He
was born on September 22, 1865, in Tiflis, in a doctor’s family. After
graduating from the Russian gymnasium (high school) in 1884 with highest
grades, he entered the school of History and Philology of Odessa
University (Crimea) the following year. After a year, he moved to the
University of Warsaw and graduated in 1889. From 1889-1891 he taught
Russian literature at the Gevorgian Lyceum of Holy Etchmiadzin, but he
was fired by an order from Catholicos Makar I for leading student
agitations against the administration.
Lisitsian moved back to Tiflis. He contributed to the journal
Taraz,
and
was its de facto editor in 1892-1893, when editor in chief Tigran
Nazarian was abroad. In 1894 he was hired as teacher at the Nersessian
School, where he taught Armenian history, general history, and Russian
geography at different times until 1915.
Meanwhile,
in 1904 his request to the authorities to publish a magazine for
children was refused due to his questionable background. In the end, a
year later
Hasker
appeared,
formally under the editorship of Lisitsian’s wife Ekaterina. The
magazine gathered the best Armenian writers, illustrators, and
scientists, including names like Hovhannes Tumanian, Avetik Isahakian,
or Atabek Khenkoyan, and actually the first true magazine for children
in the Armenian press. Stepan Lisitsian became the editor in 1913 and
continued the magazine until 1917 (it had a short revival in 1922).
Lisitsian worked in the pedagogical field for almost 60 years. Besides the publication of
Hasker,
he wrote textbooks, curricula, and specialized studies. The textbook
Lusaber
(“Daybreak”),
which he authored with Tumanian and Levon Shant, was particularly
popular. He also traveled to Russia, Switzerland, France, and Germany to
study new teaching methods. In 1911 he turned his wife’s elementary
school into a middle school and then a high school, of which he became
its principal in 1924, when the school was dissolved. He moved to
Yerevan in 1924 and became a university professor, and from 1938 he also
taught at the Pedagogical Institute.
Lisitsian,
who knew several Western languages, was also an accomplished and
prolific translator, literary scholar, and polemicist. Among his many
works, he translated Henrik Sienkiewicz famous novel
Quo Vadis
?
from the Polish original. He is also particularly remembered for his
extensive work in the field of ethnography, especially since the 1920s,
and geography. He gathered much material during fieldwork and wrote
pioneering studies on different ethnographic areas of Armenia. In 1928
he became the head of the section of Ethnography in the State Museum of
History. He wrote an important textbook on physical geography of Armenia
in 1940 and was the author of an “ethnographic questionnaire,”
published in 1946, that became a guide for scholars in the field for
many decades. In 1945 he was honored with the title of Emeritus Worker
of Science of Soviet Armenia and decorated with the Order of the Red
Banner of Labor.
Lisitsian
passed away on January 4, 1947. A school in Yerevan carries his name,
as well as the ethnographic section of the Museum of History of
Armenia.
