Death of Valerian Madatov (September 4, 1782)

The Russian army had a string of Armenian generals, both during the imperial period and its successor, the Soviet Union. One of the most remarkable was Prince Valerian Madatov, who was also involved in the campaigns leading to the incorporation of Eastern Armenia into the Russian Empire.

Madatov was born Rostom Madatian in 1782 in the village of Chanakhchi (nowadays Avetaranots), which was part of the historical district of Varanda in the khanate of Karabagh, then under Persian rule. He belonged to a family of minor nobles or meliks. He left his birthplace at the age of fourteen with his uncle, in 1797, along with a delegation of Armenian meliks seeking Russian support in their efforts to liberate the region from Muslim rule.

 

Non-Russian names and last names were usually turned into Russian ones as part of a trend to blend into the majority. Madatian’s first and last name became Valerian Madatov. He joined the Russian army at the rank of junior officer , and spent the next ten years training and serving in lower officer ranks. Madatov entered military action for the first time in 1808 during the Napoleonic wars. He joined a regiment of hussars in 1810 as a captain and then rose to the rank of major. He distinguished himself in Moldavia and Valachia during the Russo-Turkish War of 1806-1812, which earned him the Order of St. George of fourth degree in 1811. He was granted the rank of colonel for his feats during Napoleon’s invasion of Russia. In 1813 he was seriously injured in Leipzig, but, even not fully recovered from his wound, he commanded his men in a march over Paris. He was granted the rank of major-general at the age of thirty-one. He remained in France as one of the commanders of the forces of occupation after the defeat of Napoleon in 1814.

He was called back in 1815 to serve in the Caucasus, given his familiarity with the region and his knowledge of most of the major languages spoken there. He brokered peace with local regional rulers and helped consolidate Russian power in the area. In 1816 he was appointed commander-in-chief of the Russian forces in the khanate of Karabagh.

Persia tried to retake the territories lost in the first quarter of the century to Russia and attacked Karabagh in 1826, thus starting a new Russo-Persian war that would last until 1828 and end with a conclusive victory of Russia. Madatov hurried to Tiflis, where he took command of Russian forces. Leading a force of 2,000 men, they routed the 10,000-strong Persian army on the banks of the Shamkhor River and retook Elizavetpol/Gandzak (nowadays Ganja) on September 5. After defeating a Persian attempt to occupy the city again together with General Ivan Paskevich, Madatov was made lieutenant general in late September.

However, due to Paskevich’s intrigues to have his predecessors removed from the area, Madatov was ordered to move to Tiflis and later to Petersburg.

He went back to the battlefront during the Russo-Turkish war of 1828-1829, where he fought the enemy in the European front and won several significant victories. On September 4, 1829, two days after the war ended with the signature of a peace treaty, Prince Valerian Madatov died near the village of Shumla, from a pulmonary disease, sharply aggravated by the burdens of marching during the war. He was buried in the yard of the Alexander Nevsky monastery in St. Petersburg.

Death of Henri Troyat (March 2, 2007)

Prolific and popular French novelist and biographer Henri Troyat, a member of the French Academy for almost half a century, was also of Armenian origin, even though he had little connection to Armenian life.

He was born Lev Aslanovich Tarasov on November 1, 1911, in Moscow. His last name was the Russianized form of Torosian, and his maternal grandfather was of Armenian-Georgian mixed descent. His father was a wealthy Armenian draper who had made a fortune through investment in railways and banking. His privileged environment included a Swiss governess who taught him French. When the Soviet Revolution broke in 1917, the family retreated to their estate in the Caucasus, but the failure of the counter-revolutionary movement forced them to catch the last émigré boat from Crimea to Constantinople in 1920. From Constantinople, they traveled with passports of the Republic of Armenia to France and joined the exiled Russian community in Paris. They settled in the prosperous suburb of Neuilly, where young Lev attended the Lycée Pasteur. The family found exile life difficult and was forced to move to the city, where Lev Tarasov studied law at the Sorbonne. He would once say: “Success means nothing. I know what I'm talking about: at the very beginning of my life, I saw my parents lose everything in a reversal of fortune, and I kept that lesson in mind.”

He would never return to Russia, even after the fall of the Soviet Union, claiming that he wanted to keep alive the imaginary country he had created out of childhood memories and dreams. He acquired French citizenship in 1933, and departed to Metz to complete his mandatory military service. He was still under arms when he published his first novel, False Light, in 1935, which obtained the Prix du Roman Populiste, under the pseudonym Henri Troyat.

After returning from military service, the writer was appointed as a civil servant in the prefecture of the Seine. He continued his literary career, publishing a series of short psychological novels. In 1938 his fifth novel, The Web, earned him both the Prix Max Barthou of the French Academy and the very prestigious Prix Goncourt. He was mobilized with the outbreak of World War II and returned to Paris in 1940.



