Memoirs of an Armenian Revolutionary, Volume 1 — Chapter 12: Batum

Reaching Tiflis, I presented myself to the Bureau, which decided to send me to Batum^t1 as a field-worker.

It was the second time I was going to that city to work. The first time I went there was at the end of 1902, when one foot of mine was in the Dashnaktsutiun and the other was still groping about in uncertainty.(\*)

I remember that in those years (1902) I presented myself one day to Hamo (Ohanjanian) at Tiflis, who was a central figure in the Dashnaktsutiun, the youngest of them and the most

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(\) The pages that follow, which describe Rouben's first journey to Batum (in the year 1902), were written in 1948, for Hairenik*, but were not sent. The second part of Chapter XII (1904) is taken from the notebooks. (A. Kh.)

beloved. He had known me from childhood, when he used to come to our house to play with my elder brothers. When Hamo saw me he was delighted. He proposed that I go to Batum. "For young men like you," he said, "the fit place to do abadz^t2 is Batum, where the revolutionary ferment is fierce. There are two revolutionary currents: one is Sasun, in Turkey; the other is Batum and Guria^t3 — outside Transcaucasia, and throughout Russia. We have a strong Body^t4 at Batum, but it has not grasped in any depth the importance of its own ground; fresh forces are needed there. Some while ago I sent Alyosha; you go too, put yourself at the Body's disposal, and work according to its instructions."

Though I had completed my twenty-first year and had already been through a great many trials, into a test of this kind I had never fallen. I was to go and work in the name of a party which, though it was the most attractive of all in my adolescent gropings, was one whose essence was unknown to me. I was grown, but I knew that I was not prepared for the charge given me. All the same, I accepted Hamo's proposal.

Arriving at Batum, I put up at the inn where men of my sort lodged. I easily made the acquaintance of Alyosha, who was better prepared than I and more experienced in the work. He came from a Russian university, and was my own age. Sometimes he wore a student's cap, when he went into the workers' quarters, and sometimes a broad-brimmed hat, like the poets. His spectacles were inseparable from his nose — they made up one part of his face — and in his hand he carried a thick walking-stick. Only, out of that childlike, dreaming face, goodness and pity poured. He was always smiling; he smiled even in anger and in rage. He was a pleasant comrade. From the very first minute I opened myself to him as to an old and intimate friend.

— Alyosha, you want information from me about our comrades, but I shall tell you that I know no one, because I am a newcomer in the party family.

Alyosha smiled kindly. He had taken on the look of a happy man, and it seemed that Hamo's regard for him had made a great impression on him.

— Don't lose heart. Hamo did well to send you to this "furnace." He sent me the same way, with this difference, that here there was no second Alyosha to whom I could make unreserved confessions such as you have made to me. I shall tell you one thing, and mark it: frankness and inknazhgahutiun^t5 are, among Armenians, synonyms for weakness and nullity; among Russians, on the contrary, they are signs of strength and progress. I miss my^t6 comrades. Don't be that frank with anyone else again — you will lose your credit.

Alyosha spoke Armenian with difficulty, mixing Russian in as he went. This intelligent had in fact become Russian in soul, though within him the datrin^t7 Armenian spoke. He went on:

— If that is how it is, let me explain to you. Batum is a new city of more than 40,000, where the winds blow from one side out of Europe, from another out of Transcaucasia and Asia, and from a third out of Russia. It is the meeting-point of three cultures. It is the one mouth of Transcaucasia for export and import. Here the newly created industry is growing. Without Batum, Baku is a worthless fortune. So I have given you an idea of the place. Let us come now to the population.

"More than half the city are Armenians; after them come

the Georgian tribes — Gurians, Mingrelians, Ajarians and the rest; then the Greeks, and last of all the Russians. So it is a city Russian in form, Georgian in speech, and Armenian in essence. An "ashak sandal,"^t8 in which the master is the Armenian.

"The Russians are the fewest in number, but the administrative helm is in their hands. Policeman, officer, governor — these are they, and they occupy almost all the state posts besides. A small part of the Russians are in the free professions or are skilled workers. Nearly all of them are "chernosotentsy" (Black Hundredists, Russian chauvinists).^t9 There are a few students and workers outside those ranks who are gold. These hate the government.

"The Greeks are in general merchants. From the national point of view they consider themselves guests in Batum, and feel themselves a part of the greater Greece. From the social point of view they are against revolution, and by their confession they are bound to Russia as well, so that they must be judged in the ranks of the Black Hundredists. They are counter-revolutionaries, and serve as a prop to the police.

"Let us come now to the Georgians. They are divided into various tribes, so far apart from one another that one might reckon them different nations. But at present these different nations are on the road to mingling and forming a single nation, thanks to the Georgian parties and particularly to the Social-Democrats. The Ajarians, who surround Batum — which in truth ought to be reckoned an Ajarian city — are Muslim by religion, and for that reason they are bound to Turkey. They are against the Russians, and against the Armenians too, because we are against the Turk; but they are not against the Georgians and the Christians, and that is thanks to the working method and the labors of the Social-Democrat party.

"There are many Gurians in Batum, and their country lies close to this city. They have become the axis of the Georgian tribes and of the social struggles. They have for their motto 'One nation (Geor-

gian), one culture.' They put forward education, economic freedom, administrative autonomy, the abolition of despotism and other demands of the kind, and they have covered their country with consumers' and in part producers' kooperativs (cooperative societies). This element, which is forever running the names of Marx and Engels through every case, does not serve Marx; it makes Marx serve its own ends.

