Armenian Soviet Encyclopedia

Armenian Soviet Encyclopedia (also rendered Soviet Armenian Encyclopedia; Հայկական սովետական հանրագիտարան, Haykakan sovetakan hanragitaran; ASE) is the first general encyclopedia in Armenian language. It was published in 1974-1987 by the main editorial office of the Armenian Encyclopedia. It consists of 12+1 volumes, published under the direction of the President of the Academy of Sciences of the Armenian SSR Viktor Ambartsumian. In 2011, it was licensed under the Creative Commons BY-SA 3.0 free license.

History
In 1964, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Armenia issued a resolution on the publication of the Armenian Soviet Encyclopedia. In 1965, the Council of Ministers of the Armenian SSR issued a resolution on the creation of a special editorial office for this purpose.

In 1967, the main editorial board of the Armenian Encyclopedia (now the Armenian Encyclopedia Publishing House) was established. It was created under the auspices of the President of the Academy of Sciences of the Armenian SSR Viktor Ambartsumian.

The ASE was published in 1974-1987, one volume per year. The chairman of the editorial board of the ASE was Viktor Ambartsumian, the chief editors were Viktor Ambartsumian (volume 1), Abel Simonyan (volumes 2-4) and Makich Arzumanyan (volumes 5-13). 7200 authors participated in the creation of the ASE. It was printed by the Hakob Megapart Printing House.

In 2011, the state non-profit Armenian Encyclopedia Publishing House, which owns the rights to the ASE, allowed its distribution under the Creative Commons BY-SA 3.0 free license.

Structure
The ASE consists of 12 main volumes and a supplementary volume about Armenian SSR. It includes 38,767 articles, 15,263 images and 858 maps. The ASE was published using a special encyclopedic font created for it.