The Armenian Revolutionary Movement: The Development of Armenian Political Parties through the Nineteenth Century by Louise Nalbandian

Review by: M. K. Krikorian The Slavonic and East European Review, Vol. 43, No. 100 (Dec., 1964), pp. 224-227 Published by: the Modern Humanities Research Association and University College London, School of Slavonic and East European Studies Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4205632 . Accessed: 26/11/2013 17:08
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Revolutionary Movement:The Development Nalbandian, Louise. TheArmenian University of theNineteenth Century. of Armenian PoliticalPartiesthrough California Press, Berkeley and Los Angeles, Cambridge University Press, London, I963. ix + 247 pages. Bibliography. Index. a San Franciscan of Armenian origin 'and a Miss L. NALBANDIAN, permanent Research Associate in the Near Eastern Center, University of California, Los Angeles, has produced a study of the development of Armenian political parties in the igth century, which is the first work of its kind in English. The Armenian liberating movement started at the very moment when in I375 the kingdom of Cilician Armenia was ruined by the Mamluiks. The last king, Lewon VI, was captured and taken to Egypt and having been saved by ransom, wandered through Europe trying to gain support for the restoration of his throne. Thus Lewon VI came to be the founder of a movement which hoped to free Christian Armenia from the hands of the Muslims with the help of Christian Europe. In the middle of the Igth century a fundamental change came about in the Armenian liberation movement. Whereas before the Armenians hoped to be saved through the aid of Christian powers, now they were convinced that revolutionary activity was necessary for the freedom of Armenia. This change was the result of the contact of the Armenian intellectuals with European revolutionary ideas. The West-Armenians were inspired by the history and atmosphere of France, while the East-Armenians were influenced by Russian revolutionaries. The reforms for western Armenia (the eastern provinces of Anatolia) which were promised at the Congress of Berlin (I878) were a further factor which stimulated the organisation of political parties. Thus there came into existence the Henchakian Revolutionary Party (I887), which in I909 was named the Social Democrat Henchakian Party, and the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (i890). These parties used bloody and revolutionary methods to hasten the promised reforms. Eventually, on I October I896, the Ottorman government issued an imperial decree proclaiming some reforms in the administration of Eastern Anatolia which were suggested by a European Commission. These reforms were only partly respected and only for a short time, until about I908 when the Young Turks came into power. Miss Nalbandian's study is devoted to the history of the parties menRevolutionary Movement, tioned above. The work is entitled The Armenian but until 1920 the Armenians did not have 'a revolutionary movement' like France or Russia, or like Greece and Bulgaria. They carried out daring actions of a revolutionary character in courageous self-defence or revenge. A revolutionary movement would have been almost impossible to organise because firstly historical Armenia was large and divided among the Ottomans, Russians and Persians; secondly the Armenians of Eastern Anatolia, although a prominent racial element, did not constitute the majority of the population; and thirdly, in spite of the fact that, generally speaking, the Armenians were a prosperous and

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industrious people, they lacked strong financial resourcesand manpower. Finally, they did not enjoy the permanent support of a resolute foreign power. In the first two chapters, 'An Outline of Armenia's Struggle for Freedom' and 'The Ideological Background and Sources of the Armenian National Awakening', the author has introduced the reader to the history of the Armenian political parties, but the various geographical, historical, cultural and ideological notes are not well integrated and as a result give a confused impression. In the third chapter the story is more interesting and develops smoothly. 'Revolutionary Activity in Turkish Armenia, I860-I885' depicts the Armenian uprisings in Zeytun (now Suleymanlh), Van and Erzurum, and the unions which had political interests and preceded the later parties. These societies were: The Union of Salvation in Van (I872), the Black Cross Society, also in Van (I878) and the Protectors of the Fatherland in Erzurum (i 88i). The fourth chapter gives an historical survey of the Armenakan Party (I885-96) which was organised in Van by the students of Mkrtich Porthugalian (I848-I92I), a renowned intellectual from Istanbul. The purpose of the party was to 'win for the Armenians the right to rule over themselves through revolution'. Since I885 Porthugalian himself had been in Marseilles where he published (i August i885) the journal Armenia,which became the organ of the Armenakan party. The Armenakans were involved in revolutionary activity in I 889 when they imported fire-armsfrom Persia to Van, and in I896 when they resisted oppression and massacre by the Turks. Chapter five gives the history of the Henchakian Party from I887 to I896. It was founded by East-Armenian students at Geneva in August I887; its leader was Awetis Nazarbekian (named also Nazarbek or Lerentz) one of whose companions was his fiancee, Mariam Vardanian (known as Maro), a former member of a Russian secret revolutionary group in St Petersburg. From a social point of view the party was Marxist socialist and politically its aim was the restoration of the independence of Turkish Armenia by outside help and through inside revolutionary activity. The party's organ was the journal Henchak(The Bell) which first appeared in November I887, in Geneva. The methods of administration, propaganda and terror followed the Russian NarodnayaVolya,and in December i89I the party joined the Oriental Federation of Macedonian, Albanian, Cretan and Greek revolutionaries in order to pursue their cause on a broad front. On I5 July I890 the Henchaks demonstrated at Kum Kapu, where the Armenian Patriarchate was and still is located, 'to awaken the maltreated Armenians and to make the Sublime Porte fully aware of the miseries of the Armenians'; in August I 894 they led the open and armed resistance of Sasun (now Kabilcevaz) against the Kurdish and Turkish chiefs who continued to claim heavy protection tributes; on 30 September I895 they protested and demonstrated at Babi Ali, Istanbul, against the delay in instituting the reforms in the eastern provinces, and on I2 October i 895 they led a rebellion in Zeytun which lasted four months and was only concluded on the intervention of the European powers. These revolutionary activities of the Henchaks forced the Ottoman government to carry out the

