«Փող չկա, ու կյանք չկա»․ խորհրդային «բանն» ու հետխորհրդային «բան չկան» | Հանրագիտ

“So, does your research relate to history? Are you interested in the monastery?” ‘No, I’m researching contemporary history - the Soviet and post-Soviet history of Ajidzor itself, and how people live here.”  “There is nothing interesting here [Arm.: ոչ մի հետաքրքիր բան չկա ստեղ]. I’ll tell you straight: there is nothing-no money and no life [Arm.: բան չկա․ փող չկա, ու կյանք չկա].”   *** When anthropologist Maria Gunko visited one of the small towns in Armenia, she expected to hear the word "emptiness" (Arm.: դատարկություն) — a term often used by residents of small towns throughout the postsocialist realm to describe their everyday lived reality. Understanding post-socialist towns — and small-town life more broadly — lies at the core of her research. Maria Gunko Instead, she heard the words "լքված, ավերակ" (Eng.: abandoned, ruin). However, what truly captured her attention was a typical Armenian expression, "ban chka" (Arm.: բան չկա, Eng.: there is nothing). "Sometimes something clings, and you start to see it everywhere. First, you don't see it, and then you cannot unsee it anymore," Maria tells me, sitting in a small café in Yerevan on a sunny morning. When Maria began her fieldwork, she quickly picked up the widespread Armenian phrase "Inch ka chka (Arm.: ի՞նչ կա, չկա, Eng.: what’s up)?" with the most common answer to this greeting being "ban chka," meaning "nothing much" or "everything is fine." But soon she discovered that "ban chka" carries many other shades of meaning. "It was all-encompassing. People would refer to places, to life, to lack of something interesting," Maria explains. And that's how "ban chka" became the central concept of her research about a post-Soviet Armenian town.   The Deaf Observations Maria began her research within the "Emptiness: Living Capitalism and Democracy after Postsocialism" project in 2022. After moving to Armenia from Russia, she chose Ajidzor (the name of the town and the names of the interlocutors are pseudonyms used for protecting the identities of interlocutors) as a place for her study—a decision that came with many challenges. As a foreign scholar, she was unfamiliar with the local context and did not speak Armenian at that time. Despite these obstacles, she went to Ajidzor alone and began her fieldwork. At first, she met with the local administration to gather basic information. But as she notes, "ethnography is not done like that, and you have to live in a place to understand it". Her research stretched over a year and a half, from August 2022 to December 2024. Now, in a paper published in the journal Social & Cultural Geography, she takes readers on a journey to Ajidzor, exploring why there is "nothing" there. In the beginning, when she was just starting to learn Armenian and couldn't understand conversations, Maria focused on visual observations. She was sketching the ruins of the Soviet-era plant, fences made from old radiators, the holes above windows for stove pipes, the empty store, the abandoned school—everything. These observations offered her early insights into the town and its material transformation during the post-Soviet period. In Ajidzor, drawing by Maria Later, once she knew enough Armenian to understand public conversations, she began listening as well. That’s when "ban chka" entered her life and became "her big love," as she puts it. Before exploring this concept further, let's first look at the importance of infrastructuring during the Soviet era and the "dark and cold" reality that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union.   Something from Nothing — and Then Nothing Again Ajidzor was established in the late 1940s and developed around industry, like many other Soviet towns, the author writes. The Soviet authorities built a metallurgy-related plant here, which became a source of high-paying jobs for the local male population. Later, a consumer goods factory was opened to employ women. During conversations with Ajidzor’s residents, Maria often heard that before the plant, there was nothing in this place. Many people migrated from nearby settlements after the plant was established. Once, during a conversation, Maria’s landlord’s parents, Levon and Haikush, told her that their family had lived in a nearby town before the plant, as "there was nothing here" (Arm.: այստեղ բան չկար). Then Maria asked: "But surely there was something?" Levon’s answer followed:  “Don’t know ... maybe sheds for cattle and sheep. On the other side [of the gorge], under the monastery, there was a village, like now. But here, nothing really ... just manure and grass.” In Ajidzor, drawing by Maria Infrastructure creation played a significant role for Soviet authorities. Its purpose was to demonstrate their power and establish their presence everywhere. From the early 1920s, the Soviet regime aimed to transform the predominantly rural Armenian territory into what was then perceived as "a highly industrialized and technologically modern space," the author writes.  