"The Mingrelians and the Imeretians, who are still much attached to their nobility, are waking at the sight of the Gurians' example. The national currents formed among them do not speak to the heart of the lower layers, and are confined to the compass of the nobility alone — a consequence of the pressure exerted from below. There is a Federalist current as well, which tries to gather the Georgian tribes under one roof, but it is destitute of economic and social foundations, and that becomes the cause of its weakness. The Federalist current is attractive to the humble layers only for its national aspirations; those, however, are not enough to bind the masses to it. In this condition, since it serves the inner aspirations of the Social-Democrats by leveling the antagonism of the tribes, they do not disturb the Federalists' work; but at the same time, by stressing the social and economic factors, they are turning that current into a branch of their own.

"I admire the Gurian group. Zhordania^t10 and his comrades have found the way to do, under the label of international socialism, the very work the Dashnaktsutiun does — with this difference, that they are outwardly socialist and in essence nationalist, while we are outwardly nationalist and inwardly socialist."

Alyosha, having finished his cup of coffee, went on.

— Now let us come to our own people. Till now I have given you an idea of its surroundings.

"The Armenians of Batum are as old as

Batum itself. They trickle down upon Batum with the river Chorokh — Artvin, Artanush, Khopa, Borchkha and the rest. To that have been added those who came from Transcaucasia, particularly from Akhalkalak and Akhaltskha. We must count in the Armenians who fled from Lazistan and from the districts of Trebizond, and the refugees who came from the other parts of Turkish Armenia, chiefly from Akhalt^t11 and Bayberd — and we get the melting-pot of the Armenians of Batum and its surroundings.

"The Armenians are not of one religion; they are Turk, Frank and Armenian — in other words Muslim, Catholic and Gregorian. These are as far from one another as we and the Turks, as we and the Russians, and that without exaggeration. Though all three are pure-blooded Armenians, yet, to our heart's sorrow, our Muslim and our Christian churches strive to push them further apart; and our own party, which is called to abolish the barriers, has fallen in behind great affairs and neglected these everyday questions. If we accepted the essence of our program, according to which 'Religion is an individual question matter,'^t12 if we accepted liberation from confessional traditions, from the influence of the parakhanner^t13 of Catholicoi and ter-ters, the confessions could not become an obstacle to our gathering our national sections into one and forming a single nationality. We must take example from the Georgians. Azarik and Simon assure me that the number of Muslim Armenians on the banks of the Chorokh and on the skirts of Pontus is greater than that of those reckoned Armenian. The question, then, does not concern the men of Khopa and Borchkha, who may become a nucleus; the question is broader and more serious. Here is a field for us, to sow and to reap.

"The Armenians are not of one tongue, though the majority are Armenian-speaking. In this small city alone you see Georgian-speaking and Russian-speaking Armenians whose number is no quantity to be overlooked. My grandmother was Armenian-speaking, my mother Georgian-speaking, my father Circassian-speaking, and I Russian-speaking. Armenian I learned later, and imperfectly enough at that; but I am no less an Armenian than those who

know no language besides Armenian. To be fully an Armenian it is of course a necessity to know our language; but to conclude from this that whoever does not know Armenian is not an Armenian is the greatest and the most dangerous error there is. I have felt it, above all when ignorant usurers or tiratsus, who understood nothing of Armenian-ness, mocked my accent, laughed at my mistakes, and reckoned me a worse Armenian than they were. In the end, language is only a weapon to a man, to carry his thoughts to those around him and to receive theirs. Why reckon less Armenian those who have escaped dying, or escaped becoming dumb beasts? The Circassian-speaking, Turkish-speaking, Russian-speaking, Georgian-speaking Armenians, and those who speak other languages still, have become so because they have not had the chance of living together, because their fatherland has not been free and they have been driven — so it is said — out of the ancestral nest, because Armenian-ness, reckoning them lost and assimilated, has neglected their Armenian upbringing. From this one may conclude that there are three means for the reviving of the language: the Armenians' living together; the freedom of the Fatherland; and the organizing of schooling and of school-work for those who have lost the language. If the first two can today be no more than guiding ideas, to carry out the third is within our power. But we have no Armenian literature, history and school in foreign languages for the foreign-speaking Armenians, so as to keep an Armenian by origin an Armenian and draw them into the Armenian fold. Here is a broad field to work in. We must reform the purposeful distribution of the Armenian schools, and must develop and spread a many-tongued Armenian culture. In that way we should save a third of the Armenian people from loss."

Alyosha went on with his lesson:

"The Armenians of Batum divide into two classes — the bourgeois and half-bourgeois on the one side, and on the other the proletarian and poor class. As a class they are opposed to one another, but on the other hand they remain bound to one another

by their patriotism and their compatriotic unions. A strange phenomenon, and one peculiar to the Armenian alone. For the Armenian proletarian a Mantashev, a Tsaturov^t14 are not opponents but a national pride, because they are rich and are Armenian Gregorians; just as for these the Armenian proletarian is no enemy, because he is their compatriot. Among Armenians there is no class antagonism; the Armenians are mianabar^t15 against the foreign classes and against their very existence. It is not so among the Georgians and the Russians, who are divided from one another by noble, bourgeois and proletarian barricades. The Armenians of Batum are divided according to cafés.^t16 Every district or province has its own café. The Akhaltskha man, the Mush man, the Van man, the Trebizond man, the Akhalkalak man, the Akhaltskha man,^t17 the Khotorjur man has his own separate corner, where the compatriots gather without distinction of class and where all are equal; often the poorest man there carries more authority than the rich man, or than one who is conspicuous in other fields. From these^t18 two conclusions must be drawn, which I have come by through my own experience.

