problems in historiography and consider our history in a global context,” he said.

Addressing the problem, Karen Khachatryan, a professor from the National Academy's Institute of History, highlighted the existing challenges for the country. “Our neighbors are trying to represent our history as their own; this is why our historians are now carrying out tremendous work to fight also that historical negationism,” he said, highly appreciating the effort to create a separate organization to prevent future misrepresentations and falsifications of history.

According to Edgar Hovhannisyan, a professor of the Armenian State Pedagogical University and  a member of the Association, membership in the committee representing key figures “changing the climate in history” is very important in terms of seeking an international platform to bring attention to the problem.

“Over the period of independence, we have been facing numerous problems demanding solutions, so this platform now comes to really resolve those challenges,” he said, highlighting three major areas of concern.

 

As the first important step, the historian highlighted the need of thoroughly representing the Armenian history since times immemorial. “Secondly, we need to represent a history devoid of the influence of different political streams and trends. It is important to be objective as history is very often politicized,” he said, calling further for a strong fight against negationism as the third key effort.

 

“A vast literature is printed in different languages by our neighbors, while after being published just a couple of times, any false information can be a source of reference,” he said, calling attention to the problems with foreign language editions.

 

The historian said they now intend to publish a scientific journal in English to introduce the achievements of the Armenian historical thought and make it a reliable source for future references.