Book on Javakhk in the 19th and early 20th centuries

[Yeznig]

After a long silence....Here an item from Groong by Eddie Arnavoudian on Javakhk.

 

Worth a read:

 

Not necessarily masterpieces or artistically outstanding.

Yet none will disappoint the lover of literature or history.

Reading them one will always find something of value...

 

Armenian News Network / Groong

February 2, 2010

 

By Eddie Arnavoudian

 

I.

 

 

THE PLIGHT OF ARMENIANS UNDER GEORGIAN RULE

 

 

In historical times the Tchavakhk region now just beyond the north

Armenian border was one of the nine districts of the northern Armenian

province of Gugark. But, since 1918 and against the will of its

overwhelming Armenian majority constituting 92% of the population, it

has been annexed to Georgia. During the Soviet era and after,

Tchavakhk's Armenian community has continued to experience national

oppression at the hands of a Georgian elite determined to cleanse the

Armenian community from its homeland. Though sometimes over-detailed

and frequently lax in argument and supporting evidence, Ashot

Melkonian's `Tchavakhk through the 19th and the First Quarter of the

20th century' (544pp, 2003, Yerevan, Armenia) constitutes a valuable

introduction to yet another disputed region in the Caucuses. It has in

addition a substantial appendix of important documentary evidence, but

amazingly there is not a single map in the entire volume!

 

Propounding a case for Tchavakhk's secession from Georgia or for its

annexation to Armenia is not the author's primary concern. What he

does rather is mount a firm defence of the Armenian population's

national rights against a rising tide of Georgian chauvinism that

buttresses its contemporary anti-Armenian campaign by a fabricated

history that denies any ancient Armenian presence in Tchavakhk.

Falsifying the historical record Georgian chauvinists are developing a

counterfeit history in which a significant Armenian presence in

Tchavakhk is wrongly dated to commence only in the 19th century and as

if a result only of 19th century Tsarist engineered mass migrations at

the expense of the native Georgian population.

 

It is to Melkonian's credit that he does not attempt to assert an

exclusive Armenian identity or Armenian political right to the region.

The synopsis of Tchavakhk's pre-19th century history shows that it

never had an exclusive national physiognomy, Georgian, Armenian or

otherwise. As a political and social entity it had been endlessly

fought over and passed back and forth among Armenian and Georgian

monarchies and principalities, and later among Arab, Turkish, Persian

and Tsarist claimants. In the constant violent contests Tchavakhk was

repeatedly battered, beaten and reduced to waste, frequently with the

entire region depopulated and repopulated and its demographic

structure repeatedly and radically altered.

 

Successive occupying powers, Arab, Ottoman, Persian and Tsarist all

used mass population relocations as instruments of policy,

repopulating Tchavakhk, and not only Tchavakhk, with a pliable

community that would serve it, produce taxable wealth, act as a social

base for their rule and supply fodder for their armies and

administrations. During Arab, Persian and Ottoman domination inward

non-Armenian migration and outward Armenian emigration contributed

significantly to the decline of Tchavakhk's Armenian population. This

decline was accelerated by campaigns of forced conversions to Islam

and to equally pernicious forced conversion to the Georgian Orthodox

Church. In this connection Melkonian's excavation of documentary

evidence is particularly persuasive.

 

For Armenians who suffered disproportionately under Ottoman and

Persian rule and whose leadership was locked into alliance with the

Tsarist Empire, mass migration to Tsarist controlled territory was

frequently regarded as a path to salvation and freedom. So in the

trail of Russian troops Armenians would readily abandon their older

homelands in the hope of rebuilding their lives in new territories

conquered by Tsarist armies. The Tsarist state readily encouraged

Armenian emigration in view of the Armenian Church's willingness to

act as a vanguard and ally of Russian invaders and recruit the local

Armenian population to aid Tsarist military efforts. This led Turkish

or Persian forces to treat all Armenians as a fifth column for Russian

expansion to the frequent slaughter of the innocent population.

 

It was as a result of one such mass Tsarist sponsored migration that

followed the 1829-30 Ottoman-Russian war that the much diminished

Armenian community in Tchavakhk was restored to a majority position

that endures to this day. An estimated 20,000 Armenians abandoned

Erzeroum, then part of historic Ottoman occupied Armenia, for the

newly Tsarist occupied Tchavakhk. After much hardship the newly

established communities flourished. Old dilapidated Church's were

restored and new ones built along with new schools, libraries and

social institutions. From its very beginning this process was opposed

by an emerging Georgian nationalist movement. Nevertheless Tchavakhk's

Armenians went on to play a significant role in their national

movement with outstanding figures from the region including poet Vahan

Derian, novelist and dramatist Terenik Demirjian, troubadour Ashough

Djivani, the controversial Rouben Ter-Minassian and Hovanness

Kajaznouni.