"The first is that only with great difficulty can the Armenian proletarian class be brought out against the Armenian bourgeois class; but it comes out with one voice, and taking every sacrifice upon itself, against the Russian, Turkish or Georgian exploiting class, having with it the Armenian half-bourgeois and even the bourgeois layers.

"The second is that the compatriotic groupings do not lead to clan-chieftainship and to the breaking up of the wholeness of the nation. To appearance it seems so, but in essence it is not. The provincial groupings are the steps of a staircase, formed of themselves, and those steps carry the Armenian people toward the idea of the completing of a common fatherland. Only, those groupings must be made conscious, so that they do not afterwards turn into feudalities.

"These two conditions of fact place us in a very delicate position. On the one hand the Armenian is so proud of his origin and his past that he wants to be sovereign and to have his national independence, above all in Turkish Armenia, for which he is ready for every sacrifice. On the other hand he is so conscious of his personal and social interests, so full of initiative and of revolutionary flight, that he cannot endure the despotic regime and the capitalist order. With his left hand he has come up to the field of socialism, and with his left hand he clings to it^t77 as to an anchor of salvation. In that way the Armenian is both socialist and national, and that quality of his — contradictory to appearance — has an altogether different content than it has, for instance, in Russia or in Turkey. The Armenian is an individuality, like the gazelle come down from the mountains or the bear of the forest; while the Turk and the Russian are like the bee of the hive, whose individuality lies in the whole, and which, if one particle be torn from it, is subject to being melted down and annihilated.

"Freedom is for the Armenian individual a necessary condition of growth; what it is for the Turk and the Russian is a word the individual cannot understand. The Armenian can form a collective body and stand forth as a nation only by way of democracy; he cannot bear theocracy, or aristocracy, or despotism of any kind. For the Turk and the Russian, on the contrary, real democratism lies in the will of their emperor, their chief, their leader, and in the murmurless obedient discipline of their subjects. In a word, our people is the sum of independent units, while they are the contentless particles of an independent sum — like ciphers.^t19 Out of this contradiction comes the following: that if you string ciphers behind^t20 a Nicholas, a Marx or a Plekhanov,^t21 a giant sum is obtained, an unbreakable force. But with us, string as many ciphers as you like, you get only ciphers, since our birth is not from the individual or from the idea, but

from our own worth. Erase from within the Turk or the Russian his leader or his leading idea, and another remains in the place. Here is the secret: that they have no possibility of enduring and of forming a world-wide flock, like microbes;^t22 whereas we, like all the old and crystallized peoples — the Jews, the Greeks — are like grains of wheat, which taken one by one are individualities. Mix a grain with other seeds and leave it under the ground, and out of it, though volot,^t23 you get wheat again. Do not mix it with other seeds, and sow it in the soil it loves, and you get a wheatfield, exactly like the seed. That wheat can be burned, can be eaten and wasted, but annihilated it never can be. Let a few grains only be spared, and they multiply again and endure. The strength of the Armenian people is its mastery over the breadth of time; the strength of the others is their mastery over space and over force. Why is there no Roman of the deified Augustus and of Caesar? Why are there no Assyria and Babylon of Ashurnasirpal and Nebuchadnezzar? Why are there none of the mighty empires of Chinggis, of Lenktimur,^t24 of the Huns, the Alans, the Kushans and the others, which we have tasted — and why are we here? It is simple: their greatness was a string of ciphers, while we are an individuality, and we remain so forever.

⁂

"All this by way of preface, so that you may understand the Dashnaktsutiun.

"The Dashnaktsutiun is not a doctrine, only a genuine psychological product of the Armenian people's aspirations. The Armenian people has two different aspirations, and the Dashnaktsutiun too, at bottom, has a duality to which it wants to put an end.

For the Armenian people the individual is the foundation of humanity and of progress, and for that reason the Dashnaktsutiun is against not only every despotic authority, but also

all those parties which — like the orthodox Marxists, for instance — deny the value of the individual and want to cast everyone in a single mold. For the Armenian people the family is a holy temple, a footing for the gathering of individuals and for social and national unity. For that reason too the Dashnaktsutiun is not only the keeper of the traditions of the patriarchal Armenian family, but is itself a party-family, formed on those same patriarchal lines. The gathering of families is the nation; the domain of the nation is the Fatherland. Against the idea of the despotic states, that outside the bounds of allegiance to the state there exists neither the idea of a nation nor of a fatherland; against the view of the present socialist currents, that the national idea is, like religion, a counter-revolutionary, anti-progressive prejudice, and that class consciousness alone is real — the Dashnaktsutiun holds nationality and fatherland to be real, as the different genera of animals and plants are real, and in whose harmonious and parallel development it finds the pledge of progress and well-being. That is an unavoidable good for the peace and progress of mankind. At bottom, the Dashnaktsutiun leads toward the independence of nations, under the mottoes of "reforms and federation." It wants to soften the Turkish and the Russian blow, but it deceives itself more than anyone. The enemy sees that, and for that reason concentrates its blow against the Dashnaktsutiun, as against a separatist. The socialist Marxists see it in the same way, and for that reason they too are against us, even were we socialists. That union of the left and the right groupings against us has its justifying reasons, given that our aspiration is to go, by a federation of independent nations, toward a universal human harmony, while theirs, on the contrary, is to create a homogeneous mass by violating the bound-

aries of independent nations, or by annihilating national longings, and in that way to reach harmony."

