National is what a given group of people perceives as theirs. Such self-identification obtained definition as national during the last several decades, before then it was the ethnic which was perceived as national.

ArmArch: How did Torosyan, after all, unite the traditional and modernist architectural principles? Davit Stepanyan: He possessed perfectly well modernist design principles, which are present in Armenian medieval architecture as well-structural thriftiness, simplicity, overall integrity and unity of function and construction, etc.

The movement of Armenian Soviet modernism began to develop in the mid 1960s. Initially it had the character of a few clumsy imitations of Western modernist concept. But very soon , just as in the case of Social Realism, it acquired individual forms, has gained national traits and was enriched with purely local methods of artistic expression.