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Title: Anarchism in Armenia Author: Ryan Robert Mitchell Date: 2009 Language: en Topics: Armenia, history, nationalism Source: Retrieved on 22nd November 2021 from https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/9781405198073.wbierp1657 Notes: Published in The International Encyclopedia of Revolution and Protest.
Armenia has long been contested and subjugated by two regional and
competing powers, Russia and the Ottoman empire. The revolutionary
nationalist movement was formed in Armenia in the absence of any liberal
parliamentary movement that sought to represent Armenian interests. In
fact, after decades of alternate subjugation to Russian or Ottoman
power, the majority of Armenians trusted neither the bourgeoisie nor the
Armenian Church, who they saw as colluding with their oppressors. It is
in this environment that radical nationalist movements were formed in
Armenia.
The Hay Heghapokhakan Dashnaktsutiun or Armenian Revolutionary
Federation (most commonly known as either the Dashnaktsutiun or Dashnak
Party) was founded in Tbilisi in1890 as both an outgrowth of and
response to the sterile scientific socialism of the social democratic
Hunchak (Alarm Bell) Party that had been formed three years earlier in
Geneva, and was at that point Armenia’s sole political party.
Premised on the idea that socialism would be the best way to mobilize
the worker population who were horrified by Ottoman oppression and
massacres, the Dashnaktsutiun was a loose federation that attracted
socialist revolutionaries, national liberationists, and social
democrats. Lacking any ideological coherence, the party was defined by
the objective of liberation rather than ideology. Unlike the earlier
Hunchak Party, which defined national liberation as separate from social
liberation, the Dashnaks defined liberation in terms of a people rather
than territory. It was important, then, for the Dashnak Party to also
appeal to Muslim and Turkish people, both of whom they saw as being
oppressed by despotic Ottoman rulers.
Early in its founding, the Dashnak Party had a strong anarchist
contingent and its best known figure was Alexander Atabekian (1868–ca.
1940?). Atabekian extensively published Russian and Armenian language
publications as part of the Armenian expatriate anarchist communities of
Geneva, London, and Paris. In 1894, while in Paris working on his
medical degree, he began publishing the Armenian language anarchist
journal Hamayankh (Commune), which detailed the Ottoman massacres and
the Armenian resistance against them.
Beyond being a publisher, Atabekian would later serve as Peter
Kropotkin’s personal physician and was at the latter’s side when he died
in 1921. Atabekian’s own fate is unknown since there is no record of his
death or of his activities after 1921. It is likely that he perished in
the Soviet purging of political dissidents.
By the turn of the century, anarchist presence within the Dashnak Party
had effectively disappeared as the party became fractured and
increasingly authoritarian – something Atabekian had earlier expressed
concern about in the Hamayankh journal. Outside of anarchocommunist
activities in 1905 in industrial cities like Tbilisi, Kutaisi, and Baku,
any major anarchist presence in Armenia effectively ended in this era
due to increased tsarist (and later Soviet) repression and the
subsequent Ottoman genocide.
In an ironic turn of events, after Armenia gained independence from the
Soviet Union in 1991, the Dashnaktsutiun reformed as a right-wing
nationalist party supporting authoritarian post-independence regimes. In
2005 the new Dashnak Party was involved in the persecution of members of
the anarchist network Autonomous Action, which sought to expose
irregularities in the electoral process.
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REFERENCES AND SUGGESTED READINGS
Karapetian, G. (2007) Armenian History in Anarchist Perspective.
Available at http://azat.
wordpress.com/2007/02/07/the-anarchisthistoriography-of-armenian-people/#more-25
(accessed April 1, 2008).
Libaridian, G. J. (1996) Revolution and Liberation in the 1892 and 1907
Programs of the Dashnaktsutiun. In R. G. Suny (Ed.), Transcaucasia,
Nationalism and Social Change: Essays in the History of Armenia,
Azerbaijan and Georgia. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
Selbuz, C. (2006) Biography of Armenian Anarchist Alexander Atabekian.
Trans. Deniz Keskin. Abolishing the Borders From Below 25 (July).
Suny, R. G. (Ed.) (1996a) Transcaucasia, Nationalism and Social Change:
Essays in the History of Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia. Ann Arbor:
University of Michigan Press.
Suny, R. G. (1996b) Nationalism and Social Class in the Russian
Revolution: The Cases of Baku and Tiflis. In R. G. Suny (Ed.),
Transcaucasia, Nationalism and Social Change: Essays in the History of
Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan
Press.
Ter-Minassian, A. (1996) Nationalism and Socialism in the Armenian
Revolutionary Movement (1887–1912). In R. G. Suny (Ed.), Transcaucasia,
Nationalism and Social Change: Essays in the History of Armenia,
Azerbaijan and Georgia. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.