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reforms promised at the Congress of Berlin, but on the other hand they excited the anger of the Turks. In chapter six the author describes the 'Revolutionary Activities among the Armenians of Russia, I868-I890'. Here we learn about the revolutionary groups which came to the defence of TurkishArmenia. These were: the Goodwill Society of Alexandropol (Leninakan), Russian Armenia, which was founded in i868; the Bureau of the Devoted to the Fatherland, organised in the Medz Karakilise village of Alexandropol on 20 June 1874; the committee of Narodnaya Volyaformed at Tiflis and consisting of Georgians and Armenians, which in i88i-2 had its own Armenian circle; an anonymous society in Erevan which acted 'during the eighties'; the secret society Strength in Karabagh; the Union of Patriots founded at Moscow in the spring of I882, and the Young Armenia Society established in Tiflis under the leadership of Christaphor Michaelian in the winter of I889. These organisationswere inspired by the successfulrevolutions of the Balkan peoples. Miss Nalbandian comments: 'The successful revolutions in Greece and Bulgaria helped to convince Russian Armenian revolutionaries that the Armenians could also be liberated from the Ottoman Empire. They saw in the Balkans the beneficial results of revolution and urged in their writings that the Armenians use the same methods to achieve

immediateindependence' (p. 149).

The last chapter is entitled 'The Armenian Revolutionary Federation or Dashnaktsuthiun, I890-I896'. (Throughout the chapter, pp. I5I-78, the word 'Federation' in the headings is 27 times misprinted as 'Foundation'.) This strong party was founded at Tiflis in summer I890 by Christaphor Michaelian (I859-I905), Stephan Zorian or Rostom (I867-I9:19) and Simon Zawarian (i866-i 9I3). The Dashnaks were socialist Marxists, and using political means they pursued 'the political and economic freedom of Turkish Armenia'. In their programme and methods they were very close to the Henchakians, in fact at the beginning the two parties were united for a short while. The Dashnaks published a newspaper called Droshak (The Flag) and they achieved close relations with the Young Turks and Christian Balkans. The climax of their indiscreet activity was the siege of the Ottoman Bank at Galata on 26 August I896, the purpose of which was to compel the European powers to put into effect the administrative reforms of Turkish Armenia. This demonstration cost the lives of more than 6,ooo Armenians. The party continues to exist today, but since I920-I it has abandoned socialism and is engaged in an anticommunist campaign. At the end of the study, the author concludes: 'It can be said of them without reservationthat they worked at restoring the honour of their people and they believed as passionately as did their fifthcentury ancestors who fought at Awarayr: "We die as mortals, that we through our death may be placed among those who are immortal"' (p.i 85). Although Miss Nalbandian is not an historian, nevertheless she is a successful portrayer of history, and her book is a very useful and comprehensive account of the activities of the Armenian revolutionary groups and parties from I86o to I896. In compiling her work, the author has made

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use of some manuscript theses and of many printed documents and books in Armenian and European languages. Unfortunately she has neglected the archive materials of Europe, and also the Turkish sources almost completely. Nevertheless, hers is a valuable book which provides the English reader with an impartial short history of the Armenian revolutionary movement, and one hopes that Miss Nalbandian will now carry her researches still further.
Vienna

M. K.

KRIKORIAN

Adams,ArthurE. Bolsheviks in theUkraine, TheSecond I9I8-I9I9. Campaign

Yale University Press, New Haven, Conn., and London, ix + 440 pages. Index. Maps. Bibliography.
I963.

THE Russian civil war, climax of the great revolutionary crisis on the outcome of which depended the future shape of Russian society, is scarcely, if at all, inferior in historical importance to the October revolution itself. Yet comparatively little has been published on the subject in the English language: any addition, therefore, to the information made available to the student of the period is to be warmly welcomed. The Russian civil war, as is well known, presents a bewildering kaleidoscope of rapidly shifting fronts, of military leaders, governments, parties, aspirations, occupations and interventions, in which even the line between 'White' and 'Red' was not always clearly drawn. One of the most troubled regions in this second 'Time of Troubles' was, of course, the Ukraine. Here, the revolutionary events of February and October were superimposed on the traditional tensions created by age-old aspirations for autonomy, by the rivalries of khokhol and katsap,cossack and peasant, peasant and proletarian, Ukrainian, Pole and Jew, of right bank and left, the men of Kiev and the men of Kharkov. Moreover, as one of the major granaries of Europe, the Ukraine in I9 I8 was of vital importance both to the blockaded central powers (and hence, obversely, also to the embattled Entente) and to the grain-starved bolsheviks of the industrial north. The operation of these and other forces (not least amongst them the Ukrainian peasant's healthy views of his own interests) made the Ukraine, for a time, one of the cockpits of struggling Europe. It is with two loosely connected incidents of the 'strugglefor the Ukraine' that the present volume is primarily concerned. The first of these involves the activities of ataman Grigor'yev, a military adventurer 'with remarkable capacities for vodka and fighting', who gained spectacular if ephemeral successes in the southern Ukraine, and, for a short time, held a kind of balance in the Ukraine between the bolsheviks and their opponents. Like his better known and more idealistic contemporary and rival batko Makhno, he found himself, thanks to the strength of his peasant-partisan detachments, placed in a position where, whilst none of the major parties in the civil war either could or would wholly trust him, none would readily incur his enmity. Potentially, the cossack-freebooter was a useful temporary

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