Sun
Centennial Minus One
The Complicated Trek of May 28 in the Armenian Diaspora
By Ara Sanjian
Gevorg Melik-Gharagyozyan, Minister of Education in 1919 from the
Armenian People's Party (sitting behind the table in his
cabinet). Photo courtesy: Mikhail Vermishev, grandson of
Melik-Gharagyozyan.
May 28: A Pivotal Moment in Modern Armenian History
Professor Ara Sanjian, Associate Professor of History and the Director
of the Armenian Research Center at the University of Michigan-Dearborn
speaks to EVN Report's Roubina Margossian about the importance and
significance of the First Armenian Republic (1918-1920).
The government building of the 1918-1920 Armenian Republic.
In exactly one year from now many Armenians across the globe will
celebrate the 100th anniversary of the proclamation of an independent
republic in Armenia during the final months of the First World
War. Depending on when they locate the ultimate collapse of the last
Armenian medieval kingdom, most Armenians will tell you that this
proclamation on May 28, 1918 marked the return of an independent
Armenian entity to the world political map after a hiatus of nearly
six to nine centuries. They will also add that this proclamation was
the most unfailing sign of the rebirth of the Armenian people, only
three years after the genocide it had suffered in the Ottoman Empire.
In 2015, the government of Armenia succeeded in bringing together
almost all influential organizations in the far-flung Armenian
Diaspora to impressively mark and on a worldwide scale the centennial
of the darkest page in modern Armenian history. Preparations for the
genocide centennial had begun in earnest four years earlier - with the
Armenian president establishing on April 23, 2011 a state commission
to coordinate the events dedicated to the 100th commemoration of the
Armenian Genocide.
In contrast, the same president formed a commission for the upcoming
100th anniversary of the proclamation of national independence only
last month, on April 21, 2017 - just over a year before the
anticipated celebrations in late May 2018. The state commission to
organize events dedicated to the 100th anniversary of the Republic of
Armenia and the battles of May 1918 is presided over by Armenia's
Prime Minister and does not, at present, include delegates from the
Diaspora - except the Armenia representative of the Armenian General
Benevolent Union (AGBU). The Diasporan structures of the Armenian
Revolutionary Federation (Dashnaktsutiun) will also be indirectly
involved, since the party's Armenia branch is represented in the
country's legislature and as such will have a member serving on the
commission. The presidential decree foresees, however, the possibility
of extending additional invitations to new members - including those
from the Diaspora. Pan-Armenian bodies like the Armenia Fund and the
forthcoming sixth Armenia-Diaspora Forum will also be asked to get
involved. Finally, the Ministry of the Diaspora is tasked with
coordinating and assisting the holding of similar celebrations among
Armenian communities outside the homeland.[1]
It has not been disclosed whether behind-the-scenes discussions were
held by the Armenian government with various groupings in the Diaspora
prior to the release of this decree. It will also be interesting to
discover what the eventual reactions of these factions will be, from
now and until May 2018, for, although there is by now an established
consensus in the Diaspora that the three battles of Sardarabad,
Bash-Aparan and Karakilise were pivotal in saving the Eastern
Armenians in the former Russian Empire from extinction similar to the
genocide that had earlier struck the Western/Ottoman Armenians, the
emphasis laid on the symbolism of the proclamation of independence a
few days later, on May 28, 1918, continues to keep the Diaspora
divided, as we shall see below.
Armenian independent statehood was proclaimed at the end of May 1918
in the most unpropitious circumstances. In early 1918, Transcaucasia
(now more often called the South Caucasus), then still formally part
of Russia, had come under Ottoman attack. A short-lived experiment to
have an independent federal Transcaucasian republic encompassing
Armenians, Azerbaijanis and Georgians had collapsed, and Georgia and
Azerbaijan had just declared their independence on May 26 and 28,
respectively. It was only on May 30 that the Armenian leadership in
Transcaucasia issued a statement resembling an Armenian declaration of
independence. For many decades, Armenians had struggled primarily for
improved conditions, self-rule and at times for ultimate secession
from the Ottoman Empire. There was quasi-universal agreement that
conditions for Armenians in Russian Transcaucasia were much better
than under the Ottomans. It was, therefore, ironic that by May 1918
most Armenians had either been killed or expelled from their ancestral
lands in the Ottoman Empire, while a small Armenian state would now
emerge on formerly Russian-controlled territory. It was also
perplexing that the Ottoman Empire would be the first foreign country
to sign an international treaty with the new Armenian state.
