Memoirs of an Armenian Revolutionary, Volume 1 — Chapter 1: Among the Sworn

It was toward the end of 1903 when I was ordered from Tiflis to go to Kars. It was the first time I had received a revolutionary order. Counting it a great honor, that very evening I set out to place myself at the disposal of the Central Committee there. To me that body was mysterious in the extreme. To see it, and to act on its orders, seemed a greater honor, a thing more to be held in awe, than obeying my commanders had been in my days as an officer and a soldier.

With a strange fear and awe I reached Kars. There I presented myself to Hagop Zilinkarian. I gave him the open letter addressed to the Central Committee, in which was written only: "The bearer of this letter is coming. We recommend that you make use of him and train him. Hamb. Mherian."

And indeed, the province of Kars was a place in whose revolutionary furnace fledgling Dashnaks could be tempered and come out hardened and polished — or else, unable to bear the extreme ideological and Spartan life of the place, could abandon the revolutionary field.

From those few words Hagop understood that he must not at once reveal or show everything to this untried young man. He contented himself with saying:

"I will inform the Central Committee, so that it may make arrangements to use you here."

He called a young man named Medzik, who was dressed in plain clothes, and told him to settle me in "with the boys." And Medzik took me "to the boys." It was a crumbling stone house set down in the ravine of Kars, without any furniture. Only overcoats and satchels hung there from rusty nails, and a few men were sitting about. They did not ask me where I had come from or with what purpose; without any surprise, they treated me as a very old acquaintance.

Hagop himself came in behind us and said to those men:

"The comrade has come to work with us."

One of them — a young man with a small black beard, a little older than I, his eyes rather sore — looked at me with hard eyes.

"You'd do well to untie that 'necktie (galstuk) and all its nonsense' and throw it away… Andranik, there's a jacket over there, bring it…"

Andranik brought a threadbare jacket and flung away my newly tailored and cherished clothes. I obeyed without a word, accepting that perhaps this was one of those necessary laws.

The man with the sore eyes seemed very severe, and it appeared he was the chief. It was very hard to tell the great from the small: one had to guess, rather than know. They talked of laughable things and not of business. They told fables and, holding their sides, roared with laughter. But I was bewildered and took part in nothing.

Now someone came in with a chanakh^t1 in his two hands — an oven-dish, a bowl of meat stew — whose aroma set the water running in your mouth. All together, crying vah! vah!, they surrounded the chanakh and began to eat with their fingers. I found it hard to keep up with them. The chanakh was already half gone, the meat and the trimmings covered over with broth. Then the man with the sore eyes looked at me from under his brows. "Well, eat, then!… Why do you chew like a bride?" he said, and made me redder still.

Only Hagop looked on kindly, like a father. Seeing that I could neither kneel nor sit cross-legged, he pulled a satchel forward and offered it to me to sit on.

I knew no one's name, and was afraid to ask, since no one asked mine. It seemed that all of them were satisfied with the words, "he's one of our boys." I knew only the names Medzik and Andranik. But I did not know whether they too were the servants of these men, carrying out their orders, or the masters, making the jokes and sparring with the man with the sore eyes.

We went out into the town. They charged Medzik to take me that night to a gathering, and they scattered.

That night, with Medzik, through blind corners, we came into a house that seemed to be a wedding-house. In the street men were posted like sentries, and they pointed out the door. It was a sham wedding, but in truth it was the assembly-place, where more than two hundred women and men had gathered. The musicians, with their santurs, their jianurs, their daf and zurna, were seated there, but they were not playing. All of them looked with reverence at the man with the sore eyes.

There I understood that the man with the sore eyes was named Sergei, and that among those gathered there he was the most beloved, the most honored. But now he was not the sullen man of the daytime; on the contrary, he spoke with everyone, joked, and anyone he spoke a word to melted, and seemed happy to have been thought worth his attention.

Sergei began a speech on the Turkish-Armenian Cause. The thoughts did not seem so very deep — they were things said many times over. But he spoke with such emphasis, put such spirit into his rough words, that he cast a spell over all of them. I was moved by his words. But when the discussion began, and a little time had passed, I found myself not in agreement with many of his ideas, though I did not dare to speak against them.

There was a lottery, a collection of funds. Hagop directed it, with a few ladies.

It was just then that Sergei came up to me and asked what I thought of the questions he had raised. I explained my ideas, which were the opposite of what he had said. He found my opinion strange and unrevolutionary, and defended his own with such faith and such sincerity that I could not help respecting him, even though I counted his ideas mistaken.

I do not know what Sergei found in me, but from that day he had an altogether different manner toward me. We grew more intimate with each other, and our intimacy, as time went on, deepened the more — until his death.