At this point Troyat’s career took a major shift. He continued with his short psychological fiction--his novel Snow in Mourning (1952) was filmed with Spencer Tracy in 1956 as The Mountain —but his subsequent work was dominated by two major innovations: the long novel cycle and biography. In 1942 he left his civil service job to devote himself entirely to literature. He married twice; he had a son from his marriage, which ended in divorce, and later married a widow, the love of his life, with a young daughter whom he raised as his own.

He initiated a whole series of biographies of Russian writers (Fyodor Dostoevsky, Alexander Pushkin, Leon Tolstoy, Nikolai Gogol, and Anton Chekhov) and tsars (Catherine the Great, Peter the Great, Alexander I, and Ivan the Terrible). These works brought an introduction to Russian literary and political culture to the French public. The historical research became the grounds for a series of historical novels, mostly based in Russia. Troyat devoted the trilogy While the Earth Endures (1947-1950) to prerevolutionary Russia, the revolution, the civil war, and the exile, and then explored France from the same perspective in the tetralogy The Seed and the Fruit (1953-1958), which became a popular French television series in 2001. These cycles of novels were followed by other multivolume novels from the late 1950s to the mid-1970s. He would have more than a hundred literary works in his count, including novels, short stories, biographies, and plays.

Troyat became one the first French best-sellers, combining critical recognition with commercial success. In 1952 he won the Grand Prix Littéraire du Prince Pierre de Monaco. Seven years later, on May 21, 1959, at the age of forty-seven, he was inducted into the French Academy. Intriguingly, he sat on seat number 28, which had previously belonged to Claude Farrere, a novelist well-known for his pro-Turkish stances. He became the most long-standing member of the group of forty “immortals” who safeguard the French language. He would later earn a series of state decorations, including the Grand Cross of the Legion of Honor, the highest ranking in France.

Henri Troyat published his last novel, The Hunt, in 2006, at the age of ninety-five. He passed away on March 2, 2007.

Death of Khachatour Lazarian (October 10, 1871)

The Lazarian family had an important role in the history of the Armenian liberation movement from the eighteenth century. Hovhannes Lazarian (1735-1801) worked to that end through his connections to the Russian court. He bequeathed a big sum of money to the foundation of a high school in Moscow for Armenian children, designating his brother Hovakim as executor of the will. The Lazarian College, founded in 1815, would become an education beacon for the Armenians in the Russian Empire.

Hovakim Lazarian’s younger son, Khachatour, continued the family work. He was born on June 1, 1789. The details about his early life are sketchy. In 1819 he married the daughter of Manuk bey Mirzayan (1769-1817), a well-known trading partner of his father in Moldavia (Moldova), who had been very active during the Turkish-Russian war of 1806-1812.

The obstacles put by Russian high-level bureaucracy, particularly the Ministry of Education, to the activities of the Lazarian College led the Lazarian family to take an unprecedented step. In 1824 Hovakim Lazarian addressed the Council of Ministers to ask that the College be taken out of the ministry’s orbit and put under the direct supervision of the council. Brothers Hovhannes and Khachatour Lazarian, together with two members of the Committee of Educational Institutions, prepared the bylaws of the College, which were approved. The Lazarian College was renamed Lazarian Institute of Oriental Languages in 1828.  

Meanwhile, Khachatour Lazarian had been actively involved in the last phase of the Russo-Persian war of 1826-1828. Along with Prince Konstantin Arghoutian and scholar Alexander Khoudabashian, Lazarian prepared a project of autonomy for the Eastern Armenian territories that would be annexed to Russia after the war. The project, entitled, “A Series of Proposals for Georgia and Adjacent Territories,” called for an ample autonomy of Armenia within the Russian Empire and the restoration of the Armenian kingdom with Czar Nicholas I adding “King of the Armenians” to his titles. The project also anticipated the immigration of Armenian population from Persia to Eastern Armenia. Lazarian also lobbied the Russian authorities to incorporate the province of Maku, beyond the border of the Arax River. The idea of Archbishop Nerses Ashtaraketsi (future Catholicos of All Armenians) was to turn its mountains and valleys into a natural protection for the country. However, Lazarian failed in his purpose due to the obstinate refusal of General Ivan Paskevitch, who had fought and won the war. The autonomy project was also rejected, but it contributed to the initial creation of the Armenian Province (1829-1840). He was also a member of the committee that prepared the reforms in the administration of Eastern Armenia. The project, known as Polozhenye, was approved by Nicholas I on March 11, 1836.

To confront the matter of insufficient income for the Lazarian Institute –the family covered the deficits from their own pocket—Lazarian presented a project in 1837 that proposed to unify the five Armenian churches of Moscow and St. Petersburg with the Institute and establish a synergia between them, with the units mutually covering their deficits. He also suggested the creation of a religious section in the Institute for the education of the clergy. The project was approved by Catholicos Hovhannes Karbetsi and the Synod of Etchmiadzin in 1840, and then approved by the czar in 1841. Another project approved in 1848 by Nicholas I turned the Institute into an eight-year educational institution, instead of the previous six-year period.

