Memoirs of an Armenian Revolutionary, Volume 1 — Chapter 3: Kars the Mother

The immediate impression I took from Kars astonished me.

It was a school — a school for creating an authority within the authority — whose founders had been intellectual young men, each carried away by his own dreams. In 1904 they were remembered like a dream, without anyone's pointing to the substance of their deeds; yet that memory had already become an unverified capital, part imaginary, part real.

There were recalled, for example, Bakhchian and Sedrak Mandinian, who later became pedagogues. "Hey, janım, the men of the old days were bashkha (different) men; they knew every tongue, they had every learning — yet they crossed themselves and prayed, and would go to St. Karapet."

They would recall Mkrtich Ghazarian — long-legged and small-headed — and likewise Levon Sargsian, beetle-browed, with a big head and a solid frame. Though the first ended his career in the priesthood and the second in journalism, of them people would say: "Did you see? — that is how a man ought to be. Whatever else they did, they kept their word: they went to the Land, they trod it underfoot, and brought us tidings of the zulum [the oppression] there."

They would recall Rostom,^t2 who was like a kototi [a bear-cub] — which is where his nickname came from. They would recall Martiros Margarian, who, though he had the look of a bookkeeper, was serious and full of weight. Likewise they would recall Prince Arghutian, who had the look of a merry, jesting prince. And they would say: "Janım, before these there came and passed many men of every stripe, with more learning, with more chalum [swagger]; but from under every man's papakh [fur cap] a different voice sounded, each one sweeter than the last. Yet come and see — which of them are you to take a fancy to? These men raised no voice, they had no separate songs of their own; all of them said one thing with one mouth: when your head itches, you must scratch the itch with your own hand."

They would recall — and picture most vividly of all — Abam Tatul, Sarkavag, Jallat, and Turbakh. These were not intellectuals but men of action, and prized by the mass more than the learned ones. "They are of us, they speak our tongue and have no truck with high-sounding words. They are of us, and for that very reason we do not know their ghadr(). What need of words — we all of us know that the fortress of Kars belongs to our kings, that it is our capital. A matagh* to your feet — ah, Tatul, Jallad and Turbakh, and poor Sarkavag: were their feet of iron, they would have worn them away in the mountains of Khnus, of Mush, of Erzurum"…

() Ghadr* — the value, the worth.

And they would be sure to strike up the song "The voice rang out from Erzurum"…

Yuno was the manliest of these figures, the brightest and the best-beloved. It was he who lit up the imagination of the masses and pointed the way to the future — though such a thought never so much as crossed Yuno's own mind. Of his exploits the people would tell a great deal, mixing what was with what was not. But the essential thing was not what he had done. The essential thing was that the people found in his deeds that which they themselves longed for. And their inmost longing was to see a bold man who would scorn both the Russian and the Turkish powers, and strike right and left — at the oppressing policeman and the beg [the landlord-chief] — and share out what he seized among the wretched and the luckless.

In truth I do not know whether Yuno had any notion of the parties that were then being born; but they claimed him as their own.

When they say Yuno, I remember Nabi and Aley,^t1 the Turkish rebels, who roamed the mountains of Gugark and the Caucasus, and about whom there were legends, and songs were sung in every tongue. I was a child; the grown-ups would say to one another, and I would listen:

— Did you hear? Nabi has risen and taken the Tsalka road, they say; he honored all the women like his own sister and let them go their way; from all the poor he took not a single straw; all the rich he stripped mother-naked and sent packing; the pristav [the district police-captain], the judge, and the Cossacks he stood against the wall, they say, and slaughtered like sheep.

And Aunt Abed would add:

— Ka, what is it to us? Let him slaughter; our aghas of Azavret too have been with him. Why, Nabi's and Aley's bravest fighters are Armenians — they get the better of the bully, and they are good men. There is no harm to us; may God grant them long life.

We children too would go to school and ask one another:

— Did you hear, did you hear?… On Mount Abul, where a fire burned last night in the dark, it was Aley who had lit it; he was roasting a sheep and running these sokhs — the Russians — onto the spit.

These were brigands, with this difference: that it was not for money they had taken to the mountains. The one had been wounded by the absence of justice and had fled from prison; the other had gone up to the mountains out of a tragedy of love. But the one had become a hero of terror, the other a hero of freedom and vengeance. At least I had made heroes of them, when I was a child. I would feel happy when we went to the mineral springs of Tsikhisjvari, where I would dream of Aley — that he might come and besiege us and take us captive, and that I might have the chance to see him and render him my service.

When I went to Kars, and they would tell me of Yuno as though he were still alive, I remembered the fancies I had had ten or fifteen years before about Nabi and Aley. What was told of Yuno was of a piece with what my aunt Abed used to tell — that is, in want of verification. So I pass them by, and leave that to his fellow-workers and to those who were close to him.

Of Yuno's fellow-workers I met Kaftar Arshak and Kevork the Hunter, but unluckily I did not ask them about their pre-revolutionary adventures. The first of them was Keri of Erzurum, who for a time, after Yuno's undoing, made pack-saddles, bridles, and halters in Plo's workshop in Kars. Afterward he crossed with Tuman's band into Sasun, and from there to Van, from there to Persia, and became the famous Keri, who, taking the head of a company of volunteers, was killed at Rawanduz. What the second did after Yuno I do not know, but he too had joined Tuman's second band, to cross into Sasun, and was killed together with Tuman.