Alyosha felt himself master of the ground, since I was devouring his ideas, which were for the most part new to me.

"One fundamental question more, and everything becomes clear. Tomorrow, when you have dealings with the circle outside or with our own, a question will at once be put before you: 'Are we socialists or not?' The answer to it is yes, since 70 per cent of the Armenian people are either propertyless workers or peasants tilling the soil, and all the rest are hunted emigrants who, so as not to be beaten in the struggle of life, have become small and large merchants, artisans and men of the free professions. But we are socialists of our own kind, just as in the religious view we have a confession of our own kind. We can be as much against the violent regime that oppresses the class forming the majority as the Russian socialists are; but we, if you like, are more opposed to that regime than they, because we are hunted as Armenians as well, because that regime is against our national existence. The Russian socialist currents, taking Marx's theory for their starting point, have not made the liberation of nations their aim. On the contrary, they hold national aspiration to be a backward prejudice. Now, a socialism of that kind is at bottom no different from the tsarist regime. In essence it wants to reform the tsarist regime, to give it new vitality and new strength, so that, leaning on the majority and not on the minority, it may make its world-expansion more effective; so that it may be able to dissolve all nations in the Russian sea; and so that it may establish the supremacy of the lower class in place of the upper. This is neither evolution nor revolution, but merely a change of authority. With socialists of that kind we can travel the same road

as far as the overthrow of the tsarist power; but their subsequent rule is in no way to be wished for, given that the power stays the same and has only changed its clothes. They are, consciously or unconsciously, the abettors of the annihilation of the freedom of the individual, of democracy and of the aghker,^t25 of the sole rule of hangmen, and the vanguard of world-expansion. We tie the establishing of a socialist order to the individuality of the person and of the nation; for us, without the freedom of the individual and of his fatherland there can be neither socialism nor humanity — whereas for them the precondition is to be a dumb drast,^t26 so that mankind may become a bee-like or an ant-like workshop. We want the workshop to serve us; they want us to serve the workshop. These are the fundamental disputes, which for many, however, are past understanding, and for that reason we stand at present before a very heavy and delicate situation. You will see it in this small city, and you too will be forced to undergo the test, as I have undergone it several times. Here the tests are still in the germ, but they can spread and become the cause of fissures arising in our party and of its breaking up to payn^t27 extent, if the consciousness of our party is not raised.

"There are many works at Batum, chiefly bound up with the oil industry. I think 8,000 workers are employed in those works, and among them Armenians too — dororinak,^t28 Mantashev, Tsaturov, Mirzoev and so on, who keep Armenian managers and, for the most part, Armenian workers. There are other works-owners of tsarber^t29 nationality as well, of whom the chief are Rothschild, Nobel, Shibaev^t30 and so on. Only a small part of their workers are Armenians, and the greater part are of other nations, among whom the Georgians hold the chief place. The Armenian workers, and even their managers, are for the most part organized and come into the ranks of the Dashnaktsutiun. Of the organized foreign work-

ers, a minority come into the Social-Democrat party. The antiquity of these two parties dates from the years 1894–95. When the closing of the Armenian schools and the seizure of the church properties^t31 take place, Smbat, the secretary of the Central Committee, who was at the same time the director of Mantashev's works, proposes that there be a general strike at Batum. Zakaridze and the leaders of the local Georgian Social-Democrats of Batum^t32 refuse it, arguing that this is your internal Armenian question, the defense of your national rights. The same proposal, I think, was made at Tiflis too, but with no result. The Armenians struggled, while the Social-Democrats and the Georgians only looked on.

"At the beginning of this year a noticeably energetic work began among the workers, and among the Georgians in particular. A secret press, leaflets, workers' clubs and unions and the rest. Among the propagandists were Armenians too. Bedrosian, who had come from Tiflis, wanted there to be cooperation between the Dashnaktsutiun and the Social-Democrats. We were not against that proposal, on condition that, first, they should help so that the Armenians scattered through all the works came into the Dashnaktsutiun, while we for our part pushed the non-Armenians toward their ranks; second, that every practical step should be taken by the agreement and the decision of the two parties; and third, that in those places and those works where the one side or the other formed a negligible percentage, they should be free to make their own undertakings without agreement. Bedrosian went off to Tiflis pleased, reporting to the local body the success of his mission. A man by the name of Goghashvili came to express his thanks for the line we had taken, and declared to Smbat and to Saribek (Harutiunian) that they would faithfully respect the agreement concluded.

"A few weeks later Goghashvili informs the Central Committee that Rothschild's workers' union and they themselves intend

to present demands about the shortening of hours and an increase in daily wages. And he asks our support. He is answered that the carrying out of such a demand could only be on an all-Russian masshtab (scale), which does not exist. Some while back we had proposed making movements on an all-Caucasian masshtab on the occasion of the school and church oppressions, attaching workers' demands to them as well, but that was not accepted. Now, since there is scarcely an Armenian among Rothschild's workers, and the majority are you, do as you know how; we and our workers stay in the part of onlookers, and if you are in the wrong we shall stand for our few Armenian workers only. And if it should happen that disturbances spread in the works where we form the majority, thanks to the steps taken by your minorities, we do not guarantee their protection.