Cut off from the Allies of the Great War - Russia, Britain and France
- on whom they had pinned their hopes, Armenian leaders initially
tried to do their best under the watchful eye of the Ottomans and
their German and Austro-Hungarian allies. A tricolor flag - horizontal
red, blue and orange stripes - was designed in July as one of the
early symbols of the new state,[2] and it was flown on August 1, 1918,
at the opening of the country's hastily assembled legislature in
Yerevan.[3]
The young state's prospects changed dramatically in October 1918, when
the Ottomans accepted defeat in the Great War and withdrew their
forces back to the pre-war international border. This gave the
Armenian republic an opportunity to expand eastward and soon there
emerged widespread optimism among all Armenians that a large
independent Armenian state - encompassing Armenian-inhabited
territories in the former Russian and Ottoman empires - would be
endorsed by the forthcoming international peace conference. The
nascent political entity now came to be seen as just a stepping stone
toward a much larger and independent nation-state, which many
Armenians had long dreamt of.
Transcaucasia delegation in Batumi.
Armenian delegation to Constantinople, 1918.
It is very curious, therefore, that even under these seemingly
favorable conditions, the republic's official holiday list which its
legislature approved on January 17, 1919 did not include Armenia's
Independence Day. The only secular holidays on the voted list were the
Anniversary of the February Revolution of 1917 in the former Russian
Empire (February 27 old style, corresponding to March 12 according to
the Gregorian calendar) and the International Workers' Day (May 1).[4]
Nevertheless, four months later, in the run up to the first
anniversary of the declaration of independence, May 28, 1919 was
instituted as a holiday by special decree. The government thus chose
as the republic's Independence Day the decision by the Armenian
National Council a year earlier to dispatch a delegation to Batumi
with unlimited powers to conclude peace with the Ottomans on behalf of
the Armenian people or in the name of independent Armenia.[5] The
government also used the same anniversary to proclaim the Act of
United Armenia.[6] May 28 was marked majestically again in 1920,[7]
and it is very likely that this anniversary would have become an
annual public holiday had Armenia's parliament gotten the opportunity
to revise the republic's holiday list.
Among the young state's other symbols, the patriotic song, Mer
Hayrenik (Our Fatherland), was formalized as the national anthem in
1919. It had long been chanted as a marching song by various Armenian
political factions fighting oppression in the Ottoman Empire. Finally,
in July 1920, the Armenian government also approved a new coat of arms
for the republic.[8]
These new symbols, especially the tricolor flag and the coat of arms,
were deemed provisional until the expected merger of the former
Ottoman and Russian Armenias and the convening of a Constituent
Assembly to draft the fundamental law of the unified state.[9] Indeed,
a number of suggestions appeared in the Armenian press worldwide about
the design of the future flag of united Armenia.[10] Nevertheless,
even during the relatively short lifespan of the independent republic,
the latter's newly adopted and supposedly provisional symbols - and
the tricolor flag in particular - quickly spread to the various
Diasporan communities.[11]
The status of these symbols quickly underwent a drastic change,
however, after the defeat of the Republic of Armenia against the
invading Turkish Nationalists, the collapse of the dream of soon
having a united Armenia, and the republic's sovietization, all in
quick succession in late 1920.
The Dashnaktsutiun, also referred to as the Dashnak party, which had
been the dominant political force in the Republic of Armenia in
1918-1920, was forced into exile. It would thereafter remain at
loggerheads with the Communists, who replaced it in Yerevan, for the
next seven decades. This persistent antagonism would have serious
impact on how the symbols of the 1918-1920 republic were perceived
throughout those 70 years.
The Armenian Coat of Arms. The eagle and lion are ancient Armenian
symbols dating from the first Armenian kingdoms.