Yuno and his comrades, who were contemporaries of Nabi and Aley (in the years 1885–90), differed from them in this: first, that they had no other nations among them, but only Armenians; second, that the field of their activity was the districts of Tayk and Vanand — chiefly Narman, Olti, Gerla (province of Kars), Tortum, Kiskim (province of Erzurum), and Ardvin, Khopa (Batum district).

Yuno's significance is not to be measured by his deeds that remained unrecorded, but by the worth the people had set upon him. They would say: "One like Yuno has never come into the world, nor ever will. When Yuno turned his face toward Erzurum and roared, the vali trembled in his seat and the throne of Constantinople shook. When Yuno turned his face toward Kars and Batum and roared, the gubernators [the governors] quailed, and his voice carried all the way to Petersburg. Yuno was a man apart"…

When I was a child of seven to ten, it was with just such exaggerations that I pictured Nabi and Aley. And to this day those knightly brigands are for me the "greatest" of heroes. Is the public of Kars in that same illusion, I wonder, when I hear the tales of Yuno that Plo and Mkhchonts Margar tell with such relish? True, they were well on in years, their hair inclining to gray, and they wore beards. But that does not keep an aged people — one that keeps an old dream of revolt and of freedom — from having childlike imaginings. When someone is born who shows signs answering to that dream, he becomes its cherished child, independent of his real worth. He becomes a token and a guide answering to the people's dream.

Yuno was reckoned a palpable, virile force, and was the beloved of the fighting organization in Kars — as Arabo,^t7 too, was in Taron. Parents love the more, and always remember, the days of their children's first steps; and that hero is the child taking its first steps…

*

The years 1880–1892 must be reckoned the years of the rebirth of the Armenians of Kars. Each of the intellectuals who came and went there brought his own ideas, but there was no common bond among them. The patriotic groups that were formed were ardent and idealistic, but there was no common harmony.

The Hunchakian party in Kars — judging from the impressions I formed — had, by every measure, what it took to gather up the self-sprung revolutionary elements and currents and to make of them a single, complete force. It was the oldest, as a widespread organization. It was the one that embraced the progressive national and social ideas. In it were gathered the most self-sacrificing, disinterested elements of the time — the patriots of both portions of the Armenian people. In its hand was the Torch that kindled the revolutionary flame from Zeitun to Sasun, from Sasun to the Caucasus. The nation looked to it.

For a very short time, at the beginning of the nineties, Zhirayr and Murad^t3 had come up to Kars from far-off Cilicia, when they were still unknown men; but they had shown such breath, such spirit, that in a short space they had won the heart of all the currents and had made of them "one field and one dale" under a single roof, which was Hunchakianism. Even in 1904, when I was there — when Hunchakianism no longer existed in the province of Kars, save for a few individuals — it was with these words that they remembered them, and they took offense if you made any negative remark about them. They marveled when we called them "Hunchak."

— No, no, you are wrong; you sin against your own Soil. Rostom too was in Kars, and would go to Erzurum; Murad too was in Kars, and would go to Sasun. Sweet and kind, they were together. Both of them I saw off myself; both were men like angels. Neither "Center" nor "Hunchak" — the two of them said the selfsame thing: "The nation is a poor king, and we are its soldiers." We loved them, and saw to their every need, and sent them on their way — so Tevanents Ale would tell me.

Tevanents Ale was not making it up out of his own head. Such was the state of things at the beginning of the 1890s, when the likes of Rostom were leading the Federation of Revolutionaries and its decentralization. The likes of Murad found in it a practical idea; and had the members of the Hunchakian party's Center, seated abroad, understood its meaning — or had Rostom been a member of that Center — then in that case it is doubtful the A.R.F. would ever have been formed.

Hunchakianism, with all its endowments, did itself to death through its unpopular, centralizing, and totalitarian administration, and also as a consequence of the notion that the peoples do not possess their own khanjal [dagger], and that this khanjal is the monopoly of a few book-learned individuals. It is there that one must seek the causes of its decay and degeneration, and the sources of the Dashnaktsutiun's vitality.

In Kars the unity of the new organization, the Dashnaktsutiun, was perfect, thanks to Rostom.

That same unity arose in the work of gathering the fighting forces. Kukunian's band^t4 may be reckoned the Dashnaktsutiun's first attempt at organizing an armed force.

Andre Ter-Ohanian, in the pages of the Hairenik monthly, having for his source the recollections of the members of Kukunian's band, has grasped the essence of that band so truly, and described it so beautifully, that the reader may read it not as an invented novel but as real history. I too have had close friends among the members of that band, of whom Balajan and Tuben (Derdzakian) have told me the story more than once. What they told confirms the same as what Ter-Ohanian has set forth. So I add nothing further of my own about that band. I will say only that the worth of that band is not to be sought in itself, but in the influence it left on the psychology of the people.

The people of Kars were thirsting to see "the Armenian deed." This they saw and handled. And though that "deed" was imprisoned and exiled, yet the people loved what they had seen and wished to have a more flawless, more perfected military force — and they had it.