Khachatour Lazarian’s only son, Hovhannes, passed away at an early age in 1850. His parents and uncle donated 60,000 silver rubles in his memory to establish a preparatory section for the children of Armenian poor families that lacked knowledge of the Russian language to enter the Institute. As an exception, the czar agreed to this donation.

In 1860 Lazarian, a man of progressive ideas in education and always ready to have the best possible level, made a huge donation of 200,000 rubles from his own fortune to improve the educational level of the Institute—now divided into two sections, gymnasium and Oriental languages—and allow the graduates to pursue higher education without additional exams. Czar Alexander II (1855-1881) decorated him with the order of the White Lion. The intervention of the Minister of Education, Count Dmitri Tolstoy, another man of progressive ideas, established a new reform, which reunited both sections while keeping their high educational level. The new curriculum remained unchanged from 1872 to 1918, when the newly established Soviet government closed the Lazarian Institute.

Besides his support for education, Khachatour Lazarian continuously sought to support Armenian Studies among Russian scholars and convince wealthy Armenians of throwing their support “in favor of the Church and the Armenian people, which demand and are thirsty for education and science.”

Lazarian passed away in Moscow on October 10, 1871. A marble bust was installed in the hall of the Lazarian Institute in the same year thanks to the fundraising of Russian Armenians. 

The Occupation of Yerevan (October 1, 1827)

The Russian vision of reaching the “hot waters” of the Mediterranean Sea, formulated during the reign of Peter the Great (1689-1725), achieved its initial objective in the period from 1804-1828, when the region known as Transcaucasia (now called South Caucasus) was conquered from Persia and incorporated with the Russian Empire. This included, indeed, Eastern Armenia.

The treaty of Gulistan (1813) incorporated the region of Gharabagh to Russia. The rest of Eastern Armenia was conquered during the Russo-Persian war of 1826-1828. With British financial support, Persian crown prince Abbas Mirza launched the hostilities without previous declaration of war in July 1826. After Persian initial success, Czar Nicholas I (1825-1855) sent General Ivan Paskevich (1782-1856), who had distinguished himself in 1807-1814 during campaigns against Turkey and France, as second in command. He took the chief command in early 1827 and the Russian troops started advancing in territory of the Khanate of Yerevan.  

In April 1827 the monastery of Holy Etchmiadzin was occupied without resistance, and Yerevan was first besieged from April to June. Paskevich joined Russian general A. I. Krasovky in June and occupied Nakhichevan. However, Krasovky was forced to raise the siege due to the condition of his troops. He left one regiment at Etchmiadzin and retired further north. 

Abbas Mirza attempted a counterattack, planning to take Etchmiadzin and Gyumri, plunder Tiflis and return to Tabriz via Gharabagh. Krasovsky was forced to return south in August to relieve the garrison of Etchmiadzin. Despite the inferiority of troops (2300 Russians against 30000 Persians), the Russians were able to cut their way through at the battle of Oshagan, losing half of their number. They relieved Etchmiadzin, while the Persians withdrew south with a loss of just 400 men. 

Paskevich returned to Etchmiadzin in early September. He moved east and, after capturing Sardarabad, he appeared before the walls of Yerevan on September 23. The fortress was located on a rocky shore of the Hrazdan River, and had double walls and a moat. After shelling the fortress, the Russian command suggested Persians to capitulate. The garrison and residents asked Hasan Khan to surrender, but the khan turned down the suggestion of capitulation, hoping to resist until the arrival of the Persian army.

 

Capture of Erivan Fortress by Russia, 1827 (by Franz Roubaud)

After a week of siege, disorder broke out in Yerevan on the morning of October 1. The Armenian population of the city forcefully demanded that Hasan surrender the city. Armenian and Persian citizens took up arms and occupied the already destroyed part of the eastern wall. The Persian garrison refused to fight and Russian troops entered Yerevan. Hasan Khan and his army laid down their arms in front of the Russian before the main mosque. Four thousand prisoners were taken. 

After this victory, advancing Russian troops crossed the Arax River and entered Persian Azerbaijan, seizing its capital Tabriz. Paskevich arrived later with the main Russian forces. Persia sued for peace, but the negotiations dragged on due to the beginning of the Russo-Turkish war of 1828-1829. However, the Russian occupation of Ardabil and Urmia forced Fath-Ali Shah to accept all peace conditions, according to the Treaty of Turkmenchay (February 10, 1828). For the victory in the Russo-Persian war, Paskevich was awarded the St. George Order of the 2nd class and the title of Count of Yerevan. He also received a million rubles and a diamond-mounted sword. 

The khanates of Yerevan and Nakhichevan went to the Russian Empire, and Yerevan became the capital of the newly-created Armenian Province until 1840. After short-lived administrative changes, the Yerevan Governorate would be created in 1849, again with Yerevan as capital of a territory that included both Persian khanates.