The Communists, both in Moscow and Yerevan, consistently identified
the Dashnaktsutiun as their major political and ideological opponent
in Armenian life. Consequently, they went all-out against any attempt
by others to present the Dashnak record in modern Armenian history in
positive light. This anti-Dashnak campaign by Communists also included
a determined effort to avoid the usage of terms like "independence" or
"republic" when referring to the 1918-1920 period. Soviet historians
wrote that those 30 months were simply an era of Dashnak domination
when this political party, defending the interests of the reactionary
Armenian bourgeoisie, allegedly oppressed Armenian workers and
peasants who were longing for the establishment of Soviet rule in
their country. And since, according to this Soviet interpretation,
Armenia of 1918-1920 was not a proper republic, no mention could be
made of its symbols, nor could May 28 be associated with independence.
The Dashnaktsutiun, in turn, continuously questioned the legitimacy of
Soviet rule in Eastern Armenia and remained committed to the political
objective of "Free, Independent and United Armenia," which it had
first formulated in 1919. This goal made the Dashnaks enemies of both
Republican Turkey and the Soviet Union. Prior to the Great War,
Dashnaks had been active among both Western and Eastern
Armenians. Many of the party's Western Armenian leaders had fallen
victim during the genocide. In the meantime, most of the party's
Eastern Armenian leaders, who had filled commanding positions during
the short-lived independent republic, had now found refuge abroad,
after Armenia's Sovietization. They immediately filled this leadership
void in the Dashnak-controlled circles of the emergent Diaspora, which
consisted mostly of Western Armenian genocide survivors. Constructing
a somewhat idealized history of the 30 months of independence became
one of the basic tools of these Eastern Armenian leaders to wage
ideological warfare against Communism from exile and maintain the
support of the Western Armenian masses in this struggle. A master
narrative glorifying the short-lived independence period soon emerged,
based on the published memoirs of former Prime Ministers Aleksandr
Khatisian and Simon Vratsian, former Defense Minister Ruben
Ter-Minasian and others. For those who accepted or were later raised
under the influence of this master narrative, the symbols of the
1918-20 republic became, first, reminders of a very promising past,
which the Communists had brutally snatched away and replaced with an
defective present, but also a clarion call for continuous,
multifaceted struggle against the Communist system in Yerevan in order
to bring that promising, but treacherously stolen past back to life.
However, not all circles in the post-genocide Diaspora appropriated
the Dashnaks' political agenda and, consequently, their master
narrative about the 1918-1920 period. The Dashnaks were opposed in the
Diaspora by a loose, but broad "coalition" which brought together
members of other pan-Diasporic structures like the Hunchakian and
Ramkavar parties, outright Communists, the ostensibly non-political
AGBU, as well as members of various social classes and smaller
organizations of usually local significance. All these factions and
individuals made peace with the new Soviet reality in Eastern
Armenia. While their particular attitudes toward the ideology and
ultimate goals of Communism varied sharply, none of them challenged
the regime's legitimacy and all were ready to work with the new Soviet
leadership toward the betterment of life in Eastern Armenia, as much
as such efforts were permitted at different times by successive
leaders in the Kremlin. This Diasporan "coalition" looked at Soviet
Armenia through rosy glasses and was eager to celebrate its social and
cultural successes publicized by the Communists in
Yerevan. Consequently, its counter narrative downplayed the
achievements of the 1918-1920 republic as propagated by the
Dashnaktsutiun. It also questioned the political symbolism, which the
Dashnak ideologues accorded to the 1918-1920 republic. This
"coalition" had no reason to reject the new symbols of Soviet Armenia
even when it was usually cautious in displaying them in public, out of
fear of getting accused as Communist sympathizers. Accordingly, it
looked at the symbols of the 1918-1920 republic at most as prized
historical relics, but more often it disliked their public usage by
Dashnaks because as, one convinced member of this "coalition" told me
privately during my teenage years in the 1980s, it had come to see
them as "symbols which reject Armenia's present-day reality." There
was no room for these symbols in public activities organized by
various organizations within this "coalition" and no annual
celebration of May 28 as a great historical landmark.
