October 8, 451: Opening of the Council of Chalcedon

The fourth ecumenical council that convened in Chalcedon became a turning point in the history of the Armenian Church, even though the Armenian Church was not represented at Chalcedon.

The first ecumenical council at Nicea (325) determined that Jesus Christ was God, “consubstantial” with the Father. This meant that God (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit) are “of one being” in that the Son is “born” or “begotten” “before all ages” or “eternally of the Father’s own being, from which the Spirit also eternally “proceeds.” The confession of Nicea, recited in every Holy Mass of the Armenian Church, states: “We believe (...) in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, begotten of God the Father, only-begotten, that is of the substance of the Father (...) who for us men and for our salvation came down from heaven, took body, became man, was born perfectly of the holy Virgin Mary by the Holy Spirit. By whom he took body, soul and mind and everything that is in man, truly and not in semblance.”

This was reaffirmed at the first council of Constantinople (381) and the council of Ephesus (431). One of the fathers of the Church, Cyril of Alexandria (d. 444) taught that “There is only one nature (physis), since it is the Incarnation, of God the Word,” which was held as orthodoxy.

In 446, an aged monk from Constantinople named Eutyches started teaching a subtle variation of this doctrine. His teachings were considered heretical, but he was rehabilitated in a council marred with scandal, held again at Ephesus (449) and supported by Byzantine emperor Theodosius II (408-450) where he publicly professed that while Christ had two natures before the incarnation, the two natures had merged to form a single nature after the incarnation. Pope Leo I denounced the council as a “synod of robbers” and refused to accept its decisions.

The threat of a schism led the new Byzantine emperor, Marcian (450-457), to hold a new council at Chalcedon (451) from October 8 – November 1, 451, which condemned the work of the council of 449 and professed the doctrine of the incarnation presented in Leo’s Tome, a document prepared by the Pope, which confessed that Christ had two natures, and was not of or from two natures. A special committee appointed by the Council decided unanimously in favor of the orthodoxy of Leo’s Tome, and determined that it was compatible with the teachings of Cyril of Alexandria. The confession of Chalcedon stated: “We, then, following the holy Fathers, all with one consent, teach people to confess (...) one and the same Christ, Son, Lord, only begotten, to be acknowledged in two natures, inconfusedly, unchangeably, indivisibly, inseparably.”

The formula on the nature of Christ adopted by the Council of Chalcedon was severely criticized by various Oriental sees. Many local councils rejected that doctrine. Resistance reached the point that Byzantine emperor Zeno I (474-491) issued a document called Henotikon in 482, which considered the doctrinal resolutions of the first three councils (Nicea, Constantinople, and Ephesus), while the Council of Chalcedon and Leo’s Tome were not mentioned at all.

At the time of the Council of Chalcedon, Armenia was in crisis. A few months before, in May 451, the battle of Avarair had been fought, and the Armenian Church was in no position to have its say on the issue. The situation changed after the Treaty of Nvarsak (484), when the situation stabilized with Persian Armenia under the government of Vahan Mamikonian. The Armenian Church adopted the doctrine of the Henotikon, and this position was officially confirmed by the Council of Dvin (506).

The followers of the Council of Chalcedon have frequently accused the Armenian Church of monophysitism, but this is not true: the Armenian Church follows the doctrine of Cyril of Alexandria established at the third ecumenical Council of Ephesus (431) that reaffirmed the decisions of the Councils of Nicea and Ephesus.

September 27, 1829: Friedrich Parrot Reaches the Summit of Mount Ararat

Mount Ararat is not an easy mountain to climb. Today, nevertheless, we hear of many people reaching its top. The first ascent happened 185 years ago this day, according to the Julian calendar that was in use in the Russian Empire (October 9 according to the Gregorian calendar already in use in the West).

J. J. Friedrich W. Parrot (1792-1841) was a German naturalist and traveler. He was born in Karlsruhe, and studied medicine and natural science at the University of Dorpat (now Tartu), in present-day Estonia, then part of the Russian Empire. In 1811, at the age of nineteen, he undertook an expedition to Crimea and the Caucasus with Maurice Engelhardt.

In 1815 he was appointed surgeon in the Russian army. He visited the Alps and the Pyrenees in 1816-1817. He became a professor at his alma mater, first of physiology and pathology (1821) and then of physics (1827).

Parrot undertook another trip, this time to Georgia and Armenia, in 1828. Eastern Armenia had been recently conquered by the Russian Empire after the Russo-Persian and Russo-Turkish wars of 1826-1828.

