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Armenia - history, Armenia

Helen Quincy

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Armenia prides itself on being the first nation to formally adopt Christianity (301 A.D.). Despite periods of autonomy, over the centuries Armenia came under the sway of various empires including the Roman, Byzantine, Arab, Persian, and Ottoman. A blossoming of Armenian architecture and culture took place in the 1200's which was eventually halted by the Mongol invasions. A literary and cultural revival in the late 1800s was repressed in Western Armenia by the Ottoman Turkish government. Eastern Armenia was incorporated into Russia in 1828 and the USSR in 1920. 1915-1921 witnessed the Armenian Genocide by the Ottoman Turkish government, wiping out nearly half of the world's Armenians. Armenian leaders today remain preoccupied by the long conflict with Muslim Azerbaijan over Nagorno-Karabakh, a primarily Armenian-populated region, assigned to Soviet Azerbaijan in the 1920s by Moscow. Armenia and Azerbaijan began fighting over the area in 1988; the struggle escalated after both countries attained independence from the Soviet Union in 1991.