Death of Hamo Ohanjanian (July 31, 1947)

Hamo Ohanjanian was a remarkable name in the history of the Armenian revolutionary movement, as well as the short-lived first independent Republic of Armenia, of which he was its third Prime Minister for six months.

His actual first name was Hamazasp. He was born in Akhalkalak on February 1, 1873, the date more generally accepted. He studied at the local school, and then graduated from the Russian school of Tiflis.

He entered the University of Moscow, where he studied medicine. However, due to his involvement with revolutionaries and his participation in student agitations, he was forbidden from continuing his studies and staying in Moscow, and he was forced to return to Tiflis. Her girlfriend from the student years, Olga Vavilevna, a Russian revolutionary, joined him. They married in 1897 and would have three children: two boys, Monik and Arik, and a daughter, Galia. Around this time, he entered the ranks of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation.

In 1899 Ohanjanian traveled to Switzerland and specialized in medicine at the University of Lausanne until 1902. Simultaneously, he continued his revolutionary activities, which did not end after his return to Tiflis. He became one of the leaders of the popular movement against the June 12, 1903 law of the imperial government that established the confiscation of the properties of the Armenian Church and one of the driving forces behind the “Caucasian Project” that was part of the turnaround of the A.R.F. to expand its activities into the Caucasus.

He participated in the third (Sofia, 1904) and fourth general assemblies (Vienna, 1907) of the ARF, and became a member of the Eastern Bureau of the organization. He played an important role in the maintenance of the internal discipline and ironclad structure of the organization, and also remained active during the wave of democratization that followed the Russian Revolution of 1905 and the Armeno-Tatar conflict spurred by the Czarist regime of Russia.

Ohanjanian was arrested by the imperial government in 1908 along with 200 party members and sympathizers as part of a strong attempt to weaken the A.R.F. He was jailed in the infamous prison of Metekh, in Tiflis, where he was often subjected to torture to confess the “sins” of the party. His powerful defense during the “A.R.F. trial” of 1912 did not avoid him a sentence of four years of forced labor, but raised his profile and prestige among both Armenians and Russians.

He was first sent to Kharkov, in Ukraine, and then to Siberia, and Rubina Areshian, the close collaborator of the late Kristapor Mikayelian, one of the ARF founders, went after him to follow his steps and make continuous efforts for his liberation. They would marry during those years.

After the beginning of World War I, the Russian government made a crucial turnaround and approached the ARF in order to launch the Armenian volunteer movement. Among many others, Hamo Ohanjanian was liberated and returned from Siberia directly to Tiflis. As a doctor, he was at the Russian-Turkish battlefront helping the Armenian soldiers, and in Van became the right hand of Aram Manoukian, who was the governor during the brief period of liberation following the self-defense of April-May 1915 against the Ottoman troops.

Ohanjanian participated actively in the battle of Gharakilise (May 1918), where his son Monik gave his life for the defense of the homeland. After the independence, he devoted himself to consolidate the grounds of the newly created republic. He had an active role in international relations as a member of the delegation of the Republic in Europe. He was elected member of the A.R.F. Bureau in 1919, after the ninth general assembly of the party held in Yerevan, and became Minister of Foreign Affairs in January 1920.

In May 1920, after the failure of the Bolshevik rebellion, the cabinet of Prime Minister Alexander Khatisian resigned, and the political acute crisis forced the A.R.F. Bureau to become government. From May –November 1920, in the period of the “Bureau-government,” Hamo Ohanjanian was both Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs. His son Viken (1920-2009) was born in this period.

After the Sovietization of Armenia in December 1920, Ohanjanian was arrested by the Soviet regime and imprisoned in Yerevan. The popular rebellion of February 1921 saved him and hundreds of prisoners from certain death, and after its end in early April, Ohanjanian went to Tabriz (Persia) via Zangezur. In 1923 he moved from Persia to Cairo, where he would live the rest of his life.

He was one of the founding members of the Hamazkayin Armenian Cultural and Educational Society in 1928 and president of the Society until his death. He had an important contribution to the foundation of the Armenian Lyceum (the Jemaran) in Beirut and its consolidation during its first decades. He was also re-elected member of the A.R.F. Bureau.

Hamo Ohanjanian passed away in Cairo on July 31, 1947. He was buried in the Egyptian capital. His tombstone was engraved with the following legend: “He lived in the way that he preached.”

Birth of Varoujan Khedeshian (April 7, 1937)

Varoujan Khedeshian was one of the most innovative directors of Armenian theater in the Diaspora during the second half of the twentieth century.

He was born on April 7, 1937, in Aley (Lebanon). At the age of sixteen, he debuted in the Hamazkayin “Kaspar Ipekian” dramatic troupe, directed by Georges Sarkissian, another famous name of Diasporan theater.

