Off Topic — HabitableZone

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Armenians
alcaray — (archived)

They have a truly messed up history. Many of them fled the Turks to other countries with major enclaves setting up in Lebanon and other Arab countries, and in France and other European ones. Then the Soviets took over and invited the expatriots to come back to their country to rebuild it.

So you can divide their populations into 3 rough groups: those who never left Armenia, those who came back, and those who left and stayed put. The ones who ended up living in Soviet Armenia soaked up a lot of Soviet culture and language and endured the same deprivations as any citizens of the Soviet Union. The ones who stayed away soaked up a lot of the culture of the place where they landed. Many families had members scattered all over the world. And Armenians tend to be fluent in more languages than anyone else I've ever associated with. They also are at home with a wide variety of cultures.

There can be a bit of tension between the two main populations (the ones who lived in the CCCP vs. the ones who lived elsewhere). I know of an Armenian lady (Beirut population) who referred to the ones who lived in the Soviet Union as "Russians" (with a nasty voice inflection). Part of this is caused by the fact that some Armenians migrated to America with Russian ideas about organizing criminal activity.

Anyway, my acquaintences are my ex-girlfriend and her immediate family who left Armenia after the fall of the Soviet Union. Her extended family - aunts, uncles, and more cousins than you can shake a stick at - are from Lebanon and Paris and somewhere in Italy. Her father was the only one of his siblings to travel back to Armenia after the Soviet takeover.

We broke up 2 years ago and I never specifically asked about baby abuse, but I was at numerous family get-togethers (very chummy group: Armenians) and saw them around children and babys a lot. They seemed just as doting as Americans regarding their kids, and I never saw anything like umm privates pinching.

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