Radio Yerevan Jokes

Radio Yerevan jokes were popular Q&A style jokes in the USSR and the Eastern Bloc. They were mostly political, although some of them were about national stereotypes, daily life, sex, food and other topics. Here are some of our favourites from the Soviet era.

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Radio Yerevan: What is chaos?
Answer: We do not comment on national economies.

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Radio Yerevan: Is it true that the Soviet Union is standing on the edge of an abyss?
Answer: No. It used to be true, but now we have taken a big step forward.

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Radio Yerevan: What is a Soviet musical duet?
Answer: It's a musical quartet after a trip abroad.

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Radio Yerevan was asked: What happened when somebody in the assembled crowd called First Secretary Krushchev an idiot at last year's May Day parade in Red Square?
Radio Yerevan answered: “The man was immediately arrested, tried and sentenced to 35 years in prison; 1 year for insulting a fellow citizen and 34 years for revealing a state secret”.

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Radio Yerevan was asked: “What is the difference between capitalism and socialism?”
Radio Yerevan answered: “In a capitalist society man exploits man, and in a socialist one, the other way around.”

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Radio Yerevan reports: One morning First Secretary Nikita Krushchev woke up and went to his bedroom window, watching the sun rise. "Good morning, Comrade Krushchev!" the sun said. Surprised but pleased, Krushchev answered "Good morning, Comrade Sun" At noon, Krushchev looked up and saw the sun above him. "Good day, Comrade Krushchev", the sun said. "Good day, Comrade Sun," Krushchev proudly said. In the evening Krushchev watched as the sun was setting. Silence. He waited but silence continued. Finally he shouted, "Comrade Sun, why don't you bid me good night?" "Sorry, Mr. Krushchev, I am in the West now."


Armenian illuminated manuscripts: Nativity Scenes

To celebrate Christmas, here is a small selection of some exquisite illustrations from various Armenian manuscripts, depicting the Nativity scene.

The Nativity, by Evargis the priest, 1038, Gospel of Taron, ms6201 Matenadaran collection

The Nativity of the Lord and the Adoration of the shepherds, the Vekhamor Gospel, 9th century, Makenyats vank, ms10680 Matenadaran collection

The Nativity of our Lord and the Adoration of the shepherds, by Toros Roslin, 1262, W.539 Walters collection

The Nativity of oir Lord, by Tiranu Grigor, 1232, Targmanchats Gospels, ms2743 Matenadaran collection

The Nativity, by Melchizedek of Vaspurakan, 1338, ms4813 Matenadaran collection

The Nativity, by Vardan monk, 1319, Artskeh, Vaspurakan, ms7456 Matenadaran collection

The Nativity of our Lord, by Hovhannes Vardapet, 1455, Khizan monastery, W.543 Walters collection

The Nativity of our Lord, Karabakh Gospels, 14th century, ms316 Matenadaran collection

The Nativity, by Mesrop Khzanetsi, 1609, The Bodleian Library

The Nativity of our Lord and the Adoration of the Magi, artist Hovnatan Hovnatanian, 1760s, Echmiadzin Cathedral

Musique sans frontières

One of the themes of our NHLF grant is Neighbours, what we share, what we learn from each other, how we do or do not get along.  One of the things we have constantly been exchanging with neighbours is music. It’s an art that doesn’t recognise borders, governments, political affiliations or wars.  It’s also an art which is part of our everyday life, accompanying us in our headphones, on the radio, at workplaces, during religious rituals, football chants or singalongs from balconies when quarantined for coronavirus.

I find this exchange and sharing of music fascinating and have woven together an eclectic mix of examples.  These songs and their various interpretations and covers are all united by Armenian connections.

Charles Aznavour: Stenka Razin’s song

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The first song is from Charles Aznavour, our much-loved and admired singer and lyricist and here is an interpretation of a famous Russian song about a Cossack hero – Stenka Razin. It’s fascinating to think about the geography of this cover – a French Armenian, with roots from Georgia and Turkey, singing about a Russian-Tatar ataman, who is about to marry a Persian Princess.  

Stenka (Stepan) Razin led an uprising against nobility and the tsar and is one of the most admired and enduring characters in Russian folklore. There are many songs and ballads about him, but this one – Volga-Volga (or simply, Stenka Razin’s song) must be the most popular but the darkest one. Lyrics are written by Dmitri Sadovnikov (Russian poet and ethonographer) in 1883 based on a folk melody.

It’s the fictional story of Stenka and his Cossacks sailing on the Volga river and Stenka’s drunk men whispering that their leader has lost his head since meeting a woman. Overhearing it, Stenka Razin angrily states that he will prove he cares for his people more, and throws the unfortunate princess into the water - and orders his shocked men to sing and dance.