As a result, the annual celebration of May 28 in the Diaspora became
the preserve of Dashnak circles in various communities, while attempts
to display the symbols of the 1918-1920 republic in public spaces
shared by the two rival Armenian camps often led to controversy,
arguments and even fistfights. In one extreme case, the decision by
Archbishop Leon Tourian (Ghewond Durian) to ask for the removal of the
tricolor flag from the stage before his delivering an invocation
during the celebration of Armenian Day at the Century of Progress
Exposition in Chicago on July 1, 1933 hastened the eventual schism
between pro-Dashnaks and their rivals within the Diocese of the
Armenian Church in the United States on September 1, and may even have
been a cause behind the archbishop's assassination on December 24, all
in 1933. Sharply antagonistic attitudes as regards the legitimacy of
Soviet rule in Armenia continued to draw the main line of political
division in the Diaspora until the early 1960s.
Thereafter, as the fiftieth anniversary of the genocide in 1965
approached, the global Cold War was slowly moving toward d tente, not
long after and perhaps because of the perilous climax of previous
escalation during the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962.
Military parade in Echmiadzin, 1918.
Armenia's Peace Conference delegation to Paris, 1919.
The Red Army enters Yerevan.
The antagonistic Cold War ideologies of socialism and Americanization
had also both begun meeting new forms of identitarianist resistance
worldwide, based on ethnicity and religion.[12] Under these
circumstances, the Armenian Diaspora witnessed a kind of "elite
settlement" among the three political parties - Dashnaks, Hunchakians
and Ramkavars.[13] Within a relatively short period of time, these
parties decided to cut down their decades-old intense antagonism and
direct their energies instead primarily toward Turkey, by demanding
recognition and restitution for the genocide of World War I. It is
assumed that the passing, through old age, of the generation of
Eastern Armenian Dashnak leaders from the period of the 1918-1920
republic and their replacement in party leadership positions by a new
cohort of Western Armenian activists raised mostly in the
post-genocide survivor communities in the Middle East also contributed
to this shift in Dashnak priorities. The joint commemoration of the
fiftieth anniversary of the Armenian Genocide in Beirut in 1965 was
the clearest indication of this monumental change in Diasporan
politics. In order to secure full Hunchakian and Ramkavar
participation in joint events such as the fiftieth anniversary
commemoration just mentioned, the Dashnaks even agreed on this and
future occasions to the condition of their new partners not to raise
the tricolor flag of the 1918-1920 republic during joint events. A few
years ago a veteran leader of the Dashnak party remembered, during a
private conversation we were having, an ironic incident when a
lifelong devotee of the Dashnak party had gotten upset at this
concession made by his party leaders and had defiantly carried his own
tricolor flag to a joint genocide commemoration event. The Dashnak
party leadership had then expelled him for disobeying
instructions. "It was the most bizarre decision we had to make,"
concluded my interlocutor, "but party discipline has to be respected!"
Nevertheless, disagreements on how to deal with the Soviet regime
persisted among the established political factions in the Diaspora
even after this "elite settlement," albeit with noticeably less
acrimony. During the same period, the official Soviet rhetoric toward
the Dashnaks was also toned down, but not altered, and this
modification also encouraged the emergence of a relatively more
tranquil milieu in the Diaspora. Nevertheless, the legitimacy of the
Soviet regime in Eastern Armenia remained the major obstacle for the
three Diaspora-based parties to forge a common position on what the
international legal status of Western Armenia should be, if it were
liberated from Turkey. Accordingly, public intellectuals from the
rival camps persisted with the "other war," that on the historiography
of the 1918-1920 republic, even in the new era of Armenian d tente,
though, in this case, too, more infrequently and with much less
bitterness.
The "elite settlement" of the 1960s decisively condemned the political
violence that had beset the Diaspora in the recent past. It also
reaffirmed time and again that national unity among the existing
political factions was the ideal. Nevertheless, it failed to develop a
common historical reading of the recent Armenian past. To avoid
further controversy when the "elite settlement" was still fresh and
somewhat insecure, the parties involved simply made any public
discussion of past intra-party political rivalries a taboo, warning
their followers that such debates could reopen old wounds by reminding
present-day Armenians of a bygone era of intra-Armenian tensions and
rivalries.
