Publication

This issue of the CAD features three articles on the "monuments of memory" in the South Caucasus region. The first piece analyzes Armenia's testy public debate over its Soviet-era history, which was reignited by the attempt to raise a monument in 2014 to the Soviet political figure Anastas Mikoyan in central Yerevan. The second article then uses the findings of the French sociologist of memory, Maurice Halbwachs, to describe how the Armenian traditional khachkar (cross stone) became inextricably linked to the Mother Armenia monument and the commemoration of World War II. The last article posits that urban environments and the monuments that dot them say a lot about a society and its political and cultural values, as illustrated by contemporary Georgia.