⁂

The battles and massacres of Sasun and of the years 1893–96 in Turkey had turned the whole people of the province of Kars into mourners — but mourners of one will, ready to exact "vengeance." Though in those years the mass followed the Dashnaktsutiun, yet the leaders of the movements in Turkey were the Hunchakians, and the responsibility for the failure fell on them. Even so, there was no criticism whatever against the one side or the other. "What has been, has been. Let us think rather of seizing by the collar the ones truly to blame — Sultan Hamid and Lobanov-Rostovsky," they would say.

It was with this thought that the song of the ashugh Jarjati — "The Muslims' haughty companies…" — and the songs composed about Damadian and Murad had become national songs, as had the song "Of Talvorik am I the brave, the rock of the flank"…, which was the national march of those times. The broad-hearted people reasoned: "If the issue succeed, the fruit of it will be for us all; if the issue fail, the consequence too will be for us all." And it sheltered and lodged under its roof all the fugitives, all who had escaped from the massacre.

The rise of the Dashnaktsutiun and the fall of Hunchakianism took place in the course of those anxious years — through the Hunchakians themselves, and thanks to the persistence and circumspection of the Dashnaks — and in the following manner:—

In Sasun, Damadian had been arrested. He had been replaced by Murad, who had been appointed by the Hunchakian party as leader of the Sasun insurrection. It was expected that, in the event of the insurrection's breaking out, Europe would be shaken, the English fleet would enter Constantinople, and the Russian army would move — to put into effect, if not the decisions of San Stefano, then at least those of the Congress of Berlin.^t6

But for an insurrection arms were needed. Murad, apart from the Berdan rifles he had brought from Kars and 2,000 cartridges, had no other arms. The Sasun men had flintlock guns and sword and mattal, to call which by the name of arms was itself an offense. That is why, at the meeting he held with the chiefs of Sasun, Murad had resolved to meet their demands halfway and to send a representative from the Caucasus abroad, to bring the promised arms. The Hunchakian party had made its promises in plenty.

The representative chosen had been Hrayr,^t5 the beloved of Sasun. He had sent about fifty of his men — of his own people of Shlghlaghaj and his intimates — to Kars, to convey to Sasun the arms they were to receive; and he had himself set out for Kars.

Turbakh and Tevanents Ale in Kars, and later Mkrtich of Kannenu and Poghos of Shlghlaghaj in Taron, would tell the story, and their several accounts confirmed one another in the main. Mkrtich, who after Hrayr was the second man in the world of Taron, would tell it with a mocking emphasis:

"Murad was without guile, he was simple, he trusted the promises. He said to us: 'If Sasun revolts, the Ingiliz [the Englishman] on the one side and the Urus [the Russian] on the other will enter Constantinople and pull down the Sultan's throne, and the Armenians will be freed.' He drew out the 'Center's' letter and read it. The assembly of Sasun said to Murad: 'You have come upon our eyes and our head; for the nation's sake, may our blood be halal [freely given]. And let the 'Center's' (Hunchakianism's) plenipotentiary be our chief, let him be the light of our eye.'

"Osei Ave and Hrayr turned to face Murad and said: 'All well and good; but a woman, being a woman, before she does the wash first makes ready the water, then the soap, and then begins the washing. We have flintlock guns, but we have no barut [powder]. With a flintlock one can fight against you, but against the askar-i rashi (the regular troops) there is no fighting. Where are your cannon and your musket?'

"A few hotheads — empty in the upper storey — cried out in the faces of Hrayr and Osei Ave: 'You are troublemakers.' And we said: 'The troublemakers are you.'

"Murad was a good man; he rose from his place and called out the ones who were crying 'troublemaker,' and said: 'You have a few men with their wits about them — is it their tongues too you would cut out? Osei Ave and Hrayr are in the right. Without arms and munitions there is no insurrection.' And he drew out letters sent from the 'Center,' in which the Hunchakians said: 'Whatever munitions you want, whatever is needed, go to the Caucasus and take from our branches.' Hrayr he appointed chief, to go and bring the arms, and gave him letters for the four corners of the world.

"We went to Kars, we searched for a branch. There is no such thing. There were a few Hunchakian youths; we gave the letter and demanded the promised arms. They said: 'That is the Center's affair; we have no arms.' We said: 'Janım, this will not do; there is fighting over Sasun, Murad is left in a hard strait, he has sent us in haste to bring help. You are leaving us to bleed. Brothers — will you not be brothers to us?' It was no use. They said: 'It is the Center's affair,' and stood their ground. And where the Center is, the devil knows. In our extremity, we clung to Jallat, who had been to Sasun and to St. Karapet. He took us to Turbakh, who is a very good man. He took us to Alek, who is an upright man. We told them everything. They said: 'We acknowledge no Center; we are Dashnaks, and we have no word of the Hunchakians. But since you are in the midst of a fight, apply to our committee — they will surely help.'