Richard G. Hovannisian, then a young graduate student, embarked upon
his monumental five-volume study of the period 1917-1920 in the 1960s,
at a time when this "elite settlement" was taking shape across the
Diaspora. The fifth volume of what will evidently remain as his magnum
opus came out over three decades later, in 1996. Yet, at a public
lecture in Belmont, MA on December 3, 2015, Hovannisian admitted that
during his long career he had been invited to lecture about the
1918-1920 republic in public only on a handful of occasions, compared
to the hundreds of public lectures he has been asked to give during
the same time period on various facets of the Armenian
Genocide. Explaining this discrepancy is easy through the paradigm
suggested in this article: in the era following the "elite settlement"
of the 1960s, the Armenian Genocide is seen as a topic which unites
all Armenians across the Diaspora. It must be encouraged to further
deepen this desirable unity. There is still no consensus, however, in
the same Diaspora, about how the 1918-1920 republic should be viewed
and assessed. Therefore, it is better to avoid any public discussion
of this and similar controversial topics in order to avoid any
possible can of worms.
Armenian Genocide 50th anniversary commemoration, Yerevan, 1965.
Armenian Genocide 50th anniversary commemoration, Los Angeles, 1965.
Another, parallel fallout of the "elite settlement" for Diasporan
historiography was the "privatization" of the discussion of individual
heroes and stellar moments within the received histories of each
political (and religious) faction. For example, Kristapor Mikayelian,
the takeover of the Ottoman Bank, the Khanasor Raid and Nikol
Aghbalian are now discussed in public and celebrated only by Dashnaks;
Avetis Nazarbek, Paramaz, the Kum kapu and Bab-i Ali demonstrations,
by Hunchakians; Cardinal Agagianian, by Armenian Catholics, and so
on. As a byproduct of this "elite settlement," rival Diasporan
factions stopped openly challenging the interpretations of "the other
side" regarding the latter's individual heroes and glorious historical
episodes, even when they privately remained skeptical regarding what
"the other side" was saying or writing in public. The historical
analysis, celebration and symbolism of May 28 became one such
"privatized" topic - in this case, within the pro-Dashnak circles of
the Diaspora. Like other topics in this category, May 28 became a de
facto "forbidden area" for all except its "owner," the Dashnak party
and its sympathizers.
Despite efforts by all parties to downplay in the public sphere issues
over which there was still no consensus and avoid their discussion in
shared spaces, the simple reality of the persistence of contrasting
analyses and evaluations in the private sphere made it inevitable that
conflicts related to these "unresolved" issues will arise from time to
time, although in most cases the immediate reaction by all parties
would be to contain rather than try to solve these problems. Armenian
organizations and institutions outside the immediate control of one of
the three parties, i.e. those which tried hard to maintain some sort
of political neutrality, constantly had to walk on a tightrope in
order not to antagonize any of the rival factions. Haigazian College
(since 1996, University) in Beirut, an institution where I worked from
1995 to 2005, was one such location. From the mid-1970s on, it came up
with a creative solution to the contested issue whether May 28 should
be commemorated as a public holiday within Diasporan circles - a
Dashnak demand, opposed vehemently by their Hunchakian and Ramkavar
rivals. Successive catalogs of the college, starting in the mid-1970s,
underlined that there would be no classes at Haigazian on May 28
because it was the institution's "Field Trip Day (Armenian
Independence Day)"; political overtones were avoided by turning the
day into a leisure activity rather than a political
celebration. Nevertheless, even after this ingenious compromise,
problems did arise on the college campus during certain
anniversaries. Jirayr Beugekian, then a Dashnak student at Haigazian
College, has described two such incidents he and other Dashnak
students were involved in with fellow Hunchakian students during the
academic year 1980-1981. First, the Dashnak students opposed a
Hunchakian initiative to suspend classes on the anniversary of the
sovietization of Armenia (29 November) and, a few months later, the
Hunchakians challenged the right of Dashnak students to hoist tricolor
flags on rooftops on May 28 and have a lunchtime extracurricular
activity to mark the anniversary.[14]
The massive demonstrations that took place in Soviet Armenia in
February 1988 did not initially threaten the established Diasporan
"elite settlement." By then, the Dashnaks were not as keen as before
on pushing for Eastern Armenia's immediate secession from the Soviet
Union, and it was, therefore, not against the spirit of the "elite
settlement" to submit a joint demand for the unification of
Mountainous Karabakh with Soviet Armenia and to forcefully condemn the
massacre of Armenians by Azerbaijanis in Sumgait.