"At the beginning of spring, Rothschild's workers are in revolt. The administration dismisses 400 workers at a stroke, without compensation. Hunger, idleness, misery. A request is made that the workers be taken back, but it is refused. Fifteen Armenian workers who were among those wretched men are saved, being taken on at Mantashev's works. The rest, driven to it, resort to demonstrations and want to be taken back into the works. Goghoshvili comes to me and asks that we advise the workers of the works under our influence to strike and to demand that the dismissed workers be taken back. I refuse his proposal. — You, I tell him, did not accept our appeal for a general strike and for attaching the workers' question to the national educational question, saying that the persecution raised against the schools was your internal affair. You, without taking the general workers' question into account, without our agreement, undertook to strike in one works only, which comes to the same thing as making the workers of that works wretched; and now you have got up, like a tiratsu,

and want by your pressure to better the workers' hopeless position. That is not a revolutionary stand. Since you are answerable for this misfortune, you must either provide for the workers, or go into the works and demand that they be placed, or else that works must stay shut and you must let no worker go in and work there. When you carry out one of these three courses, then it will be possible to reckon with you. We on our side can forbid the Armenians to enter Rothschild's works, and those who are there we can place and provide for. You think about the rest.

"Present at this conversation, along with Smbat, was Temirian too, one of our good comrades. Fired up, he turned to the Georgians and said:

— A revolutionary does as comrade Alyosha advises; and it is left to you either to withdraw from the field or to take the road that befits a revolutionary. We are forbidden as a party to be with you, but personally I shall be with you, if you take the revolutionary road, according to Alyosha's advice.

"Goghashvili, in Zakaridze's name, has put himself at the head of the dismissed workers. Either they will go inside the works, he says, to work, or the works will come to a stop and be ruined. A crowd of some 500 workers, armed with stones and clubs, have — so it appears — besieged the works. The works asks for auxiliary troops, and when it brings them up, it is stoned by the workers. Our Temirian takes part in the demonstration and stakatsne^t33 the attack of Gogho, who is standing at his side. The troops open fire and 40 men are laid on the ground.^t34 The crowd scatters, many are arrested, and among them our Temirian and Gogho.

"This event, of which I was an eyewitness," said Alyosha, "shattered not only the workers' lives but turned my thoughts and the wholeness of my soul upside down. I came to the conviction that a people, if it has a national indi-

viduality but has not its independence, cannot have universal human socialism for its ideal. The experience I have gained at Batum shows that without being independent and free we cannot serve socialism with our full strength. There is, then, an order of degrees among the national and the socialist ideals. First the solving of the national question, and only after that socialism. When the soul of a nation under despotism is wounded, it is not the wounding of its body or its pocket that speaks from its heart. Only by way of the freedom of nations will it be possible to arrive at socialism, and oppressed and unfree nations will not travel the road of socialism with their yerknts^t35 full strength, unless they wish to fail or to be subjected to degeneration. Kamo's^t36 example is the proof of it. Kamo was a plain and crystal man, and you cannot know how attached he was to our janfedayis. A few years ago he wanted to cross into the Land with Aslan, Mejo and the others. In the end he fell into the claws of the Social-Democrats, was carried away by socialist ideas, and now he is lost to us. Or our Temirian, who became the hero of the Batum working people — through a plain misunderstanding, and in order to keep up his Dashnaktsakan tasib in front of Goghashvili — do you know what happened to him? After the demonstration(\*) they imprisoned him together with Goghashvili, and only thanks to Smbat's appeals was he able to get clear of exile and prison. But when that comrade of ours came out of prison he was altogether changed. Some while ago, Azarik and a student come from Tiflis and I were talking with Temirian. He was saying: 'To speak frankly, we are like the hunter who, gun in hand, does not fire on the wild ducks and waits for the geese to come. The geese, however, do not come, and he goes home empty-handed. Here the laboring class suffers; the capitalist, the tsar, is in front of us; we do not strike, and we say "The Land, the Land," and stay idle.'

———

(\*) The Bolsheviks now boast that Stalin orga-

The student gave him his answer:

— No, we do not stay idle; but the point is that we are one, while our pain is two. I have found my road: in the Land I am a Dashnaktsakan and I am ready to die for it, while here, and above all in Russia, we are to be with the Russian revolution.

"When I began to argue with them, Azarik came to my help:

— Cho,^t37 what have you poured water into the mortar for, and gone on pounding it? The water, as I see, has not thickened; but you — and above all Temirian, since he sat in prison, he has turned right round. Let us say it is winter, the windows of the house and the doors are zardadz,^t38 the roof fallen in, the wind blows and the snow comes inside, the children are freezing with cold — are the parents going to think about buying gloves and stockings, or are they first of all going to vaghen^t39 to mend the doors and cover the roof? Our house, the fatherland, has fallen in, and we must first build a house. And is that talk, what they say — that the workers' business does not interest us? It interests us very much, but everything in its turn. Building the house comes first of all, and inside the house there shall be no parasites. We shake the ojil^t40 out in the tonir so as to be rid of them. Those parasites too are like lice, and we shall shake them out in the tonir. But for that, first of all, we must have our own tonir, and not the Russian's or the Georgian's. Do you follow, my brat?^t41

"When Azarik with his peasant's reasoning had put an end to the differences, blue-eyed Simon of Bayberd came in, one of our comrades, who was harsh and coarse, to the point of vulgarity, because he was frank beyond all measure. His view of the world was narrow, and for that reason he was a fanatic. I had taken his measure, but our companions judged him by his words, not guessing that his word was not his own,

———

nized this strike, and every year they celebrate its anniversary. (A. Kh.)

but that of his fellow-townsman Mihran,^t42 whom he loved and respected. The moment he came in, he turned to Azarik.