Replanning and construction took place in the capital city Yerevan and other urban centers. “The Soviet state came and declared: there is nothing here, so we are going to construct something, modernize, and civilize. A typical colonial discourse of terra nullius awaiting to be conquered,” Maria explains. It was the same in Ajidzor: before the plant, there was a village, but Soviet authorities "perceived it as nothing and embarked on a journey of material remaking and social engineering," as the scholar states. During conversations, many of  Ajidzor residents described the Soviet period as a “socialist heaven, a town full and flourishing with life, with workers hurrying to their shifts in the mornings, children running to school, and couples dancing in the evenings on the main square, shops offering a variety of products, public buses connecting Ajidzor to other parts of the country, and the mail service bringing news from afar.” After the collapse of the socialist regime, post-Soviet countries faced disruptions, closures, and the destruction of infrastructure. Among the reasons for drastically severe outcomes is that the transition from one economic system to another was radical and disorderly, as the author notes.  In Armenia’s case, the infrastructural breakdown "was among the most abrupt and radical in the region." Several factors contributed, including the war with Azerbaijan, the blockade of gas supplies, and the devastating 1988 Spitak earthquake. These events triggered what became known as the "years of darkness" (Arm.: մութ ու ցուրտ տարիներ), lasting until 1995. As a result of the energy crisis, Ajidzor’s plant and factory were shut down. In the early 1990s, they were privatized and then sold off piece by piece. Ajidzor fell into unemployment, suffered electricity and water disruptions, and lost central heating and public transportation altogether. This, as the author states, "stands in stark contrast to the town’s Soviet-era prosperity." Without a centralized heating system, residents were forced to return to wood-burning stoves, which they had used before the 1970s. In a sense, they were "lucky," as the town is surrounded by forests. One of Maria’s elderly interlocutors told her: “It was dark, yes. But at least it wasn’t as cold as it was in Yerevan. We could forage for wood.”  A wood-burning stove in a house in Ajodzor, drawing by Maria The author vividly describes the traces of those dark years, evoking the feeling of standing inside a house in Ajidzor, staring at the windows: “(Re)installation of wood-burning stoves required rearranging furniture and removing the upper windowpanes, which were replaced with boards featuring a circular hole to accommodate the stove’s pipe. To this day, the houses bear marks of these modifications –black traces of soot around the improvised chimneys that cut through the windows. The dark years left a profound imprint on all who lived through that period. Every one of my interlocutors had a story of hardship, emphasizing darkness and shortages.” Maria's neighbor Seda recalls how her husband, mother-in-law, and three children huddled together in the kitchen, the only room that had a "nearly normal temperature," as the wood-burning stove was there. “The kitchen became our bedroom, dining room, living room, and study … The kitchen table was multifunctional. Under the light of candles, we read, wrote, and did all the housework.” The author states that the hardships were especially severe for families with young children. Heghineh, the sister of Maria’s landlord’s mother, recalls: “All the chores associated with children became backbreaking work. Imagine swaddling a baby in the winter cold, washing and drying children’s clothes … Those were terrible years.”   Reproducing the Nothing As urban infrastructures broke down during the postsocialist period, individual household solutions—so-called do-it-yourself (DIY) practices—began to replace them. In Ajidzor, these DIY practices were often expressed through the "individualization of heating," as the author writes: "Complicated and even hazardous-looking DIY heating systems, composed of pipes, wires, and chimneys, snake across walls and ceilings, encircling and hanging over the windows of residential buildings." Tangled wires in Ajodzor, drawing by Maria One of Maria's interlocutors, Zaruhi, a young mother of five children, lives with her unemployed husband, who constantly repairs and remodels their house. Zaruhi once said: “Is this life? Look at this house, look at this wood-burning stove – my husband made it himself from rubbish, from nothing (Arm.: ոչնչից բան է ստեղծել) from useless metal sheets left at the heating node … This is how we survive here, with nothing (Arm.: առանց որևէ բանի), with leftovers (Arm: մնացորդներով).” Another resident, Mikayel, a retired engineer who once worked at the plant, has built a garden gazebo from pipes “salvaged” from the plant and apartments. “I assembled it out of what was available, out of nothing (Arm.: ոչնչից), really,” said Mikayel. The interlocutors described these metal sheets as "nothing," since they are dysfunctional remnants from a non-functioning plant. Yet they become "something," gaining new value as part of DIY structures such as the wood-burning stove or the garden gazebo.   