Genocide Archives Of Different Countries

[Armen]

I was wondering if anyone knows which archives have been fully studied and which ones are still not available (excluding the Turkish ones).

I suspect Britain, Germany, France and Russia have a lot of archived infromation on this, as these countries had huge intelligence network in Turkey.

[DominO123]

I was wondering if anyone knows which archives have been fully studied and which ones are still not available (excluding the Turkish ones).

I suspect Britain, Germany, France and Russia have a lot of archived infromation on this, as these countries had huge intelligence network in Turkey.

All the countries you've noted, only Russia(beside Turkey) is not fully accessible. Beside being in mess there is the fact that the Red army has put their durty hands on many documents and destroyed them. There are probably sections not even cathaloged.

 

The most interesting documentations are those from Austria and Germany foreign records, and they are even open for international photocopies by using an interloaning program in some cases(there are conditions of course, and I don't know the conditions applied for Austria).

 

Why are you asking? Are you interested to conduct any research?

 

The most easily accessible for anyone are in my opinion the US public records, and they are so "cleanly" classified, explary for everyone...(there is at least one thing those in the south are good at, just kidding ) but don't expect to find much from there.

 

France, the documentation is limited like Britain, because they were the "enemy" while in the cases of Germany, there are records from German officials direct communications with Ottoman Generals and officials. Interesting ones like General Paraquin, colleague of General Halil,

Edited August 3, 2004 by Fadix

[Armen]

No, Domino I am not doing a research specifically on Genocide. I just think that the most interesting and accurate records are those of British military intelligence. They worked with many Armenians, Assirians and Greeks in Turkey. I have seen an article written on this ("British intelligence in Turkey during WWI" if I'm not mistaken) but don't remember where. Can't find it now.

Anyway, I believe the Britts know a lot on this.

Actually, are you familiar with an interview by Lawrence of Araby where he speaks about Armenians?

Edited August 3, 2004 by ArmenSarg

[DominO123]

No, Domino I am not doing a research specifically on Genocide. I just think that the most interesting and accurate records are those of British military intelligence. They worked with many Armenians, Assirians and Greeks in Turkey. I have seen an article written on this (British intelligence in Turkey in I'm not mistaken) but don't remember where. Can't find it now.

Anyway, I believe the Britts know a lot on this.

Actually, are you familiar with an interview by Lawrence of Araby where he speaks about Armenians?

Armen, there is rarly anything as accurate as the German records. German general served with Turkish generals, their Intelligence Headquarters had direct communications with the Turks. On the East, their was even a German at the head of one of the Branches of the special organisation. British documents are second quality documents... the British military intelligence had to try to get the information, while for the Germans, they had the informations directly from the Turks.

 

For instance, did you knew that all German statistics of Armenian losses without exeption are higher than those from the British military intelligences? While the Turks were trying to hide the crime and the losses... the Germans had even access to documents of how much people in an area were just killed off... and even official Ottoman statistics.

 

There were as well other kind of informations, like missionary reports, or underground groups, like the Jewish intellectual Nili group... the reports from this group are really heartbracking, in my opinion they are of better quality than most of the things the British came with as informations... The Nili group had reports of how people were gathered in mass placed all together by thousands and then combustible pulled on them and burned in mass.

 

It is true that the British worked with Armenians etc... but nothing is better than having colleagues of butcherers reporting how the butchering was done.

Edited August 3, 2004 by Fadix

[Armen]

Thanks for the interesting information. This was all new to me. However, I am more interested about the information on the decision making process in the CUP and I believe the British have more on this. The German intelligence was nowhere near the British one during First World War. The British had their people virtually in every capital's government.

[groul]

Yuri Barseghov (a prominent genocide scholar who now lives in Moscow) recently compiled and published 2 huge volumes of the documents on Armenian Genocide from Russian diplomatic archives.

 

The first volume is available here:

http://genocide.ru/tom/tom.html

 

As far as I know now the Russian archives are open to scholars. The problem is, as Domino said, that lots of documents were destroyed during and after the revolution.

 

Also, there are tons of documents in Armenian archives too.

