Armen Aivazian Controversy

[Yeznig]

Given the recent discussion on Aivazian and the political scandal that turned down his PhD I append below another item from Mr Arnavodian. It is a review of his PhD thesis, but it makes no comment on the scandal.

 

It is taken from Groong which besides an excellent diet of daily news a critical corner, a poetry site and one devoted to in-depth articles on politics and society in Armenia.

 

Does anyone else read Groong?

 

 

 

 

Why we should read...

 

"The Armenian Church at the Crossroads of the 18th Century Armenian

Liberation Movement" by Armen Aivazian

(344pp, Yerevan, Armenia, 2003)

 

Armenian News Network / Groong

January 21, 2004

 

By Eddie Arnavoudian

 

 

The Armenian National Liberation and the Armenian Church

 

The Armenian Church has had a deservedly bad reputation having been,

through the centuries, a rather poor guardian of the real interests of

its flock. But as with the sections of the French Church during the

French Revolution, or the 1960s Catholic Church in Latin America,

sections of the Armenian Church also produced individuals and groups

who made outstanding contributions to the Armenian people's history.

Armen Aivazian's is a study of such a case, one that, albeit fraught

with the risk of exonerating the Church as a whole, opens up new and

exciting territory for those interested in Armenian history.

 

Scrutinising often neglected primary sources, Aivazian argues that in

the 18th century national movement a faction of the Armenian Church in

Etchmiadzin, its historic centre, played an active, energetic and at

certain points leading role that was however always consciously and

extremely secretive. His account hinges on an exciting detective like

investigation of a claim, that clerical laws dating back to the 12th

century dictated that a successful candidate to head the all-Armenian

Church required a unanimous vote involving all the important Eastern

Armenian bishoprics.

 

This 'rule' about the elections of Catholicos, Aivazian shows, was

actually adopted sometime in the first 10 years of 1700 but was graced

with a much earlier origin by its formulators in order to give it the

weight and legitimacy of ancient and glorious tradition. It was

adopted in particular to secure the election of a Catholicos from the

eastern bishoprics. Being the more nationalist orientated section of

the Armenian Church, they were intent on preventing the Patriarchate

in Istanbul from imposing on Etchmiadzin someone who would be their

stooge and by extension a lackey of the Ottoman power. This eastern

struggle against Istanbul had another dimension too - resistance to

the Catholic conversion carried out by the Mekhitarists and the

Antonian monks among others, who were regarded as a threat to the

independence of the Armenian Church and to the prospects of Armenian

liberation.

 

Aivaizian makes a convincing case to show that the almost endemic

division and conflict between the Constantinople/Cilician wing of the

Armenian Church and its religious centres in eastern Armenia were more

than theological disputes about the future of the Church, its dogma

and its relations to Catholicism and Rome. The Constantinople/Cilician

Church leadership, subordinated to the Ottoman Empire, sought at the

behest of the Ottoman power to secure its own reliable candidate to

head the Church apparatus based at Etchmiadzin. It and Ottoman

imperial authority distrusted the eastern Armenian parishes and

prelacies regarding them as obstreperous and involved in supporting

anti-Turkish Armenian military operations in aid of Russian

expansionism.

 

There is substance to the argument. The Patriarch in Constantinople

was far removed from the realities, needs, conditions and influences

of the native Armenian lands. Integrated within the heart of the

Empire and enjoying a degree of privilege, it was not responsive or

open to the strivings and pressure from the ranks of Armenian

society. In contrast the eastern parishes in Datev, Etchmiadzin, Julfa

and elsewhere were within native Armenia. Furthermore by virtue of

their proximity to the Tsarist Empire, they were in a position to

conceive of and try to develop alliances to be rid of Ottoman rule

that they regarded as the greater enemy.

 

The case for a more actively nationalist wing of the Church is

strengthened by the fact that as the major, and in fact the only,

enduring powerful national institution it was bound to be involved in

diverse ways in the fortunes and lives of an Armenian nation and

people buffeted between the imperial policies and domestic repressions

of the Ottoman, Tsarist and Persian states. Whether as willing or

unwilling agents for foreign rule, or as a force tempering or

resisting such rule, or seeking to tactically adjust itself so as to

secure the best advantage, the jurisdiction of the Armenian Church

always involved more than the business of spiritual salvation. It was

always an intensely political institution with a complex internal

structure, a domestic and even something akin to a foreign policy

through the medium of which it sought to balance and manoeuvre in

relation to foreign powers and organise its administration and

governance of its own fiefdom all with a view to protecting its own

status and power vis-`-vis the state.

 

It is in this context that political questions, among them those of

national liberation and political freedom, were forced upon its

agenda. It could not remain indifferent to the altering balance of

forces between the three empires jousting for dominance in Armenian

territories. It needed to calculate, evaluate and develop a strategy

and orientation that suited its own interests best. Thus it was

ineluctably drawn into the political conflicts and ambitions of the

day, with different wings of the Church adopting different attitudes

and strategies. With regard to the 18th century, Aivazian demonstrates

the eastern Church leadership's relationship to and role in the 1720s

Armenian insurrectionary movement.

 

A particularly exciting moment in the volume is the account of Lazar

Chahagetzi's role in the origin of modern Armenian nationalism.

