December 4, 1738: Birth of Mikayel Chamchian

Fifth century historian Movses Khorenatsi has been commonly labeled as the Father of Armenian History. It is not unfair to call Father Mikayel Chamchian the Father of Modern Armenian Historiography.

Chamchian was born in Constantinople. He was initially homeschooled and then attended the local Catholic school. He later studied jewelry with Mikayel chelebi Diuzian, imperial jeweler and a distant relative. The young Garabed (that was Chamchian’s baptismal name) was so famous in town for his talent as a jeweler that a contemporary wrote: “Not even one was found like him.” Diuzian thought of turning him into his business partner and even arranging marriage with his daughter. However, in 1757, barely eighteen, Chamchian left his promising career and went to the island of San Lazzaro, in Venice, to enter the Mekhitarist monastery and satisfy his thirst for knowledge. His elder brother Hagopos was a member of the Mekhitarist Congregation.

After graduating from the island’s school in 1762, Chamchian joined the congregation and became a teacher at the school. His scholarly studies were interrupted in 1769, when he was consecrated vartabed and sent to serve the Armenian Catholic community of Basra (Iraq). He traveled through the Armenian communities of the Middle East (Alexandria, Beirut, Damascus, Aleppo, Baghdad, etcetera) and collected manuscripts for the library of the monastery. In the 1770s he wrote a four-volume polemical work (each volume contained 800-900 pages) entitledShield of Orthodoxy. This work was destined to demonstrate “the orthodox doctrine of the Armenian Church.” His enemies robbed this work from his room, and the Vatican called him for an interrogation, since his defense of Catholicism seemed to have been accompanied with some sympathy for the “schismatic” Armenian Apostolic Church.

He returned to the monastery in 1775 and taught at the seminary for the next fourteen years. Many of the best scholars of the congregation in the next several decades were his students. He produced a remarkable grammar of Classical Armenian in 1779, which he abridged in 1801 and became the main textbook of Armenian schools in the nineteenth century (eleven reprints).

Between 1780 and 1788, Chamchian dedicated himself to write the first comprehensive history of Armenia from the origins to his days. The author was an enormously fastidious writer and made countless changes and additions in his volumes until they went into printing. The thick three volumes, which had the publishing dates 1784-1786, were actually published between 1785 and 1788. Chamchian’s History of Armenia would become a reference work for Armenian Studies scholars for over a century and, besides, it would offer a full picture of the past for a people that were trying to construct their national identity.

Afterwards, he devoted himself to religious and theological works. Due to his poor health, the congregation sent him back to Constantinople as its resident representative. He would remain in the capital of the Ottoman Empire and he would continue producing with incredible fecundity; among other works, he published a ten-volume commentary of the Psalms, more than 6,000 pages (1815-1823). He also worked on a project to create a school of Armenian higher education in any European university town. Besides a history of the Ottoman Empire that remained unpublished, he produced an abridged version of his History of Armenia, both in Armenia (1811) and in Turkish (1812). The Armenian version was translated into English and published in Calcutta in 1827.

Following the ecumenic orientation that had been the focus of the founder of the congregation, Mekhitar of Sepastia, Chamchian dedicated himself also to solve the disputes among Armenian Apostolics and Catholics in Constantinople, in the understanding that the Armenian Church was not heretic, as it was frequently portrayed at the time, and there was no need to shock the Armenian nation with new quarrels. He even tried to unify both communities. During four decades (1776-1815), he wrote a theological work of some 900 pages, Shield of Faith, Which Confirms the Orthodoxy of the Armenian Church from St. Gregory, the Illuminator of Armenia, until Today. Another Catholic priest robbed the book and took it to Rome, where it had the impact of a bomb. After four years of discussions and debates, the book was destroyed by order of the Propaganda Fide and only an abridged version was published half a century after Chamchian’s death (Calcutta, 1873).

Chamchian passed away on November 30, 1823 and was buried in the Armenian cemetery of Pera (today Beyoglu). His History of Armenia still remains as a classic, and has been the foundation of his intellectual fame.

