Birth of Shushanik Kurghinian - August 18, 1876

Quite a neglected name in the literary canon, Shushanik Kurghinian was one of the earliest figures of Armenian feminist literature. Shushanik Popoljian was born in Alexandropol (today Gyumri) into a poor family. She wrote in her autobiography, “Sometimes father would bring his shoe-repair ‘workstation’ home, in order to save money, and I would work for him demanding my wages, every single kopeck. Mother, being raised in a traditional household, would reprove of my ‘ill behavior toward my parent,’ blaming those harmful books for corrupting me.”

She first studied at an all-girls school. In 1893, at the age of 17, she organized the first female faction of the Social Democratic Hnchakian Party (founded in 1887). She was twenty-one when she married Arshak Kurghinian, a businessman and a member of the socialist underground in the Caucasus. She published her first poem in 1899 in the monthly Taraz. Her activities against the Russian czar blacklisted her. In 1903 she escaped to Rostov-on-Don, in the northern Caucasus, with her two children, while her husband stayed in Alexandropol. Living in utmost hardship and poverty, Shushanik Kurghinian immersed herself in the Russian revolutionary milieu and some of her most powerfully charged poetry was written from1907–1909, during the years of her affiliation with Rostov's proletarian underground. 

She managed to clandestinely publish her first collection of 43 poems, Ringing of the Dawn, assisted by Alexander Miasnikian, the future leader of the communist party in Soviet Armenia. Her second forthcoming volume, however, was rejected by the censors and never released. Her poetry brought out the most silenced voices and raised such issues as the unjust social conditions that forced poor women to lives of prostitution and exploitation. Kurghinian used poetry to promote feminist ideals, envisioning a social revolution through women’s struggle for equal rights and emancipation. 

She continued to write and participate in social projects, but her fragile health became an issue. She moved back to Alexandropol in 1921, a year after the sovietization of Armenia. She traveled to Kharkov and Moscow in 1925 for medical treatment, but returned home disappointed. After the earthquake of Leninakan (the name of Alexandropol from 1924-1990) in 1926, she settled in Yerevan. She died the next year at the age of fifty-one. 

During the Soviet era, Kurghinian’s poetry was used only for socialist propaganda, thus undermining the artistic merit of this writer and activist. Her feminist works were marginalized. As Victoria Rowe writes in A History of Armenian Women’s Writing, 1880-1922, “Soviet literary criticism ignored the gender specific aspects of Kurghinian’s works because they posited that socialist society would eliminate women’s problems, and any specific addressing of women’s issues was condemned as ‘bourgeois’.” Her works have started to be seen under a new light over the past few years.

Birth of Siamanto - August 15, 1878

In the constellation of intellectuals that were victims of the Armenian genocide, Siamanto occupied a place at the top. He was one of the shining stars of Armenian modern poetry together with Taniel Varoujan. 

Siamanto’s birthplace, Akn, was a city on the shores of the Euphrates River, in the vilayet of Kharpert. It was remarkable for its troubadours, inspired by the natural beauty of its surroundings. It was also noted for the frequent migration of its Armenian inhabitants. Many contemporaries of Siamanto were born there or had their family roots in the city, such as writers Arpiar Arpiarian, Arshag Tchobanian, Minas Tcheraz, Misak Medzarentz and Krikor Zohrab. 

Born Adom Yarjanian, the future poet lived in Akn until 1891. He attended the Nersessian School. Its principal, Bishop Karekin Servantzdiantz, a folklorist and writer, encouraged him to develop his poetic talent. He gave him the pen name Siamanto, from the hero of one of his tales. 

Siamanto came from a middle-upper-class family. They moved to Constantinople, where he graduated from the Berberian School in 1896. The massacres ordered by Sultan Abdul Hamid II were in full fledge. When the bloody wave reached Constantinople, Siamanto, like many other Armenians, fled the city and the country. He ended up in Egypt.

He moved to Paris in 1897 and enrolled in the Sorbonne to pursue studies in literature for the next three years. He did menial jobs to sustain himself. He developed close ties with well-known Armenian personalities in and outside Paris. In 1898, his first published poem, “Vision of Death,” made an impact among literary circles. In Geneva (Switzerland), he developed close ties with the newspaper of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation, Droshak. He became a member of the party and his poetry nurtured from news of the massacres and revolutionary actions. 

