YEREVAN LETTER: Generous donations by Armenia's diaspora can only carry the country so far, writes MARK GODFREY
IF EMIGRANT ardour is measurable, then Armenia would at least rival Ireland in a count of the money sent home by exiles who have made it in the US. Armenia's diaspora has plenty to spare, if you consider that California-based financier Kirk Kerkorian is one of the richest men in the world.
Tales of the largesse of Los Angeles's richest man abound in the JazzYe cafe on fashionable Pushkin Street in the Armenian capital. Local professionals and students told me about how Kerkorian (91) has built highways the government could not afford. His roads link the city centre to a new airport and business park built by Armenian-Argentinian billionaire Eduardo Eurnekian.
With wealth comes influence. One of Washington's most powerful lobby groups, the Armenian National Committee of America, recently berated US lawmakers for what it sees as a sentimental shift towards Azerbaijan, with which Armenia fought a war over the Nagorno- Karabakh enclave (now controlled by Armenia) in the 1990s.
The Azeris have recently found their own source of influence - oil and gas, which the US and EU would like to buy - which in turn has helped them rebuild a military humiliated a decade ago by Armenia, a land with half the population but an energetic and wealthy diaspora.
Armenian exiles are determined to preserve and popularise their nation's hard history and proud culture of carpet-weaving, brandy-making and devotion to their church. To ensure the next generation does not forget, a diaspora of 10 million - which dwarfs the republic's population of three million - is rebuilding Yerevan.
This architecturally unremarkable city, whose original churches, mosques and hammams were buried by Stalinist city planners, feels more Mediterranean or Middle Eastern in character than Soviet.
Businesspeople and members of the Armenian Assembly in Glendale, California, have paid for the tasteful redecoration of Stalinist buildings such as the National History Museum.
There are three days worth of well-curated exhibitions next door in the National Gallery of Armenia. Situated on Republic Square, it houses 19,000 canvasses over eight floors and has bilingual signage and carpeted corridors.
But all of this will be dwarfed by the new art museum financed by US media tycoon Gerard L Cafesjian. It will be integrated with the Cascade, a vast flight of stone steps and flower beds that looks remarkably Soviet in its scale and cold sprawl. At present a mess of workers, wheelbarrows and scaffolding, the Cascade was originally designed by Yerevan's Soviet-trained planners but had been left unfinished. Since taking it over in 2001, Cafesjian has spent $37 million (€29.6 million) on landscaping and outfitting the project, a modern take on the Egyptian pyramids.
Giving a taste of the art he intends to house here, Cafesjian has installed a voluptuous stainless-steel Fernando Botero sculpture, Cat, in strange juxtaposition with the bleak plaza, which commemorates the 50th anniversary of the Soviet Republic of Armenia.
Despite their generosity to the homeland, the diaspora have in most cases never lived within the boundaries of today's Armenia - nor were their families from here. They are the children of Armenians who fled for the US after horrid treatment by their Ottoman rulers. Today, their children visit the sobering Armenian genocide memorial complex on Tsitsernakaberd Hill, almost as a rite of passage.
Remittances ensure Armenia remembers, but they may only carry the country so far. Outside the capital you get the impression that entire towns could be sold to China as scrap for smelting. Skeletons of concrete and rusting metal linger on in post-industrial towns such as Alaverdi and Vanadzor. Armenia made chemicals, tools and textiles for sister Soviet states - whether they needed them or not - in return for raw materials and energy.
Today there seems to be neither the energy nor the people to dismantle the factories and refineries that collapsed along with the heavily subsidised Soviet market. You can tell how badly emigration has hurt these towns by the occasional new uPVC window fitted in grey, boxy apartment blocks that were built hastily in the Brezhnev era. No one bothers to weed the grounds, paint the walls, or maintain the giant public sculptures and pieces of Soviet military hardware that stand in the square of Alaverdi, hometown of one of the designers of the MiG jet fighter.
Yerevan may be made over but sustainable economic success for Armenia will mean engaging with neighbours and enemies. The landlocked country spends much more than it should on transport because the roads to Azerbaijan and Turkey are closed. The only decent route to Georgia's Black Sea ports is a two-lane road that in places narrows to one lane. The road into Iran is similarly underdeveloped because, since the 1920s, Armenia has sent its goods westwards to Soviet-bloc sister states such as Azerbaijan.
In Yerevan, young Armenians ponder their fate over games of chess and soorch - strong black coffee brewed in the Turkish style - in the bewildering array of cafes that proliferate in city parks.
"Psychiatrists have no work in Armenia because we spend so much time talking," one of my soorch companions, an out-of-work geologist, told me.
Armenians spend so much time talking because there isn't enough work. Predictably, the Armenian National Committee reacted with outrage and a barrage of lobbying when US aid was cut and redirected to what Washington judged to be "more reform-minded" states such as Moldova and Georgia. So while it helps, diaspora cash may not be enough for Armenia.