Stepanos Nazariants

May 8, 2014 by admin

THIS WEEK IN ARMENIAN HISTORY

(Prepared by the Armenian National Education Committee[ANEC])

 

Death of Stepanos Nazariants
(May 9, 1879)

The nineteenth century was a period of awakening for Armenians both in the Ottoman and the Russian Empire. In Russia, one of its pioneers was Stepanos Nazariants, a journalist, teacher, and orientalist.StepanosNazariants

He was born on May 27, 1812, in Tiflis (now Tbilisi), in the family of a priest. The Nersisian Lyceum, founded by the primate of the Armenian Apostolic Church in Georgia, Nerses Ashdaragetsi, was opened in 1824, and Nazariants studied there between 1824 and 1829. He became also one of the first Armenian students of the Caucasus to study in Dorpat (now Tartu, in Estonia), which had one of the best, German-speaking universities in the Russian Empire.

In Dorpat, Nazariants first studied at the gymnasium for a year (1833-1834) and then at the schools of Medicine (1835-1836) and Philosophy (1836-1840). He wrote his doctoral dissertation on the work of Persian poet Ferdowsi, Shahnameh (Book of Kings). From 1842-1849 he was the chair of the Armenian language department at the University of Kazan. Later he moved to Moscow, where he was professor of Persian language and literature at the famous Lazarian Lyceum until his death. From 1869-1871 he was also principal of the lyceum.

Influenced by European enlightenment and Russian social movements of the 1840s, Nazariants wrote against the ruling feudal system and its ideology. He was a fervent advocate of modernization, as well as of patriotic ideas, such as the struggle against Turkish domination. He saw education as the key of Armenian progress, and supported the development of secular instruction and methods of pedagogy that were consistent and age-appropriate. He advocated the use of Modern Armenian, and perhaps his greatest achievement was the publication of the monthly Hiusisapayl (Aurora Borealis, 1858-1864), together with his younger associate Mikayel Nalbandian, which had an important role in the development of Eastern Armenian. The monthly became the voice of progressive ideas, and ran afoul of the Armenian establishment due to the discussion of sensitive issues, such as his criticism of serfdom and clerical power. Nazariants and Nalbandian developed principles to modernize literary criticism among Armenians.

Nazariants wrote a number of books in Russian (A Brief Survey of Thirteenth Century Armenian Literature, 1844; A Survey of Armenian Literature in the Modern Period, 1846) and Armenian (Discourse on Experimental Psychology, 1853; First Spiritual Nutrition for Armenian Children, 1853; Source Book of Religion, 1854, and Review of Modern Armenian Speaking, 1857). He also wrote poetry and translated many works, including those of Swiss poet Friedrich Schiller. He passed away on May 9, 1879, in Moscow.

 

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KING LEVON I

May 1, 2014 by admin

THIS WEEK IN ARMENIAN HISTORY

(Prepared by the Armenian National Education Committee[ANEC])

 

Death of Levon I (May 2, 1219)

 

The Armenian state of Cilicia (1080-1375) started as a princedom under the rule of Rupen I (1080-1095). It played an important role during the first Crusades under the Rupenian dynasty. In a hundred years, it would become a kingdom due to the efforts of Prince Levon II.

Levon (known as Leo in non-Armenian sources) was born in 1150. His father Stepan, the third son of Prince Levon I (1129-1137), was murdered by the Byzantines in 1165. His paternal uncle, Mleh I (1169-1175), had made a host of enemies and was assassinated by his own soldiers in Sis. Levon’s elder brother, Rupen, elected to succeed Mleh, was imprisoned in 1183 by Prince Bohemond III of Antioch, who had begun hostilities against him in alliance with Prince Hetum III of Lambron.Levon_I

Levon became regent during his brother’s absence. Rupen was released in 1187 after the payment of a large ransom and cession of two cities to Antioch. He relinquished power to his brother and retired to the monastery of Drazark.

Levon II had an initial rapprochement with Bohemond III as a result of the alliance between Byzantium and Sultan Saladin of Egypt. He even married Isabelle, a niece of his rival’s wife.

He approached Frederick I Barbarossa, the German emperor, when he entered the Armenian territories on his way during the Third Crusade, but the emperor drowned in Cilicia in 1190. Nevertheless, Levon participated in the siege of Acre and in 1191 he joined King Richard the Lionheart in the conquest of Cyprus.

Levon II was intent upon ensuring the security of Cilicia. He entered in conflict with Saladin, who died in 1193, and Bohemond III, whom he took prisoner in the same year. A solution of the conflict between Cilicia and Antioch was found when Raymond of Antioch, son of Bohemond III, married Levon’s niece Alice. However, Raymond died soon and Alice and her infant son Raymond-Rupen were returned to Cilicia. The Armenian prince determined that his great-nephew should inherit Antioch on the death of Bohemond III.