"Hrayr went forward. We went to the Dashnak committee and told our trouble. We did not know what a Dashnak was, nor did we know these men. When we said that we had come for arms, that there was fighting there, and why should we go back empty-handed, they said at once: 'What we have, count as yours. And let our own boys too be a matagh for you. We are one nation and of one faith, and we want the freedom of our nation.' The next day we set to work. Of the men of Shlghlaghaj we had brought with us, under Poghos's lead, we armed twenty-six and sent them back to Sasun. They reached safety. Seven others too — among whom was Cholo, a tender boy still — we started off by the road, but they could not get across beyond Baten. They were arrested; Cholo alone managed to escape.

"Jallat crossed into Sasun with a few men and came back, while Turbakh crossed into Khnus and settled there to pass bands across, and stayed there until the massacres came; but he got away. And so we did not send back from Kars empty-handed the men we had brought with us. Hrayr explained the whole affair to those who were returning, and begged them to make it plain to all — to the chiefs of Sasun and to Murad — that the Center was lost, and that all these arms the Dashnaks had given."

These accounts of Mkrtich of Kannenu, which I have brought in here by the way, are not meant to shed light on the history of the first Sasun insurrection. That does not concern Kars. It may be that Mkrtich of Kannenu's accounts are not verified facts, either. That I count a secondary matter. The essential thing must be reckoned to be those phenomena that became the cause of the Hunchakian party's utter disappearance in the Land and in Kars.

It must be reckoned undeniable that from Taron there were sent by Murad, as Hunchakians, Hrayr, Mkrtich, Poghos, and with them Hovo of Gomer, who turned to bring from the foreign "branches" the promised arms for the insurrection. Yet these men's efforts came to nothing with the Hunchakians, and, on the contrary, bore fruit with their adversaries, the Dashnaks. As a consequence, Hrayr, Mkrtich, and those who had come with them returned as Dashnaks.

It must be reckoned undeniable, too, that at that anxious moment, when the Dashnaktsutiun was still unknown in the Land, we see not only Peto of Kars in Van, but also Rostom in Erzurum; while Jallat (of Alexandropol) and Turbakh (of Kars) we see in Sasun and Khnus, together with the men Murad had sent, under the watchword of helping "the nation," without condition.

Who were the modest members of the A.R.F. central committees in the years 1893–1896, I have not been able to determine.

But for me it is a conviction that they, however unwittingly, by their conduct took so vast a step that they bound their district finally to the Dashnaktsutiun. And it was they who were the founders of the moral authority of that district, which I enjoyed in 1904. That step they wished to ascribe to Tevanents Alek, to Jallat, and to Turbakh; but these men, in my view, could be helpers and initiators, while the one who truly decided was the Central Committee. As the consequence of that step must be reckoned the riddle that the world of Taron — where the ruling and moral force had until then been the Hunchakians — passed all at once and wholly over to the side of the Dashnaktsutiun, with its Gevorg Chavushes,^t8 its Pokhots and its Makhars. From Kars to Erzurum, where Rostom had made his nest, and from Erzurum to Taron, Hunchakianism vanished away, and the Dashnaktsutiun took its place. This we owe to the Central Committee of Kars.

*

After the Congress of Berlin, Khrimian Hayrik set forth a vivid image with his famous tale of the "iron" ladle.^t9 This had a fateful significance in the Armenians' relations, both inner-revolutionary and outward. That two-edged parable, which became the anchor of the Hunchakians' line of conduct and which infected the Dashnaktsutiun as well, was for me a question open to review. And I would often speak of it with Sergei and with Hagop (Chilinkarian).

At the beginning of 1904, Sergei said to me one day:—

— Musings are fruitful when they are worked out in the open. They cripple a man when they are not dispelled. So you are to give a lecture on the subject "The Congress of Berlin, the Hunchakian Line of Conduct, and the Affair of Bank Ottoman."

I wished to refuse, but there was no escaping it, the more so as the meeting had been fixed for a close circle. Constrained, and stammer-ing, that day I spoke more or less the following:—

— Khrimian's conclusion — that at the Congress of Berlin they could not eat the harissa, because in their own hands were paper spoons while in the others' hands were iron ladles — is a piece of poetry: harmful, senseless, and two-edged, and one that has led Hunchakianism, and us likewise, and the whole of the Armenian people, down a wrong road.

They listened to me in silence and looked at me coldly, as though I were dripping poison into the chalice. But I went on:

— It is two-edged, because we can understand that parable otherwise: "Freedom cannot be gained by petition, by prayer, by weeping, but can only be wrested and seized with the iron ladle. International undertakings have worth when they serve the interests of the powers, and when what you have wrested with your own iron ladle you have been able to carry to your mouth and digest." If this is what Khrimian means to show, then that wisdom does not belong to him, but is a very old, time-worn truth, reckoned indisputable in history and beyond doubt.

Here the faces of my hearers cleared a little.

— But that elementary truth was grasped neither by Khrimian nor by his clerical companions, who went in the name of the Armenians to the Congress of Berlin — and, by their own confession, with a "paper" spoon.

When I marked reluctance on their faces, I raised my voice and cried out:

— Kruger,^t11 the president of the Boers, who is now going about Europe for the freedom of his people of a few hundred thousand, will attain his aim, because he understands that without the iron spoon no request is ever granted; and he will win the Boers' freedom from England. But we, a people of several millions, cannot win our freedom from Turkey and from Russia, since we have not yet understood that truth.