He published his first slim volume of poetry, Heroically, in 1902. Struggle for liberation was one of the main themes of his writing, which he developed in a collection of poems, Sons of Armenia, published in three cycles (1905, 1906, and 1908). Here he made a transition from mystical symbolism to a realistic depiction of the Armenian plight. His collection Torches of Agony and Hope (1907) showed him in a more lyrical and evocative vein. 

In 1904, Siamanto fell ill with pneumonia, but he was able to fully recover, although his health was always delicate. He lived in Paris, Zurich, and Geneva for the next four years, until he returned to Constantinople after the Ottoman Revolution of 1908, which promised freedom and equality to all. The Adana massacres of 1909, however, showed that the cycle of violence had not ended. The bloodshed deeply affected Siamanto, who published his new book, Bloody News from My Friend (1909), as a reaction to the massacre. 

In 1909-1910, he lived in Boston, where he was an editor at the Hairenik newspaper. He published a book of twelve poems, called Invitation to the Homeland, to launch a campaign for the return of the thousands of Armenians who migrated to America during the years of tyranny. He also published the first volume of his Complete Works in 1910. He returned to Constantinople and in 1912 he wrote the poem Saint Mesrob, dedicated to the 1500th anniversary of the creation of the Armenian alphabet (at the time, the date of the creation of the alphabet was thought to be 412), which was celebrated with great enthusiasm by Armenians all over the world. A few months later, he traveled to Eastern Armenia and the Caucasus accompanying the coffin of Simon Zavarian, one of the founders of the A.R.F. (1866-1913). 

In the ill-fated night of April 23-24, he was rounded up by the Turkish authorities, sent to exile in Ayash with many other intellectuals, and from there, months later, to death and to immortality.  

Death of Joseph Emin - August 2, 1809

The small Armenian community of India became one of the protagonists of the second half of the eighteenth century. The “group of Madras” introduced the ideas of the Enlightenment in the Armenian realm, while an Armenian from Calcutta, Joseph (Hovsep) Emin, engaged in political projects in Armenia proper.

Emin was born in Hamadan (Persia) in 1726. He moved to Calcutta in 1744 to join his merchant father. Seven years later, against the wishes of his family, he left for London. After four years of hardship and misery, deprived from any financial assistance from his family, he met the famous British philosopher Edmund Burke (1729-1797), who took him under his wings. He later entered the Royal Military Academy in Woolwich, and after a year of studies, he enlisted as a volunteer in the British and Prussian armies during the seven-year war (1756-1763) against France. 
 

In 1759, Joseph Emin traveled to Holy Etchmiadzin to motivate the Catholicos towards the idea of liberating Armenia. But his expectations were not met and he returned to London. Two years later, he went to Russia and obtained a letter of recommendation from Russian Imperial Chancellor, Count Vorontsov, which he presented to King Erekle II of Georgia in 1763. Emin’s goal was to engage the Georgian king in a joint Armenian-Georgian project to liberate Armenia from Persian and Ottoman rule. The king was initially interested, but in the end dismissed Emin’s project and ordered him to leave the country. Emin went to the Northern Caucasus and was able to reach Karabagh and Zanguezur, but hopes of liberation were pinned to any possible help by the Georgian king. After being ordered to leave Georgia for a second time, he returned to India, but his hopes of getting financial assistance from Armenian merchants there were dashed by clerical opposition.

Emin, disillusioned, remained in India for the rest of his life. In 1792, he published his memoirs, Life and Adventures of Joseph Emin, an Armenian, in London. He passed away in 1809 and was buried in the courtyard of Kolkatta’s (Calcutta) Holy Nazareth Armenian Church. His memoirs were reprinted in 1918 by his great, great grand-daughter, Amy Apcar, and translated into Armenian in 1958 by an Armenian American intellectual that old New Yorkers may remember, Hagop Kashmanian (1886-1968).

Founding of the Writers Union of Armenia - August 1-5, 1934

After the establishment of the Soviet regime, various literary societies existed in Armenia for short periods of time. The Writers Union of Armenia, as a component of the all-Soviet Writers Union, was founded along with the latter during the first Congress of Soviet Armenian Writers, held in Yerevan on August 1-5, 1934.

The first president of the Writers Union was literary critic Drastamat Ter-Simonyan, and its secretaries, poet Vahram Alazan and critics Harutiun Mkrtchyan. The advisors were: Alexander Shirvanzade, Yeghishe Charents, Axel Bakunts, Azat Vshtuni, Derenik Demirjian, Mkrtich Janan, Stepan Zorian, Gurguen Mahari, Norayr Dabaghian, Nayiri Zarian and Hajie Jendi. Four of the thirteen members of the board died during the Stalinist purges of 1937-1938 (Ter-Simonyan, Charents, Bakunts, and Janan) and four others were deported to Siberia and returned more than fifteen years later (Mahari, Alazan, Mkrtchyan, and Tapaghian).

