Armenian Rebels & Dissidents: Atabekian

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" Born in Shusha, Transcaucasia, Russia 1868 of Armenian descent, died in Russia 1940 (?); studied medicine in Geneva and Lyon; became an anarchist in 1890 through Kropotkin's publications; in Geneva he published Armenian and Russian translations of Kropotkin and other anarchist authors; edited in 1894 the only Armenian anarchist periodical Hamaink (5 nos.); worked between 1896 and 1917 as a doctor in Northern Persia; after the February Revolution again active in the anarchist movement; edited the anarchist magazine Pocin, representing the anarcho-cooperative trend in the libertarian movement 1919-1923; one of the veteran anarchists who founded the Kropotkin Museum in Moscow; arrested in the 1930s and presumably died in a labour camp in 1940. "

 

Armenians were part of introducing the interesting political and social philosophy of anarchism into the region , as an article in APOC points out that:

 

" this region saw first wave anarchism develop primarily along the margins of the region; Armenian anarchists, for instance, were already being brought under control by the Ottoman Empire by the late 19th Century due to their widespread agitational activity. Of the Armenian anarchists, Alexandre Atabekian maintained the highest international profile and had the most connections to the international anarchist movement, befriending Petr Kropotkin, Elisee Reclus and Jean Grave while studying in Geneva. His freindship with Kropotkin was so great in fact that he was actually with him at his deathbed and subsequently helped to organize the famous funeral procession through the streets of Moscow. Atabekian translated several anarchist works into Armenian and published and distributed an anarchist journal called Commonwealth (Hamaink) that was translated into Persian as well.

 

Atabekian made a serious attempt to make the politics of anarchism relevant to the political situation of the Middle East. Throughout his writings there is a clear pattern of opposition to both the domination of the Ottoman Empire over Armenia and to European intervention and domination over the region in general. These culminated eventually in the development of the Revolutionary Armenian Federation (Dashnaktsouthian), which was a coalition of anarchists, nationalists, and socialists who amongst other activities, published and distributed several anarchist tracts throughout Armenia. Though their manifesto was early on compared to the rhetoric of the Russian nihilists, Dashnaktsouthian anarchism seems to have been largely replaced by Marxism-Leninism within a few years. However, even as Marxism-Leninism rose to popularity in Armenia, anarchist ideals became popular amongst Armenian immigrants heading to the nation-states of the West, as is evidenced by the publication of several anarchist journals in the Armenian language in the United States around the same time (Stiobhard)."