Death of Garnik Stepanian (July 1, 1989)

One of the best specialists of Western Armenian culture in Soviet Armenia, Garnik (Der) Stepanian was born on February 14, 1909, in the village of Mamakhatoun, district of Derjan, in the area of Erzinga. In May 1915 most Armenians of Derjan were killed during the genocide; many were forcibly converted to Islam, and the remainders were deported towards Der-Zor. Young Garnik managed to survive and, after the war, he reached Sepastia, where he received elementary education. In 1923 he was moved to Greece together with many Armenian orphans, where he found shelter in the orphanages of Edipsos, Khalkis, and Oropos. Two years later, he found his way to Egypt and worked for the next five years as a typesetter in the daily Arev and the printing house Voskedar.

Stepanian’s life would make a turn in 1930 when he immigrated to Soviet Armenia and found his lost parents there. He continued working as a typesetter, this time at the first printing shop of the State Publishing House. In 1938 he graduated from the Faculty of Philology of Yerevan State University. Meanwhile, he taught Armenian language and literature at the Alexander Tamanian technical school (1937-1939), and Classical Armenian at the Faculty of Philology from 1939-1940. He was a student of famous linguist Hrachia Adjarian, about whom he would write an intriguing memoir (1976).

He wore several hats in the editorial world: he worked at the daily Sovetakan Hayastan, the monthly Sovetakan Hayastan (published for the Armenians of the Diaspora), and the monthly Teghekagir, the social studies publication of the Academy of Sciences of Armenia. In 1943 he became a member of the Writers Union of Armenia and two years later, he published the first novel about the Armenian Genocide in Soviet Armenia, Nightmarish Days (1945), based on his own experience, which was reprinted three times.

Garnik Stepanian worked at the Institute of Literature of the Academy, directed the Museum of Literature and Art from 1954-1963, and was a researcher at the Institute of Art of the Academy from 1963 until his death. He became a prolific and well-regarded name as a historian of Armenian culture, specializing in the fields of Western Armenian literature and theater. He authored monographs about several famous actors in the history of Western Armenian theater, like Bedros Atamian, Arusiag Papazian, Megerdich Djanan, and Siranush, a volume of correspondence by Atamian, and a memoir about another famous actor, Vahram Papazian. His most important contribution to the field was the seminal three-volume monograph, Outline of the History of Western Armenian Theater (1962, 1969, 1975). He would also delve into the theater of the Diaspora, with a series entitled Essays on the History of Diasporan Armenian Theater, of which he managed to write two volumes on French-Armenian (1982) and Armenian-American theater (posthumously published, 2008).

Stepanian not only published monographs on two famous Western Armenian writers, Arpiar Arpiarian (1955) and Hagop Baronian (1956, 1964), but he also translated from Turkish into Armenian the first Turkish novel, Hovsep Vartanian’s Akaby (1953, originally published in 1851), and several works by Baronian.

Another important contribution by Stepanian to the field of Armenian Studies was his three-volume Biographical Dictionary (1973, 1981, 1990), which unfortunately remained unfinished .

In 1967 he earned the title of Emeritus Art Worker of Armenia and four years later he defended his second doctoral thesis in the field of art. In 1980 he was a co-winner of the State Prize of Armenia for the five-volume collective work, History of Modern Armenian Literature.

Stepanian passed away on July 1, 1989, in Yerevan. Among his posthumous works is an especially remarkable 600-page monograph on the history of his birthplace, Erzinga (2005).

Death of Alexander Saroukhan (January 1, 1977)

Alexander Saroukhan (Saroukhanian) was among the most famous caricaturists and cartoonists of the Diaspora outside the Armenian realm, as he became a much-sought name in the Arab world.

Saroukhan was born in Ardanush, a town in the province of Batum (now Georgia) on October 1, 1898. At the age of two, his family moved to Batum, where he went to the Russian school at the age of seven. In 1909 the Saroukhan family moved to Constantinople, where Alexander and his brother Levon attended the school of the Viennese branch of the Mekhitarist Congregation. From 1910-1912 the Saroukhan brothers published a handwritten, four-page weekly called Ghughigo, with Levon as the writer and editor and Alexander as the caricaturist. Their publication was interrupted when their father decided to return to Batum after his commercial plans ended in failure, and they remained in Constantinople to continue their studies. The brothers would burn the copies of the weekly, for obvious reasons of safety, during the Armenian Genocide.

Saroukhan graduated in 1915 and found refuge in the school, which was under Austrian protection, during the war, together with their teachers and a group of students. After the armistice of Mudros (1918), he worked in the British army as a translator from Russian, Turkish, and German, and also as a scribe in a store. He started publishing caricatures in Armenian newspapers and magazines, particularly the satirical magazine Gavrosh (1921-1922). In 1922 he left Turkey and went to Europe to study at the section of graphics of the Art Academy of Vienna, finishing his studies in two years, instead of the usual four.

In 1924 Saroukhan left for Egypt with more than 125 pieces of his art work. He published the satiric magazine Armenian Cinema (1925-1926), where he also featured his drawings. He presented some of his works at an exhibition in Cairo (1927) and met Egyptian journalist Mohamed El-Tabii. They cooperated closely, becoming the most important and influential journalists in Egypt for twenty years. Saroukhan worked as a caricaturist for the widely circulated Rose el-Yusuf magazine, named after its founder, which El-Tabii edited. His drawing of Rose (aka Fatima) el-Yusuf, a Syrian woman journalist, was the first to appear on the cover of the magazine in March 1928. From then on, Saroukhan became known as a “political” caricaturist. He would draw the cover of the magazine until 1934.

His fame was also established through his character El-Masri Efendi (Egyptian Efendi in Arabic). However, because of a dispute between Rose el-Yusuf and Mohamad el-Tabii, Saroukhan left the magazine and joined the staff of Akher Sa’a (Last Hour), another Egyptian well-known paper, which el-Tabii published until 1946. In 1945 he published Cette guerre (This War in French, 1945), considered to be his finest book as it defined his talents to discover humor in criticism.

When El-Tabii sold Akher Sa’a to Akhbar El-Yom (Today’s News), Saroukhan moved to the new newspaper, where he worked until 1952, and then he went to work at the newspaper Akhbar (Today) until his death. He published a French-language humor magazine, La Caravane, from 1939-1942. He also contributed to Egypt's foreign language press, with cartoons in La Presse Egyptienne, Image, and the Armenian daily Arev. He had exhibitions in Yerevan (1968) and Montreal (1973), among other places.

Saroukhan drew more than 40,000 political, social, and humoristic caricatures. He was also active in the Armenian community life of Cairo. He published various collections of caricatures in Armenian, like We Through Our Lenses (1962) and Look at What You’re Saying! (1962), as well as the play We Don’t Know Armenian (1963). Among other publications, he also contributed his drawings to the republication of two classics of Armenian satirical literature: Yervant Odian’s Comrade Panchoonie (1938) and Hagop Baronian’s The Honorable Beggars (1962). His drawings were also used in the English translations of these books by Jack Antreassian, and in the Spanish translation of Comrade Panchoonie by Vartan Matiossian.

Saroukhan passed away in Cairo on January 1, 1977. He has had posthumous exhibitions of his drawings in Alexandria (2009), Athens (2017), Cairo (2018), and Liverpool (2018), and his memoirs were published in 2018 in Cairo.