November 20-23, 1923: The “Self-Liquidation” of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation in Yerevan

The first years of the Soviet experience were marked by the struggle to establish the foundations of the new regime that included the need to end all remaining opposed forces throughout the Soviet Union. Ceremonies of “self-liquidation” of various parties that had been on the anti-Soviet front were staged.

The turn of the Southern Caucasus came in 1923. First the Social Democrat Hunchakian Party (June) and then Georgian Menshevik (Social Democrats) and Azerbaijani Musavat parties (both in August) announced their dissolution in congresses “organized” by their ex-members. The Armenian Revolutionary Federation followed suit in November.

After the Sovietization of Armenia in December 1920 and the retreat of the leadership of the party from the country following the revolt of February 1921, the A.R.F. was going through an organizational crisis, which was part of the critical moment being lived by the Armenian people worldwide. It was an hour of reckoning and self-criticism, as the Vienna Conference held in April-May 1923 showed. This conference decided to convene abroad what would be the 10th World Congress of the A.R.F.

The purpose of the “Congress of Former Dashnaks in Armenia” was to impede the reconstitution of the A.R.F. outside Armenia. The Armenian Communists’ concern was to combat the idea of independence and to renounce publicly any territorial claims against the neighbor republics and Turkey, aiming “to open the eyes of the Armenian workers of the colonies."

Upon the invitation of an “organizing bureau” of seventeen members, 247 delegates representing 4,032 members of the party (a striking number in comparison to the number of members of the Communist Party of Armenia, namely, 4,230) gathered at the State Theater of Armenia on November 20, 1923. The opening was by young agronomist and writer Aksel Bakunts (1899-1937), who would soon become one of the leading story writers of Soviet Armenia before his death in the Stalinist purges. As he said in his opening remarks, the congress was organized to allow the “four thousand Dashnak party members who had never been able to express their aspirations” to break with their old party and “to put their revolutionary energies at the service . . . of the Soviet state.” During three days, the delegates evaluated the current situation of the A.R.F., analyzed critically its ideology and its political activities during the preceding thirty years, and measured the extent of its current activities in an environment that enjoyed relative freedom of expression but did not lack theatrical elements. Old Bolshevik Askanaz Mravian had a major address during the second day of sessions, where he analyzed the international and domestic situation in Armenia and Soviet Russia. The closing address on November 23 was by Lukashin (Sargis Srapionian), chairman of the Council of Popular Commissars of Armenia (equivalent to prime minister) and representative of the Central Committee of the Communist Party.

The congress stressed that the peasants and workers of Armenia, whose fate had been sacrificed during the previous years at the altar of “national independence,” would henceforth enjoy “peace and security.” It called upon Armenian workers abroad to liquidate the A.R.F. committees and to struggle against capitalism, waiting for the final victory of the international working class, which would allow the resolution of the “bloody question of the liberation of the small nations.”

The main utility of the congress was internal. The “former Dashnaks” contributed to the legitimization of Soviet rule in Armenia playing the role of mediators between the Communist Party, yet poorly rooted in the country, and a population longing for peace and security. The congress failed in its key mission however, as the A.R.F. gathered its 10th World Congress from November 1924-January 1925 in Paris and retained its goals for a free, independent, and united Armenia in its program, although stressing that it had no plan to overthrow the Soviet regime. A.R.F. clandestine structures would remain active in Armenia until 1933.

November 14, 1829: Birth of Mikael Nalbandian

Francis Scott Key is just remembered as the author of the lyrics of the U.S. national anthem. It is not the same in the case of Mikael Nalbandian, who was an influential intellectual of the nineteenth century and is an important name in the history of Armenian culture, besides being the author of the lyrics of the Armenian anthem.

Nalbandian was born on November 14, 1829, in Nor Nakhichevan, the town close to Rostov-on-Don founded in the late eighteenth century by Armenian emigrants from Crimea, in the family of a craftsman. He studied in his hometown at the school of Gabriel Patkanian, and for a while he was classmate of his son, the future poet Rafael Patkanian (Kamar Katipa). He worked as a secretary in the Armenian diocese of Nor Nakhichevan and Besarabia from 1848-1853. Then he left his post and went to Moscow, where he taught Armenian language at the Lazarian College for a short while, and took classes at the Medicine School of Moscow University as an auditor (1854-1858).

