This book examines how Armenian cultural heritage was used (and misused) by Imperial Russian and Soviet authorities to marginalize and control the region during the 19th and 20th centuries. It does this through an analysis of scholarly writings, artistic production, personal stories, and contemporary press, whilst crucially contextualizing the situation within the broader geopolitical landscape, with Armenia acting as a pivotal buffer zone between major empires throughout the period in question.

Colonizing the Armenian Past employs a multi-disciplinary approach, drawing on methodology from the history of science, cultural history, art history and the biographical method, to explain the mechanisms of exclusion and inclusion deployed by the Russian and Soviet state in the context of internal propaganda, national policy and self-presentation. While underlining significant continuity between the two successive regimes, the book reveals the ruptures in the use of cultural heritage and art, especially during the experimental period under Vladimir Lenin and later during the Second World War.

The book ultimately demonstrates the influence of Russian and Soviet colonial policy on the perception of Armenian art and culture in the Euro-Atlantic context.

Ivan Foletti is Full Professor at Masaryk University, Czech Republic and privatedozent at the University of Helsinki, Finland. He is author of Russian Imperialism and Medieval Past (2024) and Objects, Relics, and Migrants: The Basilica of Sant Ambrogio in Milan and the Cult of Its Saints (2020).

Margarita Khakanova is Research Assistant at Masaryk University, Czech Republic. With Ivan Foletti, she co-authored Armenophobia: Art, Scholarship, and Russian Colonial Policy at the turn of the 20th century (2024).