That man with the sore eyes and the sullen face was the Sergei of Kars, who later became the Aram of Van, to whom the Turks gave the title of Pasha. He became afterward the Aram who was dictator of Erevan, and who, without seeing the fall of the Republic of Armenia, parted forever from this world.

Looking at Sergei, I understood what is meant by "Thy faith shall save thee." I understood how weak, how unsteady a thing reason is in the face of faith…

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A few days later I was present at another nighttime gathering, near the bridge. The "wedding-guests," with their families, came in one by one, verified beforehand by the watchmen.

Tables had been spread, laden with food. The tar and the jianur, the daf and the santur played softly. And in the street the passers-by were watched by our sentries, who kept reporting to Hagop, who sat gravely by the door. The passers-by were chiefly belated Russian soldiers, or officers seated in carriages, going up toward the fortress.

At Hagop's side stood two richly dressed girls, into whose baskets those who came in dropped whatever their hearts prompted.

Now Hamo came in. I do not know whether his real name was Hamazasp or Hmayeak; we knew him as Hamo. He shone and could have burst with joy. He had a black suit, gleaming shoes, a shirt white as snow, rings on his fingers like glittering light, his hair and his face done up. It was plain he had just come from the barber's. The scent of woman came off him.

Hamo drew out a red ten-note and dropped it into the basket of the girl standing on the right. When he looked to the left, he said to the girl on the left:

"Let there be no offense to you," and threw a ten-note into her basket too. It was a great sum, that, and many eyes went wide.

"Hamo jan, may you prosper!" cried Mkhchonts Margar. "But it's Sarkis who is the master of the bride and groom — what will you give him?"

"My bumazhnik," said Hamo, and held out his wallet to Sarkis.

Mkhchonts Sarkis, who was a tradesman, exclaimed:

"Now, Hamo — it isn't empty, is it?"

When he opened it and looked inside, he was struck dumb.

"Now, Hamo — do you know how many rubles are inside? " And he began to count aloud: "100, 200, 300, 400, 500, 600, 700 rubles. And of these small ones, 12 rubles more."

Mkhchonts Margar turned to his brother:

"Give him back his 12 rubles, so he won't go hungry tomorrow. Let the 700 be for the bride and groom."

And the wallet, minus the 12 rubles, was set before Hagop, who looked round with his sullen face and, without counting, threw it into the girl's basket.

Hagop looked displeased, though the true owners of that money were not the bride and groom, but the A.R.F., the Dashnaktsutiun — and the master and manager of the A.R.F. in Kars in those days was Hagop.

The performance began.

"Boys, jan," called Plo "the king," "let us all sing together." And he himself began:

Blind Fahrat the ashugh, the author of that tune and those words, in those days threw all the authors and their works into the shade. There was not yet Charents.^t2(*) There were not on the field Tumanian, Hovhannisian, Durian, Beshiktashlian. Those were for the schools, for the intellectuals. A little, too, one heard the name of Isahakian; but beside Fahrat he had — so people said — "made a hash of it." Fahrat was the best-loved singer and preacher of those days, at whose words the masses were bewitched, and death turned into a wedding.

(*) If I am not mistaken, he was the son of one of the Mkhchonts brothers.

Hamo too was moved. He was on his feet, his face flushed, his eyes ablaze, his fist clenched. Before the song was over, he struck up a new one: "The Muslims' fierce battalions, vast in number"… And so it went on, until they gave the sign to fall silent.

Sergei mounted the platform. He spoke with an inner fire. He was young, but already he seemed to be counting over his comrades who had earned the crown of martyrdom. When he named Menak, and Isajan, his voice began to tremble. The listeners' eyes grew wet, and Sergei, finding himself again, said:

"My dear ones, the weeping, the mourning is not for them; they were martyred and earned immortality. The weeping, the mourning is for us — for us, who speak of martyrdom but are afraid to earn it…"

Sergei said many other things too, but only those words have stayed in my mind. All of them were dazzled. Sergei had reached his aim: he had made them all ready to be offered up as matagh.^t3

While they were clapping, Hamo came up to me and said: "I have something to say to you."

He was a handsome young man. On his face the down had scarcely sprouted, and had formed faint, thin whiskers, like an arched brow. Grief, anger, love, and passion poured out of his chestnut eyes and cast a spell, whether you willed it or not, on whoever stood in front of him. He might have been a flower of spring.

Until then I had met him only once.

"Let me say it in a word," Hamo began. "Believe me — I want to be made a matagh. If I cannot become a 'martyr,' then let me at least become a simple matagh for my nation."

He was moved, his voice caught, and he kept asking:

"You don't believe me? Believe me — try me."

