ARMENIA’S VANISHING UDIS
By Tatul Hakopian in Dedebavan

Institute for War and Peace Reporting IWPR, UK
June 28 2007

Small community is slowly losing its ancient language.

Seda Kumsieva, a teacher for 36 years, lives in Armenia although
she used to teach Russian language and literature in the village of
Vardashen in Azerbaijan.

The crisis of the late Eighties that led to the Armenian-Azerbaijani
war over Nagorny Karabakh forced her to flee her home and resettle
in Armenia.

Seda is an ethnic Udi – a Christian group with its own unique language
– but her husband is Armenian, a fact which sealed her fate.

Her family is now scattered across the Caucasus.

"Some of my relatives stayed in Vardashen, others settled in Tbilisi.

I am completely Udi by blood, but my husband is Armenian and we and
other families who had mixed marriages left Azerbaijan," she said.

Eleven Udis from Azerbaijan resettled in Dedebavan and many more have
found homes in other villages. In conversations with IWPR, the Udis
made it clear they feel quite secure in Armenia, but are worried that
their unique culture is dying out.

The head of the village community in Dedebavan Georgy Babayan told
IWPR, "We don’t make any distinction between Armenians and Udis.

During the emigration from Vardashen in 1988, several Udi families
came with the Armenians. Later on, many of them emigrated to Russia.

We are the same as the Udis – we share our joy and grief with them."

Hranush Kharatian, an ethnographer who has written extensively about
the Udis, says that there are only around 200 of them in Armenia.

"The community does not have the status of a national minority,"
he said. "Today there isn’t a single regulatory document on this issue.

Only those groups which systematically try to preserve their ethnic
identity are recognised as minorities."

Kharatian said that the Udis had fled Azerbaijan not just because of
mixed marriages with Armenians, but because they were a persecuted
minority.

"Udis who were persecuted in Nij have resettled in the Georgian village
of Oktomberi. Until the recent deportations from Azerbaijan there
were not just two but five whole Udi villages. We don’t know much
about three of the villages, because although the Udis living there
were Christians, they spoke Azeri. These villages were called Jourlu,
Mirzabeilu and Sultan Nukhi. Several people from there emigrated
to Armenia."

Seda Kumsieva uses her cousins in Tbilisi – who now go by the surname
Kumsiashvili – to get information about relatives who stayed behind in
her home village. She still badly misses Vardashen – now renamed Oduz.

"Although our way of life and traditions are Armenian, Udis have
their own specific festivals," she said. "As a child, I remember how
in May they used to tie multi-coloured threads round the hands of
little children and then hang these little bundles on the branches
of trees. Everyone used to make a wish to have their dream come true.

The festival was called Dimbaz."

Forty-five-year-old Zanna Lalayan is married to an Armenian and her
family is also scattered. "My brother Oleg and other relatives live
in Nij. My other brother and other relatives live in Ukraine – his
children don’t know the Udi language. Our generation of Udis based
in Russia and other countries doesn’t know our language.

"Our nation is gradually dwindling."

Seventy-year-old Arshaluis Movsisian, an Udi whose late husband was
Armenian, lives in the village of Bagratashen and left behind a large
part of her family, a whole troop of nieces and nephews. "My heart is
breaking, I want to see their faces," she said, holding back the tears.

"Like the Armenians, we recognise the cross and the church," she
said. "We didn’t marry our girls off to Azerbaijanis and we didn’t
marry theirs, because we are people of the cross. Like the Armenians,
our brides come out in white clothes, with uncovered faces , we dance
Armenian dances and bury our dead according to Armenian customs.

Apart from the language, we are no different to them."

Armenian historians, like their Azerbaijani counterparts, say that the
Udis are the descendants of the Caucasian Albanians. But Armenians
say the process of assimilation happened much earlier – that the
Albanians converted to the Armenian church in the 5th century and at
the same time began to adopt the Armenian language, customs and names.

The Udis alone, the historians say, survived as a tiny remnant of a
once much bigger culture. They point out that the Udis’ language has
nothing in common with either Indo-European Armenian or Turkic Azeri.

Some unique Udi customs also seem to date back to pre-Christian times.

Arzu Dargiyan recalls how in Azerbaijan they used to pay homage
to sacred trees. "We would choose a fruit tree in the garden and
performed an act of worship in front of it," she said. "We lit candles
and sacrificed animals. It was forbidden to climb the sacred tree or
pick its fruit. You could only eat them if they fell from the tree."

Oleg Dulgarian is an Udi also from Vardashen, although he left as a
small child. He runs a non-governmental organisation for refugees,
and is passionate about trying to preserve the culture of this ancient
but tiny community.

Dulgarian says that he wants to create an organization called "Aghvank"
(the ancient name for Caucasian Albania) that will aim to preserve
traditions and engage in academic study of the Udis.

"It’s not a problem to be an Udi in Armenia; no one forces us
to renounce our ethnicity. The main problems that Udis who have
emigrated from Azerbaijan face are the same as those facing the
Armenian refugees."

Dulgarian wants to get government help for his project but the
main element of Udi culture – their language – is now in apparently
terminal decline.

"My sons don’t speak Udi at all," lamented Alexei Kazarov, who also
fled from Vardashen. "Our nation is gradually disappearing. There
are only eight or ten thousand Udis left in the whole world."

Tatul Hakopian is a political observer for Public Radio in Armenia.