[DominO123]

Thanks for the interesting information. This was all new to me. However, I am more interested about the information on the decision making process in the CUP and I believe the British have more on this. The German intelligence was nowhere near the British one during First World War. The British had their people virtually in every capital's government.

Armen, the Österreichisches Staatsarchiv/Haus-,Hof_Und Staatsarchiv contains documents like nowhere else there is. The British were absent on the East, there are more reports from Americans on the spot from the East than British.(See Leslie Davis reports for example) And the reason is simple. When you are from the enemy side, you have to spy on the enemy to have those informations, you have to try hard... while the Germans didn't needed to spy the Turks, the Turks were just telling them what they were doing. While General Paraquin was with General Halil, General Halil was clearly describing in his face to face discussions with him, the measures he was taking to eradicate the Armenians, he was even not managing with words. The Turkish war intelligentcia was on direct communication with the German war intelligentsia... and I repeat one of the branches of the special organisation had as chief a German... It was the special organisations task to eradicate the Armenians... while the British had no clear informations about those things, in a series of secret reports by German officials stationed in the Ottoman, there was reports of the direct situations in the concentration camps, the special organisations role. German reports are as well more autorative on the intention of the Ottoman government. The German general Hans F.L. von Seeckt, the last Chief of Staff of the Ottoman Armed Forces in World War with with Dr. Riza Tevfik, the Minister of Education worked hand to hand to destroy documents from Ottoman autorities on the extermination process. Only considering how precise are the documents not destroyed, one can wonder what the Germans had in their hands.

 

BTW, I really recommend you Dadrians work on German complicity in the genocide, read the archival documentations from German sources and compare them with the British ones, you'll see what I mean.

[DominO123]

Yuri Barseghov (a prominent genocide scholar who now lives in Moscow) recently compiled and published 2 huge volumes of the documents on Armenian Genocide from Russian diplomatic archives.

 

The first volume is available here:

http://genocide.ru/tom/tom.html

 

As far as I know now the Russian archives are open to scholars. The problem is, as Domino said, that lots of documents were destroyed during and after the revolution.

 

Also, there are tons of documents in Armenian archives too.

Have you any ideas if there are any translations of the Volume in process?

 

Since my knowledge of Russian is near to non-existant, I can really not judge what I can't understand here.

 

Thanks for the link... now I know I need some people knowing Russian to translate me this.

[Armen]

BTW, I really recommend you Dadrians work on German complicity in the genocide, read the archival documentations from German sources and compare them with the British ones, you'll see what I mean.

Thanks Domino, I'll try to find it.

[groul]

Have you any ideas if there are any translations of the Volume in process?

 

Since my knowledge of Russian is near to non-existant, I can really not judge what I can't understand here.

 

Thanks for the link... now I know I need some people knowing Russian to translate me this.

Just checked the book more carefully, and found out, that it consists from different documents, not only Russian. But the owner of genocide.ru who knows Barseghov personally, told me that the scholar did make a thorough search in the Russian archives and got whatever documents on the Armenian Genocide he could find.

 

As far as I know there are no plans of translating those books into English, because Yuri Barsegov is more than 80 years old, and he tries to accomplish and publish another book with the comments on those 2 volumes.

 

BTW, there is also another book which may be interesting for you:

 

"Hayeri kotoracnery Baqvi ev Elizavetpoli nahangnerum 1918-1920 tt."

523 pages of documents from Armenian archives mostly in Armenian and Russian, also French about the atrocities commited by Turks and Tatars on the territory of modern Azerbaijan.

 

Sadly, only 350 copies of this book were published, and I am glad I have one.

[bellthecat]

Armen, the Österreichisches Staatsarchiv/Haus-,Hof_Und Staatsarchiv contains documents like nowhere else there is. The British were absent on the East, there are more reports from Americans on the spot from the East than British.(See Leslie Davis reports for example) And the reason is simple. When you are from the enemy side, you have to spy on the enemy to have those informations,

But why would the Germans want to report extensively on things that those on the ground knew was happening, but which Germany would rather be kept unreported. They knew the propaganda coup that had been given to the allies had when the Germans committed their own attrocities in Belgium in 1914.