"I believe your word," I answered.

"You believe, but Hagop does not. I begged him to send me to the Land with the first band, or to set me to some task where there is dying to be done. He threw a stone in my path and said scornfully: 'You are still a child, yesterday's zhogin.^t4 The wind has caught your nose, you've cocked your tail, but you don't yourself know yet what you want. You say, let me go, let me be martyred. But they don't give martyrdom to everyone who wants it; you are still a thing whose "kind and kin are unsettled",^t5' he said, and finished. And I have not even yet been entered on the Dashnak roll. My hope now rests on you and on Sergei. If the two of you should wish it, you can persuade Hagop. And if you wish, you can put me into Tuman's coming band. Or wherever you two are, take me with you and try me."

Looking into his beseeching eyes, I answered:

"Let me see what I can do."

I saw Sergei and made Hamo's longing known to him. He was glad, but the doubt stayed within him.

"He is small — perhaps he'll regret it. Let us see what the others think; they know more of the ins and outs. We'll take the question to the Central Committee."

\ \ \*

Through Sergei and the other comrades I came to know the whole machinery and the comings and goings of our organization in the district of Kars. I do not think it superfluous to set out here the organizational form of Kars, which became a model for the Land. The field-workers (gordzich),^t6 trained there and taking their practical lessons, would cross into the Land and apply what they had seen and learned.

Kars, with all its villages, was saturated with the revolutionary spirit. The first cause of this was the closing of the Armenian schools and the seizure of the church estates by the Russians. The second cause was the question of the liberation of Turkish Armenia, which they called the Land.

In 1878, when Armenian generals — Loris-Melikov, Lazarev, Ter-Ghukasov, and others — took Kars from Turkey and joined it to Russia,^t7 the Armenians believed that from this a great good would come to the Armenian people. If not a free Armenia, then at least for the landless Armenians a place and a field were to open. And they believed in it.

But the very opposite came about. Though the Armenian generals took honors, and the fortifications of Kars were christened with their names, still the church of Abas — or was it Gagik — Bagratuni they turned into a Russian church, which was a thorn in the eye of the Armenian people; the hopes of Armenian self-rule vanished into thin air, and Russian military rule was established. Those too who believed that at least the landless Armenians would get land in their reconquered country were left despairing. In the first year of the conquest the Armenians were 45 to 50 percent of the population — some 80,000 in all. By 1903 the number of the population had risen to about 400,000. Though the number of the Armenians had grown, and reached 120,000, their extent of land had stayed the same as it had been twenty-five years before, while their proportion of the whole population had fallen to 30 percent. The lands were being parceled out to immigrant Russians, to Molokans, to Greeks, to Ossetians of the Caucasus, to Circassians and others, while the 30,000 Armenians who had escaped from Turkey in the years 1894–96^t8 remained landless — counted an undesirable element by the Russian authorities, and dragging out their existence in Basen, Takht, and Kars through the goodwill of the local Armenians.

On top of this state of things there came the school question, the matter of the seizure of the church estates, and — after Kukunian's band, down to the destruction of Torgom's and Vaghharshak's bands by Russo-Turkish collusion. In this way Russian policy toward the aspirations of the Armenians was laid entirely bare. Laid bare, likewise, was the course of Turkey: on the other side of the frontier, the massacring policy of the Hamidian regime.

The people of Kars, of whatever class and schooling, saw all this and felt it on their own skin. They were cured of setting their hopes on the Russian or on any other. The "statesmen" of the coffeehouses, or of the salons of the capitals, they counted "wind-blowers, arse-blabbers." Kars had created its own separate atmosphere and political direction — pessimistic, yes, but realistic — which was distilled into the following words: "The Russian lays his axe to the root of the Armenians; the Turk lays his axe to the branches of the Armenians. The others too have come to chant the hallelujah over our heads. A curse on this one and on that one alike."

This situation, however, had not set the Armenians on the ground of despair, but on the contrary on the ground of hope and of faith — faith in their own strength. Their watchwords were these: at whatever cost, to keep the national selfhood; to count holy whatever is national; not to offer sacrifices to the saints, but to spare no sacrifice for the abolition of Turkish and Russian tyranny. "Freedom is parted from us by a deep abyss; that abyss must be filled with the enemy's corpses and with our own."

These were not merely fine words. The comrades who surrounded me were preparing themselves for death. They had one concern only: to sell their lives dear and to die on the soil of the Land. And if they could manage to see the Lake of Van, and Antok of Sasun, then after that let come what may. They knew that it was not by their deaths that they would bring down the Turkish and Russian regimes; but they believed that it was over their corpses that the enslaved Armenian people would pass from bondage to freedom.