— Azarik, what business have you^t76 with ticks? The whelps have got up and are playing at "social"! Hey there, you dog's whelp Temirian — if you are not a tick, if your blood is Armenian blood, why do you not shed it for the Land, and go off to shed it for Rothschild's kambal (lazy) workers?

"These heavy words were cold water, and stunned everyone. Temirian turned deathly yellow, and we felt that he would burst; there was a smell of blood in the air. Azarik rose from his place.

— You be quiet, the words are addressed to me. Simon, if there is a tick here, it is you. If there is a dog's whelp here, it is your schoolmaster, who has made a tick of you and blows through your mouth. Draw in your tongue, bring your wits back to your head, or else you have driven the knife to the bone.^t43

"Simon stood there petrified. Azarik turned to the man serving in the café.

— What are you standing there like a hayvan and listening for? Quick, bring us four glasses and a bottle of cognac.

"Azarik's distorted face brightened again. He drew up his chair and turned his back, kar korads,^t44 to Simon. Then he addressed us gently.

— Boys dear, may I be a sacrifice for your souls; forgive me^t45 whatever I have said amiss. There — Simon has made me lose my thread. Let us say I am a man of Trebizond or of Bayberd, that I have left house and home, ploughing and sowing, and fled from the Land and landed up in Patum. Let us say I am your own, and I am helpless and have no work; let us say that you are my classmates. One of you is young and goes to his studies (he looked at the student); one of you works and barely brings his mother her dry bread (and he looked at me); one took a rifle and went as far as Khastur,^t46 fought, and came back beaten, without having been able to free our fields (he turned round and looked at Simon, standing over his head); and one more, the most stout-hearted of all and the best, seeing that his own belly was empty, seeing that at home they were starving, gathered all the hungry about him and fell upon those men

who had been the cause of his own hunger and his household's; let us say his blood grew hot and he scattered and plundered all the shops of Patum like a brigand; let us say that this brigand too is our Temir. Now you tell me: is our Temir a bastard, or the true child of his family?

"Before he was answered, he filled his own glass and the others' as well, except Simon's, who by now had no glass, and then he turned to Temirian.

— Temir jan, you are not a bastard; you are the truest son of our house. You went toward death with our blessing, and with our blessing you came back from it. I am older than you, so make my words a ring in your ear. Your lragd^t47 is good, but do not forget one thing: that until our country is freed, until we have house and home, your efforts go with the wind. Your health — may I die for your soul.

"While we were emptying the four glasses to Temir's health, Simon kuatsav^t48 and kissed Azarik.

— Godless man, then why is there no glass for me?

— When you kiss Temir's forehead, you shall have both a glass and a chair to sit with us.

Simon came up and kissed Temir's forehead."

Alyosha, who told what he had seen very vividly, drew his conclusion:

"I have explained to you, from top to bottom, what I have seen of the melting-pot here. I have told all of it frankly to Hamo too, and asked for some remedy. Tomorrow, in a few days, you will anchamb^t49 see these opposing elements. Wholeness and unity are kept neither by me, nor by you, nor by the Central Committee — and I will say more, not by the Bureau either. From what I have told you, you have seen that the ring of unity is the Azariks, who are sound in soul and stand firm on two legs and a walking-stick. But can the Azariks bind the Simons forever, who are sliding down a slippery

road toward a narrow sectionalism? Can they hold Temir, degh,^t50 you, who feel the weight of both the national and the social questions? Many are already sliding toward denationalization. You must carry these anxieties too, and must for the present give strength to the Azariks' view, until it crystallizes and becomes a conviction to the right as well as to the left.

"I have talked a great deal; you have listened the whole time. I think I have fulfilled Hamo's wish. Take what I have said into account, and find your road accordingly."

Alyosha was my first serious teacher. I think those three hours gave me three years' maturity and opened new horizons before me.

There are meetings and conversations that at first rouse only a confused interest and seem to us to pass by, but that in the course of time crystallize and shape our thoughts — like the clear spring flowing over the rock, which opens fissures in it and at last wears it away and gives it a new form. The lesson Alyosha gave me was, in my whole life, that spring which wore away what was there and shaped what was new.

Who was I to Alyosha, that he sowed the seeds of his ideas in my soul? Only a stranger, since he did not even ask who I was (I was living under a false name at Batum; my name was Vardan, and my surname I have forgotten). About me he knew only that I was the one Hamo had sent, and that was enough for him to be unreserved with me.

And who was he himself, Alyosha? To this day I do not know. Perhaps he too was under a false name — that big-eared, handsome young man, on whose face and eyes his whole soul could be read. To all appearances he must have been from the North Caucasus; he wore a university badge on his breast.

Where are you, Alyosha, who met me at my dawn, and whom at my dusk I am seeking? Whether you are alive or not, I have no word. Perhaps, worn out by the oppositions of Simon of Bayberd and of Temir, you withdrew from the field to rest in your fam-

ily. Perhaps, as you foresaw, you too parted from us, and the current cast you into the Russian revolution, and you were melted down there among millions of young men like yourself. Perhaps you are alive even now and are my enemy. Whatever it may be, the seeds you sowed I keep within me.