Faced with the Kremlin's intransigence, however, the Karabakh movement
in Yerevan gradually became more independentist, and this gradual
shift generated a deep interest among the politically mobilized public
in Armenia about the history of the 1918-1920 republic and its
symbols. This curiosity regarding the 1918-1920 period was also
initially in line with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev's calls to
study the blank pages of history - topics, which Soviet historians had
previously been ordered to avoid.
The anniversary of May 28 was first marked in Yerevan in 1988,
alongside the rallies demanding the annexation of Mountainous
Karabakh. Movses Gorgisian is now credited for being the first to
raise the tricolor flag of 1918-1920 that day in Theater (now,
Liberty) Square in downtown Yerevan. Gorgisian, however, was a member
of the relatively small independentist wing of the Karabakh Movement,
and the Karabakh Committee, which then led the movement's mainstream,
stayed away from this particular celebration.
However, as it became clear to the masses that the Kremlin leadership
was adamantly opposed to making internal border changes within the
Soviet Union, calls for Armenia's independence and the raising of the
tricolor flag became more and more common during rallies held in the
summer and fall of 1988.
Thereafter, the Communist Party's Central Committee in Yerevan had a
change of heart, sometime around mid-May 1989, and asked its Institute
of Party History/Armenian branch of the Institute of Marxism-Leninism,
the Soviet Armenian Academy of Sciences, and Yerevan State University
to co-organize a conference on the First Republic of Armenia in
1918-1920 on May 26, 1989. This hastily convened gathering formally
recommended to the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of Soviet Armenia
to declare May 28 as the Day of the Re-Establishment of Armenian
Statehood (Haykakan petakanutyan verakangnman or) and designate the
tricolor flag as an Armenian national symbol. These recommendations
were implemented immediately,[15] and Communist Party newspapers -
Khorhrdayin Hayastan, Erekoyan Erevan, Avangard and others - carried a
number of lengthy articles about the history of the 1918-1920 republic
in their issues published between May 26 and 28, 1989. Even the
newspaper Pravda in Moscow printed a short report on May 29 about the
popular festivities that had taken place in Yerevan the previous day.
Thus, for over a year, Soviet Armenia would have both an official
state flag and the tricolor flag as a separate national symbol. A year
later, this duality was brought to an end, however, when the
Communists ended up as the minority in Soviet Armenia's legislature in
August 1990. The new, reformist majority in the Supreme Soviet
scrapped the Soviet-era flag and reinstated the tricolor as Armenia's
state flag on August 24, 1990 - after a gap of almost seven decades.
The re-adoption of the other symbols of the 1918-1920 republic
continued in the next couple of years as Armenia's pursuit of
sovereignty and political independence deepened and ultimately
acquired international recognition. Mer Hayrenik was reinstated as the
national anthem on July 1,1991, while the old coat of arms was revived
soon after the independence referendum of September 21, 1991.
Today, Armenia's official holiday list includes both May 28 (to mark
independence in 1918) and September 21 (to celebrate the referendum
for independence in 1991). The tricolor flag, Mer Hayrenik and the
reinstated coat of arms are wholeheartedly accepted by the
overwhelming majority, not to say all, of the country's
population. Few people, mostly members of the dwindling and ageing
Communist Party, do continue to hoist in public any of the symbols of
Soviet Armenia.
The situation in the Diaspora remains slightly different, and that's
why the question posed at the beginning of this article - about what
response the presidential decree to mark the centennial of May 28 next
year will get outside Armenia - remains fascinating. For Dashnaks in
the Diaspora, the about face by the outgoing Soviet Armenian regime in
1989 regarding the anniversary of May 28 and the symbols of the
1918-1920 republic was a vindication of what their party had struggled
for throughout 70 years. It was proof that they had been right all
along. Today, they are proud that post-Soviet, independent Armenia
continues to honor the proclamation of independence on May 28, 1918
and has this particular flag, this particular national anthem, and
this particular coat of arms, all symbols which the Dashnak party had
preserved and held high for seven decades, ignoring all kinds of
criticism from other Armenian circles in the Diaspora. They cannot
imagine an independent Armenia close to their heart not having this
particular flag, this particular national anthem, and this particular
coat of arms.