The people were aware that these men were going toward certain death. But neither friends, nor parents, nor anyone at all counseled them to draw back. On the contrary, with sorrow they would say: "May your vow be accepted." And to the comrades going to their deaths, death seemed beautiful and easy. Death had become more alluring even than life.

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In this atmosphere, the town of Kars had taken the following organizational form:—

The town was divided into quarters, in each of which the sworn party members (ukhtyal)^t9 were divided into bands (khumb), according to age and to the band's own wish. The members of a band knew one another, held regular meetings, attended lectures, paid their dues, and carried out the orders of the Sub-Committee. A member of one band did not know the members of the other bands. They were kept secret from one another and linked together by the Sub-Committee. Among them there were no women. But the women were organized like the men, and performed the role of the Red Cross. They had their own separate boards, which chiefly created money, work, and sources of income for the members of the party.

Material sacrifice was a thing of rivalry. Stinginess was equivalent to putting oneself outside the Armenian people. And each one wished to sacrifice beyond his strength — sacrificed more than was needed — a thing the leaders had to moderate.

Schooling had to be Armenian. The Russian state schools were wholly under boycott. The children attended the Armenian private schools almost in secret. Schooling was obligatory.

A few years earlier, to speak Russian had been a mark of being cultivated and a matter of honor; the young, whether they knew the tongue or not, strove to express themselves in it. Now it had become the opposite. Russian was under ban. Whoever used that tongue was counted a traitor.

The Armenian churches stood empty at the hour of the liturgy. They did not go to prayer, which they counted deceit and vanity. Only a few old women went to church. In spite of this appearance, the defense of the Armenian church was a national and party duty for Armenians of every denomination.

The clergy were despised. "Mountain and gorge — the der-der's belly," they would say, and counted them backward, counter-revolutionary. In spite of this, since the Armenian clergy were persecuted by the Russians and were in danger, the party had taken their protection upon itself, as the remnant of a national authority. Khrimian Hayrik, in their eyes, was no longer merely a Catholicos, but the head of the nation. And they would dispute whether he was a Dashnak or a Hnchak, though he was in fact neither the one nor the other.

The Catholic and Protestant Armenian communities, though they attended their churches more, and seemed more firmly settled in their creed, were of one mind with the Lusavorchian, and were just as fiercely zealous in defending Armenian traditions and rights. "The Armenian church belongs to the Armenians and not to the Russian," they would say.

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The organizational form of the villages was a little different, and had its own defects, which were to be put right after 1903. Those defects arose because of the tayfas — the clans — that existed in the village, or of those who belonged to another party.

The whole community of a village elected a three-man Sub-Committee, which was the highest authority in the village. Its business was as follows:—

Judicial. No suit reached the Russian state court. All the village's quarrels and suits were settled on the spot by the elected three. In the case where there were unresolved suits in the village, or where the elected three were themselves subject to trial, they were judged by the district committee.

Educational. The state schools were under boycott. It was obligatory to have an Armenian school, even a secret one. The costs of the school were met with money or with goods in kind.

Party levy. To evade the state taxes was no crime; but to fail in the national and party dues was a dereliction. Each one, according to his means, was obliged to pay his party rate in money or in kind, which was passed on to the Central Committee.

The question of the refugees. Lodging and work had to be found for the refugees. Every labor had to be performed for their welfare.

It was necessary, too, to keep in safety the munitions to be sent to Turkish Armenia, and to maintain the bands passing through, at the district's charge.

The villages of the county, through their representatives, elected the District Committee, which was the immediate superior board over the Sub-Committees. At its disposal was the district's circuit-riding field-worker (shrjig),^t10 appointed by the Central Committee, who carried out — or had carried out — the Committee's decisions, and called the recalcitrant to order. At the shrjig's disposal were at most two armed men.

All this was carried on amid the conditions of the strict regime of the Russian government, the more so as the province of Kars was a military zone. No doubt the government sensed the comings and goings, but it had no possibility whatever of interfering. The people's antipathy toward the authorities was so great, and their sympathy toward the A.R.F. so strong, that its lower strata, terrified of the scorn of their own kind, strove to seem better than the best. And those who dared, by loose talk or by malice, to become tools of the government, often paid with their lives at the hands of their own kin. For the deeds that were done, there were found near the government neither complainers, nor informers, nor betrayers.

⁂

This activity had yielded great fruit in the province of Kars. Although the authorities demanded of the 30,000 Armenian refugees sheltering there that they either accept Russian subjecthood or be dispersed from this military zone, they accepted neither the one nor the other, and, thanks to the local people, always stayed in the place where they were. Their material condition was bearable, and there was no trace at all of the question of native and refugee, which I saw later in other districts.