Levon II pressed for a royal crown and sought the assistance of German emperor Henry VI and Pope Celestine III. The latter required submission of the Armenian Church to Rome, but this was opposed by the Armenian bishops. Byzantine emperor Alexios III sent Levon a royal crown, and the negotiations between an Armenian embassy headed by Bishop Nerses of Lambron and the Byzantine side in Constantinople centered on religious questions, and were fruitless in the end.

Finally, Levon II was crowned on January 6, 1198, in Tarsus by Catholicos Gregory VI Abirad, and received another royal insignia by the Papal legate, Archbishop Conrad of Mainz. After the fall of the Bagratuni kingdom of Ani in 1045, an Armenian kingdom had been restored. He was Levon II when a prince, but after his coronation, he became Levon I, because he was the first king of that name. He would issue coins with the legend “King of All Armenians” (Takavor Amenayn Hayots).

Levon I was entangled in the conflict of succession of Antioch. When Bohemond III died in 1201, although the barons had sworn allegiance to the king’s great-nephew Raymond-Roupen, Bohemond’s second son, Count Bohemond of Tripoli, opposed the validity of the oath and was installed as Bohemond IV of Antioch. The Papacy, the Templars, the emir of Aleppo, and the Seljuk Sultan of Konia were involved in the conflict at one time or another. Levon was finally able to install Raymond-Roupen as prince of Antioch in 1216.

Meanwhile, he received “injurious information” about his wife Isabelle. The king imprisoned her in the fortress of Vahka, where she died around 1206. He married Sibylle, the half-sister of King Hugh I of Cyprus, in 1211. His daughter Rita (d. in 1220) married King John I of Jerusalem in 1214.

However, before his death in 1219, Levon quarreled with his great nephew Raymond Roupen and named his young daughter Zabel (born in 1215) as his rightful heir. Levon I is known in Armenian history as Levon I Medzakordz (the Magnificent). Several years of conflict for the succession of the throne of Cilicia would ensue. Finally, in 1226 Zabel would marry Hetum, son of Constantin of Baberon, and this would end the long dynastic and territorial rivalry, unifying the two most powerful families of the kingdom: the Rupenians and the Hetumians.

 

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Panos Terlemezian

April 26, 2014 by admin

THIS WEEK IN ARMENIAN HISTORY

(Prepared by the Armenian National Education Committee[ANEC])

 

Death of Panos Terlemezian
(April 30, 1941)

Many Armenian intellectuals were also involved in the movement of national liberation at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth century. Painter Panos Terlemezian was one of them.

Self portrait by Panos TerlemezianHe was born in Aygestan, the Armenian suburb of the city of Van, on March 3, 1865. His father was a farmer. After studying at the elementary school, he attended the Van Central College (1881-1886), which he graduated with honors. He became a teacher, while at the same time he joined the first Armenian political party, the Armenagan Organization, founded in 1885.

His political activities attracted the attention of the Turkish government, which tried him in absentia. In 1893 he escaped to Persia and later to Tiflis, in the Russian Empire. After working for a while there, he 1895 he moved to St. Petersburg, where he entered the school of the Art Society. The Turkish government had him imprisoned in 1897 and sent to prison in Tiflis and then in Yerevan, from where he was exiled to Persia. In 1898 he clandestinely traveled to Paris and entered the Académie Julian in 1899. He graduated in 1904, when he won the first prize for his works in the academy’s exhibition. His work “ThKomitas Vardapet by Panos Terlemeziane Entrance of the Monastery of Sanahin” (1904) won the gold medal of an all-European exhibition in Munich (Germany).

After living and creating in Armenia between 1905 and 1908, he returned to Paris for the next two years. In 1910 he moved to Constantinople, where he lived and exhibited until 1913, when he returned to Van. He was one of the seven members of the military authority that led the successful self-defense of Van in April-May 1915 and allowed some 200,000 Armenians of the town and the environment to save their lives. After the evacuation of the town and the emigration of the population towards the Caucasus, he settled in Tiflis, where he participated in the organization of the Union of Armenian Artists.

After the end of the war, Terlemezian lived again on the move. He was in Constantinople, Italy and France between 1919 and 1922, and crossed the Atlantic Ocean to the United States, where he lived for the next five years, always painting and giving exhibitions. Finally, in 1928 he settled in Soviet Armenia, where he continued producing landscapes, a genre where he excelled, and portraits of celebrated Armenians. He received the title of People’s Artist in 1935. He passed away on April 30, 1941. The Art School (now Art College) of Yerevan bears his name.

