1915 – DEAR BROTHER IN LAW
Collectif des Democrates Armeniens d’Europe, France
May 22 2006
Le ttre d’un volontaire armenien dans l’armee russe, ecrite en 1915
a son beau-frère.
Dans cette lettre, E. Vartanian fait allusion a l’organisations des
troupes armeniennes dans l’est de l’Empire Ottoman en 1915.
Letter from Mr. E. Vartanian, an Armenian-American Volunteer in the
Russian Service, to His Brother-in-law in Egypt ; Dated 9th /22nd
July,1915, and Published in the Armenian Journal “Houssaper,” of Cairo.
“We have been here three days. Some of us are going to be sent to
Erivan ; the rest of us are starting in two days for Van.
The enthusiasm here is very great. There are already 20,000
volunteers at the front, and they are trying to increase the
number to 30,000. Each district we occupy is placed under Armenian
administration, and an Armenian post is running from Igdir to Van.
The Russian Government is showing great goodwill towards the
Armenians and doing everything in its power for the liberation of
Turkish Armenia.
When we disembarked at Archangel the Government gave us every possible
assistance. It even undertook the transport of our baggage, and gave
us free passes, second class, to Petrograd.
At Petrograd we received an equally hearty welcome, and the
Governor of the city presented each of us with a medal in token
of his sympathy. The Armenian colony put us up in the best hotels,
entertained us at the best restaurants, and could not make enough
of us. This lasted for five days, and then we continued our journey,
again at the Government’s expense, to Tiflis.
Everywhere on the way the population received us with cheers and
offerings of flowers. Just as we were leaving Archangel, a young
Russian lady came with flowers and offered one to each of us. I
also saw a quite poor man who was so moved by the speech in Russian
that one of our comrades had made, that he came and put his tobacco
into the pipe of a comrade standing next to me, and kept nothing for
himself but a bare half-pipeful. A third, an old man, was so moved
by the speech that he began to cry and nearly made off, but a little
while after I saw him standing in front of the carriage window and,
with a shaking hand, holding out a hard-boiled egg to our comrade
the chemist Roupen Stepanian. Probably it was his one meal for the day.
And so at every step we found ourselves in the midst of affecting
scenes. At Petrograd Railway Station the crowd was enormous. There was
an Armenian lady there who offered each of us a rose. There were boys
and young men who wept because they could not come with us. At Rostov
a young Russian joined our ranks. He was caught more than once by his
parents at the stations further down the line, but he always succeeded
in escaping them and reioining us. We have christened him Stepan.
When we arrived at Tiflis, we marched singing to the offices of
the Central Armenian Bureau, with our flag unfurled in front of us,
and the people marched on either side of us in such a crowd that the
trams were forced to stop running.
That is enough for to-day. My next letter shall be written from
Armenia itself..
Please say nothing to my sister about this resolution that I have
taken. I hope, of course, that she would know how to sacrifice
her affection for her brother to her love for the nation and for
liberty.. I should curse any of my relations who lament my resolution ;
they would have committed treason against the nation. There are five
of us brothers ; was it not imperative that at least one of us should
devote himself to the cause of a national emancipation ? Let us keep
up our courage, realise the urgency of the moment and do our duty.”
–Boundary_(ID_5XGWcKzHCeImPKL4fVwtFA)–