Meanings of Ban Chka The very first meaning of ban chka that Maria learned when she began her fieldwork was simple: "nothing much" as a part of phatic speech. But as time went on, she discovered at least three more. “The deeper you go, the darker it gets,” Maria explains. When the scholar had just moved to Ajidzor, she met Yeranuhi, the Head of the House of Culture. When Yeranuhi learned that Maria's research related to history, the only thing she found worth mentioning was the old monastery. But when Maria explained that she was interested in contemporary history, Yeranuhi replied that "there is nothing interesting here." In this answer, Maria uncovered the second meaning of ban chka — there is nothing interesting for an outsider in this town. The author writes: "She conveys a sentiment that only the spectacular–something out of the ordinary–can be interesting to an outsider like me. For instance, the ancient monastery, a subject of numerous historical and archaeological inquiries, is seen as a point of interest. In contrast, Ajidzor is devalued and downplayed due to familiarity and a perceived lack of sophistication." Maria never returns from fieldwork without drawings While investigating Ajidzor’s history, Maria learned that, like many other urban centers, Ajidzor was initially perceived as "nothing" by Soviet authorities, who then came to modernize it — building the plant, the factory, new housing, and the central heating system. Even today, many residents think, "there was nothing here before the plant." The author calls this perspective "colonial ban chka / nothing," another layer of meaning to the phrase. The fourth meaning of ban chka emerged from the second part of Yeranuhi's remark: "’ll tell you straight: There is nothing — no money and no life..." Maria describes this as the "relative ban chka / nothing." “Ajidzor, once created from the perceived nothing, has now returned to nothing. …. If the Soviet nothing was entangled with the imaginaries of modernity and creation, then what is the post-Soviet nothing? There are still things inside vacant apartments, but no people who make them a home. There is still machinery in the factory, but no production. There are remnants of desks and teaching materials scattered on the floor in the former school building, but no teachers and students,” writes the author.  This ban chka denotes the lack of important things and phenomena for the interlocutors.   Maria was so fascinated by the different meanings of ban chka that she even wrote a separate article about it during her research. She says writing journalistic pieces and explaining things to the general public helps her process the information she gathers during fieldwork and understand it better. They Came and Destroyed Maria's interlocutors believed that the 1990s were years of "purposeful destruction." Once, while walking with an elderly man named Asha, Maria asked him about a ruined building on the hill. It turned out to be the heating node. When she asked what had happened to it, Asha replied:  “They destroyed it.”  “Who are they?” “The power elites, Ter-Petrosyan [Levon Ter-Petrosyan, president of Armenia 1991–1998], Kocheryan [Robert Kocheryan, president of Armenia 1998–2008] and their friends … They destroyed and sold off everything …” The author notes that Asha attributed the destruction to "them"—the capitalist-state alliance within Armenia—not only to locate agency in the destruction, but also to distance himself from it. “When you don't understand who exactly did it, you tend to say ‘they’. …. In theory, this ‘they’ is this power that is somewhere there, that is not approachable, and it's usually corrupt. And you have no agency to combat it. So there come the conspiracy theories: they are trying to kill us, they are trying to destroy us. But it's just like a handy way of denoting this agency that is beyond your control. It is also a way of a loophole: I have nothing to do with this, it's they, I didn't do anything,” the scholar explains. When Maria and Asha entered the heating node, it was completely empty. There was no equipment; all the pipes had been cut off․ “The bare walls still bore marks of torn-out copper wiring and missing radiators. Under the windows, only hooks were left where radiators once hung.” Radiators became fences, drawing by Maria According to the author, "while the Armenian state may have lacked the resources or political will to sustain the centralized Soviet heating system or support industry, it was the ordinary residents of Ajidzor and surrounding areas who physically disassembled the infrastructure." When Maria asked Asha what had happened to the equipment and pipes, he answered simply, "Pilfered." As the author notes, he used the verb without a pronoun and was reluctant to elaborate further: "What was clear, however, was that Asha reserved less judgment for those who pilfered than for those who destroyed." The author explains that anthropologist Xenia Cherkaev uses the metaphor "gleaning after reaping" to describe the pilfering that followed destruction during the postsocialist period. Another anthropologist, Martin Saxer, similarly notes that "this strategy is not so different from foraging wild herbs, berries, or mushrooms." It was the same in Ajidzor, the author explains. In Soviet times, these materials were common property, and after the state's withdrawal, people found ways to reuse them: “Valuable metals were sold as scrap, while materials that could not be sold were repurposed. Walking through Ajidzor today, one can see the remnants of this (dis/re)assembling everywhere. Cut-off pipes, metal cords, and radiators have been repurposed into fences surrounding private houses and land plots. Metal sheets of all kinds are used to cover roofs, construct various housing extensions and outbuildings (gazebos, sheds, outdoor toilets, and etc.).”   