Similar to Khachatur Abovian, Nalbandian championed the introduction of Modern Armenian (ashkharhapar) instead of Classical Armenian (krapar), and confronted the opposition of ecclesiastics and conservatives. He translated poems of Alexander Pushkin, Mikhail Lermontov, Heinrich Heine, and others. Among his own poetry, three poems became favorites of the public: “The Song of the Italian Girl” (Idalatsi aghchga yerke), “Freedom” (Azadutiun), and “Days of Childhood” (Mangootian orer). The first, better known as Mer Hairenik (“Our Fatherland”), would become the anthem of the first Republic of Armenia in 1918, and was adopted again after the new independence of 1991.

Nalbandian published the journal Hiusisapayl (Aurora Borealis) with another influential intellectual, Stepanos Nazarian (1812-1879), in Moscow. During its five years of existence (1859-1864), the journal became a leading name in the cultural awakening of Eastern Armenians. Nalbandian had already made a name for himself since the 1850s due to his progressive and liberal views, as well as his outspoken and ironic style. Reform and renewal were his main ideas, as he espoused them in his writings on different issues. He published various political tracts, of which the most important was Agriculture as the Right Way (1862), where he criticized the peasant reform of 1861 in Russia.

The writer made two trips to Europe (1859 and 1860-1862), and he also visited India. In London he became friends with various famous Russian revolutionaries, such as Alexander Herzen and Mikhail Bakunin. After his return in 1862, he was arrested by the Russian secret police and spent three years in prison in St. Petersburg. He was accused of inciting anti-government sentiments and exiled to the fortress of Kamyshin, in the province of Saratov. He passed away at the age of 37, victim of tuberculosis, on April 12, 1866. He was buried in the Armenian monastery of Holy Cross, in Nakhichevan-on-Don. An important street in central Yerevan and a statue remember him.

November 7, 1922: Inauguration of the National Library of Armenia

The biggest repository of Armenian literature in the world is the National Library of Armenia, founded in 1921, but officially inaugurated on November 7, 1922.

The beginning of its history is linked to the foundation of the library of the Boys Gymnasium of Yerevan, in 1832. (“Gymnasium” was the name of Russian schools that emphasized strong academic learning, similar to U.S. preparatory high schools.) During the first independence of Armenia, this library, with a collection of 18,000 volumes, became the main state library after a decree was passed by the Council of Ministers of the Republic. The first director of the library was Stepan Kanayan, between 1919 and 1921. His efforts were instrumental to collect and buy the libraries of various Armenian organizations and schools in Tiflis, Baku, Akhaltskha, and Kars, and transfer them to Yerevan.

Various private and public collections were assembled and became the basis for what was known, during the Soviet period, as the Yerevan Public Library. Alexander Miasnikian, chairman of the Soviet of Popular Commissars (Council of Ministers) from 1921-1925, was instrumental in its foundation and initial growth. After his death in an airplane accident in 1925, the library was named after him and maintained that name until 1990 when it became the National Library of Armenia. Since 1999, July 4 is celebrated as day of the National Library of Armenia.

The library has four buildings. The oldest is the main building designed by architect Alexander Tamanian (1868-1936), who designed the master plan of Yerevan, and finished in 1939.

 

 

 

The number of daily visitors to the library is about 900. An annual average of 1.5 million pieces is delivered to library users. The library collection encompassed more than 6.3 million units as of January 1, 2014, including books, journals, newspapers, maps, posters, dissertations, musical notes, postcards, stamps, calendars, ex libris, banknotes, audiovisual and electronic supports (CDs, DVDs), etcetera. The library has the first printed book in Armenian, Urbatagirk (Venice, 1512); the first newspaper in Armenian, Azdarar (Madras, 1794); and the first map printed in Armenian, Համատարած աշխարհացոյց (Worldwide Map; Amsterdam, 1695). Its current director is Tigran Zargaryan.