 

In connection with the mass 1830 emigration that restored an Armenian

majority in Tchavakhk it is worth remarking that it simultaneously and

qualitatively undermined the demographic density of Armenian

population in the heart of historical western Armenia. In this it

constituted a decisive moment in a historical trend of depopulation of

Ottoman occupied Armenia - by emigration and repression - and had deep

negative consequences for the development of the Armenian national

movement as a whole. Damaging demographically, the 1820-30 migrations

removed from the core of historic Armenia a central social force of

the national movement. A substantial portion of those who left Erzerum

were craftsmen, traders, merchants, artisans and skilled workers. This

stratum could have provided a crucial foundation both for Armenian

economic development, and in an age of rising nationalism, the cadre

for an indigenous and independent leadership.

 

Melkonian's volume is most interesting in its coverage of the years

between 1917 and 1923. These coincided with the victory of Georgian

ultra-nationalists who rejected earlier Georgian-Azeri-Armenian

agreements to settle post-war territorial border disputes according to

demographic compositions or by popular referendum. Intent on

territorial aggrandisement they displayed complete disregard for the

interests of the local inhabitants, not just in Tchavakhk but in other

areas populated by Armenians or Azeris. Deemed Georgian territory they

insisted in addition that these were strategically necessary for

Georgian state security and so refused to consider anything but their

annexation. In collaboration with German imperialism and with Turkey

they moved rapidly to enforce Georgian rule both by military and by

other means.

 

Armenians of course were no angels and when their elite had commanded

primary economic positions in Georgia they had no hesitation in

humiliating their Georgian opposition. Yet this elite prejudice and

discrimination could not justify the indiscriminate Georgian elite's

campaign against the entire Armenian community within its

jurisdiction. In Armenian populated territories that remained in

their control after the 1918 Georgian-Armenian war, Georgian leaders

resorted to national repression, cultural prohibition, economic

discrimination and even starvation in an attempt to cleanse contested

regions of their Armenian inhabitants. When almost the entire Armenian

population of 80,000 fled the Turkish invasion of Akhalkalak they

were, despite being formally Georgian citizens, denied rights of

transit or resettlement in other regions of state. They were later

denied the right of return to their homes. The result was in the

region of 30-35,000 dead.

 

In the drama of the Tchavakhk's Armenian community the British, as

they had done in Karabakh, Nakhichevan and elsewhere, again played

their pernicious role. Exploiting a vacillating Armenian government

they deployed deceptive diplomacy to impose arrangements that passed

Armenian populated regions to Georgian control. They urged Armenians

to relinquish rights not only to Tchavakhk, but to Karabakh (Artsakh)

and Zangezur on the grounds that large portions of Western Armenia

were to be offered them from the collapsing Ottoman Empire! Armenians

were also prompted to political passivity with promises that

international conferences would offer them justice! Melkonian does not

explain the roots of Britain's pro-Georgian policy, but it was

certainly driven in part by fear of a pro-Russian Armenia becoming a

rampart for Russian ambition just at the moment that Bolshevism had

been victorious. The British in addition had an eye on substantial

Georgian economic resources and sought to counter significant German

influence there.

 

Georgia's anti-Armenian policy continued well into the Soviet era when

they succeeded in grabbing more Armenian populated land and

consolidating their grip on Tchavakhk despite the vocal protests of

local Armenians. Nationally minded Armenian Communist Party leaders

such as Alexander Miasnikian, who attempted a more democratic

resolution, were no match to the influence that their Georgian

opponents had in Moscow. Yet despite the fact that the Armenian

population recovered its 1917 numbers only in 1989 and despite the

mass Armenian emigration of the 1950s-70s the Soviet era Georgian

nationalists failed to decompose Tchavakhk's Armenian majority.

 

In the post-soviet period the rampantly nationalist Georgian elite has

resumed its campaign, starving Tchavakhk of economic support and

redesigning provincial borders to break up and isolate Armenian

majorities in the hope of this time accomplishing their ambitions.

Armenian resistance however remains stubborn and confronted with an

unrelenting Georgian state this resistance could easily express itself

in a desire for annexation to Armenia.

 

 

II.

 

 

THE CULTURAL BARBARISM OF THE YOUNG TURKS

 

 

`The Loss to Armenian Culture Caused by the Destruction of Armenian

Monasteries and Churches During 1894-1896 and 1915-1925' by Rev. Fr.