To Learn About Ban Chka, I Had to Become Ban Chka Discovering Ajidzor’s story wasn’t an easy task. In 2022, Maria had just started learning Armenian. By the end of her fieldwork, she knew the language well enough to use what she calls the "Russian-Armenian muddle" of conversations. “I would start with Armenian, they would answer. I would not understand. I would try to ask to translate or we would speak in Russian, and I would ask: ‘How would you say it in Armenian?’ So it would be a little complicated situation. But on the other hand, it put me in a very interesting, actually very useful position because people would have to explain to me very basic things,” Maria says. One of the greatest difficulties Maria faced was dealing with unpleasant incidents involving male residents during her time in Ajidzor. She states that doing fieldwork as a woman is hard — but being a Slavic woman creates additional challenges. “It's not just in Armenia. It's the whole of the former Soviet Union thing when Slavic women were and still are perceived as less chaste. We come from a different culture, where women are more free so to say. But in the eyes of my local interlocutors, this was not freedom but looseness,” she explains. Maria acknowledges that when she decided to move to Armenia and start her research, she wasn't fully prepared for these stereotypes, which initially led to some difficult experiences. Now, she says, she is very cautious about everything. She also recalls that when she first arrived in Ajidzor, she became the only "ban" (Arm.: բան, Eng.: thing) in the residents' eyes. “I was expected to tell them stories about faraway lands, about myself, about my family. For a long while, I was the news. I was the ban,” she says. In response, I smile and say: "Until you became Ban chka." Maria’s answer follows: “Exactly. You're just laughing right now, but this was my strategy—to become Ban cհka there.” “Did you succeed?” “Yes, I did! In a way, to learn about Ban chka, I had to become Ban chka.” The first thing Maria did was change her appearance, pulling her hair back in a tight bun and trading colourful clothing for black closed outfits. Nothing revealing or tight-fitting. Then she ventured to build a sort of kinship connection with her landlord’s family, so that there was a social network of support and protection. She became close friends with her landlord’s mother. “We would drink coffee, cook something together, I would ask her to teach me to cook, to help her in the garden,” she recalls. When I asked what Armenian dishes she learned to cook, Maria answered in Armenian: “Տոլմա, կլոր գաթա, ավելուկով աղցան (Eng.: dolma, round gata, salad with aveluk).”  But the most important step Maria took was bringing her family to Ajidzor. “Now you're going to laugh - my husband laughed at it so much - but I brought him and my two boys. He was walking first, and I was walking behind him in little steps, and he was like: What is going on here? And then I would take him around all of the people with whom I might be talking, all the people I knew, and tell them: This is my husband. And I would be walking around him, serving coffee and being - what's the word? -  համեստ, հանգիստ (Eng: modest, quiet),” she recalls. Maria remembers every detail of one day in July 2023. She was walking with her sons through the main square, where a group of men were gathered in a gazebo. "The guys [in the gazebo] didn't even turn around to look at me. It was the first time they didn't. And then I understood: that's it. I'm 'nothing interesting.' Finally," she says.   *** It was June 2023. Maria was sitting at Ajidzor’s central square, observing. Asha drove by in his sky-blue Lada. He stopped the car, opened the window, and called out to Maria: “Again at the square? Aren’t you bored? There is nothing here [Arm.: ստեղ բան չկա], nothing interesting. Nothing to wait for. Everyone leaves, and you should too, dear girl!” But ban chka is only the first part of this story, Maria explains. Despite everything, people still live in Ajidzor. Residents — especially women — repurpose dysfunctional objects, while men are often working abroad, sending remittances. Diasporan capital flows into the town, attempting to bring some ban — something. Maria’s new scientific articles are expected to be published soon, describing how people live in Ajidzor, side by side with the perceived ban chka, “creating something out of nothing like God from the primordial void”, as the scholar states.   Author: Anna SahakyanPhotos by Roman AbovyanMain photo by Susina Khachatryan The "PopScie" series is implemented with funding from the "Young Scientists Support Program" (YSSP).