The second Congress of Soviet Armenian Writers was held in 1946 and elected poet Avetik Isahakian as president (1946-1957). The position of president was eliminated afterwards. Critic Eduard Topchyan was elected first secretary of the Union in 1959 and held his position until 1976. He was succeeded by novelist Vardgues Petrosyan (1976-1988), who in 1986 was elected president. However, at the onset of Mikhail Gorbachov’s “perestroika” (restructuring) in Armenia, he was replaced by poet Hrachya Hovhannisian during an extraordinary congress of the board of the Union in January 1988.

Another poet, Vahagn Davtian, became president of the Writers Union from 1990-1994. He was followed by poet Razmik Davoyan (1994-1996) and novelist Hrand Matevosyan (1996-2001). The current president is translator and journalist Levon Ananyan, who was elected in 2001.

The Writers Union, which is directed by a Board of Trustees (51 members) and an Executive Board (19 members), has its headquarters at the Writers’House (3 Marshal Baghramyan Avenue, Yerevan). Currently the Writers Union has 368 members from Armenia, 43 members from Artsakh (Karabagh), and 83 members from seventeen countries of the Diaspora (including 22 members from the United States), making a total of 494 members.

The Writers Union of Armenia building in central Yerevan.

 

Death of Calouste Gulbenkian - July 20, 1955

Calouste Gulbenkian, “Mr. Five Percent,” was a businessman and a philanthropist who amassed the largest collection of art ever owned by one person. In 1940, he was called “mystery man of the Near East oil fields” by The New York Times.

He was born in Scutari (Üsküdar), in Constantinople (now Istanbul), in 1869. His father was an oil importer/exporter who sent him to be educated at King’s College in London, where he studied petroleum engineering. In 1889 he traveled to the Russian Empire to examine the oil industry at Baku; he wrote a book in French on his impressions (Paris, 1891). He escaped the Hamidian massacres of 1896 with his family to Egypt. In 1902 Gulbenkian became a naturalized British citizen and five years later he was involved in the merger that resulted in the creation of Royal Dutch/Shell, from which he emerged as a major shareholder. He earned the nickname “Mr. Five Percent” due to his habit of retaining five percent of the shares of the oil companies he developed.

In 1912 he was the driving force behind the creation of the Turkish Petroleum Company (TPC), a consortium of the largest European oil companies aimed at cooperatively procuring oil exploration and development rights in Iraq, then under Ottoman rule. After Iraq came under British mandate in the aftermath of World War I, the TPC was granted exclusive oil exploration rights in 1925 and an agreement was signed three years later determining the companies which could invest in TPC. It reserved 5% of the shares for Gulbenkian. TPC became Iraq Petroleum Company in 1929.

Calouste Gulbenkian was president of the Armenian General Benevolent Union (AGBU) from 1930-1932, but he resigned as the result of a smear campaign by the Soviet Armenian government.

He had amassed a huge fortune and an art collection which he kept in a private museum at his four-story, three-basement house in Paris. In 1938, Gulbenkian incorporated in Panama a company to hold his assets in the oil industry. From “Participations and Explorations Corporation” came the name Partex (now called the "Partex Oil and Gas (Holdings) Corporation,” a subsidiary of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation headquartered in Lisbon, Portugal.

He left France in late 1942 for Lisbon and lived there until his death in 1955. At the time of his death, Gulbenkian's fortune was estimated at between $280 million and $840 million (today this would be $10 billion to $30 billion). After undisclosed sums willed in trust to his descendants, the remainder of his fortune and art collection was willed to the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, with US$300,000–$400,000 to be reserved to restore the Cathedral of Holy Etchmiadzin. It established its headquarters and museum in Lisbon to display his art collection. Since its establishment, the Foundation has granted huge sums for Armenian and non-Armenian charitable, educational, artistic, and scientific purposes.

Death of Vahan Totovents - July 18, 1938

Vahan Totovents was one of the prominent members of the Armenian intelligentsia killed during the second “April 24” of the twentieth century: the Stalinist purges of 1937-1938. A prolific writer and translator, he had settled in Soviet Armenia in 1922.

Totovents was born in 1889 in the Western Armenian city of Mezre, close to Kharpert. His parents were originally from Akn; the Totovayents were a well-to-do family of Akn that moved to Mezre in the eighteenth century.