His aim was to reach the summit of Mt. Ararat (16,945 feet). He established his base camp in Arguri (Akori), and set to his mission. It was not an easy task, especially in those days when mountaineering was not well-developed. He made two attempts, and he barely escaped a deadly fall in one of them.

The third was the charm. This time, too, the climb was difficult. “The newly fallen snow which had been of some use to us in our former attempt, had since melted, from the increased heat of the weather, and was now changed into glacier ice, so that notwithstanding the moderate steepness of the acclivity, it would be necessary to cut steps from below,” he wrote.

A sketch of Mt. Ararat and the Monastery of Holy Etchmiadzin in the foreground from Parrot's book, Journey to Ararat.

Finally, on September 27, 1829, after overcoming a violent snowstorm, “before my eyes, now intoxicated with joy, lay the highest pinnacle (...) and at about a quarter past three (...) we stood on the top of Mt. Ararat," he wrote. Parrot and his five companions, two of them students from the University of Dorpat, had made the first modern ascent of the mountain where it is traditionally held that Noah’s Ark had come to rest. He did not claim to see the rests of the ark, considering that the ice was 300 feet thick.

The climbers remained 45 minutes on the peak. A deacon from Holy Etchmiadzin, who had made the ascent in his habit, was among his companions; he planted the cross they had brought and then filled a flask with Ararat ice. After a prayer meeting, Parrot poured a libation for patriarch Noah.

The ascent was an event of importance, despite Armenian assurances that Ararat was unconquerable: “Put an Armenian on the summit of Ararat and he will still cling to the idea that it is unconquerable,” wrote Parrot. However, even more important for the history of Armenia culture was the encounter of Parrot with the deacon from Holy Etchmiadzin. The latter was no other than twenty-year-old Khachatur Abovian (1809-1848), a founding name of modern Armenian literature. Parrot was impressed by the intelligence of the young Armenian and made arrangements so he could enter the University of Dorpat. Abovian would stay six years at the university (1830-1836), which would become a magnet for Armenian students throughout the nineteenth century; his period of studies would be crucial in his life and his literary production. His protector would pass away five years after Abovian’s graduation.

Parrot wrote about the climb in a book in German, also translated into English (Journey to Ararat), but he was greeted with skepticism. Less than half a century later, British historian and explorer James Bryce would climb Ararat again and vindicate Parrot.

September 20, 1918: Execution of the 26 Baku Commissars

In the history and the mythology of the October Revolution and the Soviet civil war, the 26 Baku Commissars have played a role similar to the 300 Spartans in the history of ancient Greece. Their death would be immortalized in Soviet times through movies, books, artwork, stamps, and public works, and even cities and towns would be named after some of them.

After the Bolshevik revolution of October/November 1917, a Soviet (council) of workers, villagers, and soldiers was created in Baku. This council came to power from April 13 to July 25, 1918 and created an executive organ, the Council of Popular Commissars, formed by an alliance of Bolsheviks and leftist Socialist Revolutionaries, and presided by a famous Bolshevik revolutionary, the Armenian Stepan Shahumian. It was known as the Commune of Baku.

The Commune faced various problems, from the shortage of food and supplies to the threat posed by the invading Turks. The Red Army units hurriedly organized by the Commune were defeated by the Islamic Army of the Caucasus, an Ottoman army unit organized by order of Minister of War Enver Pasha on the basis of the local Tatar (Azerbaijani) population, and retreated to Baku in July 1918.

The military defeat provoked the rise of a coalition of rightist Socialist Revolutionaries, Social Democrats, and Armenian Revolutionary Federation members, which asked help from British forces stationed in Persia to counterbalance the Ottoman advance. The Commune transferred power to the new provisional government formed by the coalition, called the Centro-Caspian Dictatorship, and left Baku for Astrakhan, which was under Bolshevik control. However, the new authorities arrested the members of the Commune under charges of embezzlement and treason.

However, a new attack of the Ottoman forces over Baku prevented the trial of the military tribunal, and, according to Soviet historiography, on 14 September 1918, during the fall of Baku to the Turks, Red Army soldiers broke into their prison and freed the 26 prisoners; they then boarded a ship to Astrakhan, which changed its destination to Krasnovodsk, on the other side of the Caspian Sea. They were promptly arrested by local authorities of the Transcaspian provisional government, also anti-Soviet, on September 17, and three days later executed by a firing squad between the stations of Pereval and Akhcha-Kuyma on the Transcaspian Railway, apparently under British pressure.

Isaak Brodsky's The Execution of the Twenty Six Baku Commissars (1925) depicting the Soviet view of the execution.