Khrimian's understanding, and that of the Hunchakians who followed his path, of the harissa's "iron and paper" spoons had another sense. They had believed in the victory of justice; they believe that by setting forth their just rights they will attain their aim; they believe that to stir the human conscience is decisive for reaching their aim. In a word, they await salvation from outside. This is a deadly peril, and a chasing after chimeras, which leads us to failure and ruin. Those who think and act thus will bring nothing but harm.

Such are our diplomat-clergy, who preach justice and freedom without the dagger. Such are the Hunchakians, who make an insurrection without a rifle, hoping that the pity of Europe will be moved and that justice will triumph. They do not know that justice and freedom are torn loose only with the point of the dagger.

The hearers were exasperated. Norhatian said: "Let him be, let him be, let him finish; let us see what he means to say." I went on:

— As for the affair of Bank Ottoman,^t10 I see in it only one thing, if we set the heroic side aside. By its action it means to make us and the world understand that one must spit on all political labor, if it is not backed by force. The worth of Bank Ottoman lies in this — that it is aware that it is to the biting dog they throw the bones, while for the whimpering and beseeching dog no share is set out. But we, unhappily, do not grasp that simple thing, and do not act in the spirit of Bank Ottoman.

When I saw that the listeners were awaiting my conclusion, I added:

— All of them are wrong. We have no iron ladle. That must be found, created, made ready. A paper ladle will serve for nothing. It remains to eat the harissa in the Armenian way — without a spoon, with our fingers and with lavash bread — and always keeping in mind the watchword of the Russian Socialist-Revolutionaries:^t12 "Only by your own strength do you come into your right."

I had finished. But fingers shot up and wolfish voices were heard: "I want the floor," "Give me the floor," "Give me leave to speak." And they fell upon me like vultures and tore me to shreds.

I took the blows and was in a pitiable state. Only Sergei — whether he pitied me or found me in the right, I do not know — intervened, saying:

— What did the lad say, that you have fallen upon him? He said that all the sermons, the weeping and the wailing, and the petitions are worthless — all of them empty hopes; and empty hopes must not be encouraged; and only after we have force must we wrest our right, to the measure of the force we have, and not beg for it as alms.

I had taken a beating, meeting with fierce opposition and reproach, but I consoled myself. Since there was such passionate opposition, it meant that they could not so quickly part from the traditions of decades, and the passion there was ought to be reckoned a sign of the loosening of those traditions. Therefore they had to be pulled down, stubbornly.

They were already on the point of falling. In Kars there was no longer any Russophilia, any blind service to the Russians. The Armenians there had been left despairing, looking at the fortress of Kars, which had once been their capital. Today it belonged to the Russian, though it had been retaken by the Armenian general Lazarev. They had been left despairing by the ruin of the bands of Kukunian, of Basen, and others, and by the joint efforts of Russian and Turk. They had been left despairing above all by the forcible seizure of the Armenian church estates, and stood before a reality that was far removed from any blind faith in the Russian.

Therefore a positive support had to be found, to replace those false and harmful dreams.

That break had come about not in me alone, but in all of us.

Weeks had passed when one day Sergei said to me:

— In your last lecture you said one good thing, but you did not explain your thought well. You said: spit on the paper spoon, we have no need of it; let us eat the harissa like Armenians — with lavash bread and with our fingers, spoon and all. Come, let us work this out in detail and find the practical road. I have thought much, and I find that something must change. But how it must change — that let us ponder together. Have you read Droshak [the A.R.F. organ, "Banner"]? While we are pondering such things, Loris and others are going about in Italy and other cities, holding meetings and blowing the zurna. That does not please me. It has no smell of the Dashnaktsutiun about it, but of Hunchakianism.

So we would talk, and could find no road. That road we were to find in the Land — which came out at the line of collaboration with the neighbors.

Those years were the years of the break in our politics.

*

When you ask a man whose son he is, he gives his father's name, even if his father's influence on him was slight. He does not give his mother's name, though he knows perfectly well who his mother is, and that everything he is hangs on her, and that he owes her every quality he has.

Like all mothers, Kars too remains unacknowledged, though she was the mother of the revolutionary upbringing, its tender parent, who gave her all to all Armenians without distinction.

Blessed be Hovsep Ter-Davtian^t13 and Hamo Ohanjanian,^t14 who said to me: "Until you have drunk the water of Kars, breathed its air, and digested the ways of its people, go nowhere else." And giving me a note, they sent me first to Kars, that I might grow used to the atmosphere there. This I did, and I saw

that the mother of the Armenians is Kars.

And if you ask me whose son I am, I do not err in telling you that I am a boy of Kars, though I was not born here.

Sons of Kars are all those who have passed over her soil and drunk of her waters. And if they have not drunk, it is all the same: Kars is a grandmother who counts every Armenian her own child, though she may never have seen them. Kars helps them without distinction, grieves for them and rejoices for them, though she draws no one's notice.

Kars, with her districts, sat astride the roads that led to the Land. It was from beneath her skirts that one could go to Bagrevand, to the districts of Erzurum, to Khnus and Akhlat, to Hark and Apahunik, to far-off Kajberunik and Tmorik, to Vardo, to Taron and the land of Sasun lost among the mountains, and to the parts more distant still — in a word, to the whole of Upper Armenia and the center of Armenia. Kars was the ring and the key of northern and southern Armenia.