 

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Easter Message of His Holiness KAREKIN II

April 20, 2014 by admin

The Message of His Holiness KAREKIN II
Supreme Patriarch and Catholicos of All Armenians
On the Occasion of the Feast of the Holy Resurrection
 of our Lord Jesus Christ
Mother See of Holy Etchmiadzin, April 20, 2014

In the Name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, Amen.

“I am the light of the world.
Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness,
but will have the light of life.”
John 8:12

Dearly Beloved Sons and Daughters in Armenia and the Dispersion,

The feast of the wonderful Holy Resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ has illuminated our souls with bountiful hope. Our Savior has Risen from the dead; the tool of execution – the Cross – has been transformed into the tree of life; man and universe have been renewed by the grace of life and eternity.

Today risen with Christ, is the new creation, the path of a new life, bright with life-giving light, which is granted by the Savior. “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.” These words of our Risen Lord are a divine invitation for an eternal, as well as an earthly illuminated life, directed to each individual since the graces of the Holy Resurrection are distributed for all; including those who as yet, are not walking the path of faith; including those, who brokenhearted by the trials of life, are rebelling against God. The graces of the Holy Resurrection are dispersed also in those places where men and women have become bitter through wars and enraging terrorism, where hearts have become hardened, where people bear the severe burden of misery, where angelic children are sacrificed, all as results of poverty, indifference, and military actions. Today, the darkness-dispersing light of Christ’s Resurrection shines over all conflicts that disrupt the life of mankind, over humanitarian and environmental disasters, economic and political crises, and all worries and challenges. The belief in the Resurrection, which transformed the course of history, and educated soul and mind, created culture, guided states to progress; offered standards for justice and rights for all mankind, philanthropic values and principles; remains also today the miraculous power on which we shall rely and through which the world and the souls of men shall be renewed by new achievements, peace and love, to transfigure with goodness the life of humankind. Today, there are no societies or states without concerns, needs or problem. However, societies and states cannot have progress – and are even doomed to annihilation – if they do not possess the vision and goals of life, progress, and perfection, established on spiritual-moral values; and apostles devoted to the same.

Indeed, the greatest achievements of mankind are the heroisms of individuals who possessed vision; just as those disciples of Christ who spread the light of Christianity, who with their powerful faith in God, and a self-sacrificing sense of duty, laid the beginning of the path of eternal life in this world, for the sake of humanity’s salvation, happiness and wellbeing. Everyone who believes in God, who has love for creation and his fellow man, is an apostle and will implement his mission with the confident knowledge that the source of grace is God’s blessing, which dispels the gloom from life; that God’s help multiplies the fruits of labor, God’s consolation dissipates hopelessness and sadness, and God’s heavenly justice reinforces the foundations of earthly justice. It is with this knowledge and the elevation of this spirit that the wounds of the present world shall be healed, the course of nations and societies be established on paths of love and solidarity, and life be transformed by the light of resurrection, which is the commandment of our Lord and the sacred mystery of the Resurrection of Christ.


Dear and Pious Faithful,

The good news of the Risen Savior today is an invitation to our people dispersed throughout the world to not submit to the difficulties of our national life; rather to invest efforts with steadfast will for the prosperous and bright future of our native land and our people. In the tempests of centuries, where would our people be if not strengthened by the graces of Christ’s Resurrection? If not having love for our homeland and nation? And not able to turn that, into a buttress in times of difficulties, and strength, to live, create and rise up? We can determine solutions to the trials and challenges we face with unshakeable desire to transform life, by fidelity to our Christian values, via the noble and good path, and with our undertakings, and our nation-devoted and beneficial works. The feast of the Holy Resurrection brings to us the encouragement to bring to life with a hopeful spirit those plans that each individual – by responding to the call of the Lord – is able to realize for our familial, societal, state and national life, by not differentiating between the personal interest and the national and people’s interest. Let us serve in our calling and responsibility with spirit and devotion; let us not aspire for successes only for ourselves, rather for one another, for the progress of our native and national life, and as the Lord instructs, consider that we have done all that we were obligated to do. (Luke 17:10.)

