NEW ZEALANDERS LOOK AT ARMENIA

Press, Volume XCIII, Issue 27914, 10 March 1956, Page 11

NEW ZEALANDERS LOOK AT ARMENIA

Contrasts Between The New And The Very Old COLLECTIVISED FARMING ON THE ARARAT PLAIN [Specially written for "The Press" bu J. w. D. HALL} October, when 1 went with a four-man delegation to jhe L.S.S.R. and it was arranged that we should spend part of pur time in Armenia, I was extremely ignorant about that country or its geography. In fact, the limit of my knowledge of the i Armenians would have been that they were a swarthy race, and that they had suffered fantastic persecution at the hands of the Turks and were consequently to be met as exiles in almost any part of the world. So, assuming that there are other New Zealanders as ignorant as myself, I propose dealing fairly fully with j subject. Moscow had already begun to prepare for the winter when , W e took a south-bound plane, and as we flew over the vast plains of Russia and the Ukraine, we noticed that all the crops had been gathered and much of the autumn ploughing finished.

After stops at Kharkov and Rostov we skirted the eastern coast of the Black Sea and came down to land at the Georgian town of Sukhumi, where we immediately noticed that it was appreciably warmer. The airport here is in no way pretentious, and several families were not above getting some extra grazing for their herds of goats and pigs between the runways. Semitropical fruits and palms could be seen in the airport gardens, and we even got a reminder of home by finding tome New Zealand flax growing there. Here we had a light meal, in which several sorts of caviare and fish liver j figured largely with Georgian wines ' or brandy. As we flew along the coast, it was interesting to pick out the health retorts for which this region is famous, and to see some of the shipping ply- : ine in these parts. The next hop brought us over i Armenia, with a view of the snowy | Caucasian Mountains on our left, and • just before landing we saw the wellknown Lake Sevan, which is fed by i many streams from these mountains So we came down to Erivan, the ArI menian capital, and here it was that we found that our fame had gone before us and that the authorities had seen fit to send a deputation to welcome us. This came as a surprise, and it was only a little later, during a welcoming speech, that I tumbled to the reason. New Zealanders had not been to Armenia for so many years that our visit was regarded as something of an event, and as we stepped from our plane each member of our party was handed a bunch of flowers. It really gave me a feeling that our venture into these parts might do some good. For even this small contact between our countries was better than the total mutual ignorance that has prevailed for so many years. “This Exciting Country” From the airport we were driven to our hotel, and soon we were seated round a table laden with grapes, melons, and tropical fruits and wine, listening to a speech of welcome from the chairman of the committee representing our hosts. After giving us a short outline of Armenian history going back some 2500 years, he asked us to tell him_what our particular interests were. Of course, anything in this exciting country was going to interest us. but I told him that being a sheepfarmer I would like an opportunity of seeing their sheep, while the other members of our party mentioned their own particular lines Everyone told us that we had come here at the best time of year for agreeable weather, since the summer can be unbearably hot and the winter very cold. Armenia is situated at an altitude of about 4500 feet above sea level, and the climate is quite different from that of sub-tropical Georgia. While we were there we had nothing but bright sunshine and lovely warm days, weather not unlike a fine autumn in th*> South Island of New Zealand. Needless to say. we lost no time in

getting out into the town and making acquaintance with this interesting place. We did not have to go far to find something of interest, for right under our bedroom window, in the hotel yard, stood a crumbling monument, obviously many centuries old. It was shaped like an oldfashioned beehive. It was made of bricks and was some 25 feet high, having a square base up to half that height. The upper part, which first attracted our attention, was covered in mosaic patterned stone work, with the convex slope coming up to a blunt point. It was not till some time after that I learned that it was the remains of a fourteenth-century mausoleum. I think that a lot of the fascination of Armenia comes from the mixing of the very old with the new, and next morning we were taken by the city architect to see what has been achieved in recent years. Naturally one feared that some central planning authority might have called for uniformity, say with Moscow, in the architecture, but' it is pleasing to find nothing of the sort. The traditional middle eastern style, with well proportioned archways, was in evidence everywhere. Reconstruction of Capital Erivan did not suffer the war-time damage that so many Russian cities are only now overcoming, but it needed nearly as much reconstruction as they did, because of ignorance and neglect in its pre-revolution days. The focal point of the newly-built area is the Lenin Square, which is generously spaced and has several well-designed Government buildings enclosing it. Fountains playing on to a sheet of water give a pleasant finish to the lay-out. Armenia is in volcanic country, so that the possibility of earthquakes has to be reckoned with in all the building work From its quarries comes a very useful type of stone of volcanic origin, light and easily worked and in several pastel shades from rose-pink to lilac. The new buildings are nearly all faced with this stone, and it is also exported to other Darts of the Soviet Union. As the city architect showed us round, we presently came to apartment buildings under construction, and at our request he took us over one block which had just been finished but which was not yet occupied. These were all of stone construction. and each flat had a veranda for sleeping on in the summer. Water and electricity were laid on. Also, there was a coal range for cooking. By our standards these flats were plain, but as we looked outside and saw the old houses being knocked down we realised that the people to occupy them would think differently. The growth in Erivan of factories which burn a lot of coal is already presenting the city planners with the problem of smoke, as a pall of this hangs over the place from about the middle of the morning. Unless something is done in the way of improved stoking, I can see their beautiful buildings losing their colours.