Although they have been named as “commissars,” not all of them were officials and not all of them were Bolsheviks. Among the executed men, there were Russians, Jews, Armenians, Georgians, Azerbaijanis, Greeks, and Latvians.

Along with Shahumian, there were five other Armenians: Baghdasar Avagian, military commander of Baku; Aram Kostandian, deputy commissar for Agriculture; Suren Osipian, chief editor of the newspaper Izvestia of the Baku Commune; Arsen Amirian, chief editor of the newspaper Bakinski rabochi; and Tadeos Amirian, commander of a cavalry unit. Arsen and Tadeos Amirian were brothers, and this explains why the latter, a member of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation, had fought on the side of the Commune.

After the establishment of the Soviet regime, the authorities of Azerbaijan exhumed the bodies of the 26 victims and reburied them in Baku, at the square named after them, where a pantheon was built in 1968. The anti-Armenian hysteria in Azerbaijan has reached the point that, in January 2009 the pantheon was demolished, since the activity of the Baku Commune is considered an “Armenian conspiracy,” and the remnants were reburied at the Hovsan cemetery, reportedly “with the participation of Muslim, Christian, and Jewish clergy, and the corresponding rituals” (ironically, most of the commissars were atheists). Monuments and streets devoted to the commissars, whether Armenian, Russian, Georgian, or Azerbaijani, have also been demolished or renamed.

Meanwhile, the cities of Stepanakert (in Gharabagh) and Stepanavan (in Lori) continue to carry the name of Stepan Shahumian, whose statue in the proximities of Republic Square, in Yerevan, has been maintained. Amirian Street, an important street originating from the same square, has also kept its name.

September 14, 1862: Birth of Movses Silikian

The battle of Sardarabad, from May 21-28, 1918, symbolized the defining moment in Armenian life. It is quite likely that, following an Armenian defeat, the Turkish armies would have had a free pass to occupy Eastern Armenia and liquidate its population, completing the process of annihilation that had been taken place with Western Armenians from 1915-1916. The victory had a military hero, General Movses Silikian.

Silikian was born on September 14, 1862, in the village of Vardashen, in the province of Nukhi (currently Azerbaijan). He was not an ethnic Armenian, but belonged to the Udi minority (an ethnicity descending from the Caucasian Albanians, with a distinctive Northern Caucasian language), although he was a faithful of the Armenian Apostolic Church. He graduated from the Moscow Military Gymnasium (1882-1884) and the Alexander III Military School.

Silikian entered the military service in 1884 and was assigned to the military region of the Caucasus. After serving as company and battalion commander, he was awarded with the degree of colonel in 1914. He became adjutant to the military commander of Yerevan in 1915, commander of the Eighth Regiment in 1915, and commander of the Army Group of Van in 1916. He participated in the liberation of Mush and Bitlis, and became military commander of Erzerum after the occupation of the city. He was awarded the order of St. George in 1916 and rose to the degree of major general in August 1917.

After the Russian Revolution of 1917 and the retreat of the Russian forces, Silikian was designated commander of the second rifle division of the Armenian army in January 1918, and afterwards, commander of the Army Group of Yerevan. He managed to organize a regular army in a short time, and by order of Aram Manukian, who had taken the leadership of the Province of Yerevan, Silikian led the Armenian troops in Sardarabad, where their victory stopped the advance of the Turkish army towards Yerevan.

After the independence of Armenia, Silikian, promoted to general commandant in 1919, became commander of the front of Nor Bayazid (nowadays Gavar) in the same year and was designated general commander of the front of Kars-Alexandropol (nowadays Gumri) in the fall of 1920.

The veteran soldier was exiled in January 1921 to Riazan after the establishment of the Soviet regime in Armenia. He returned in May 1921 to Armenia and settled in Yerevan. He was exiled once again, this time to Rostov-on-Don, and returned again to Yerevan. He worked at the Alexandropol branch of the Swedish “Baltic” company from 1921-1923, and from 1923-1929 or 1930 at the Armenian branch of the Near East Relief.

Silikian was arrested once again during the Stalinist purges of 1937 (he had been previously arrested in 1927 and 1935), and charged within the frame of the “Tukhachevsky case” (a fabricated case against Marshal Mikhail Tukhachevsky and other prominent Soviet military leaders), to which he bore no relation. As many other victims of the purges, he was executed in the gorge of Nork, together with General Kristapor Araratian and other heroes of Sardarabad, on November 22, 1937. He was rehabilitated fifty years later, on November 10, 1987. A neighborhood in Yerevan has been named after him, as well as a medal of the Ministry of Defense of the Republic of Armenia.