We extend our fatherly words especially to our young children in Armenia and the Diaspora, exhorting them to be the bearers of the divinely commanded mission; combining with hope and faith the marvelous vigor of youth with our national life. Keep strong the life-affirming spirit of youth when facing the difficulties and imperatives of our lives, the self-centered and passing soul-destructive trends and views of our times, and all gales of temptation, by steadfastly standing on the rock of faith and recalling the words of our Lord Jesus Christ, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.” Dear and beloved young sons and daughters, you who are the first generation of our free homeland, keep and protect in your hearts as your most precious treasure, the light of your souls that is free with Christ, that is bright through Christ. A people that has scions educated with the laws of God, has real hopes and a positive future. You shall bring to fruition those hopes in the fields of our state, national and ecclesiastical life, at the borders of our homeland, at the positions of defense of our language and culture in the Diaspora; to strengthen our country, to defend the right of Artsakh to live free, to defend our righteous cause on the fields of battle; and with the devotion of your souls, through your responsibilities in our native and national life, you shall weave the victories of our life in this new day.

At present, the difficult situation of the Armenians in the Middle East, continues to concern our national life, especially in Syria. In recent weeks, a new crisis has arisen in Kessab where militant extremists have engaged in military actions with the assistance of the Republic of Turkey. The destruction of an Armenian populated area and the deportation of its Armenian residents is the continuation of the same criminal policy adopted by Turkey towards the Armenian people, which we shall confront through state, ecclesiastical and national structures, to defend the rights of our people through unified efforts.

Today, beloved, when the light and excitement of the Feast of the Resurrection of Christ once again beat in our hearts, and in accord to the apostolic words, having put on the armor of light (Romans 13:12), as one who rejoices in our Risen Lord, and as apostles who reject grief, fear and despair, let us go out to transform our lives and the lives of our brethren and people with new accomplishments, through steadfast steps that shall turn the vision of our bright future into a shining reality.

It is with this faith and wish that we extend the greetings with the good tiding of the Holy Resurrection to the incumbents of the hierarchal sees of our Holy Apostolic Church: His Holiness Aram I, Catholicos of the Great House of Cilicia; His Beatitude Archbishop Nourhan Manougian, Armenian Patriarch of Jerusalem; His Beatitude Archbishop Mesrob Mutafian, Armenian Patriarch of Constantinople; and all clergy of our Church; as well as to the heads of all sister Churches and their faithful flock. We appeal for the Lord’s protection for them and His daily assistance in their divinely commanded mission.

With the appeal for the graces of Christ’s Resurrection, we convey our greetings to the President of the Republic of Armenia, Serzh Sargsian, and the First Lady, present here today for the Divine Liturgy. We extend our greetings and best wishes as well to the President of the Artsakh Republic, Bako Sahakian, and to all state officials of the Armenians, and all representatives of diplomatic missions accredited in Armenia. We extend our fatherly love and blessings with the joyful news of the Holy Resurrection to all of our sons and daughters dispersed throughout the world.

On this holy and cherished Easter Sunday, our prayer from the depths of our heart, is for the graces of Resurrection to reinforce you, dear Armenian people, to live in faith and hope and love, and to build the new good day of our lives in solidarity.

         May God grant peace to the entire world under His Holy Right Hand, grant prosperity and progress to our homeland, and brilliance to our Holy Church and our faithful Armenian nation, to praise today and always, the Holy Resurrection of our Savior.

 

Christ is Risen from the dead.
Blessed is the Resurrection of Christ.

 

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MESSAGE OF HIS HOLINESS KAREKIN II, SUPREME PATRIARCH AND CATHOLICOS OF ALL ARMENIANS, ON HOLY WEEK

April 17, 2014 by admin

MESSAGE OF HIS HOLINESS KAREKIN II, SUPREME PATRIARCH AND CATHOLICOS OF ALL ARMENIANS, ON HOLY WEEK

“Dear faithful people,

Great Lent marked the days of prayer, spirituality and reflection, a time for meditation, penitence and repentance to rejuvenate our spirits and strengthen our faithfulness, piousness and love for one another.

The genuine desire and the honorable aspirations of God-willing brotherly love, solidarity and support are a powerful and vital force that will help us to overcome our hardships, keeping the independent and peaceful foundations of our Homeland unshaken. The doors of God’s mercy and blessings will be widely opened before our personal and national life if we keep God’s commandments.

We are entering Holy Week. With the sacrament of the church services, through contemplation and empathy we witness the last events of Our Lord’s earthly life – Christ’s passion, His Crucifixion and Death, also His miraculous Resurrection, granting humanity a resurrected life on Earth and eternal life in the Heavenly Kingdom.

Beloved faithful children in Armenia and the Diaspora, let the message of Holy Week become a call for all of us to reinforce our path to God, rejecting unworthy thoughts, words and deeds, so that we can accept the good news of Our Lord’s life- giving Resurrection with a pure heart, and a hopeful and joyful spirit. Let us make the effort to have the Christian spirit manifested everywhere in our reality, valuing honesty and devotion of the spirit, righteousness, sympathy and mercy, and become closer to God. Let us pray for each other, extending our joint prayers for the Syrian people, the Armenians in Kessab and all the Syrian Armenians, and offer them our support so that our brothers and sisters in Kessab, who were displaced by armed extremists, can overcome the hardships and return to their homes and continue living peacefully with God’s will.