The people of Kars, above all of the villages, had until then been indifferent toward schooling, and the greater part of them was illiterate. But in spite of the Russian persecutions, and thanks to the direction the Dashnaktsutiun had adopted, the number of its pupils had tripled, the number of schools had doubled. Though their quality was low, and though the state schools had been left empty thanks to the boycott, the children attended with zeal the schools set up in the haylofts and the barns.

The Armenians of Kars, though fewer in number than the Armenians of Tiflis, of Erevan, of Alexandropol, and of other districts, and poorer too than all of them, had nonetheless covered their own expenses by 1904. The net capital it had brought into the party treasury was, I believe, 40,000 rubles, and it held the first place in those days. And Baku, which was the world of the millionaires, was left in the shade by Kars.

There was one other contradictory phenomenon, curious, which I have not to this day been able to grasp in its depth. The Central Committee was the district's supreme leader; in its name all business was carried out. But it itself was invisible. This was not merely a consequence of caution; it had another meaning as well.

From county to county, in bringing the bride home, the verdict varied. In Upper Armenia and its offshoots — Kars, Akhalkalak, and a few other districts — until the groom's mother and his aunt had seen their bride wholly naked in the bath, they would give no verdict on the marriage. It seems likely that this custom had also had its effect on the election of the Central Committee of Kars, at which I was once present, and the like of which I saw nowhere else.

The District Delegates' Assembly had been convened in the general way, according to the by-laws. Only — since the Central Committee, though it was made up of seven persons, was yet a single person as Central Committee, and since it was itself a secret body, and had, by remaining secret, worked through its appointed field-workers — it therefore continued to stay absent from the District Assembly.

Two chief reports — the financial and the working — had been pre-sented, confirmed with the seal of the Central Committee. The Central Committee had appointed as its representatives, in its stead, Hagop (Zilinkarian) and Sergei, who were its field-workers. They at the same time tendered their resignations, and demanded that a new Central Committee be elected.

In the usual way there were criticisms of the absent Central Committee. But it was not the Committee itself that defended it, but the delegates or the field-worker-representatives, who also gave supplementary information on the questions raised.

When every explanation had been heard, and criticisms made, the chairman put the question:

"Could more have been done than our Central Committee has done? Have its deeds answered to the decisions given, and what is our estimation of our Central Committee?"

All of them found that the Central Committee had been much to be praised for its activity.

The elections, as usual, were according to the by-laws, but there were particulars that were peculiar to Kars.

In the first place, they did not concern themselves with the person of the candidate for the Central Committee, but with his lineage. Who were the candidate's mother, his father, their grandmother, grandfather, great-grandfather and great-grandmother — and thus they would rummage through his descent all the way to Noah the Patriarch. If you made the mistake of asking what that ancient history had to do with the candidate, the old men, who could tell the stories in minute detail, would answer:

"You are yellow-beaked; a word does not reach you. He who sucks lawful milk turns out lawful. From a snake's egg no turtledove hatches."

In the second place, they would rummage through the candidate's family, his inner life, and how he kept himself within the family: did he drink, did he play at gambling, was his eye not on what was outside, what was the well-being of his family, what was his personal life?

If you made the mistake of asking why they pried into the candidate's private life, they would answer with heat:

"Is not the Central Committee the leader of thousands upon thousands of our families? One who cannot govern himself and his own family — can he govern us?"

In the third place only did they examine the personal and party qualities of the candidates for the Central Committee. They must not be without work. On the contrary, they must have their own settled occupation, their post. At the least they must be self-sufficient.

If no well-off man could be found, and you blurted out — is there no place for the poor in the Central Committee? — you drew the objection at once:

"No, the Central Committee is for the wretched, but it must be independent and unhampered, so that it can reach out a hand to the wretched. The workless, the incapable man, who is forced to look to another's purse — how do you expect him to be impartial, free, and useful both to himself and to another?"

The candidates were chosen without regard to their place of birth, their standing, or their class. And so you would see one — a schoolmaster, or a clerk — who would argue:

"The nation is a rainbow of the sky made up of seven colors. The nation is a sweet melody made up of seven voices. Therefore I propose that we choose one from each of those seven mysteries, and create out of the seven kinds a Central Committee, so that we may have an ear and an eye in all seven classes."

And indeed the votes were concentrated in that direction:— Norhatian (a Kars man) of the teaching, cultural color; Sev Karo (an Akhalkalak man) of the color of the workmen, the laborers; Yeruand (an Akhalkalak man) of the color of the tradesmen; Bznuni (a Kars man, I believe) of the color of the state officialdom; Dr. Kazanjian (an Akhalkalak man) of the color of the free professions; Mkhchonts Margar (a Kars man) of the color of the small tradesmen, the peasantry.