The benefits she brought for the Land were these:

1.— Within her bosom she had created such a patriarchal and national atmosphere that every Armenian, whatever his origin and class, felt himself within a family of his own; he forgot his narrow and harmful feelings of faction and of native-place, and was consumed with the joys and sorrows of the whole Armenian people. He spared neither his goods nor his blood for its independence and its freedom. There, in the moral sense, died all those who by their selfishness and their foreign-mindedness stood in the way of the settlement of the Armenian cause.

We have seen that the district of Kars had reached this goal through its autonomous, revolutionary inner government. And this psychology it exported to the Land and to northern Armenia.

2.— As a waystation between northern and southern Armenia, she encouraged and aided by every means all those men, intellectual and non-intellectual, who crossed

from the one side to the other with the aim of forging freedom. All the field-workers and fighters who fell as martyrs in central Armenia died with a feeling of gratitude toward Kars, carrying away with them her tenderness and her encouragement. Arabo, Keri of Dersim,^t15 Serob of Sokhord,^t16 Rostom, Hrayr, Zhirayr, Murad of Sasun — which of them should I name? — all of them drank the water of Kars and learned something of the spirit of her people and carried it away with them.

Not content even with this, Kars sent to Van one of her own sons, Peto, who laid the beginning of the Dashnaktsutiun there. Several times she sent to Sasun Jallat and Turbakh, who in their day were figures dear to the people and spreaders of the mind of Kars. She sent others too, such as Maloyan and Shavro, who, before reaching their goal, froze or were killed on the frontiers. But this did not dishearten the man of Kars. "The pitcher breaks on the road to the water," he would say, and so he consoled himself — and multiplied the number of the martyrs.

3.— She gave shelter to those who suffered for the nation — to the fugitives, to the weary fighters, to the multitudes fled from the massacres. But she did not reckon this giving of shelter a favor, a national service rendered to the afflicted, but their natural right — as it is the natural right of the weary and the wounded to return to their own house and be given over to their mother's care. Those who came to Kars felt themselves neither "refugees" nor strangers. Such a thing I have met with nowhere else, except in the land of Taron. Some 25,000 Armenians fled from the massacres of 1894–96 had found refuge in the district of Kars, despite the persecutions of the Turkish and Russian authorities. The newcomers were protected and cared for by the Armenians of Kars as fellow-workers with equal rights.

4.— The district of Kars had also the following psychology:— The Land is under the first and gravest danger. It must be

set free. Freedom and security are not given if you have no force. Force cannot be created so long as you have no perfected arms. Therefore, first, arms must be procured. Second, the arms procured must be conveyed to all those who fight within the Land. And third, armed bands must be prepared and brought to the aid of the fighters.

I have already noted that for the procuring of arms only two means were used — namely, purchase by party or other national funds, and theft from the state depots. Here I must add that the suspicions of the Turks were groundless, who supposed that the arms had been supplied by the Russians. Equally groundless were the suspicions of the Russians, that some other power was aiding us. Because these dealings were carried on with money, they imagined that the Armenian people could not raise that money. It is to be noted, too, that this method of purchase and theft could not be put into practice within the Land — which would have brought a double benefit. Nor was the building of our own arms-factories ever accomplished in Kars. That came about only in part, in Tabriz. One way or another, in a limited fashion, arms were procured in Kars.

A harder task was the work of getting the arms into the Land, which was full of dangers. At first it was comparatively easy, when no notice was yet taken by the governments. The arms were passed across the frontier as goods, as merchandise, and reached their destination through men who were in on the plan. But this means was soon wholly done away with. When they understood that under the name of merchant-goods forbidden arms were being brought in, the inspections at the frontiers grew severe, and the trade of the Armenians was prohibited on both sides, by Turkish and Russian agreement. By that agreement, the Armenian subjects of the two states were to be cut off from one another, and no Armenian could any longer cross from one side of the frontier-line to the other, though both

sides were the country of Armenians.

There remained but one means: to slip by night past the two frontier-guarding armies, to organize arms-running bands, small or large — the zinatar (arms-running) bands — and to carry the arms across into the Land. In other words, either the fighting element in the depths of the Land had to come in person as far as Kars and take up the store of arms, or fighters had to be found in Kars who would cross the frontier fighting. The transport of arms became a constant preoccupation, one that was as good as playing with one's life.

Into this hard work Hrayr introduced an innovation.

Though hot fighting had already broken out in Sasun, Hrayr hastened to reach the other centers abroad, going as far as Romania and Bulgaria, so that, if there were no arms even to convey to Sasun, at least the fleet of the Ingiliz [the Englishman] might hurry into Constantinople, as the Hunchakian Center had promised in the letter addressed to Murad. That promise, too, was without foundation. Hrayr had not turned back in despair; he washed his hands of the Hunchakians and vowed to go after the Dashnaktsutiun. Rostom had become his idol — whom, though he had not seen him (I do not think he ever saw him at all), yet, judging from his deeds, he had come to believe in.

