Keeping Artsakh Alive in Los Angeles How Displaced Armenians Are Pushing Back Against Powerlessness, Disillusionment, and Loss

Displaced populations often face multiple layers of erasure—in the actual experience of dispossession and in the telling and shaping of their narratives. That compounded loss is made even more complicated for peoples exiled from their homeland.

This has been the experience, for the past 18 months, of ethnic Armenians from Artsakh, who until recently were part of a self-governing democracy in the South Caucasus. Against the backdrop of a broken international order, we can help them by amplifying their stories. To ensure that even as homelands are made invisible on political maps, peoples and their experiences are not forgotten.

Artsakh’s more than 1,000 square miles of highlands are majestic, their features embedded in its various names: Karabakh—a Perso-Turkic combination posited to mean “black garden”—and Nagorno— “mountainous” in Russian. The Armenian people have had a continual presence in the region for more than two millennia, building thousands of religious and cultural monuments.

The territorial conflict over Artsakh is a recent phenomenon, connected to the region’s 20th century imperial legacy. In 1923, Soviet authorities placed the autonomous region of Artsakh—with its majority Armenian population—not within the Soviet Republic of Armenia, but within the Soviet Republic of Azerbaijan. In the late 1980s, as the Soviet Union disintegrated, the region’s fate was unclear, and contested. The Armenians of Artsakh peacefully protested for unification with Armenia; Azerbaijan responded with violence.

For decades, the Armenians of Artsakh lived in the shadow of conflict, sometimes frozen, sometimes full-scale war, with Azerbaijan. In September 2020, Azerbaijan launched an unprecedented military offensive, taking control of the contested territory—followed by a catastrophic nine-month blockade of Artsakh that left its residents without access to food, fuel, and medicine. In September 2023, Azerbaijan escalated the violence with a lightning assault on a starved population, culminating in Artsakh’s dissolution.

In a matter of days, the entire Armenian population—more than 100,000 people—fled for their lives. Approximately 500 recently resettled in Los Angeles, including at least 20 new students in Glendale public schools, with more trickling in across the county.

These new arrivals to L.A. add to the existing mosaic of the world’s largest and most diverse Armenian diaspora—also the only place outside Armenia where symbols of the newly dissolved republic form a prominent aspect of the urban landscape.

In Glendale, the nucleus of the local Armenian community, the restaurant Zhengyalov Hatz—named for Artsakh’s national dish—has become an informal welcome center for new arrivals. A buzzing WhatsApp group chat among Artsakh Angelenos connects incoming families, offering guidance on navigating complex local bureaucracies to find housing, employment, and educational opportunities for their children.

Established community members recently founded the Artsakh Preservation Committee to support local refugees and safeguard their unique cultural and linguistic heritage. Artsakh Americans are creating their own athletic teams and cultural clubs. Armenian American board members at the Glendale YMCA have offered a space where Artsakh Armenians can hold monthly gatherings.

Though this community is a recent addition to Los Angeles, symbolic markers of Artsakh have long nodded to the pivotal place Artsakh occupies in the larger Armenian consciousness.

Reminders of the region are all over the city: in signs for Artsakh Avenue in Glendale, at Karabagh Market in East Hollywood, in the oblong, herb-stuffed flatbread at Zhengyalov Hatz. In 2023, the Los Angeles City Council voted to name the intersection of Wilshire Boulevard and Granville Avenue in West Los Angeles “Republic of Artsakh Square.”

Displaced populations often face multiple layers of erasure—in the actual experience of dispossession and in the telling and shaping of their narratives.

Many Armenian Angelenos use creative alphanumeric combinations on their license plates to carry Artsakh with them through the city, with renderings such as “ARTSKH,” “ARCAX,” and “ARCAXCI.”

USC, where we lead the Institute of Armenian Studies, is home to students, faculty, and staff who have lost loved ones in multiple wars that have plagued the region, and who despair for friends and family who remain captive in Azerbaijan. In November—Artsakh Awareness Month—our institute hosted “Artsakh Uprooted: Aftermaths of Displacement,” a symposium that gathered scholars, artists, and activists from Artsakh and beyond to reflect on the global reverberations of displacement.

The event also provided a platform for Artsakh refugees to share their experiences of war and losing a homeland—to let their histories breathe freely.

In a moving panel discussion titled “(Re)Starting Again,” young people from Artsakh spoke with raw emotion. “Every single day that I live, I hear things, I see things, and everything reminds me of where I come from, and everything reminds me of the horrors I’ve seen,” said Nina Shahverdyan, a master’s student in education at Columbia University.

For Shoushan Keshishian, executive director of Hub Artsakh, an Armenia-based nonprofit that supports the region’s displaced people, war has influenced nearly every aspect of her young life—from practical decisions about where to live to her educational and career trajectory. Born in Syria and raised in Lebanon, Keshishian relocated to Armenia after upheaval in the Middle East, then to Artsakh, hoping to apply her expertise in post-war recovery. The blockade ultimately drove her back to Armenia.

“War has always been part of my life. It’s really shaped who I am, the values I have, and the work that I do,” Keshishian said, capturing how cycles of displacement have colored the global Armenian experience.

For so many displaced, from Artsakh and across the world, Los Angeles has become the final stop on their journeys, a safe haven. At the symposium, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Viet Thanh Nguyen emphasized the importance of abolishing “the conditions of voicelessness,”  ensuring that stories from all these diasporas are valued and heard.

If “Artsakh Uprooted” taught us anything, it is that displacement is universal. Providing a platform to highlight and connect the experiences of diverse groups is a powerful tool for building solidarities. For those ripped from their homes, the agency to shape their own narratives at events like the symposium offers a salve against feelings of powerlessness, disillusionment, and loss.

Art, too, can do this work. As USC’s Vice Provost for the Arts Josh Kun stated in his introduction for Artsakh-native rapper Lyoka, if displacement is a dismembering, an amputation of sorts, “music can be a re-membering, an attempt to put something back together that has been broken and severed.”

As hundreds of people rose to their feet, Lyoka delivered a message that spoke to our common humanity: “I have a right to have a home and land / I have a right to live peacefully, safe at home / I have a right to tell my story / And a double right to change my future.”.