From the Mother See of Holy Etchmiadzin we extend Our Pontifical blessings, wishing from the bottom of Our heart that the graces of Our Lord’s Holy Resurrection descend upon our lives, and reinforced with divine blessings, that we always remain loyal children of God, and devoted children of our nation and Holy Church. May the heaven- sent peace be established in all the corners of the world, staying strong in our independent Homeland and in the lives of our people dispersed throughout the Diaspora.

May Our Lord Jesus Christ’s grace, love and mercy be with us and all for now and forevermore. Amen.”

 

Posted in Sermon |

Avedis Aharonian

April 17, 2014 by admin

THIS WEEK IN ARMENIAN HISTORY

(Prepared by the Armenian National Education Committee[ANEC])


Death of Avedis Aharonian
(April 20, 1948)

AvedisAharonan

Avedis Aharonan

Avedis Aharonian, known as the “singer of Armenian sorrow,” was one of the popular names of Eastern Armenian literature in the first half of the twentieth century. He was equally noted for his active participation in the revolutionary movement and the first Republic of Armenia.

Aharonian was born in 1866 in the village of Igdir Mava, in the district of Surmalu, which would be lost to Turkey after the Moscow and Kars treaties of 1921. He graduated from the Gevorgian Lyceum of Etchmiadzin in 1886, and taught for a few years. He became a member of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation in the 1890s and in 1897 he departed to Europe, where he graduated from the literature course of the University of Lausanne (Switzerland) in 1901. His first stories on Western Armenian emigrants and the movement of national liberation, published in the A.R.F. organ Troshag, attracted the attention of the readers. His most famous stories on these subjects are collected in the volume On the Road to Freedom (1908) and would make him the successor to novelist Raffi (1835-1888) as an inspiration for the Armenian liberation movement.

In 1902 he returned to the Caucasus and became the principal of the Nersesian Lyceum of Tiflis from 1907-1909. The persecution started by the Russian government against revolutionary parties, including the A.R.F., targeted him and he was arrested and jailed for two years. Due to his poor health, he was liberated and went first to Constantinople and then to Europe for treatment. He returned to the Caucasus before World War I, and in 1917 he was elected president of the Armenian National Council in Tiflis. After the independence of Armenia, he was elected a Parliament member and then president. He went to Paris in 1919, where he headed the Delegation of the Republic of Armenia that signed the Treaty of Sevres in 1920. He also participated in the conventions of London (1921) and Lausanne (1922-1923). He wrote down his reflections on the Armenian Cause in a book called From Sardarabad to Sevres and Lausanne (1943).

He had to stay abroad after the establishment of the Soviet regime in Armenia, where his works were banned. Besides his political activities, Aharonian continued writing a steady flow of stories, novellas, literary and political studies, memoirs, travelogues. Symbolist in some of his works and romantic in some others, his emotional style appealed to the heart of the masses and made him particularly cherished among Armenian readers throughout the world, even after his death.

It may be said that he fell on the line of duty. He was one of the keynote speakers at an event organized by Hamazkayin in Marseilles on February 11, 1934, before an audience of 2,000 people. His speech started with the following paragraph: “Armenian people, you have to know that this is a waiting situation. You have to believe that you will return to the land of your ancestors, your braves. We have not come here to stay; we have come here to return…”  He had just reached the fourth paragraph of his speech, when he was silenced by a stroke. He lived for the next fourteen years in Marseilles, unable to speak or write.

He passed away on April 20, 1948, and was buried in the cemetery of Père Lachaise, in Paris. His collected works were published in 10 volumes in Boston and Venice between 1947 and 1951.

After the independence of Armenia, his name was returned to the homeland. His works have been published over the years and a street in Yerevan bears his name.

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Foundation of Armenfilm

April 12, 2014 by admin

THIS WEEK IN ARMENIAN HISTORY

(Prepared by the Armenian National Education Committee[ANEC])


Foundation of Armenfilm (April 16, 1923)

The first Armenian movie, called “Armenian Cinema” (Հայկական սինեմա), was filmed in 1912 in Cairo (Egypt). In the same year, it was shown in several Armenian communities of the United States. But the first and biggest Armenian studio was created eleven years later, in 1923, in Yerevan.