October 23, 1908: Birth of Anna Ter Avetikian

This name is probably unfamiliar to the English reader. Anna Ter Avetikian was the first female architect of Armenia and the designer of some recognizable buildings in Yerevan.

She belonged to a family well-known to older inhabitants of the capital of Armenia. The Ter Avetikians had been instrumental in the construction of many historic buildings, such as the small hall of the Philarmonia of Yerevan, the old building of Yerevan State University, and the first hospital of the city, located on Abovian Street. Their efforts had succeeded in the creation of the first drinking water network of Yerevan.

In 1924 Anna Ter Avetikian entered the department of Architecture of the Technical School of Yerevan State University, which became the grounds for the Yerevan Polytechnic Institute in 1933 (now the State Engineering University of Armenia). She graduated in 1930. In 1926, while still a student, she started working in the studios of two renowned architects, Nikoghayos Buniatian and Alexander Tamanian (the author of the master plan of Yerevan and of many of its most characteristic buildings). Later she went to work in design organizations.

The designs of Ter-Avetikian were used for the construction of about forty buildings in Yerevan (schools, residential buildings, and administrative buildings). These included the building of film makers at the corner of Mashtots Avenue and Koriun, where the legendary coffee shop “Ponchikanots” (the ponchik is a kind of donut) and the Mayakovsky School are located.

An inscription on a building designed by Anna Ter-Avetikian where Armenian filmakers lived during the Soviet period in central Yerevan.

She married architect Konstantin Hovhannisian (1911-1984), who also worked in the studios of Buniatian and Tamanian in the 1930s, and together they designed the buildings of the Yerevan Police, the Yerevan Fire Station (on Sakharov Square), and the “Sasuntsi Davit” cinema (demolished in the 1980s). Her husband was the head of the excavations of Arin-Berd (1950-1972) and dug out the remnants of the citadel of Erebuni.

Anna Ter Avetikian was a laureate of the Soviet overviews of female architects in 1938 and 1956, and received a diploma from the international exhibition of Paris, “Women in Art and Popular Creation” in 1938. Her design of the building of film makers earned her the first prize in the all-Soviet competition of female architects of 1948. In 1967 she received a congratulatory note from the Supreme Soviet of the Armenian Republic and in 1968 she became an emeritus architect of Armenia.

She also won recognition and honors from the independent Republic of Armenia: the golden medal “Alexander Tamanian” (2002) and the golden medal “Yerevan” of the Yerevan City Hall. In 2012, at the age of 104, she gave an interview to the news agency Mediamax, in which she said:

“I can’t single out any one of the buildings. Is it possible to say which one of your children is your dearest?

“All my buildings are built with national style. That was not only conditioned by traditions, but by seismic and weather conditions, as well as the characteristics of national psychology.

“All cities change, and that’s natural. There are periods of flourishing and decline. However, people build the city and its environment is created thanks to them. The old city has to be maintained; keeping the link of time educates people and ties them to their history and roots.”

Anna Ter Avetikian passed away at the age of 105. Her passing was announced on January 16, 2013, by the news agency A1+.

October 21, 1978: Death of Anastas Mikoyan

Anastas Mikoyan was perhaps the only politician that lived through the first half century of the Soviet regime, from the days of Lenin to the first years of Leonid Brezhnev’s rule in the 1960s, and remained at the highest positions of the Communist Party. He was also a controversial name with regards to Armenian history. (His younger brother Artem was the co-founder of the Mig aviation design bureau, which would produce the military jets.)

Mikoyan was born on November 13 (25), 1895, in the village of Sanahin, nowadays the neighborhood of the city of Alaverdi, in the province of Lori (Republic of Armenia). After graduating from the local school, he studied at the Nersisian School in Tiflis and the Gevorgian Seminary in Etchmiadzin.

In 1915 he formed a workers’ soviet in Etchmiadzin and formally joined the Bolshevik faction of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party. He edited two newspapers in Baku and led the Bolshevik clandestine network after the collapse of the Commune of Baku in June 1918. He was among the 26 commissars who fled from Baku and the only one who escaped death when the others were shot in September 1918. The circumstances have remained shrouded in mystery.