To me this course was unintelligible, and I expressed my surprise: why had Turbakh not been chosen, who had been an old and famed field-worker even in the Land itself; why had Hagop and Sergei not been chosen, to whom the whole province looked?

Hagop answered, smiling:

"You are surprised, because you do not understand the essence of the Central Committee. In the beehive the queen bee is everything, and all the rest of the bees are her creatures and her captives. Whatever she commands, so it will be. To each she gives a different work, and according to that work she has armed them: to one she has given trunks and armor, to strangle the enemy; to another, stings, to defend herself, to gather the nectar of the flowers and turn it into honey. She herself is bare of all this — a wretched grub, that leans on the sacrifice of her creatures. But if that grub is absent from the hive, all of them will destroy one another and flee. And so she is always in their midst, and like a prisoner she never sees the sun. Take the queen bee for the Central Committee. She has three duties: (a) to be among her ranks night and day, never to see the sun, like our mothers, and to love all of them without distinction; (b) to keep the harmony among the whole multitude, and to have the will to enforce that unity; (c) to foresee and to secure the existence of that multitude in time of danger and of peace, and its strengthening in quality and in number. Nothing else."

By this example Hagop meant to make me understand something; I asked myself: "Hagop, in telling his story of the queen bee, does he mean us to ape the bees, or is what he says an inborn quality of this people?" In my imagination I had gone to Yeriza,^t11 where the goddess of wisdom was the divinity Anahit, who, like the queen bee, was everything, though she was herself a statue of stone. Could it be that all this had risen again and come and mingled in the by-laws of Kars, and the election of the Central Committee too had become an unwritten law?

"You say, leaving aside Turbakh, who is a hero, we are putting another into the body. That is the good of it. The members of the Central Committee do not have the possibility, or the duty, of being heroes. First, they must be secret. And then — they are the ones who must create the likes of Turbakh by the thousands. You say, leaving aside me and Sergei, we are putting others forward. That is good. We are here today, gone tomorrow, and we will come to our end on the work as well. But who is to be the one that creates workers better and more numerous than we? If the Central Committee understands its role and meddles in no other things — if it lays its eggs and has the will to govern, without factional strife — it will justify its existence, and everything will go on, lasting and good. This will be, when it becomes a single person."

I have told this much so that another cast of mind, another atmosphere, may be understood, which the Central Committee had created in that district.

\ \ \*

The field-worker, the soldier, and the one who goes to the Land were the element that was to be made a matagh to the nation. They were subject to particular rules, of which the chief were these:—

— You must not have your own property.

— You must cut your ties with worldly life.

— You must cut your ties with your family and with women in general.

— You must in no way share in pleasures.

— You must be the servant of yourself and the servant of your comrade.

— In speech and in bearing you must be seemly, bold, and proud.

Lying, stealing, cursing, whoring, making love to girls, loving the soft life, not knowing the mother tongue, cowardice, tale-bearing, timidity — these are human failings. He who has not had one of them from birth, and does not have it by reason of his own incapacity, is not virtuous. Virtuous is he who has had every failing, but confesses it openly, renounces them, struggles against them, and conquers. What is the der-der's sermon on charity worth, when not a metalik comes out of his pocket? The benefactor is the man who has, and gives what he has. What are the counsels of abstinence worth, from a broken man, or from a hermit who has fled to the mountain? The man of worth is the man who has everything, and stays abstinent.

Here, then, in this school of the spirit, was where they had put me to be "trained." My mother, my brothers, had come to Kars and settled there. They were even rich; but I, moved by the general atmosphere, would not set foot within our threshold. From now on I was to have nothing but our shabby lodging in the Zor quarter, the bare ground, and a yapunji^t12 for a blanket. To fetch a tava or a chanakh from Tepanants Alek's cheap eating-house and fill my belly, to clean by turns my own and my comrades' shoes, to groom our horses with my own hands and to feed them — these had become our daily duties, alongside the party work.

Levon Kalantarian, who was a Zok, came among us from Baku. They said that he was rich, that he had renounced his rights, and, giving up his business, had come to go as a matagh. I did not learn it from him, but others said that he had paid to the Central Committee the whole cost of one or two dozen soldiers' full equipment, horses and all. In spite of this, his hard-hearted new comrades kept making trials of him, to see whether a man would come out of that "bourgeois." His sleeping-place fell by the door, from under which the cold wind blew. Before the dawn had broken, Sergei would say:— "I am very tired; clean my shoes, and go and groom my horse too." Hagop would add:— "You'll buy meat, onions, you'll buy potatoes, and you'll make something good, and we'll eat." They opened his saddlebag, and whatever he had, every man took from it what he wanted, and nothing was left him. Levon protested, laughing:

"Well and good, but you didn't even leave a change of things — I'll take yours too."