The Council of Popular Commissars (Council of Ministers) of Soviet Armenia adopted a decision on April 16, 1923, to nationalize all private cinemas and to found the company “Petkino” (State Cinema), which was shortly thereafter renamed “Haypetfotokino” (Armenian State Photo Cinema). The board of the company was directed by Daniel Dznuni. The company was renamed “Haykino” in 1928 and then Yerevan Film Studio (1937).

The first film was a documentary, “Soviet Armenia” in 1924 (directed by I. Kraslavski). It was followed by the first feature film, H. Bek-Nazarian’s Namus (The Honor), a year later. A series of silent films by Bek-Nazarian, the pioneering director of Armenian cinema, and others brought recognition to Armenian productions within the Soviet Union. The beginning of the “talkies” was marked by the production of the masterpiece of Armenian cinema, Pepo (1935), also directed by Bek-Nazarian. It followed a long period of historical films, before and during World War II, including Zangezur (1938), by Bek-Nazarian, which won the USSR State Prize. However, Lev Atamanov filmed the first Armenian cartoon, The Dog and the Cat (1938), during this period.

After a period dominated by the production of documentaries, feature films resumed in 1954, and the period of maturity was reached in the 1960-1980s, when some of those films even made their way to the international market. The company was renamed Armenfilm in 1957 (it was known in Armenian as Hayfilm) and the studios were baptized with the name of Hamo Bek-Nazarian in 1966. Some of the more remarkable films of this period were: “Hello, It’s Me” (Frunze Dovlatyan, 1965), “Triangle” (Henrik Malian, 1967), “We Are Our Mountains” (Henrik Malian, 1969), “The Color of Pomegranate” (Sergei Parajanov, 1969), “Nahapet” (Henrik Malian, 1977), “A Piece of Sky” (Henrik Malian, 1980), “White Dreams” (Sergei Israelian, 1984), “The Tango of Our Childhood” (Albert Mkrtchyan, 1985), “Nostalgia” (Frunze Dovlatyan, 1990), and others.

After the fall of the Soviet Union, Armenfilm entered a period of decline and was privatized in 2005 to Armenia Studios LLC (a branch of CS Media Holding).

Henrik Malian’s “The Tango of Our Childhood” (Մեր մանկութեան Թանկոն), 1985. Watch the entire film by clicking the above link.

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Vahan Tekeyan

April 4, 2014 by admin

THIS WEEK IN ARMENIAN HISTORY

(Prepared by the Armenian National Education Committee[ANEC])

 

Death of Vahan Tekeyan
(April 4, 1945)

Poet and public figure, Vahan Tekeyan belonged to the surviving generation of the Armenian Genocide and during the last three decades of his life he influenced an entire generation.

Tekeyan was born in Constantinople on January 21, 1878. He was the youngest of five children, fourteen years younger than his closest brother. His father passed away when he was eleven. He attended Nersesian, Berberian, and Getronagan schools, but did not finish his secondary schooling and was self-taught for the most part.

He went to work with an insurance firm as a secretary at the age of sixteen. Two years later, in 1896, he was transferred to Liverpool, England, just before the massacres of Armenians in Constantinople ordered by Sultan Abdul Hamid II. In 1897 he was sent to Marseilles, where he stayed for four years, and then to Hamburg (Germany). In 1901 he published his first volume of poetry, Burdens, in Paris. In 1904 he was in Egypt and the following year he began publishing the literary monthly Shirag with Mikayel Gurjian (1878-1965). After the restoration of the Ottoman Constitution in 1908, Tekeyan returned to Constantinople and resumed publication of Shirag for a short while. He was elected a member of the National Church Council. In 1911 he visited Armenia for the first time for the election of Catholicos of All Armenians Gevorg V Sureniants.VahanTekeyan

He published his second book, Miraculous Rebirth, in 1914, which was received with unanimous praise. It was on the eve of World War I, and Tekeyan would escape the fate of Armenian intellectuals during the genocide by chance. He was sent to Jerusalem to settle a church dispute as a representative of the Armenian National Assembly. At the outbreak of the war, he went to Cairo and followed the developments from there.

Tekeyan had been originally a member of the Social Democrat Hunchakian Party, and after its split in 1896 he entered the Reorganized Hunchakian Party. He went back to Yerevan in 1919 to lead negotiations on behalf of the Armenian National Delegation headed by Boghos Nubar Pasha with representatives of the Republic of Armenia. Then he participated in the Armenian Congress held in Paris in the same year.

He published his third book in 1919 (From Midnight to Dawn). The next year he returned to Constantinople after an absence of six years. In 1921 he was instrumental in the fusion of four parties that gave origin to the Democratic Liberal Party (Ramgavar Azadagan). Tekeyan became the editor of its organ, Joghovurti Tzayne, and in 1922, together with four other noted intellectuals (Gostan Zarian, Hagop Oshagan, Shahan Berberian, and Kegham Kavafian), founded the short-lived literary monthly Partzravank. From 1921-1922 he was also principal of Getronagan School.

