CEU eTD Collection

CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2017

Author	Merenics, Éva
Title	Whose Children, Whose Future? Orphan Care in Caucasian Armenia during the Near East Relief's Operations (1918-1930)
Summary	Supporting child survivors of the Armenian genocide was a crucial issue in the first independent Republic of Armenia and in the initial years of the Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic. The third party in the endeavour was the Near East Relief, an American charity organisation. The large-scale endeavour; building communities in orphanages and schools, establishing the orphans’ ties with the broader society was realised in a period of very intensive political, economic and social change. Socialising the orphans was carried out in a period of intensive state-building processes, the nation-building project of the first Republic of Armenia, and the communitarian society building process, involving still nationalist elements in the Armenian SSR. All three actors tried to realise their principles of the ideal society through these children, who, losing their families, seemed not to have any social embeddedness. With the use of archival sources I answer the questions how the conflict between these institutions for their ideologies was played out, and how the practical measures were related to the social reality of children. Further questions are how the results influenced children’s lives, and finally, how they reacted to the ways of being treated by these actors.
Supervisor	Rajaram, Prem Kumar; Rabinowitz, Dan
Department	Sociology MA
Full text	https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2017/merenics_eva.pdf

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CEU eTD Collection (2017); Merenics, Éva: Whose Children, Whose Future? Orphan Care in Caucasian Armenia during the Near East Relief's Operations (1918-1930)