ARMENIA - The capital : YEREVAN
Yerevan has a population of more than 1 million inhabitants. It is the
largest city of Armenia and also its capital. Yerevan is situated along
the Hrazdan River, which is not navigable, on the Ararat Plain. Yerevan
was severely damaged by the Dec., 1988, Armenian earthquake.
Archaeological research has proven that the fortress of Yerbuni stood
on Yerevan's site in the 8th cent. BC The city, known in the 7th cent.
AD, was the capital of Armenia under Persian rule and became
historically and strategically important as a crossroads of the caravan
routes between Transcaucasia and India.
Yerevan always has had a large strategic significance. Therefore, it
was constantly fought over and it passed back and forth between the
dominion of Persia and the Ottomans for centuries. In 1827 it was taken
by Russia and formally ceded by the Persians in 1828. After the 1917
Russian revolution it enjoyed three years as the capital of independent
Armenia, and in 1920 became the capital of the newly formed Armenian
Soviet Socialist Republic, a territory of the Soviet Union. The flood of
refugees from the 1915 holocaust and its aftermath fueled an uneasy but
productive alliance between Armenian nationalism and Soviet hopes of
spreading the Communist gospel through the Armenian Diaspora. Modern
Yerevan was built, deliberately, to be the universal center and pole of
attraction for the diaspora, with an educational and cultural
infrastructure far out of proportion to the size or intrinsic wealth of
Soviet Armenia. In 1991, as the Soviet Union and communist rule
collapsed, Yerevan became the capital of the independent Republic of
Armenia.
Yerevan is a leading industrial, cultural, and scientific centre in the
Caucasus region. It is also at the heart of an extensive rail network
and is a major trading centre for agricultural products. The city's
industries produce metals, machine tools, electrical equipment,
chemicals, textiles, and food products. Educational and cultural
facilities include a university, the Armenian Academy of Sciences, a
state museum, and several libraries. There are ruins of a 16th-century
Ottoman fortress.