After the occupation of Constantinople by Kemalist forces, Tekeyan left the city, and went to Bulgaria, Greece, Egypt, and Syria to supervise Armenian refugee and orphan care. He was particularly helpful to one of those orphans, future Armenian American writer Leon Surmelian (1906-1998), and encouraged and collected his Armenian poetry, which he published in a book in 1924, Joyful Light.

From 1926-1932 he became editor of Arev, his party’s publication in Cairo. He moved to Paris, where he published his fourth collection of poetry, Love (1933). After a stint at the Melkonian Educational Institution in 1935-1936, he became the founding editor of the daily Zartonk of Beirut in 1937. Then he returned to Cairo to resume editorship of Arev.

He published his last two books in 1943 (Song of Armenia) and 1944 (Odes). His poetry, be it lyrical, patriotic, or philosophical, would always reflect the sobriety of its author. By the time of his death, some of his poems had become classics, and had earned him the title of “Prince of Armenian poetry.” His literary style had already created a numerous following, which would be active for several decades after him.

After a long life of service, Tekeyan died in Cairo on April 4, 1945. The Tekeyan Cultural Association, founded in 1947, bears his name.

 

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Alexander Miasnikian

March 22, 2014 by admin

THIS WEEK IN ARMENIAN HISTORY

(Prepared by the Armenian National Education Committee[ANEC])

 

Death of Alexander Miasnikian
(March 22, 1925)

Few communist leaders are still celebrated in Armenia after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the second independence. Alexander Miasnikian is one of them.

He was born in Nakhichevan-on-Don (Nor Nakhichevan), the town near Rostov founded by Armenian migrants from Crimea in the late eighteenth century, on January 28 (February 9 in the Gregorian calendar), 1886. Son of a small merchant, he studied first at the diocesan school of his hometown and then at the Lazarian Lyceum of Moscow from 1904-1906. He was attracted by revolutionary ideology as a student, first in Nakhichevan and then in Moscow. Miasnikian formally became a member of the underground revolutionary movement (the Bolshevik branch of the Russian Social-Democratic Party) in 1904 and was arrested and exiled to Baku in 1906. He continued his revolutionary activities, first in Baku and then in Moscow, where he graduated from the law department of Moscow University in 1911. Between 1912 and 1914, he worked as an assistant to a lawyer in Moscow and participated in the dissemination of political literature. His revolutionary nom de guerre was Al. Martuni (“son of fight”). AlexandrMiasnikian1

During those years, he also devoted himself to literary criticism and journalism. He edited ten periodicals. He published articles in the 1910s about the meaning of the discovery of the Armenian alphabet and the works of poets Mikayel Nalbandian, Hovhannes Tumanian, Hovhannes Hovhannisian, and Alexander Tzaturian. He wrote many times about the Armenian Question, which he labeled “Gordian knot,” where the disagreements and the interests of the European powers were tied.

Miasnikian was drafted into the Russian Army in 1914, where he promoted revolutionary ideas among the soldiers. After the February Revolution of 1917, he became a member of the Western Front’s frontline committee and was elected as a delegate for the 6th Congress of the Bolshevik Party. He later became chairman of the Northwestern Regional Committee of the Bolshevik Party, member of the Military Revolutionary Committee of the Western Region, and commander of the Western Front. In early 1919 he was appointed chairman of the Central Executive Committee and the Bolshevik Party in Bielorussia (Belarus).

After his long parenthesis outside Armenian life, Miasnikian, who was on the Polish front in 1920, was appointed chairman of the Council of People’s Commissars, the newly installed government of Soviet Armenia which replaced the Revolutionary Committee that had been in power after the fall of independent Armenia. He took the position in April 1921, after the end of the February uprising against the Soviet regime. He brought a letter from Vladimir Lenin, where the leader of the Soviet revolution exhorted his Armenian comrades: “(…) A slower, more careful, more systematic transition towards socialism; this is what is possible and necessary. To work at the same time to improve the situation of the villager and took over the great work of electrification and watering…”

Miasnikian’s constructive policy led to the formation of state institutions and the economic infrastructure of the republic, stabilizing the internal situation. He actively pursued work towards the eradication of illiteracy and the development of local manufacturing. Many intellectuals exiled in Iran before and after the February uprising returned to Armenia, while many others settled from Constantinople and other places. Many refugees from Western Armenia also started to settle in the country. He voted in July 1921 against the decision of incorporating Mountainous Karabagh into the territory of Azerbaijan, which was fueled by Joseph Stalin.

