SUMMARY:

This article deals with the voluntary repatriation of 10 percent of the Armenian diaspora to Soviet Armenia during the immediate postwar years. Coming from the Near East, Europe, and North America, these repatriates had to deal with the harsh postwar conditions, inscrutable social rules, and the negative reception of their Soviet “brothers.” About half of them soon were deported to Siberia and Central Asia. The narratives presented in interviews, memoirs, and archival sources allow for an insight into the evolution of national identity, its relation to Soviet civilization, and what it meant not to be part of Soviet Armenian society, but eventually to become part of Soviet society on the national periphery in the decades after 1945.