Norman's Blog: Yerevan

Yerevan

I went on a tour of Yerevan promoted as a Tour of Soviet Yerevan.

First stop was Republic Square where several government offices are housed including a hotel for visiting diplomats and government officials where all the rooms were bugged.

Next was the main station, and altough the railway wa built before the Great Patriotic War, the station was only built in 1956. Trains used to depart to all major cities in the USSR and neighbouring countries, but since most of the land borders are shut, there are only a few local trains and a bi-weekty train to Georgia.

In front of the station is a statue of Sasuntsi Davit in Sasuntsi Davit Square.

There is a view of Mount Ararat but it was covered in cloud. It used to be part of Armenia but Arnenia lost several of its historical provinces after the First World War when those provinces became part of the new Turkey.

Inside the railway station, much of it very similar in design as a cathedral so the joke is that the Armenians got the Soviets to build them a cathedral.

...and the main hall until the guard approaching us in the photo told us that photography with a camera was forbidden. The rules predate the introduction of phones, so taking pictures with a phone is allowed,

Despite the resemblance to a cathedral, there are hidden elements of the Soviet influence such as at the top of on of the columns is a hammer and sickle.

We had some Soviet era local snacks in the underpass beneath the station. Then we boarded the metro. In the Soviet era, any city with more than a million people would get central funding to build a metro,Baku and Tbilisi had metros but Yerevan only had a population of 700,000. The government built more homes but there was doubt that the city had a million people. When Breznev visited, everybody drove their cars along the main roads causing a lot of congestion and therefore causing presidential convoys hours to get anywhere. The congestion was so bad that Breznev was convinced that the city ad a nmillion people and Yerevan got a metro.

Three lines were planned with 35 stations but only 10 stations and 12 kilometres were built. Two further stations are officially 'still under construction' but no construction activity has occured for decades.

Our next stop on the metro was Paradise. It s a huge former industrial area more than half the size of Central Park. Its main factory was to convert oil into rubber for tyres for cars, lorries, aircraft and any other rubber product. It employed over 10,000 people and contributed 40% of the country's GDP. It was the largest plant of kind and the sixth largest industrial complex in the world. The predominant wind is from the north so it was built on the south side of the city.

That might have sounded like a good idea as the pollution would be pushed by the wind away from the city. The downside is that the rich fertile farmland that produces much of the city's agricultural produce is also located to the south of the city.

With the collapse of the Soviet Union, there was less requirement to be self sufficient. Natural rubber is cheaper and plentiful and the complex closed. The site is heavily polluted. It is too far from the city centre for the land to have nuch value so it remains abandoned.

One of the cooling towers.

Several pipe bridges that cross the road.

One of the many buildings on site.

Our next sto was the Bangladesh market, a huge covered market for agricultural produce.

It is a very colourful place with all sorts of vegetables, fruits and nuts on display, with different shapes, colours and smells. There is no storage areas provided so old cars and vans are parked down the centre and usedas storage. Some have such a thick layer of dust on them that they must have been here for decades.

A general view.

Some of the produce and cars used for storage...

...another view.

We drove onto the 16th Quarter. It is a huge development of dozens of 14 storey blocks of flats. Each block only has one entrance and one lift. in the cyrillac alphabet, USSR is written as CCCP. Looked at from the sky, the development was planned tp spell out CCCP.

The development was never finished. Some of the building sites have been abandoned and the 'P' of CCCP was never completed.

People now own the flats. Many of the former balconies have had windows fitted and have been incorporated into the living area. Some people have knocked through outer walls and inserted new windows.

There are schools and shops nearby to serve the community. We stopped and had some icecream, branded as Soyuz, made by Grand Candy, a large locally owned multi national company.

There are drinking fountains everywhere. This honours some of the dead who fell fighting for independence.

Down a back street on some derelict land next to a military barracks stands some remains of Lenin statues, unkown to many of the locals. There is a body of one statue and two giant heads. If their presence was discovered, they would likely be defaced or covered with grafitti.

The Children's Railway was our next stop. It is a children's attraction with the rolling stock replicas of the real thing but on a child's scale. It has three stations, a tunnel and runs for two and a half kilometres.