He had understood at once in what atmosphere he was, and adapted himself. Against our will we would say: "He's a golden boy…"

⁂

Different was Kevork — whom they called Rus-Kevork, "Russian Kevork," for having a Russian's features. He stood higher than all in schooling. He would say:—

"My dear fellow, the ties a man has with life are heavy chains; they hold him back from the highest sacrifice, from martyrdom."

Kevork had clung with severity to the hermit's life. The Tolstoyism that was in fashion in those times paled before his exactingness. His delicate body he wished to train to endurance, which it could not withstand. His mind was always soaring to the summit of Mount Antok, where with weapon and armor he would fight against the tyrant Turk — whom he never saw. His beloved Buckle, "The History of Civilization in England,"^t13 he had thrown aside; he read it no longer, worn away in soul and in body.

We saw this and would say: "Rus-Kevork is a diamond."

But he was ill. At his head Sergei sat in sorrow and played the mother.

"Kevork jan, Minas's(*) place is vacant. Let us take him there. His mother will make you well."

"That is — you count me useless?"

"No — so that you may get well, so that you can reach Antok."

They lifted him and took him to our house, for care.

I had already left Kars when Kevork, restored to health, had — as I learned — joined Vaghharshak's band and added his bones to the ruins of Zivin,^t14 without ever seeing Antok.

⁂

As for Hamo Janpoladian, who was likewise counted a "bourgeois" chick, he could not part from his costly cigarettes, his fine clothes, his lavish way of living, and his lovemaking with women. He was not moved by the atmosphere that had been created, and seemed to find it meaningless.

"Are we to save Armenia by asceticism, or by martyrdom and by deeds? I would understand it if you said that our aim will be to strike down those who disorder life. My aim is to strike 'them' and to love life."

And we, above all Hagop, would say in despair:

"A dog's crooked tail cannot be straightened with a press."

Let me tell of a gathering of the leaders, to which I too had been invited, and where Hamo's question was laid. There were Norhatian, Yeruand (my brother), Sev Karo, Dr. Karo, Bznuni, Mkhchonts Margar, Plo, Sergei, and Hagop.

Yeruand was the one reporting.

"I was passing in front of Baghdasarov's shop. He called me in and said: 'It seems you don't count me an Armenian. I've un-derstood that the nation needs money. There is no one to ask me, and no one to try me. Take this 500-note. Let my finger too be in your work.' I was taken by surprise, took the 500-note, and said: 'I'll give it to whoever needs it, but I don't know whether he'll accept your gift or not.'"

(*) Rouben's baptismal name. (Note by A. Kh.)

Hagop leapt up from his place.

"I had gone to the Kroy quarter. Khnko the water-carrier scarcely earns 30 kopeks a day and brings home the price of dry bread. He gave a gift of 2 rubles and said: 'Take it for the nation, in place of a glass of water.' Those two rubles are equal to Baghdasarov's 2 million rubles. Let us not mix these foul monies with the kopeks of the Khnkos."

It was decided: if Baghdasarov gives 1,000 rubles, to bring it into the treasury, since he has given the gift unasked. If it be less than 1,000, to return it.

Hagop reported on a gathering held two days before, saying that Sergei had shown a great gift for preaching and had charmed everyone. "I propose that we give him the leadership of the propaganda work."

The proposal was accepted, against Sergei's protest that this work was not to his heart, and that this was not his aim in coming to Jrabert (Kars).

"At the wedding-performance," Hagop went on, "the net income was 2,912 rubles and a wallet. Of that sum, 12 rubles have been returned to Hamo Janpoladian; 700 rubles, with the wallet, remain in suspense. I propose that we bring the 2,200 into the treasury and give a corresponding receipt to the Sub-Committee that organized the performance, and return the 700 rubles, with its wallet, to Hamo."

Silence fell. Sergei made me a sign to open my mouth. But I was moved, did not know what to say, and hesitated. Norhatian began to speak.

"Hagop jan, Hagop — I know Hamo, I have seen him in the street with the schoolboys. He is a mere slip of a boy who has not yet finished school; torn from the Russians, he has come to our 'church.' He has come to our church, and, turning all he has and has not into so many candles and tapers, he wants to light them for our saints, for our martyrs. Why do you, chasing after Hamo's candles, want to put them out — want to throw his gifts into the privy? I have been a schoolmaster, and I know what an effect it has on the soul of that slip of a boy, if his gift is not accepted. I propose that we accept it and encourage him, and send the 'bumazhnik' (the wallet) to the museum."