September 8, 1701: Foundation of the Mekhitarist Congregation

Mekhitar of Sebastia

Since its inception, the educational and cultural activities of the Mekhitarist Congregation had a very important role in Armenian history. After becoming a priest at the age of 20, Mekhitar of Sebastia (1676-1749) decided to find a congregation in order to work collectively to increase the spiritual, moral and intellectual levels of the Armenian people. He was consecrated celibate priest in 1699 and soon converted to Catholicism. However, he did not renege his Armenian ancestry and identity.

On September 8, 1701, on the feast of the birth of the Virgin Mary, Mekhitar and a group of sympathizers founded the congregation of St. Anthony the Abbot in Constantinople. The congregation initially had twelve members, including four celibate priests. The conflict between the Armenian Apostolic and Catholic communities in the Ottoman capital took a bloody turnaround. Mekhitar and his sympathizers fled the Ottoman persecution and moved to the Peninsula of Morea (Peloponessus), in Greece, which was under the domination of the Republic of Venice, and settled in the fortress of Methon.

The Mekhitarist Monastery on the island of San Lazarro in the Venetian Grotto.

An assembly held in 1705 prepared the draft bylaws of the Congregation, based on the bylaws of the Benedictine Congregation and extracted from the canons of the life of St. Anthony the Abbot. He sent two of his students to Rome with the draft, and letters to Pope Clement XI and the governor of the Propaganda Fide. The assembly of the Propaganda Fide, since the canons of St. Anthony were incomplete, suggested Mekhitar to choose from the canons of St. Basil, St. Augustine, or St. Benedict. The Armenian priest chose the canons of St. Benedict and presented the new draft of bylaws to the Pope on May 12, 1711. The bylaws were approved by Clement XI in 1717, who bestowed the title of Abbot upon Mekhitar.

The library inside the Mekhitarist Monastery in Vienna, Austria.

 Meanwhile, a war started between the Ottoman Empire and Venice in December 1714. Mekhitar and most of the congregation members fled Methon and moved to Venice. However, they needed a cloister and a monastery to carry on their plans. The Venetian Senate had just approved a law that forbade the establishment of any new religious congregation in the city. Nevertheless, the highest body took Mekhitar’s request into consideration and proposed that he find a place outside the city. Mekhitar chose the island of San Lazzaro, which belonged to the order of the Mendicants. On August 26, 1717, the Senate of Venice conceded the island to the congregation with right of permanent residence, and Mekhitar and his followers, a total of sixteen, settled there on September 8, the anniversary of the foundation of the congregation. The renovation work at the church was completed in 1723, and Mekhitar started the construction of a new monastery, which was finished in 1740, including a library and a refectory. Mekhitar passed away on April 27, 1749, and was buried before the main altar of the island. On his death, he had already achieved the publication of some twenty books, including the first volume of the Haigazian Dictionary, which his disciples would complete twenty years later. After his passing, the Congregation was named after him.

August 30, 1997: Death of Frunze Dovlatyan

Almost fifty years ago, Frunze Dovlatyan’s film, “Hello, It’s Me!” (Բարեւ, ես եմ), marked a milestone in the history of Armenian cinema.

Dovlatyan was born in Kamo (nowadays Gavar), on May 27, 1927, in a family of actors. His father and his paternal aunt staged amateur plays in the theater of the town. When the Dovlatyan family moved to Yerevan, Frunze, still a school student, started his career as an actor. He performed from 1941-1952 in the provincial theaters of Armenia and in the “Gabriel Sundukian” academic theater of Yerevan. He graduated in 1947 from the theatrical studio of the latter, and appeared in a few films from 1943-1958, the first being Hamo-Bek Nazarian’s “David Bek”.

He moved to Moscow and graduated from the all-Soviet Cinema Institute (VGIK) in 1959. He had already started his career as a film director (he would still appear as an actor in several films, some of them of his own, until the late 1980s) and directed three movies from 1958-1963 in Moscow.

Soviet movie poster for Hello, It's Me.

He returned to Armenia in 1964 and the next year directed his first film in the homeland, “Hello, It’s Me,” partly based on the life of the famous Armenian physicist Artem Alikhanian, the founder of the Institute of Physics of Yerevan. The film started the career of famous actor Armen Djigarkhanian and had ten million viewers in 1966. It was nominated to the Palme d’Or in the Festival of Cannes in the same year and won the State Prize of Armenia in 1967.

