Recently, government officials and Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan himself have often used the non-Armenian name of Chaizam, saying that it was allegedly outside Armenia according to Soviet maps. Sen Hovhannisyan, head of the cartography department at the Institute of National Economy of the USSR, director of the Nahapet Publishing House, and photographer, claims the opposite, referring to Soviet, including military, secret maps.
“If we take the story of Chaizam, we should mention that there was a village in the Zangezur province of Elizavetapol province, in the Goris police district. There was a settlement near the wood processing plant, which was part of the Goris region. In the map of the administrative-territorial division of the Republic of Armenia, which was published in Minsk by Demirchyan’s order, Chaizam was completely in the territory of Armenia.
The area is associated with a geographical name, but it was not a community, but as I have already mentioned, it was a small settlement near a woodworking factory in the Goris region. Let those who say Chaizam take any map of the administrative-territorial division of Armenia and look at it,” he said, wondering, “I do not know what maps they refer to now, when in any map of the Soviet years, whether military or otherwise, it was in the territory of Armenia. By the way, there is no Chaizam on any map.”
Sen Hovhannisyan also adds that during the administration of President Levon Ter-Petrossian in 1995, Chaizam was part of the village of Shurnukh in the Goris region.
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Gohar HAKOBYAN