After the creation of the Transcaucasian Federative Republic in March 1922, where Armenia, Georgia, and Azerbaijan were integrated in one political unit, Miasnikian left his position and went to occupy leadership positions in the government of the federation as one of the chairmen of the Executive Committee and later first secretary of the Transcaucasian Committee of the Communist Party. AlexandrMiasnikian2

He died tragically on March 22, 1925, when he was departing from Tiflis (Tbilisi) to Sukhumi with Gevorg Atarbekian and S. Mogilevsky to participate in the Congress of the Soviets of Abkhazia. The “Junkers” airplane took fire due to an engine problem and the three men died. They were buried in Tbilisi three days later. Although the official version was an accident, there are views that it was not, and that the incident was orchestrated by, among others, the influential Georgian Bolshevik Laurenti Beria, who had started his career as right hand of Stalin. 

A factory, a square, and a street took Miasnikian’s name (in Russian Myasnikov) in Minsk, the capital of Belarus. Later, two cities in Armenia and Karabagh were named Martuni after his pseudonym, while a village in the province of Armavir was called Miasnikian. His statue is placed in Miasnikian Square of Yerevan.

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Assassination of Talaat Pasha

March 13, 2014 by admin

THIS WEEK IN ARMENIAN HISTORY

(Prepared by the Armenian National Education Committee[ANEC])

March 15, 1921: Assassination of Talaat Pasha

On March 16, 1921, one of the headlines of The New York Times read: “Talaat Pasha Slain in Berlin Suburb.” After giving the details of the killing the day before, the report noted: “Talaat, whose name was on the second Entente list of Turkish war criminals, left Constantinople two years ago and had been living as a fugitive ever since under assumed names, first in Switzerland and later in Germany. He evidently feared the fate which has now overtaken him, for he had frequently changed his address in Berlin and at the time of his death was living at a pension in the West End.” The correspondent for the American newspaper added that the killer had been identified as an Armenian student (“Solomon Tellirian,” according to the Associated Press) and that “it is assumed that the deed was an act of revenge for the massacres of his compatriots.”
Jagadamard

On the front page of the daily paper, Jagadamard, the headline in Armenian below the banner reads, "An Armenian student kills Talaat Pasha."

In July 1919, the Turkish martial court of Constantinople had condemned to death in absentia, among others, the “Three Pashas,” the members of the Young Turk triumvirate that had led the Ottoman Empire during the war: Talaat (Minister of Interior and Great Vizir in 1917-1918), Enver (Minister of War), and Djemal (Minister of Navy). The three had already fled Turkey, and the sentences were never carried out either by Turkey or by the allies.

The 9th General Assembly of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation convened in Yerevan, the capital of the Republic of Armenia, between September and October 1919, and adopted a resolution to punish those responsible for the genocide. A list of 200 names was prepared. The secret operation received the code name “Nemesis” (the name of the Greek god of vengeance). It was led by Shahan Natalie (Hagop Der-Hagopian, 1884-1983) and Armen Garo (Bastermadjian, 1873-1923), the latter being the Armenian ambassador to the United States.
SoghomonTehlerian

The number one target of the operation was Talaat, who the U.S. Ambassador Henry Morgenthau had called the “Big Boss” of Turkey and already considered responsible of the extermination in his memoirs.

Soghomon Tehlirian (1897-1960), a 23-year-old student who had survived the Armenian Genocide in Erzinga, was selected to execute the mission. Some of the personnel in the Armenian diplomatic mission in Berlin gave logistic support, and other A.R.F. members worked from outside. Once Talaat’s whereabouts were established, Tehlirian arrived in the German capital in December 1920. For the next three months, he carried a surveillance task with his associates. He rented an apartment near the Turkish leader’s house in order to study his everyday movements. Talaat was killed by Tehlirian with a single shot on March 15, 1921, as he came out of his house in the Charlottenburg district. The assassination took place in broad daylight and led to Tehlirian’s immediate arrest by German police.

The young avenger was tried for murder on June 2-3, 1921. The three German defense attorneys focused on the influence of the genocide on Tehlirian’s mental state. When asked by the judge if he felt any sort of guilt, Tehlirian remarked, “I do not consider myself guilty because my conscience is clear … I have killed a man. But I am not a murderer.” It took the jury slightly over an hour to render a verdict of “not guilty.”

Operation Nemesis, which continued until 1922, went totally unnoticed at the time. The partial story of Talaat’s liquidation was told by Tehlirian in his memoirs, published in 1953. The main details of the operation were not uncovered until the 1980s.

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