In the end it is the seed of the bread we eat that matters, and not the sower of it.

Alyosha took hold of it a good half-century ago and then vanished, without another man to give his approaches^t51 general currency; but life came to confirm that his approaches were prophetic. And men argue to this day over whether one must go toward socialism by way of the solving of the national question, or whether the national question is to be solved by the establishing of socialism. And today the opinion that prevails is the first, which was Alyosha's opinion. He used to say that the right and the left wings of the Dashnaktsutiun would wither and fall. And a few years had not gone by when out of the right there arose the Mihranakan movement,^t52 and Khatur's^t53 fighters became enemies of the Dashnaktsutiun; while out of the left there sprang Separatism, and the Levon Atabekians^t54 went off to mingle in the ranks of the foreigner.

Alyosha used to say that unity would stand above confessional, religious and other distinctions. And in fact the Dashnaktsutiun went by that road, given that^t55 the Dzyuraghs^t56 and the Hasan-Jalalians^t57 became its pillars. In that direction, however, there is still much work to be done, so that those narrow-minded prejudices may be abolished which still weaken the efforts that have been made.

Alyosha used to say that the difference of languages too would not become a cause of the breaking up of national unity. And in fact the part played by the Javriens (Russian-speaking) and by the Khans (Turkish-speaking)^t58 in the Dashnaktsutiun proves it. What, however, is the means of binding the foreign-speaking Armenians to the nation? That means is constantly being sought, but the sure road has not yet been found.

Alyosha used to say that without the soil of the Fatherland there is no nation. And in fact the Dashnaktsutiun went in the direction of freeing the soil of the Fatherland, and with very costly sacrifices was able to free the soil of the Fatherland in part and to strengthen the nation. But the firmness of the nation and of the Fatherland becomes doubtful if the nation is not the sole and supreme master of its Fatherland, because the wholeness of the Fatherland and of the nation is the precondition of its firmness.

Alyosha used to say that the federation of nations that have come into their independence is the precondition of peace, and that it is what leads toward socialism. Though it is still too early, against the facts as they have been, to set aside that view of Alyosha's, yet one cannot set aside the reality that the efforts of Rostom–Yeprem^t59 in Iran, and the efforts of Aknuni,^t60 of Rostom and of the field-workers of the Land in the Ottoman Empire, gave in that direction meager results and boundless harm. On the other hand, Russia and Germany, under the name of socialist and independent, went in the direction of Stalin's and Hitler's despotic, nation-destroying and socialism-destroying course, and became the grave both of freedom and of elementary rights. Where the road lies, experience can say; and Alyosha's reasoning has been necessary to me in order to arrive at that experience.

*

In 1904, when by the Bureau's charge I came to Batum a second time, I found everything changed. In that year the members of the Central Committee were Kristapor,^t61 Saribek Harutiunian and others. These were not darachukhali^t62 men, like those I had seen till then. They belonged to the higher intelligentsia, or to the class of works managers. Working at Batum as free field-worker comrades were Diran of Bolis, who was a frant^t63 young man and a sweet-natured field-worker, and the student Krpo.^t64 Here our party ranks were chiefly workers, the greater

part of them Turkish Armenians, hunted from every side. There were two opposing currents in this city. The Turkish Armenians and the fighting men^t65 lived zad^t66 the life of Turkish Armenia and of the Land, and, having turned the cafés into clubs, held meetings continually and had stirring conversations about the Land. "Everything for the Land" — this was their motto. And sitting in the cafés, while they played nard,^t67 they paid their dues for the Land, and gathered round the finjans (cups) of coffee they collected gifts for the fighting men. Every movement, every word turned about the fighting and the Land. The consequence of these dispositions was the armed bands they organized, which by way of Artvin–Artanush marched under the leadership of Mihran and of Turtsik-Gevorg^t68 toward the frontier districts, and, giving battle and killing many of the troops and of the population that resisted, came back to the Russian frontier. This spirit, which was very strong, was master in that circle. But beside it there was also the working class, which took an interest in the workers' movement. For these, Krpo and other comrades read lectures in their kazarmas (dormitories).

I too, as circuit-rider and field-worker of that district, had to give lectures, chiefly on two subjects: the question of Turkish Armenia, and the defense of workers' rights against the exactions of the bourgeoisie. The working people, as I have said, lived chiefly by the life of the Turkish Armenians, and the freeing of that country was to them a desirable ideal. For that purpose they did not grudge bringing their material help, which was done in the form of monthly payments and gifts. Just as a poor widow would not spare her last kopeck to put into the alms-box before the image of Yotverk^t69 (Alexandropol), so these did not grudge setting aside a share out of the morsel in their mouths for Turkish Armenia. That share, I must say, was not

so abundant as that of the Turkish Armenian circles. But that working class, organized within our party, did not forget its own interests either, and followed with interest the lectures read on workers' rights, and was ready to take steps to defend its interests and to come into its rights.