Here is Aznavour’s emotional French version, and if you didn’t know the lyrics, you could easily mistake it for a tender love song. Interestingly, the first Russian narrative film is based on this song, made in 1908 and this video uses the footage from that film.

And you can listen to the original sung by the Russian Red Army Choir here and a popular Western adaptation – The Carnival is Over here.

Medz Bazar: Bobik Djur Mi Era | Yaro Jan

The band describes their music as: ‘On stage, Collectif Medz Bazar balances tempered instruments with music from modal traditions, including Middle-Eastern percussion and Parisian voices of various origins (Armenian, Turkish, and French-American), inspired by folk music from Asia Minor and Iran, Caucasian Rabiz and rhythms from Thrace, with touches of Venezuelan sounds, operette, hip-hop, jazz and bluegrass’’.

Whatever their own ethnic heritage, the band members learn the songs in the various languages and their enjoyment shows in the videos and in their music. Medz Bazar’s repertoire spans cultures in their arrangements of well-known folk songs but also with their own original compositions in various languages.  Some of these are satires and social critiques, some are just fun (see Kokorec below), others explorations of the different sides of love. None of these recognise boundaries and aspects of each are found in societies everywhere. The band has been together for many years now and played across the US, including South by Southwest Festival (SXSW) and Innovate Armenia, in Moscow, Yerevan and Gyumri, many times in Turkey, including Istanbul and Diyarbekir, of course Paris and….. London! 

The Armenian Institute has organised two sell-out concerts with this wonderful band and we hope to see them in London again.

Listen (and dance) to their energetic, fun interpretation of 2 Armenian folk songs: Bobik Djur Mi Era and Yaro Jan:

A great example of early Medz Bazar is their composition Kokoreç – Video shot in Paris, sung in Armenian and French – a hymn to a delicious tripe sandwich made in Istanbul.

The Beautified Project  I Have Two Homes (Sayat Nova Cover)

Martiros Saryan: Sayat-Nova

Martiros Saryan: Sayat-Nova

Sayat-Nova is the perfect example of a musician who transcended linguistic and national boundaries with his art.  A poet, musician and ashough whose songs are in Armenian, Georgian and Turkish, he was heavily influenced by Persian poetry and songwriting traditions.

One of his reworkings of a Georgian folk song was picked up by the Armenian bard Artur Meschyan in the early 2000s. Meschyan  wrote lyrics for the melody, staying faithful to Sayat-Nova’s original lyrical compositions. And here is a beautiful cover of ‘I Have Two Homes’ by London-based band with Iranian-Armenian roots, The Beautified Project.

The band’s frontman Andre Simonyan says: ‘’music is sound and sound knows no man-made borders. It can travel from one country to another without any interruption caused by man-made territorial limitations’’.

The Chorus of Leblebijis from Dickran Chukhajian’s 'Leblebiji Hor-Hor Agha' Operetta

Leblebiji Hor Hor Agha operetta troupe in 1970s

Leblebiji Hor Hor Agha operetta troupe in 1970s

Considered the first original Turkish operetta, this was written by an Armenian composer, Dikran Chukhajian, and based on the libretto by Takvor Nalian in Constantinople in 1875.  It’s a story of two couples in love, dressing up, kidnappings, amorous misunderstandings and crooked villains. The operetta has been translated and performed in many languages including Armenian, Greek, German etc – but retains its joyful Italian musical influences in every interpretation, like in this Turkish version. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WAA-XZHuEEk

The part of the angry Leblebijis (chickpea sellers) is one of the most entertaining choruses from the operetta, demanding that Hor-Hor Agha’s daughter be returned to her father and reminding everyone about their brave ancestors. http://www.museum.am/songs/74.html

Its Armenian version became even more popular after the release of the film ‘Karine’, based on ‘Hor-Hor Agha’. You can watch a snippet from the film here, and listen to this wonderful version:

By Tatevik Ayvazyan

Computing in Armenia - from Soviet military mainframes to incubators and startups

A few years ago, I visited Bletchley Park, and I went to have a look at one of the bombes - the electro-mechanical devices that were used to decipher the German Enigma machine messages. An old lady in a wheelchair rolled up next to me and I struck up a conversation in which she started telling me about how she used to program it by setting up various configurations of patch cables. All of her fellow bombe operators were women from the Wrens (WRNS - Women's Royal Naval Service).

