Old postcards Armenia

Soviet rule in Armenia was established on 29 November 1920; the cards in this section date from the 1970s and 1980s. These Soviet postcards of Armenia come from several sets — Yerevan 1971, Leninakan 1972, Dilijan 1976 — plus a mixed group of views from across the republic.

The 1971 Yerevan set reaches well beyond the capital. Next to the David of Sasun monument, the Armenia hotel and the State University, it includes a view of Mount Ararat, the ruins of Zvartnots, St Hripsime church in Echmiadzin and the khachkars (carved cross-stones) of Geghard monastery. The Echmiadzin churches, Zvartnots and Geghard were inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 2000.

The 1972 Leninakan set shows the city before the Spitak earthquake of 1988: the Square of the Heroes of the May Uprising, the teacher-training institute, a church captioned “Marmashen, 9th century” and the Friendship obelisk on the Tbilisi highway. Dilijan appears on 1976 cards of the Mountain Armenia sanatorium and its lookout tower, the USSR Composers’ House of Creativity, the Aghstev river bank and Lake Parz.

The mixed-views subcategory is not a single town but a 1978–1989 assortment: the Komitas monument in Echmiadzin, the pagan temple at Garni, the Marmashen and Tanahat monasteries, a waterfall at Jermuk. All of it is scanned from original Soviet cards rather than modern lookalikes, and the rest of the Armenian cards will follow once scanned.