In 1960 he went to London to study at the Webber Douglas Academy of Dramatic Art. He graduated in 1965 and returned to Lebanon, where he joined the Hamazkayin “Levon Shant” dramatic troupe. Two years later, he founded the “Theatre 67” dramatic troupe, which had a very important role in the Lebanese Armenian community until the beginning of the civil war in 1975. Khedeshian was noted for staging works from the Armenian and international repertoire that went outside the mold of tradition, introducing the audience to contemporary works by playwrights like Arthur Miller, Peter Weiss, Edward Albee, and Neil Simon. He would maintain this approach when he took over the direction of the “Kaspar Ipekian” from 1989-2000. He translated a total of 22 plays from English into Armenian.

Some of the works he directed included, along with “Ancient Gods” and “The Emperor” (Levon Shant), “By the Road of Heaven” and “Up to Where?” (Hagop Oshagan), “Alafranca,” “The Oriental Dentist,” and “Brother Balthazar” (Hagop Baronian), “The Piper of the Mountains of Armenia” (Hamasdegh), world-famous works like “The Merchant of Venice” (William Shakespeare), “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” (Edward Albee), “Marat/Sade” (Peter Weiss), “The Crucible,” “View from the Bridge,” “The Price,” and “All My Sons” (Arthur Miller), “The Prisoner of Second Avenue” and “Barefoot in the Park” (Neil Simon), “The Master Builder” (Henrik Ibsen), “Romulus the Great” (Friedrich Dürrenmatt), “The Venetian Twins” (Carlo Goldoni), “The Caretaker” (Harold Pinter).

From 1979-1987 Khedeshian staged five dramatic performances in Armenia, both in Yerevan and Leninakan (now Gyumri), and received the “Bedros Atamian” medal in 1987, becoming the first Diasporan Armenian who earned this award during the Soviet period.

His decades-long theatrical activity earned him multiple accolades and several distinctions late in life. In 2000 he was decorated with the “St. Mesrob Mashdots” order of the Holy See of Cilicia by Catholicos Aram I and the Hamazkayin order by the Central Executive Board of this organization. In 2008 the Ministry of Culture of Armenia awarded him its gold medal, and Catholicos of All Armenians Karekin II bestowed upon him the “St. Sahag-St. Mesrob” medal of the Armenian Church. Meanwhile, in 2004 he had received the order of the Institute of Arts of Lebanese University, where he had taught dramatic art from 1971-1999.

Varoujan Khedeshian passed away on December 28, 2015, in Beirut, at the age of seventy-eight.

Birth of Levon Shant (April 6, 1869)

Levon Shant was perhaps the most important playwright in the history of Armenian theater, but he was primarily a seasoned and accomplished educator. He was also an active participant in the Armenian liberation movement. 

Shant was born Levon Nahashbedian on April 6, 1869, in Constantinople. He lost his parents at an early age and adopted the last name Seghposian after his father Seghpos. He attended the Armenian school of Scutari (now Uskudar) until 1884, and then the Gevorgian seminary at Holy Etchmiadzin for the next seven years. He returned to Constantinople in 1891, where he worked as a teacher. He published his first literary piece in the local daily Hairenik in the same year. In 1893 he departed to Germany, where he studied science, child psychology, education, literature, and history in the universities of Leipzig, Jena, and Munich. Meanwhile, he started his literary career with the poem The Mountain Girl (1892), published under the pen name Levon Shant (shant/շանթ means “lightning”), but soon shifted to a series of novellas (Dreamlike Days and The Outsiders, 1894; Vergine, 1896; The Return, 1896, and The Actress, 1898). After finishing his university studies in 1899, he taught for more than a decade at the Gayanian Girls School in Tiflis and the Diocesan School of Yerevan. He became a member of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation in the 1890s.
The turn of the century brought in him a different literary persona: the playwright. He wrote his first play, The Egoist, in 1901, followed by For Someone Else (1903), and On the Road (1904). After this string of plays inspired in contemporary life, he turned to the historical past and wrote his masterpiece Ancient Gods (1909), published in 1912, which made a huge impact on the Armenian literary world when it was premiered in Tiflis (1913). This was the first of several successful historical dramas he would write over the next two decades: The Emperor (1916), The Enchained One (1918-1921), The Princess of the Fallen Fortress (1922), Oshin the Bailiff (1932).
In Tiflis, Shant participated actively in the gatherings of the literary circle “Vernadun” (Վերնատուն), held at the attic of poet Hovhannes Tumanian’s home, and was in close contact with other writers of the group, like Ghazaros Aghayan, Avetik Isahakian, and Derenik Demirjian. In 1909 he published, together with Hovhannes Tumanian and Stepan Lisitsian, the series of Armenian textbooks Lusaber.
In 1911 he returned to his birthplace, Constantinople, and taught at the Central (Getronagan) and Esayan schools until 1914. By that time he was already married and moved with his family to Lausanne in Switzerland. He returned to the Caucasus in 1915 to supervise the publication of textbooks, but was unable to go back to Europe and remained in Tiflis until 1917, when he returned to Switzerland. However, after the independence of Armenia, he returned to Yerevan, where he became a vice-president of the Parliament of the first Republic. In April 1920 he led a delegation to Moscow to carry out negotiations with the Soviet regime, which would fail in the end. He was imprisoned by the new government after the Soviet takeover, but freed following the uprising of February 1921. In April 1921, after the end of the uprising, he left Armenia.
For the next thirty years of his life, Shant would live abroad, first in Paris, then in Cairo, and finally in Beirut. He wrote political essays, like Nationhood as the Basis of Human Society (1922) and Our Independence (1925). In 1928, together with educator and literary critic Nikol Aghbalian, theater director Kaspar Ipekian, and former prime minister of the Republic, Dr. Hamo Ohanjanian, as well as a group of less known A.R.F. members, he was one of the main founders of the Hamazkayin Armenian Cultural and Educational Society in Cairo. In 1930, together with Nikol Aghbalian, he settled in Beirut, where they founded the Armenian Lyceum (Jemaran) of Hamazkayin in 1930, later known as the Nishan Palanjian Lyceum and currently as Haig and Melanchton Arslanian Lyceum. Shant was the school principal for the next twenty years, while at the same time he taught pedagogy and psychology. He created a unique pedagogical atmosphere in the Jemaran, focused on his belief that the school should educate a humanistic education also linked to the preservation and development of national identity.
Engaged as he was in education and school management, Shant continued with the task of preparing school textbooks. He did not leave literature. In 1945 he published the novel The Thirsty Souls, and from 1946-1951 he published an edition of works in eight volumes, which included a yet unpublished history of Armenian literature. He passed away on November 29, 1951.
His name was banned in Soviet Armenia, as were many other writers who were A.R.F. members or sympathizers. Nevertheless, a monograph about him was published there in 1930, and a collection of his plays appeared in 1968. After the second independence, a school in Yerevan was renamed after him in 1994.