At the end of the nineteenth century, the province of Kharpert was going through a process of economic and cultural development. The Euphrates College, founded by American missionaries, was centered in Kharpert and the National Central College (Azkayin Getronagan Varjaran) had been created in Mezre, where a group of intellectuals such as Rupen Zartarian and Lerukhan (two writer who would be victims of the Armenian genocide), among others, gave particular momentum to education. Young Vahan entered the National Central College in 1897.

As many other writers, he first wrote poetry and in 1908, after he graduated from the school, he departed to Constantinople, where he published two booklets of poetry in 1908 and 1909. In 1909, he traveled to Paris and from there to New York. Members of his extended family had already settled in Saint Paul (Minnesota) and Totovents worked for a while at the Oriental rug shop of his maternal uncle, writer Bedros Keljik. He also studied literature at the University of Wisconsin-Madison from 1912 to 1914. In those years, he became a member of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation.

In 1915, he was among the hundreds of Armenian Americans who embarked to the Caucasian front to fight in the volunteer battalions against the Turkish army. Disillusioned with the A.R.F., in 1917-1918 he edited the independent newspaper “Hayastan,” published by General Antranig, in Tiflis. During the war years and after the war, he continued to publish poetry, stories, articles, and satire. He also published several books.

In 1920 he left the Caucasus and went to Constantinople. He got married and after living again in the United States for a while, in late 1921 he returned to Constantinople, where he was an editor of the periodical “Joghoverdi Dzayne,” which belonged to the newly founded Armenian Democratic Liberal Party. In late 1922 he settled in Yerevan.

He was a professor at the University of Yerevan from 1924-1926, a newspaper editor and a translator. During the 1920s and 1930s, he published many novels, stories, and plays; among them his best works, such as the memoir “Life on the Old Roman Road,” the collections of stories, “Doves,” “Pale Blue Flowers,” the short novel “Burned Papers,” etcetera. He also translated several plays by Shakespeare into Armenian. In 1934 he participated in the First Congress of Soviet Writers held in Moscow. Decades later, several of his books were translated into English and some of his stories were turned into films.

Following the assassination of Aghasi Khanjian, first secretary of the Communist Party of Armenia, by Laurenti Beria, Stalin’s henchman in the Caucasus, a wave of repression started against many prominent intellectuals. Totovents was among the first to be arrested on July 18, 1936. He was interrogated and tortured several times, and after a summary mock trial, he was shot on July 18, 1938. His only son, Levon, died in the Soviet army fighting against the Germans in 1942, during World War II. Totovents memory and standing were rehabilitated in 1955, after the death of Stalin.

The Constitution of the Republic of Armenia - July 5, 1995

Three years before the American Revolution, in 1773, a book called Որոգայթ փառաց (“Vorokayt paratz,” The Snare of Glory) was published in Madras (India). It reflected the thoughts and projects of a group of intellectuals known as the “Madras Group.” Its author was Hagop Shahamirian, who, for the first time in Armenian history, called for a "constitutional republic" as the best way of maintaining democracy and equality in the free Armenia of his dream. He also attached a project of Constitution for a republican and free Armenia.

The first Republic of Armenia, despite its democratic institutions, did not have enough time to draft and pass a Constitution. The Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic had two Constitutions, in 1936 and 1978, which logically replicated the Constitution of the Soviet Union. 

Independence came in 1991 and with it, the need to have a basic document that outlined the organization of the new state and the rights and duties of its citizens. Initially, the Constitution of 1978 remained in effect, except in those cases when legislation had superseded it. A draft constitution was presented in late 1992 by the government. A long struggle between the government and the opposition alternative drafts ensued. The final project of Constitution was voted in a nationwide referendum and approved on July 5, 1995, which became Constitution Day in Armenia. A new referendum amended the Constitution on November 27, 2005.

The Constitution is composed of nine chapter and 117 articles. Its preamble says:

“The Armenian people — recognizing as a basis the fundamental principles of the Armenian statehood and the pan-national aspirations enshrined in the Declaration on the Independence of Armenia, having fulfilled the sacred behest of its freedom-loving ancestors for the restoration of the sovereign state, committed to the strengthening and prosperity of the fatherland, with a view to ensuring the freedom of generations, general well-being and civic solidarity, assuring the faithfulness to universal values — hereby adopt the Constitution of the Republic of Armenia.”  

Click here to view the Constitution of the Republic of Armenia.

A view of the interior of the Armenian Parliament building during session.