Catholicos in Etchmiadzin from 1737 to 1751 and representative of

early Armenian nationalism, his reputation needs to be salvaged from

decades of malign evaluations that followed his nationalist opposition

to the Catholic Church. Remarking on Chahagetzi's referral back to the

brilliant Krikor Datevatzi from the late 14th century, Aivazian argues

that Datevatzi represented a certain type of medieval nationalism

which Chahagetzi both inherited and developed. Datevatzi, for example,

lists 10 particularities that define or distinguish some form of

Armenian identity. Chahagetzi offers no less than 50, significantly

adding the factors of language and land as foremost in his list. In

developing his vision of the Armenian nation Chahagetzi also referred

to classical Armenian Kings and royalty, generals and fighters - both

secular and religious.

 

Unearthing the contribution of Church to the 18th century liberation

struggle, Aivazian makes a note of the movement's breadth and depth.

There is evidence that beyond Artsakh/Karabagh and Siunik/Kapan, the

movement's organisers also attempted to secure armed rebellion in

parts of western, Ottoman occupied Armenia. Aivazian thus suggests

the existence, albeit in inchoate form, of a broad pan-national

movement, one in which the Church and its leadership, at least in

Etchmiadzin, played an important supporting and sometimes leading

role. This interesting and possibly very significant thesis deserves

further consideration.

 

A potential problem that lurks in Aivazian's book surfaces clearly in

a concluding chapter. He argues that from the XV-XVIII centuries the

Church, through its cultural, educational and ideological work,

shouldered the task of preserving a semblance of Armenian nationhood.

This argument has of course an element of truth - in so far as it

refers not to the Church as a whole but to a segment of it, and in so

far as it is qualified by reference to the fact that the Church was

not representative of the Armenian people as a whole. One needs to

note the almost feudal structure of the Church whose privileged estate

rested upon the labour of the Armenian peasant and serf, to whose

fortunes the Church was hardly responsive or sympathetic. Whilst

noting any positive contribution, it is wise to recall the Church's

widespread defence of obscurantist and backward custom and tradition

that was compounded by corruption and general philistinism. Armen

Aivazian is of course conscious of such corruption and indeed devotes

some 25 pages to considering the corrupt Catholicos Nahapet Yedesatzi.

 

Making any broader or generalised statement about the Church opens a

hornet's nest of questions. Among them being a demand for an

explanation of the 19th century revolt against the Church and its

authority, both in the east and the west, by outstanding thinkers such

as Mikael Nalpantian and Haroutyoun Sevajian and many others. Such

reservations aside, Aivazian has done a fine job sifting through

apparently trivial, purely theological or bureaucratic Church

documents and letters to throw light on the different political trends

within the Armenian Church, especially as they related to the struggle

between the power centres of Bolis and Etchmiadzin. He has not only

salvaged the reputation of some honourable Churchmen, but has made an

important contribution to the history of the Armenian liberation

movement.

[Sasun]

Given the recent discussion on Aivazian and the political scandal that turned down his PhD I append below another item from Mr Arnavodian. It is a review of his PhD thesis, but it makes no comment on the scandal.

Excuse my ignorance, didn't Armen Ayvazian already have a PhD (gitutiunneri teknatsu) degree?

[grig75]

Excuse my ignorance, didn't Armen Ayvazian already have a PhD (gitutiunneri teknatsu) degree?

I am attaching a short CV of Armen Aivazian, PhD

 

Armen M. Aivazian was born in Yerevan, Armenia, in 1964. In 1992 he received his Kandidat of the Historical Sciences (equivalent to Ph.D.) degree from the Institute of History of the Armenian Academy of Sciences.

From 1992 to 1994 he worked as Assistant to the President of Armenia, Adviser to the Foreign Minister of Armenia, and Acting Head of the Armenian Delegation to the Conference (now Organization) on Security and Cooperation in Europe at Vienna. From 1994 to 2002 he was a Senior Researcher in the Matenadaran (the Yerevan Institute of Medieval Manuscripts) and an Adjunct Senior Lecturer of Political Science and a Fellow of the Center for Policy Analysis at the American University of Armenia.

From October 1995 to January 1996, as a recipient of an International Security Studies grant provided by the Carnegie Corporation of New York, he worked in affiliation with the Program on the Analysis and Resolution of Conflicts, Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, Syracuse University.

In the 1997-1998 academic year, he was a Visiting Senior Fulbright Scholar, affiliated with the Center for Russian and East European Studies, Stanford University, USA.

From October 2000 to April 2001 he was a Visiting Alexander S. Onassis Foundation Fellow at Hellenic Foundation for European and Foreign Policy (ELIAMEP).

Below are the monographs published by A. Aivazian: The Mother See of St. Etchmiadsin and the Armenian Church in the 15-18th centuries (Historical Studies) (Yerevan: The Modern Center of Armenological Studies, 2002).

 

Forthcoming.

Mother Tongue and The Origins of Nationalism: A Comparative Study of the Armenian and European Primary Sources (Yerevan, Matenadaran: "Artagers," 2001)

The Code of Honor of the Armenian Military, 4-5th centuries (2000, in Armenian)

The History of Armenia as Presented in American Historiography: A Critical Survey (1998, in Armenian)

The Settlement of the Nagorno-Artsax Conflict and the Strategic Security of Armenia (1998, in Armenian)

The Armenian Rebellion of the 1720s and the Threat of Genocidal Reprisal (1997, in English)