In 1919 Mikoyan became the head of the Baku board of the Caucasian committee of the Russian Communist Party. After a short stay in Moscow, he returned to Baku as representative of the Military-Revolutionary Committee of the XI Red Army. In December 1919 he wrote a report to Lenin where he insisted on the need to put an end to the Armenian Question and to renounce the idea of the formation of a united Armenian state. In 1921 he co-signed a letter sent to Lenin by Nariman Narimanov, the head of the Military-Revolutionary Committee of Azerbaijan, which said that Gharabagh and Nakhichevan should remain under the authority of Soviet Azerbaijan.

Afterwards, Mikoyan moved to Moscow, where he continued his political career. He was in Stalin’s inner circle; he became People’s Commissar of Trade of the Soviet Union in 1926 and Commissar of Food Industry in 1931. He developed a comprehensive program for the Soviet food industry and, in this regard, he visited the United States for two months in 1936 with his wife Ashkhen (died in 1962) to study the American methods of production. He initiated the production of ice cream in the Soviet Union, which remained under his personal supervision until the end of his tenure.

The Caucasus trio: From left to right, Mikoyan, Joseph Stalin, and Sergo Ordzhonikidze.

Mikoyan was elected a full member of the Politburo of the Communist Party in 1935 (he would keep this position until 1966) and became deputy chairman of the Council of People’s Commissars in 1937. He was among those who executed Stalin’s policies, including signing documents that condemned to death hundreds and thousands of people during the Great Purge.

In September 1937 Stalin dispatched him, along with Georgy Malenkov and Lavrentiy Beria, with a list of 300 names to Yerevan, to oversee the liquidation of the Communist Party of Armenia, which was largely made up of old Bolsheviks. Over a thousand people were arrested and seven of nine members of the Armenian Politburo were sacked from office. On September 22, 1937, Nikolai Yezhov, head of the NKVD (predecessor of the KGB) from 1936 to 1938, transmitted to Stalin a petition by Mikoyan to execute 2,000 Armenians, instead of the initial 1,500. During the celebration of the 20th anniversary of the NKVD at the Bolshoi Theater in Moscow, on December 20, 1937, Mikoyan praised Yezhov for his tireless work: “Learn the Stalin way to work," he said, "from Comrade Yezhov, just as he learned and will continue to learn from Comrade Stalin himself.” On the other hand, he helped the families of purged friends who had remained without any assistance. He also saved Marshal Hovhannes Baghramian, a hero of World War II, from repression and exile in 1937.

Mikoyan had an outstanding role during the war. Trade, army supply, and production of light and food industry were under his supervision. In 1941 he became a representative of the State Defense Committee, which was the supreme state authority during the war, and was decorated with the order of Hero of Socialist Labor in 1943 for his remarkable job. After the war, he continued to be Minister of Foreign Trade until 1949. Despite his position, his teenage children Sergo and Vano were exiled on trumped-up charges, but returned shortly after the end of the war. His son Vladimir, a pilot in the Red Air Force, had died in combat during the war.

During the 19th Congress of the Communist Party in October 1952, despite his speech filled with praises of Stalin, Mikoyan was not elected to the presidium of the congress. Although he was elected a member of the Central Committee of the party, he did not make it to the presidium of the party. During the plenary session, Stalin rained invectives over Mikoyan and Molotov, first deputy chairman of the USSR Council of Ministers, and expressed publicly his lack of trust in them. Stalin’s death in March 1953 probably saved Mikoyan’s career and life.

Ernesto "Che" Guevara, First Deputy Premier Anastas Mikoyan of the Soviet Union, and Fidel Castro meet after the successful revolution in Cuba.

The “survivor,” as he would be labeled by Time magazine, maintained a neutral position in the struggle for power after Stalin’s death. He supported Nikita Khrushchev after he imposed himself over Beria as the strongman of the Soviet Union and backed his policy of de-Stalinization. He returned to the post of Minister of Foreign Trade (1953-55) and then became first deputy chairman of the USSR Council of Ministers (1955-1964). Nevertheless, he never gave a public assessment of Stalin’s crimes. In 1954 he visited Armenia and gave a speech in Yerevan, where he encouraged Armenians to reprint the forbidden works of Raffi and Yeghishe Charents.