For the anti-Dashnak "coalition," however, the same about face in
Yerevan was initially a bitter pill to swallow. It took some months
for its leaders to get accustomed to the new reality and then explain
to their followers that this sudden interest in Soviet Armenia toward
the symbols of the 1918-1920 republic was not a defeat of their 70
year-long ideological struggle, that Armenia was not going to be taken
over fully by their Dashnak rivals, and that they would still be
welcome there under the revived state symbols of 1918-1920.
1988 demonstration in Yerevan, near the Opera house, currently known
as Liberty Square.
Movses Gosgisian during a rally in Yerevan, 1988.
Invitation to May 26, 1989 conference.
Today, in the metro Detroit area where I have lived since 2006, the
Armenian tricolor flies high, alongside the national flag of the
United States, in front of the AGBU Alex and Marie Manoogian
School. The same is true for the headquarters of MASCO, the very
successful company of the late, former AGBU president Alex Manoogian,
now run by his son, Richard. This would have been unthinkable before
1989. All across the Diaspora, members of organizations which were
once part of the anti-Dashnak "coalition" in the Soviet era now stand
proudly when Mer Hayrenik is played as Armenia's national anthem
during events they organize. It's rarer, but not unusual to see the
coat of arms of the Republic of Armenia hanging on the walls of some
of their premises. Members of this former "coalition" now justify
their acceptance of the symbols they once shunned by maintaining that
their love of the fatherland is not conditioned by particular
symbols. They will love and support the Armenian state whatever its
flag, anthem and coat of arms are. Unlike the Dashnaks, we should
expect little or no resistance from this group of Armenians during a
hypothetical situation in future when constitutional mechanisms are
launched to change one or more of the republic's current, i.e. the
1918-1920, symbols.
Whatever the justifications provided by members of the two previously
antagonistic factions in the Soviet-era Diaspora, the situation has
come full circle at the moment, as far as the tricolor flag, Mer
Hayrenik and the 1918-1920 coat of arms are concerned. They are now
all respected as symbols which unify rather than divide the Diaspora,
and there is an abundance of tricolor flags wherever Armenians of
various political persuasions march together on April 24 every year.
Unfortunately, the annual celebration of May 28 has remained the odd
symbol out of the current consensus. The catalog of Haigazian
University reinserted the description "Founding of the Republic of
Armenia" in its 2007-2009 version and the designation of May 28 also
as "Field Trip Day" was eventually dropped in the 2012-2014
catalog. We can assume that the top administration of the university
made these changes confident that it will no longer be charged with
bias by anti-Dashnak factions in the Armenian community in Lebanon for
having acted the way it did. It will be difficult for members of the
former anti-Dashnak "coalition" to demand the scrapping of May 28 as
Armenian Independence Day from the university's academic calendar or
from any other list now that it is an official holiday in Armenia
itself and can no longer be interpreted as "a symbol which rejects
Armenia's present-day reality."
But why do members of this "coalition" fail to follow the current
government in Armenia and join in the annual celebrations of May 28 -
either by organizing events of their own or by participating in events
which Dashnaks have traditionally held for decades in the various
Diasporan communities? As I write these lines in Beirut and with the
next May 28 only a few hours away, the Dashnak news outlets are
reporting that this year too, the Dashnak-affiliated sports
association, Homenetmen, will hold its traditional annual march and
festivities in Lebanon on May 28, while the party will also have its
separate celebration, probably combining one or two political speeches
with songs and music. The newspapers of the Hunchakian and Ramkavar
parties are as usual silent regarding this forthcoming anniversary and
will probably ignore it this year too. On the other hand, one may also
ask why does the Dashnak party hesitate to take the initiative itself
and invite the other parties to co-organize a joint event - like those
they already do for decades every April 24?
May 28, 1919 celebration in Yerevan.
Armenian Revolutionary Federation (Dashnaktsutyun) Memorial Ruble,
1990.