In Kars Hrayr had become a man of Kars; he had taken to himself the mind and the method of Kars, and had become an unsparing critic of the Hunchakian way of working. And when they sang the songs of Talvorik and the others that Damadian had composed, he would silence them, saying: "A curse on those sweet tongues that can raise the simple people to their feet but cannot keep them standing. Better that the people of Talvorik had remained — better you had never understood its glory."

When they read that Gladstone had said this and Dillon that, he would say, exasperated: "A curse on those hands that can make another believe what they themselves do not believe. Such men are the grave-diggers of the people. I have seen where lies end."

The old men, and Tevanents Alek in particular, when they told of this, would add:

— Everything about Hrayr was as it should be. He was a great man; only, he spoke against Damadian and Murad, which did not sit well with our hearts. When we made him see that one does not strike a man already fallen, he said: "Let it be as you say. But you do not understand. I have eaten the garlic and the pepper — my mouth burns. I have minced the onion — my eyes water. It is I who was their fellow-worker, and now I see — no good will come of it — that my people went down underfoot on a vain hope."

The people-loving, embittered Hrayr did not know what awaited him ten years later. Under different conditions, he too would be killed for the love of that same people, prompted by his own disillusionment.

Sasun had fallen. Near the rock of Yorofor, Murad, Gevorg, and their comrades had been taken in 1896, and despair reigned there. But Kars did not despair; she was only sorrowful. Hrayr, who had come to Kars, was seeking new devices, new paths, to help the Land. Looking to the organization and the people of Kars, he pointed to a new way out. He reasoned in the mind that prevailed in Kars:

— A rock that has broken loose from the mountain cannot be set upright again. Our people have opened their eyes; they cannot be made slaves again. An awakened slave who has no protector will surely be killed by his master of yesterday. Let us take this into account. And that there is no protector, let us know for certain too, so that we do not deceive ourselves to no purpose. We have not that quiet, hush-hush organization of yours, without chalum (swagger), the one you have let slip. Second: we have fighters, but no arms; you have both. I will cross into the Land this very tomorrow, if you give me your word that you will place at my disposal — on the frontier, in the places I show you — arms and organizers, as many as I want.

He got their word, and set out from the Russian Basen to the Turkish Basen, where the same Armenian people live. Already, by the same plan,

Aram Takhul had crossed to Erzurum, while Turbakh and Jallat had crossed to Khnus and Taron.

The plan was simple. First, to organize the Armenians of the Turkish part quietly, hush-hush, without noise, without chalum. This Hrayr accomplished fully in Basen, taking it upon himself to carry the work through. The second task was to bring munitions, by local bands, from the Russian Basen and the district of Takht into fixed places on the frontier, to hide them in the mountains and withdraw. This Kars did. From the Turkish Basen bands came, as though they were peasants, took up the hidden arms, and by night conveyed them to Hrayr, and turned peasants again. This method of transport, which was carried out without noise and at speed, had yielded a fairly large result. Force was being made ready in Basen, and from there it moved more easily on to Khnus and the parts further in.

But into the field had fallen tares, and into the wheat, a moth. The government had learned the secret, and was hunting out and arresting every farmhand and plowman in the Armenian villages. In the village of Igderan in Basen, I think, while Hrayr was watering buffaloes in the ravine as a farmhand, they arrested him and took him to the prison of Erzurum, where Aram Takhul too had fallen. The latter they hanged, while Hrayr was freed at the time of the general amnesty and returned to Taron. With his arrest his method of transport came to an end.

This was in the bloody and dreadful years of 1895–96.

It remained for Kars to continue her help to the Land — with armed bands.

⁂

The number and the quantity of the zinatar bands is very hard to determine, because of those bands that had reached safety nothing was written and little was said. To remain unknown made the next undertaking easier. It is the ones that met with failure that were known to all; for when a band had not

reached its place and all had been killed, there could no longer be any harm in speaking of it.

I must try to speak in turn of these zinatar bands, each of which was an epic and a tragedy. The list I give will not be complete. Let those who take an interest in the matter make their study in the old letters and archives, or let those who took part in those battles and marches supply what is missing.

Of the marches of the following armed bands in the years 1890–1899 I have heard from the accounts of those who took part. These are the ones from the province of Kars:—

1.— Yunan's band. What I know of this I have written. It penetrated into the Land as far as Sper, Kiskim, Khope, and Tortum, and had its base at Artvin, Olti, and Geola.

2.— Kukunian's band. As it seems, the most trustworthy source is the collection of Andre Ter-Ohanian. The compass of its activity was confined to the counties of Kars and Kaghzvan. Among those who took part in this band were Yeprem, Beri (Baftar Arshak), Balajan, Ruben Derdzakian, and, I think, Kevork the Hunter too, who together with Beri had also been in Yunan's band.

3.— Prince Hovsep Arghutian (of Lori) and Jallat, who crossed from Kars to St. Karapet, or established themselves with Arabo, and, leaving their band's arms behind, returned.

4.— Arabo's band.(*) He came to the Caucasus. In Kars they armed his band and put into it such comrades as gave the band a revolutionary character. One of them, I think, was Levon of Akhaltskha. The band and Arabo were killed on the road, in the valley of Geale-rash, on the frontier of Taron.

5.— The band of the Hunchakian Murad, which was armed in Kars

(*) Of Arabo I will tell later on (Volume III).

and reached Sasun in safety.