Birth of Nikol Aghbalian - March 24, 1873

An accomplished intellectual, educator, and public figure, Nikol Aghbalian was a self-appointed missionary of Armenian values wherever he went and wherever he worked, from the Caucasus to Beirut.

He was born in Tiflis in a working-class family. He graduated from the Lyceum Nersisian in Tiflis and the Kevorkian Seminary in Etchmiadzin, and he dedicated himself to teaching. At the same time, he started writing literary criticism for the monthly Murj, and the quality of his writing attracted the attention of the readership and the intelligentsia. Despite his precarious financial situation, he managed to follow university courses in Moscow, Paris, and Lausanne, although he was never able to graduate.

Aghbalian became a member of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation at a young age and he used his intellectual qualities to service the political cause. Since 1905, he was among the leading members of the Vernadun, the circle of intellectuals that gathered in the attic of poet Hovhannes Tumanian’s house to discuss literary and cultural issues of the day.

He was the principal of the Armenian school of Tehran between 1909 and 1912. He returned to Tiflis in 1913, where he became the editor of the A.R.F. newspaper Horizon and vice president of the Armenian Writers Society.After the beginning of World War I, Aghbalian was one of the founders of the Armenian National Council and played a crucial role in the organization of the Armenian volunteer movement that gave several battalions of Armenian soldiers to the Russian army fighting on the Caucasian front. When the retreat of the Russian forces brought thousands of survivors of the Armenian genocide from Western Armenia, he devoted himself to the daily work of sheltering, nourishing, and treating those refugees.

After the establishment of the Republic of Armenia, Aghbalian was elected a member of the Parliament and in 1919-1920 he became Minister of Education and Art. He established the grounds of the University of Yerevan and sponsored various educational and cultural initiatives. It is a well-known fact that his sponsorship of the yet unknown poet, Yeghishe Charents, whom he gave a job at the ministry, permitted him to concentrate on his literary creations.

After the sovietization of Armenia, he was incarcerated by the Bolshevik regime on February 9, 1921, and he was able to save his life, as well as many others, thanks to the popular rebellion of February 18, which liberated the prisoners, who had been condemned to death. After the end of the rebellion, he left Armenia and went to Tabriz, in Iran. A short time later, he moved to Alexandria (Egypt), where he worked as a teacher until 1928. In that year, he was among the initiators and founders of the Hamazkayin Armenian Educational and Editorial Society (today Hamazkayin Armenian Educational and Cultural Society). Later he moved with his friend and associate, the writer and educator Levon Shant (1869-1951), to Lebanon, where they founded the Armenian College (Jemaran) of Hamazkayin in Beirut (later Nshan Palanjian College and today Melanchton and Haig Arslanian College).

Until his death on August 15, 1947, Aghbalian followed an active schedule as a teacher and scholar. He taught the history of Armenian literature, Classical Armenian, and Armenian classical literature. He also organized a cycle of widely attended popular lectures to attract the interest of the Armenian community towards its literature and culture. He remained one of the intellectual referents of the Diaspora in its first decades.

His extended activities as a public figure and an educator did not allow Aghbalian to complete many of his projects. However, he managed to publish several books on Armenian literature and politics, and a four-volume collection of his works was published in the late 1950s in Beirut.

His family remained in Yerevan after his exile in 1921. His name was forbidden in Armenia until the final years of the Soviet regime. His name and his work were fully rehabilitated after the second independence. Some of his works, as well as monographs about him, have been published, and a school has been named after him.