And also - what happened during the months before the outbreak of war is just as important, maybe even more so.

[bellthecat]

Sadly, only 350 copies of this book were published, and I am glad I have one.

Fortunately, thanks to scanners and the internet, the rarest book in the world can now be just as accessible as the most widespread book. All we need to get over is some peoples fetish for printed matter.

 

Steve

[DominO123]

But why would the Germans want to report extensively on things that those on the ground knew was happening, but which Germany would rather be kept unreported. They knew the propaganda coup that had been given to the allies had when the Germans committed their own attrocities in Belgium in 1914.

And also - what happened during the months before the outbreak of war is just as important, maybe even more so.

Many reports were done because the German witness was just disgusted... and here, I think what is important is that they was reported rather than why would they report it.

[groul]

Fortunately, thanks to scanners and the internet, the rarest book in the world can now be just as accessible as the most widespread book. All we need to get over is some peoples fetish for printed matter.

Yeah, and there are also copyrights and the nice matter called "intellectual property"

 

But I plan to talk with the authors of the book and probably get permission to post it online. Thanks to gods there are still people in Armenia who can overcome personal greed for patriotic reasons.

 

Domino, I just checked bunch of bibliographies, actually there are tons of published documents from Russian archives. I can post some titles if you are interested.

Edited August 3, 2004 by groul

[bellthecat]

Yeah, and there are also copyrights and the nice matter called "intellectual property"

 

But I plan to talk with the authors of the book and probably get permission to post it online. Thanks to gods there are still people in Armenia who can overcome personal greed for patriotic reasons.

 

Domino, I just checked bunch of bibliographies, actually there are tons of published documents from Russian archives. I can post some titles if you are interested.

Any original documents relating to the Armenian genocide are now well out of copyright, as are a great many of the books. And, given that most books do not make much money, and certainly not something that is printed in quantities as ridiculously low as a few hundred, it is that "fetish of getting things into print" problem that authors must overcome, and not the desire for making money.

[groul]

Any original documents relating to the Armenian genocide are now well out of copyright

If you go to an archive yourself, find a document and get a permission from the administration of that archive to publish it, yes, then you can put it online. (BTW, I have no idea why you need to get a permission from an archive or a library, because the documents they own are not their intellectual property, but still this is the procedure)

 

But if you get the text of the document from a book or a web site they are already copyrighted.

 

as are a great many of the books

E.g. anything published after 1923 in the U.S. is copyright protected unless the person who holds the rights had explicitely stated that his book, or article is in public domain.

 

given that most books do not make much money, and certainly not something that is printed in quantities as ridiculously low as a few hundred, it is that "fetish of getting things into print" problem that authors must overcome, and not the desire for making money.

It is both yes and no. For example, even if you print 350 copies and sell them for $6 each, then it is $1800 which is considered to be a huge money among the scholars in Armenia (with typical salaries about $100/month).

 

ALso, if the book is a success, they can print it again.

 

On the other hand, as I already said, most of the Armenian authors are glad to share their texts via the Internet, but still it is better to wait till all the available copies are sold (not to hurt the sales) and only after that ask for the permission to publish.

[DominO123]

Groul, even if archival documents are not copyrighted, if there is a translation... the translator can hold a copyright, and the editor of the work in which it has been translated.

 

As far as archival research goes, the permission is needed everytime you access original works. And it is obvious why.

 

As far as works concerning the genocide goes... the problem in most of the cases is not the author, but the publisher/editor that will creat the problem.

 

For example, Kévork K. Baghdjian(PhD Social jurist) is dead for many years, his family obviously will be willing to permit to make his 2 major works available, but the problem in this cases will be the editor... but the editor doesn't do a dollar profit of it... Because those kind of works after few years don't get published... and for the editor, he'll be losing money to publish them.

Edited August 4, 2004 by Fadix

[groul]

even if ... not copyrighted, if there is a translation...

exactly.

 

the translator can hold a copyright, and the editor of the work in which it has been translated.

Also publishers can hold copyrights, especially if they provided an advance, or paid for advertising, etc.