6.— The band of Poghos of Kzghl-Aghaj, whom Hrayr had brought with him to Kars, where it was armed and reached Taron and Sasun in safety.

7.— A second band from among those who had come with Hrayr (the leader's name I do not recall) was armed in Kars and returned to Sasun and Taron. In this band took part Zoro of Shenik, still a lad. On the road the band lost a few men in fighting, while the rest reached their place in safety.

8.— The band of Stepan of Shenik. Stepan, who was a close kinsman of the renowned Prince Grge, set out for Kars to procure arms before the Sasun fighting had begun. On the road, in the village of Apri in Bulankh, he saw a Kurdish sheikh who had seized the estates of the Armenians by force and lorded it over the Armenians. Being a hot-blooded lad, he drew his dagger and, without a thought for the consequences, killed the sheikh; and he himself went on his way and reached Kars.

— I am the brother of Grge of Shenik (his cousin, I think). I have not begged to live; I have killed. Give me a good weapon, he said.

— There are no arms for you, they answered, since you have brought no letter. We will give you five weapons instead of one, if you find five comrades known to us and return to Sasun with the arms.

He accepted the condition, and, finding five men who were known, was armed and returned to Sasun in safety.

Two weeks later he planted himself in Kars again and asked for arms once more. But this time they grew suspicious of him, and death swung over his head. How was it that he had gone and come back within two weeks, and had again brought no letter? By the time those suspicions were dispelled, the thing was long past: Grge had been killed and Sasun had fallen.

Stepan too I saw, at the end of 1903. He was in the villages of Takht, living on his past and puffing himself up on Grge's laurels. He had become by now a rusted rifle.

9 and 10.— These two bands are ones that Hrayr passed across, which from the Turkish Basen, with arms received from Kars, went to Taron. Who their leaders were I could not learn.

11.— Jallat's second band, which he brought safely to Taron. He himself returned to Kars by way of Khnus. On the road he was caught in the storm of the general massacre, for which he drew a reprimand — why he had turned back into that storm.

12.— Turbakh's band, of men of Khnus perhaps, armed in Kars, which reached Khnus and settled there. During the massacre he too stayed in Khnus, and then returned — alive, I believe.

Of these twelve bands, the first five crossed into the Land in the years 1890–94 — that is, before the first insurrection of Sasun had yet broken out. The remaining seven were in the years 1894–95 — that is, in the course of the Sasun insurrection or in the days of its fall.

13.— The band of Abro of Shabin-Karahisar, which crossed from Kars to Sasun during the general massacre and the rebuilding of Sasun and, after reaching safety, departed content, falling under hiwsini.

14.— Serob of Sokhord, who came by way of the Balkans and, having taken the head of a band in Kars, crossed safely to Mount Nemrut and the district of Akhlat, and became Serob Pasha.

15.— A small band of men of Akhlat, which crossed by way of Kars and reached Akhlat in safety. The leader's name I do not know.

16.— Sepuh of Baberd (known in Kars by the name of Kersa Arshak) crossed by way of Kars, reached Sasun in safety, and returned.

17.— The great band of Jartar of Akhlat (a kinsman of Serob), in which took part Arakel, Musheg, Avag the Lion, and Balabek Karapet; arming in Kars, it entered Bagrevand and, from there onward, fighting without cease, reached Mount Khatavin. By the name of the last that band became

legendary. After many Homeric battles, the remnants of the band reached Akhlat, to Serob. The fights of this band have been made immortal by unbelievable feats of daring, which the Kurds above all swear by.

18.— The Khastur band, likewise armed in Kars, went to Akhlat on the traces of Jartar. Who the leader was — Mihran or Khan — I do not know for certain. This band was caught in very heavy fighting in the neighborhood of the village of Khastur in Bagrevand, and by that name it too is known. The chief among its members were two brothers, Mihran and Yaket (who were very brave, but who later, carried away by factional passion, turned traitor and became Russian agents, and were made the object of a terror-act by the Dashnaktsutiun, having first snatched Yeghishe Topchian from us); Khan, who later became the band's leader; Simon of Baberd; and Tultsik Gevorg (the Georgian), who was a most original figure, with a higher German education, and a steadfast lover of soldiering. This band, before reaching its goal, was forced by its losses to turn back halfway. Sepuh too, I think, took part in the Khastur fight.

19 and 20.— The bands of Sako of Sev-Kar and Sepuh of Baberd, which — whether separately or together I do not know — set out from Kars and reached Sasun and Taron in safety. Their chief aim was to replace Gurgen, who had been killed in the village of Tsronk, and to put an end to the disagreements and conflicts that had arisen between Serob Pasha and Andranik,^t17 and between the people and the fedayis. The mission had failed because of Sako's arrest, and Sepuh, seeing that he could not reconcile the sides, had turned back.

This list, as I have said, is incomplete. Let others complete it.

How many took part in these bands, how much armed and human force was supplied, and how much of it perished and fell as martyrs — to determine this exactly is impossible

in present conditions. But the fact remains a fact, that in the years 1890–99 the work of bringing in forces of that magnitude weighed almost wholly upon Kars.

Not in this list are the bands and undertakings that were carried out from Erevan and from Persia toward the Land.