The veteran politician, who visited the United States several times during Khrushchev’s time, would have a crucial intervention in the solution of the Cuban missile crisis of 1962. Two years later, he would become chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR shortly before the coup that ousted Khrushchev and replaced him by Leonid Brezhnev, but he was forced to retire in 1965. Mikoyan was one of the few Old Bolsheviks who was spared from Stalin's purges and was able to retire comfortably from political life. He died on October 21, 1978, at the age of 82, from natural causes and was buried at Novodevichy Cemetery in Moscow. Last April, an initiative to erect a statue of Mikoyan in Yerevan gave room to a heated controversy that shows that the Soviet legacy is far from being resolved.

October 13, 1668: Completion of the first printing of the Armenian Bible

After more than two and half years of work, the printing of the first edition of the Armenian Bible was finished in Amsterdam (Netherlands) in 1668. The tenacious efforts of Voskan Yerevantsi, a bishop of the Armenian Church, had finally achieved an elusive target that had been pursued for several decades.

Voskan (1614-1674) was the son of parents from Yerevan, who had been part of the deportation of Armenians from Eastern Armenia to Persia ordered by Shah Abbas I in 1604 and settled in New Julfa (Nor Jugha), the Armenian suburb of Ispahan founded by the Persian ruler. He studied at the monastery of All Saviors and, against the wishes of his parents, he was consecrated a celibate priest. After a few years of further study in Holy Etchmiadzin and Yerevan, he returned to New Julfa. Invited to Etchmiadzin by Catholicos Pilipos I Aghbaketsi in 1634, he was appointed abbot of the monastery of St. Sargis in Ushi, where he took classes in Latin, philosophy, geometry, and astronomy from the learned Dominican monk Paulo Piromalli, a Catholic missionary in Armenia, and taught Armenian to him.

In 1655 Catholicos Hakob IV Jughayetsi (1655-1680) sent his secretary, Movses Tzaretsi, to Europe with the aim of establishing a print shop. He did not find support in Italy and went to Amsterdam, where conditions were more favorable for printing, as the Netherlands were outside the sphere of influence of the Catholic Church. He was able to establish a print shop, but his attempt at printing the Armenian Bible ended in failure. Before his death in 1661, he asked his friend, the merchant Avetis from Jugha, to take over the print shop and continue his work. Avetis, at his turn, asked his brother, Voskan Yerevantsi, to come to Amsterdam. The latter had already been consecrated as bishop and was commissioned by the Catholicos to continue the task.

The first page of the Gospel of Matthew from the first printed Armenian Bible of 1668.

Bishop Voskan arrived in the Dutch port in 1664 and took over the direction of the “Holy Etchmiadzin and St. Sargis” print shop. Between 1664 and 1669, he printed 14 Armenian books, including the first printed book by a living Armenian historian, the Book of Histories by Arakel of Tabriz (1669). He and his disciples Karapet Andrianatsi and Ohan Yerevantsi started the printing of the Armenian Bible on March 11, 1666, which would result in a beautifully illustrated edition of 21 x 26 cm. (8.27 x 10.23 inches) and 1464 pages. This achievement would become enough to give Voskan Yerevantsi a place of honor in the history of Armenian printing, following the first printer of Armenian books, Hakob Meghapart.

Voskan moved his print shop to Livorno, Italy, in 1669, and three years later to Marseilles, France. He would print eight more books, including the first mathematical textbook, which was also the first printing in Modern Armenian, entitled Art of Calculus (Արհեստ համարողութեան, 1675). He died on February 4, 1674, before the printing of the textbook was complete. His print shop remained active until 1686 and a total of 40 books were printed.

The original text of the Armenian Bible has had ten editions since 1666 (the last one was printed in Vienna by the Mekhitarist fathers in 1929). Very Rev. Hovhannes Zohrabian’s edition, printed in Venice in 1805, is regarded as the most valuable by Biblical scholars.