From 1966-1969 Dovlatyan was first secretary of the Union of Cinematographers of Armenia. He went on to direct some important films of the last decades of Soviet Armenian cinema: “Saroyan Brothers” (1968), “Chronicle of Yerevan Days” (1972), “Live Long” (1979), “The Solitary Walnut Tree” (1986). From 1986 he was the artistic director of the Armenfilm studios. His last work was “Yearning” (1990), about the life of a genocide survivor who, led by his yearning of the lost homeland, crosses the Soviet-Turkish border during the time of Stalin.

The filmmaker was the chairman of the Tekeyan Cultural Association in Armenia during the last three years of his life. He passed away in 1997 and was buried in Yerevan.

August 23, 1990: Armenian Declaration of Independence

The Constitution of the Soviet Union, adopted in 1977, established in article 71 that “Each Union Republic shall retain the right freely to secede from the USSR [Union of Soviet Socialist Republics].” In the late eighties, within the scope of Mikhail Gorbachev’s newly proclaimed policy of restructuration (perestroika) and transparency (glasnost), the political tension in the country would reach the point of explosion and, in the end, the secession and collapse of the Soviet Union would be completed between 1990 and 1991.

The Karabagh Movement started in February 1988, called “the test of perestroika” at the time, had its ebbs and flows, and the rise of the people became the inspiration for similar movements in other Soviet republics, such as the Baltic States, where the “popular fronts” made their appearance in the middle of the year. In Armenia, four days after the earthquake of December 7, 1988, the eleven members of the Karabagh Committee that led the movement were arrested and imprisoned in Moscow. A wide movement of international solidarity, as well as internal developments caused their release in May 1989.

The reformist tide in the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and the revolutions of 1989 that ended the Communist rule in Eastern Europe, including the fall of the Berlin wall that became the symbol of the reunification of Germany, were echoed in Armenia by the formation of the Armenian National Movement (ANM) as an alternative, democratic choice against party monopoly.

In February 1990 the Communist Party yielded its 70-year-long monopoly of power. The immediate result was the loss of four republics to the democratic opposition in parliamentary elections held in February and March (Lithuania, Moldova, Estonia, and Latvia). The three Baltic States, headed by Lithuania, declared the beginning of a process to reestablish themselves as independent states between March and May. In Armenia, the elections of May 1990 saw the victory of the ANM over the Communist Party.

In June a power struggle started between the Russian Federation, represented by Boris Yeltsin, newly elected chairman of the Presidium of its Supreme Soviet, and the Soviet Union, represented by Mikhail Gorbachev, first secretary of the Communist Party. It was followed in July by the resignation of Yeltsin from the Communist Party.

After run-off elections in June and July to complete the seats of the Supreme Soviet of Armenia, the democratic wave saw the victory of Levon Ter Petrossian, one of the leaders of the Karabagh Committee and the Armenian National Movement, over Vladimir Movsisian, the candidate of the Communist Party, in the election for president of the Supreme Council (Parliament), held on August 4.

Less than three weeks later, on August 23, Ter Petrossian, president of the Soviet Council, and Ara Sahakian, secretary, signed the proclamation of independence, which established that the Supreme Council declared “the beginning of the process of establishing of independent statehood positioning the question of the creation of a democratic society based on the rule of law” on the basis of the November 1, 1989 joint decision of the Armenian SSR Supreme Soviet and the Artsakh National Council on the reunification of Armenia and Upper Karabagh, “developing the democratic traditions of the independent Republic of Armenia established on May 28, 1918.”

The proclamation had twelve points: 1) The Armenian SSR was renamed Republic of Armenia, which would have its own flag, coat of arms, and anthem; 2) The Republic of Armenia became a self-governing state, where only its constitution and laws were valid; 3) The people were the bearer of Armenian statehood and exerted its authority through its representatives; the right to speak on behalf of the people belonged exclusively to the Supreme Council; 4) Citizens living on Armenian territory were granted citizenship, and Diasporan Armenians had the right of citizenship of Armenia; 5) The new republic created its own armed forces and organs of public security; 6) The republic led an independent foreign policy; 7) National wealth was property of their people, regulated by laws of the republic, which had the right to its share of the USSR national wealth; 8) The republic created the principles of its economic system and created its own money and financial system; 9) The republic guaranteed freedom of speech, press, and conscience; separation of powers; and a multi-party system; 10) The republic guaranteed the use of Armenian as the official language; 11) The republic stood in support of international recognition of the Armenian Genocide. Finally, point 12 declared that the proclamation would be the basis for the future Armenian Constitution and, meanwhile, was the basis for the introduction of amendments to the current constitution and for the government of the country.

There was no date set to end the process of establishment of an independent statehood. The events would take a dramatic pace in 1991 and, thirteen months after the proclamation, Armenia held a referendum to declare its second independence in the twentieth century.