 

As far as archival research goes, the permission is needed everytime you access original works.

And it is obvious why.

If you use documents for a research, yes, but if you want to publish a document in a full, not to say if you want to publish a collection of documents from an archive, you usually have to get a written permission from the archive.

I do not know why it is so and how they can enforce that (probably the fear of not being allowed to enter that archive again is a sufficient motivation to obtain a permission before publishing any paper)

 

As far as works concerning the genocide goes... the problem in most of the cases is not the author, but the publisher/editor that will creat the problem.

Yep, Unfortunately I know such cases too.

[bellthecat]

But if you get the text of the document from a book or a web site they are already copyrighted.

I think that this is legally doubtfull, though I admit I am not an expert. If you are reproducing all the contents of someone elses book then obviously that is breaking copyright laws - but if the original documents are unchanged (i.e. no translations, etc.) then I would think that they could be reproduced elsewhere as long as the format or the essence of the book they came from is not being reproduced.

 

 

E.g. anything published after 1923 in the U.S. is copyright protected unless the person who holds the rights had explicitely stated that his book, or article is in public domain.

 

Isn't 70 years after the death of the author the usual time limit for copyright?

 

 

It is both yes and no. For example, even if you print 350 copies and sell them for $6 each, then it is $1800 which is considered to be a huge money among the scholars in Armenia (with typical salaries about $100/month).

 

ALso, if the book is a success, they can print it again.

 

Do printers in Armenia print books for nothing?

 

I'd say that it is not possible anywhere in the world to print any book in as low a quantity as a mind-numbingly stupid quantity of 250 and sell it for that amount and still make a profit. For example, in Britain, a commercial printer's pricelist for A4 colour booklets, 64 pages: 500 copies cost £3546 to produce, yet 5000 copies cost only £6541 - i.e for less that twice the cost you get an additional 4500 copies.

[groul]

I think that this is legally doubtfull, though I admit I am not an expert. If you are reproducing all the contents of someone elses book then obviously that is breaking copyright laws - but if the original documents are unchanged

Well there are those little tricks which help people make money out of nothing.

Just a real-life example. An American university put some old American magazines back from 1880-1900s online. The content of those magazine is definitely not copyrighted. Can you use whatever they put online? Lets see what they write about that:

 

As part of its educational mission, The ZZZ University Library makes available via the World Wide Web digital versions of certain items from its collections.  This material is to be used for personal or research use only. Any other use, including but not limited to commercial or scholarly reproductions, redistribution, publication, or transmission, whether by electronic means or otherwise, without prior written permission of the Library is prohibited. The Library will grant or withhold permission on a case by case basis, and a usage fee may be required depending on the type of proposed use.  Permission requests may be sent to the appropriate contact address for each digital collection.

 

When you run across a copyrighted image of Mona Lisa it's not the painting which is copyrighted but the photograph of the painting.

 

Thus if you have a book which is published prior to 1923, it is not copyrighted, but if someone scans it, the scanned images of the pages are belong to the person who scanned it.

 

You want to print 10000 posters with Mona Lisa's image? No problem, you have to go to Louvre, get a permission from the administration (for which they will charge you a lot), and then shoot it.

 

Isn't 70 years after the death of the author the usual time limit for copyright?

 

Not anymore. They made it 90 a few years ago, and they will make it 100 if needed. Disney and other big guys have lot to lose in this game so they will push whatever laws they can just not to lose any profits.

 

Do printers in Armenia print books for nothing?

 

Well, usually printing expences are covered by grants. But still my calculations were not accurate, because they have to send some copies to state archives, then usually they send some copies to foreign libraries for free, etc.

 

Also, they still have to pay their taxes

 

So it will be lets say $1000 instead of $1800, and it is also shared between the coauthors. But even $300 is not little for an Armenian scholar.

 

I'd say that it is not possible anywhere in the world to print any book in as low a quantity...

Well, actually for the last 8 year i have been earning my living as a graphic designer both in traditional media and on the web, and I know the printing world very well

Believe me, you still can make some profit even from 350 copies. The thing is that noone in the U.S. or Europe will consider $300 as a profit.