As the war progressed, the Germans developed new ciphers that were harder to decipher than those produced by the original Enigma machine. Colossus the first programmable, electronic, digital computer, was designed to crack them. The operating team for Collossus was made up of 272 Wrens (Women's Royal Navy Service) and only 27 men. In the USA, ENIAC, the first general purpose digital computer was developed to help develop artillery firing tables. The team of 6 who programmed ENIAC were all women.

Nowadays, if you look at the world's five largest tech companies, only 14% of the software engineers are women. Silicon Valley has developed a reputation for a "bro culture" in the tech industry, and many large tech companies have reputations as highly toxic environments for women.

Something seems to have gone wrong.

Even if we broaden our view beyond software engineers the percentage of women employed by tech companies seems to be around 20% in the USA and UK.

However, as I discovered more recently, things seem to be quite different in Armenia. Armenia's technology sector has been growing rapidly in recent years - by 33% in 2018. Reportedly, around 30% of the people working in this sector are women, and at many newer companies, this percentage is around 50% or more.

Armenia has a long history in computing, and a much larger role in the history of Soviet computing than many would imagine for such a small country. For example, somewhere between 30% and 40% of Soviet military computers were built in Armenia.

Andronik Iosifyan

Andronik Iosifyan

This history seems to begin with Andronik Iosifyan. Born in 1905 in the Kalbajar district of Artsakh, he became director of the All-Union Scientific Research Institute of Electromechanics (AUSRIE) in Moscow. Iosifyan specialised in designing electronics, and used his skills to design electrical systems for missiles, nuclear submarines, satellites and spacecraft, such as the first Soviet Meteor weather satellites. The electronics for the Soyuz spacecraft and Mir space station were developed under his leadership.

Victor Hambartsumyan, known as the founder of theoretical physics in the Soviet Union, was looking for designs for a computer that might be assembled at the Yerevan Scientific Research Institute of Mathematical Machines (YerSRIMM). He travelled to Moscow to meet Iosifyan, in the hope of securing such a design. Sergey Korolev, the lead designer of the first Soviet spaceships and satellites was also part of this meeting. Iosifyan knew Isaak Bruk, who had designed a minicomputer called the M-3 for scientific calculations, and arranged to build three at AUSRIE between 1957-1958. One of these stayed at AUSRIE, one went to Korolev and the other to Sergey Mergelyan at YerSRIMM.

YerSRIMM had been established in 1956, with the mathematician Mergelyan as its founding director. Receiving the M-3 computer in Yerevan enabled Mergelyan and his team to accelerate their work in computing and they designed a new computer called Aragats between 1958-60, based on the M-3.

The Hrazdan/Razdan family of computers were designed at YerSRIMM between 1958 and 1965. This was the first semiconductor computer in the Soviet Union. Manufactured from 1961, the Razdan-2 could perform 5000 operations per second, and the Razdan-3 released in 1966 could perform in the order of 30,000 operations per second. The Razdan computers were large - designed to occupy a 50 square metre room - and were mostly used for military purposes. A Razdan-3 can still be seen in the Computer Science Museum in Szeged, Hungary.

User guide for the Nairi minicomputer

User guide for the Nairi minicomputer

Later, the Nairi minicomputer, was developed to be used to solve scientific, engineering and economic problems. This was a smaller machine, designed to be operated by a single person, and some were in use in Moscow railway stations. A number of iterations of Nairi were developed, with those in the 1980s being designed to be compatible with DEC PDP-11 computers.

Sadly, the breakup of the Soviet Union seems to have led to a lack of support and funding for research. In 1996, disappointed by the situation, Mergelyan left Armenia to join his son in Sacramento, California. Through the 90s, it seems that much was lost, but by the late 90s and early 2000s, efforts were being made to revive the industry.

Fortunately, in recent years, the technology industry in Armenia has been experiencing a very positive outlook. In 2015, the technology industry was responsible for 5% of GDP, and it was realised that this industry is relatively unaffected by Armenia’s geopolitical situation, being landlocked and with two of its borders closed to trade. New laws were introduced, making it much easier to found, operate, and grow a tech startup in Armenia. In 2014, it was reported that the IT sector was growing at a rate of 20% per year; in 2018, it grew by 33%. Technology incubators have been set up, funded by Silicon Valley venture capital funds with the express aim of supporting Armenian startup businesses, and there are already success stories. The Armenian technology industry seems to have a bright future ahead.

The Armenian Institute will be hosting an event on Thursday 18th March 2021, to explore the current situation with a panel of speakers who are all involved in this exciting growth industry in Armenia. Please join us to discover more about what is happening and what the future looks like for innovation in Armenia.

Written by Stephen Masters, AI trustee