I will not extend this already lengthy article further by providing
some personal thoughts about why the differing approaches toward May
28 in the present-day Diaspora (described in this article) have become
calcified the way they have been for many decades by now. I prefer to
see what reactions the latest initiative by the government in Armenia
will receive in the coming months and perhaps I'll then return to this
topic.
Last year the Dashnak party in Lebanon commemorated what it described
as the builders of Armenia's independence with a memorial service held
at the Armenian national cemetery in Bourj Hammoud on May 29. The list
of the political figures commemorated was entirely Dashnak. It
excluded Armenians of other political persuasions who had also been
active in Eastern Armenia or abroad during the 1918-1920 period, and
later died and are buried in Lebanon. I think this could have been a
very good occasion for the Dashnak organizers to push the anniversary
of May 28 out of its "privatized" nature described in this article. If
this is their objective, alas, the opportunity was missed!
Will the current Armenian government, whose legitimacy is challenged
by many people inside the country, but which enjoys acceptance by most
of the traditional Diasporan organizations, be able to go one better
and break the ice described in this article? It will be hard and it
certainly needs a lot of imaginative effort to succeed. But, if it
does, it will be a remarkable achievement - irrespective of what
people think about other aspects of the current government's political
and socio-economic record.
-------------------------------------------------
[1] For the full text of the presidential decree, see
https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__www.irtek.am_views_act.aspx-3Faid-3D89467&d=DwIBAg&c=clK7kQUTWtAVEOVIgvi0NU5BOUHhpN0H8p7CSfnc_gI&r=LVw5zH6C4LHpVQcGEdVcrQ&m=PuOr5hRxNlrt3ALGUHsSs7yEm8MGCACGvEkKJzIFDdo&s=HOaxphrKnoKxCI2rOA8Eoypl5psyiza0uAi991SwUQs&e=
(last accessed: 27 May
2017).
[2] Simon Vratsian, Hayastani Hanrapetutiwn (Paris, 1928),
pp. 160-161.
[3] Richard G. Hovannisian, The Republic of Armenia, Volume I: The
First Year, 1918-1919 (Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of
California Press, 1971), p. 43.
[4] A. Virabyan, Hayastani hanrapetutyan parlamenti nisteri
ardzanagrutyunnere 1918-1920tt. (Yerevan: National Archives of
Armenia, 2010), pp. 160-161.
[5] Hovannisian, Republic, I, p. 33.
[6] Ibid., pp. 459-461.
[7] Ibid., III (1996), pp. 255-258.
[8] Vratsian, Hayastani, p. 393.
[9] Ibid., pp. 160-161 and 393.
[10] For an overview, see the three-part study by A[rtashes]
Ter-Khachaturian, `Hay droshi arajarkner (1918-1919 tuakannerun)',
Azdak, 30 June-2 July 1992.
[11] For examples of the use of the tricolor flag among Armenians in
Constantinople in 1919 and 1921, see Lerna Ekmeko#lu, Recovering
Armenia: The Limits of Belonging to Post-Genocide Turkey (Stanford,
California: Stanford University Press, 2016), pp. 20-21 and 45-46.
[12] Odd Arne Westad, The Global Cold War: Third World Interventions
and the Making of Our Times (Cambridge University Press, 2005),
p. 400.
[13] For the concept of "elite settlement," see Michael G. Burton and
John Higley, "Elite Settlements," American Sociological Review,
Vol. 52, No. 3 (Jun., 1987), pp. 295-307; Michael Burton, Richard
Gunther, and John Higley, "Introduction: Elite Transformations and
Democratic Regimes", in John Higley and Richard Gunther (eds.), Elites
and Democratic Consolidation in Latin America and Southern Europe
(Cambridge, New York and Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 1991),
pp. 1-37..
[14] Jirayr Beugekian, `Noyember 29en Mayis 28', in H.H.D. Zawarian
Usanoghakan Miutiwn, Mek Dar` Bruntskov Pahanjatirutiwn... (2004),
pp. 116-118.
[15] Lendrush Khurshudyan, `1918 tvakani mayisi 28-e` haykakan
petakanutyan verakangnman or' & Armenpress, `Gitakan nstashrjan
Erevanum', Khorhrdayin Hayastan, 28 May 1989.
evnreport.com/politics/centennial-minus-one