Norhatian's remarks weighed heavily on Hagop, and he said:

"Your example was good, but wrong. Before the saints they light tapers and candles made of beeswax; that is acceptable for the saints. But if the candle is made of the fat of a pig or a dog, that becomes a sacrilege, and our church a pigsty. He is a slip of a boy, he has no earnings; but that 700 rubles — from where did it get into his pocket, that he offers it to us? Has your pocket seen 700 rubles?"

"No, it has not, because I have no rich father, nor the Kaghzvan salt-mine."

I took heart and opened my mouth:

"A word does not fall to me, but let me say what I have seen. I too have no earnings yet, but I have 150 rubles in my pocket. That is not from a pig's fat, since those who gave it are sitting among you, and are Hagop's dear ones."

Yeruand and Hagop looked at one another and laughed. I went on:

"I have begun to be afraid both of the money in my pocket and of you. How much will Hamo fear and be cast down, if his gift is not accepted? That is not what I have to say about Hamo. I wished to make his request known to you. He complained of Hagop, who, counting him a child, has become a bar to his joining the bands, to crossing into the Land. He begs that we take him into the Dashnak ranks, and then set him to some task where there is dying to be done. He has vowed — so he says — to be martyred. I would wish that his longing be fulfilled."

"No, oghlum," Norhatian put in, "martyrdom cannot be made into an aim. Aparim, Hagop — though young, yet he acts like a settled man. Last evening too they sent to my address, from Derbent, a very handsome boy of nineteen or twenty who has finished the gymnasium. He was so fine that I left everything. He passed the night with us, and now too he is at our house. Yeruand, your house is roomy; I'll send him to you. He must not be mixed with the coarse and rough soldiers. Let us somehow persuade him and send him back; this trained generation will be of use to us. I have wandered a little from the point. What I meant to say was that when I spoke with him (his name is Kevork), he explained the mystery of death with such faith, he so yearned to go to the Land to earn the crown of martyrdom, that my mouth stayed open. Let me tell you a thing: this new generation of ours is infected with 'the sickness of martyrdom.'" Then, turning to Dr. Karo — "Have you any remedy for it? Aparim, Hagop, what you did was good. To save Hamo, one must forbid his suicide."

Norhatian, without knowing it, exploded a storm in this little assembly. Fingers rose, and all of them wished to speak at once. Mkhchonts Margar, without asking to speak, got up and began, thrusting his red beard up in the air:

"Norhat, Norhat, is what you say any kind of talk? So then — there are white bones and black bones, it turns out? Whoever is good, with schooling, let us put him in turshi at home, and the bad ones, the ill-bred, let us send to the Land — are we to leave martyrdom to them alone?"

Sev Karo shouted from his place:

"Norhat, Norhat, something has struck your head today. Doctor, look — hasn't he perhaps 'gone soft'?"

Sergei could not sit quiet in his place, but Hagop persuaded him that the word was his. Hagop made his speech:

"If Norhatian thinks I hold the same views as he, he is grievously mistaken. I am not against taking Hamo into our ranks and putting him into the bands of the Land. Let him keep his 'aparims' to himself. Yet, contrary to Norhatian, I think that the first candidates to be put into the Land ought not to be the good-for-nothings, nor ignorant and idealess men, but our chosen generation, those who have taken schooling, those who have an ideological aim. I am against putting them in 'turshi'; they will turn sour and become stuff to be thrown out.

"Ninety percent of those who go to the Land will be killed, and only ten percent will reach the place. That does not mean that our aim is to become 'dying, being sacrificed, being martyred,' but to bring at least one in ten alive to the Land, where they will spread our ideas.

"None of you knows Hamo as I do; he is capable of every sacrifice, he is fearless, but he loves the action, not the true aim of the action. It is that I fear."

Then, looking at me, he went on:

"You, who meddle without knowing, are mistaken. First, he is the son of Janpoladov, a rich man who exploits the sweat of thou-sands. We, who ought to be against that, can we be against it through such men as he? Such men are our adversaries of tomorrow. And it is not that which occupies Hamo today.

"The second chief cause is this. It is undeniable that without labor no money is created, and without money no work at all can go forward. However much one must fear being left without money, one must fear still more having much money easily. Our Hamo, a mere slip of a boy, has not yet had his own earnings, whether just or unjust, but he feels himself proud that he is rich. To give gifts from his father's money is no sign of sacrifice. And his personal expenditures — the theater, riding first class on the railway, his food, his dress, decking himself out like a woman — are a sign that he is on the way down. He is 'baylimiz' (undefined). I am his friend; let the enemy know me. Let him not enter our ranks."

They all gave Hagop the right of it.