Shushi Armenian Realschule
Realakan Dprots
The Shushi Armenian Realschule was a major educational institution in the Armenian quarter of Shusha and part of the city's late imperial Armenian cultural infrastructure. Its destruction in 1920 matters because schools are heritage of social reproduction: they produce teachers, professionals, newspapers, political cadres and civic identity. The loss of the Realschule was therefore part of the destruction of Armenian urban modernity in Shusha, not simply collateral damage to a building. Azerbaijanis rightly remember Shusha as a centre of Azerbaijani poetry and music; Armenians remember a parallel Armenian city of schools, churches and presses that was burned and left largely unrecovered. The Realschule makes that second city concrete.
The Shushi Armenian Realschule was a major educational institution in the Armenian quarter of Shusha and part of the city's late imperial Armenian cultural infrastructure. Its destruction in 1920 matters because schools are heritage of social reproduction: they produce teachers, professionals, newspapers, political cadres and civic identity. The loss of the Realschule was therefore part of the destruction of Armenian urban modernity in Shusha, not simply collateral damage to a building. Azerbaijanis rightly remember Shusha as a centre of Azerbaijani poetry and music; Armenians remember a parallel Armenian city of schools, churches and presses that was burned and left largely unrecovered. The Realschule makes that second city concrete.