A large part of the Turkish Armenians, at a time when the Mihranakan movement did not yet exist, protested against the work carried on by us among the workers in the direction mentioned above, and against the Caucasian program, saying that in that way our forces were being sapped and the impetus to help the Turkish Armenians weakened. They insisted that we must fix our forces on the question of Turkish Armenia and on nothing else. At the head of the current were Simon of Bayberd, Arakel, and a rich man of Mush who even had a two-storey house. In the other current, however, there was no emphatic contrary opinion that we must fix our attention on the workers' question alone and put the Turkish Armenian cause in the second rank. That being so, the men of the first current pointed out above looked with an unfriendly eye on those field-workers who occupied themselves with the workers' question; and these last, in their lectures, dwelt equally on both subjects. The said section of the Turkish Armenians would not lend an ear to it and did not want to hear our lecturers. Toward me, however, they were more indulgent, and gave weight to my words, because they knew I had newly come from the frontier, that I was one of the candidates for going to Turkish Armenia, and — the chief thing — they knew that I had fallen in battle for that purpose. With this last argument I managed to convince the most stubborn of them and to hold their agitation in check.

The Batum district was rich, and our party's money income was abundant. The rich, the workers, and those belonging to the Turkish Armenian section all paid their share of dues and their gifts regularly. A general enthusiasm reigned. Ready for sacrifice

were even the ladies and the young women, who often got up evening and afternoon entertainments and secured considerable sums for the party.

It must be taken into account too that the district was a fairly large one, taking in the shores of the Black Sea. Though the district was far from the mother country, yet thanks to the Dashnaktsutiun's all-pervading organization it was more closely bound to the Center than were nearer districts.

The Central Committee of Batum occupied itself closely with affairs relating to the Land, on which it had concentrated its chief attention. Through the Central Committee, connection was kept up with Trebizond and Constantinople. The Batum organization kept vigilant watch that all those authors of the Armenian massacres who passed through Batum or appeared within the Committee's district should be struck down. Of such was B.,^t70 after whom a terrorist is sent from Batum, who, however, kills himself at Simferopol.^t71

An act of teror took place at Batum as well, in my time there. One day Martiros Margarian (Safo) came to Batum with a man unknown to us who was a spy of the Russian government. Martiros, passing through to Constantinople, leaves a note for the Central Committee charging it to kill that man. The stranger had put up at a hotel, from which he meant to leave in a few days. I went to the same hotel, took a room, and at dinner-time made his acquaintance. I promised to show him about the city, and at the same time I told Sarkis of Alkhat^t72 to follow us and, when I made the sign, to kill the man I was with.

We went together to the boulevard along the shore. There was music^t73 there, and a dense crowd was strolling. We mixed with that crowd and began to stroll likewise. I turned round and saw that Sarkis was following us. I wanted to make him understand by a sign that this was the man he was to subject to teror. But the good-for-nothing Sarkis came up to us at once and, in the middle of the crowd, put his revolver to the man's nape, laid him on the ground with a single blow, and himself, mixing with the fleeing peo-

ple, disappeared. At first I was bewildered by that unlooked-for blow. For about a minute I stayed nailed to the spot, but coming quickly to my senses I began to run myself. The police were whistling from every corner and firing shots — at whom, I do not know. I hear the whistle of one of those bullets over my head; but mixing with the bewildered crowd, I slip away round the street corners and go into a café, where I see Sarkis sitting quietly, drinking his coffee, as though nothing had happened. I give him no sign of recognition, I say not a word to him, and I come out silently by the other door and go to the house of a man of Mush I knew; and there too, without saying a word to him, I lie down to rest and to hide my agitation. I feign sickness there until the afternoon of the next day, when I get sure news that two Georgians have been arrested as the terrorists. Revolvers had been found on them too. On that news I disclose to my host the reason for my feigned sickness (he had already begun to suspect that I was not without a part in that affair). All danger being past, the next day I go back to my work.

I said above that I was succeeding in reconciling the two currents in the Batum organization. There occurred, however, an event which created a heavy situation for me and made my reconciling part impossible from then on. The event is this. I went to Kutais to collect the membership dues, and by rousing a few rich men I succeeded in raising 8,000 roubles and bringing them back with me to Batum. On my return I organized the workers of Mantashev's works and persuaded them to declare a strike and demand increases. On this question we came to an agreement with the Georgians as well. The strike lasted some time and the workers' money ran out. The workers asked me to lend them money until the end of the affair, that is until they should succeed in compelling

the works-owner to give way and grant increases. Without long thinking about it I gave them 5,000 roubles as a loan out of the money brought from Kutais, which I was bound to pay into the Central Committee's cash-box and which could only be taken out by the Committee's decision. On this matter I contented myself with telling Diran alone, and we agreed that the question should not go to the meeting of the Central Committee, the more so as one of its members was one of the works' managers. I must say that even without this there was already dissatisfaction with me in the Central Committee.

I do not know how, but a provokatsia^t74 was spread that the money gathered for Sasun^t75 was being handed out to the workers; and when, as usual, I visit the cafés at the back, they look at me that day with a scowling eye, and Simon (of Bayberd), before them all, turns to me and says that Sasun has fallen for want of money and cartridges, and here you are handing out the money to this man and that. Excited, they shake their fists at me and threaten to make me tifa-tifa (to pieces).

By all this I am much shaken, and, despairing both of the Central Committee and of that failure of mine, I leave everything and go to the station and, taking a train, set off straight for Tiflis. I never did learn what became of the question of the 5,000 roubles. Probably Krpo and Diran closed the accounts, recovering the money from the workers, who, I think, were successful.

Coming to Tiflis, I declared to the Body that I had come from Batum without authority, without a word to anyone, forced to it by the compulsion of the awkward situation that had been created; and I ask to be released from Batum, given that I have decided to cross into the Land.

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