YEREVAN, JUNE 8, NOYAN TAPAN - ARMENIANS TODAY. The Apricot's Festival will open on July 9 in the Moscow Hermitage Garden within the framework of the Year of Armenia in Russia. During the festival, treating of Armenian apricot will be organized as well as a concert of duduk (Armenian national pipe made of apricot-tree wood) will be held. RA President's Assistant Vigen Sargsian informed the Noyan Tapan correspondent about it. According to him, various events will be held in Russia till the end of the year. An exhibition of children's paintings on the themes of the Bible and "Sasna Tsrer" epos will open at the Fine Arts Center of the Moscow Pushkin Museum in July and August as well as an exhibition of modern Armenian painters of Moscow will be presented. Concerts of the "Hover" choir, RA People's Artist Barsegh Tumanian will take place in middle of June within the framework of the "White Nights" festival in Saint Petersburg. Days of Armenian theater will be organized in Moscow in September in which the Yerevan Hrachia Ghaplanian Dramatic, Gabriel Sundukian National Academic and Konstantin Stanislavski Russian Theaters will participate. Besides cultural events, events of educational, economic and other spheres will also be held within the framework of the Year of Armenia in Russia. According to V.Sargsian, the solemn closing ceremony of the Year of Armenia in Russia will be held in November or December, which will probably be held in one of palaces of Saint Petersburg. "Those events are important to that extent that Russian representatives of especially younger generation have possibility to get acquainted with the Armenian culture and form an idea about the Armenian people having history of milleniums," Vigen Sargsian mentioned.

---