Dajad Yardemian (107pp, Mekhitarist Publication, San Lazzaro, Venice,

1995) should be compulsory reading. It shows why and how cultural

barbarism was integral to the Young Turk genocide attempt against the

Armenian people. In relation to Armenian culture the Young Turks acted

in accord with Nazi Goering's infamous remark that whenever he heard

the word culture he reached for his gun. With shocking statistical

data Yardemian catalogues the loss represented by the `2500 plundered,

burnt down or destroyed monasteries, Churches, libraries, refuges,

chapels and other holy places (p11)'.

 

Armenian Churches and Monasteries were more than just spiritual

centres and places of worship. They constituted social, cultural and

educational hubs of Armenian life, in many ages being an

organisational foundation and core. Religious establishments

functioned as schools, universities and academies. They were centres

of learning for historians, philosophers and poets. They were

workshops for the production of hundreds of thousands of beautifully

designed manuscripts and books. With their thousands of cultural

objects church building were veritable museums as well as being

architectural monuments. Church grounds were in addition social

centres and gathering points for popular celebrations.

 

Right into the 19th and 20th centuries this Church continued to play a

vital role in the Armenian life. Grasping its central role in

sustaining Armenian nationhood, Sultan Hamid II's regime in 1896 and

the Young Turks thereafter identified it as primary targets. Their

mobs `took their rage out most fiercely on Armenian monasteries,

Churches, schools and libraries' writes Ormanian, that brilliant

historian of the Armenian Church (p20). The story is repeated with

greater savagery in 1915. Through the centuries the Armenian Church

had been targeted repeatedly by foreign invaders but none compares to

the scale, the speed and finality of the 1895-1925 vandalism.

 

In 1898 French lieutenant R Hubert registered the existence of 218

Armenian monasteries and 1740 Churches in Ottoman territories. In 1904

an official census registered a higher figure, 228 and 1958

respectively. The figures for the period just before the 1895-1896

massacres would of course have been even higher. According to Henri

Barbie during the 1895-96 massacres `568 Churches and monasteries'

were `destroyed or turned into Mosques (p19).' 1915 delivered the

final fatal blow. By 1919, 83 Archbishoprics, 1860 Churches and

chapels, 229 monastic institutions, 26 secondary schools, 1439

elementary schools and 42 orphanages had been wholly or partially

destroyed.

 

The loss this represented - to Armenian life and to human culture - is

staggering. Up to 200,000 manuscripts and books, ancient classical

literary, philosophic, historical and religious texts protecting

centuries of human thought were destroyed (p73). This loss, as

Yardemian rightly says, `cannot be measured by any material criteria

nor can it be replaced by other values.' The works of many historians

and intellectuals whose names have reached us will as `a result of

Young Turk vandalism now never be accessible to us and still how many

other unknown authors and their works will as a result also `remain

forever unknown' (p74).

 

Symbolising the Ottoman and Young Turk vandalism was the fate of the

8th century Monastery of Narek, home to the greatest Armenian poet,

10th century Krikor of Narek, a man of the stature of Dante. In 1896

the monastery was destroyed and in 1915 the manuscript of the poet's

`Lamentations' written many believed in his own hand was burnt. To the

loss of invaluable manuscripts is to be added the loss of vast amounts

of gold and silverware, bronze work, jewellery, woodwork, stone

etchings, crosses, chalices, Church vestments and decorations,

carpets, curtains, cushions and grave stones - all products of human

creativity, labour, ingenuity and skill.

 

Within what was Ottoman controlled historical Armenia, of the vast

heritage there once was, today virtually nothing remains and what

remains is also under threat of irreversible destruction,

notwithstanding recent cosmetic and propaganda moves by the Turkish

government. From 1925 onwards Churches that were not turned into

Mosques, storage depots or dumping grounds, were demolished, used as

military target practice and its stone plundered for local building

work.

 

To the crime against humanity represented by the one and a half

million dead, is the crime of cultural barbarism. But the 1896-1925

attempts to annihilate Armenian culture and society failed, despite

the vastness of irreplaceable loss.

 

 

--

Eddie Arnavoudian holds degrees in history and politics from

Manchester, England, and is Groong's commentator-in-residence on

Armenian literature. His works on literary and political issues

have also appeared in Harach in Paris, Nairi in Beirut and Open

Letter in Los Angeles.

[Javakhk]

Very interesting! Where can we get the full text?

 

Thank you very much for posting, too!

:-)