Memoirs of an Armenian Revolutionary, Volume 1 — Chapter 13: Salmast and Khanasor

While I was still at Batum, the question of the roughly 30,000–40,000 Armenian emigrants of Sukhum–Sochi had been raised.^t1 Either they would accept Russian subjecthood once and for all and settle in those districts, or they would give it up, leave Russia, and go to settle wherever they pleased. For three rea-

sons the emigrants did not want to accept the Russians' offer. First, they were attached to their homeland, the province of Trebizond, and were waiting rather for the day of returning to their own country, whereas by accepting Russian subjecthood, they believed, that would become impossible for good. Second, they did not want to perform military and other obligations. And finally, there was a strong propaganda on our side, and I too was a warm partisan of the view that our people must not bind itself permanently to these far-off provinces cut away from Armenia. And the people stood ready to leave those districts and cross into Turkish Armenia or Persia. It was these emigrants who, in order to find themselves a new homeland, had chosen me and seven specialists in tobacco and soil, headed by Janik Efendi, to settle the question.

I, as one who had been in Persia, pressed hardest of all for them to go and settle in Persia.

Even when I was there, I had kept thinking how good it would be, and how easily our problem would be solved, if the districts of Her and Zarevand had not been emptied of Armenians. There we would have had a solid base for linking up with Vaspurakan. Plans of that order were not new; they had existed as far back as the nineties. Some of our field-workers had dreamed of filling the whole neighborhood of the monastery of Derik (right on the border), and from there on toward Kotur and as far as Maku, with 40,000 people. My views, then, had a history behind them, and they were shared both by the party and public men of our day and by the Bureau.

A meeting took place at Tiflis, at the house of Hambardzum Arakelian, editor of the paper Mshak. Public men of every rank had been invited to it. The decision was taken that I should lead the delegation into Persia. There were hardships of the road, and Janik Efendi, who was a delicately reared man, left the whole business on my shoulders and himself turned back under various pretexts.

I arm myself with testimonials of every kind, which I obtain from Hambardzum Arakelian, from the Party, from the Catholicos, from the Prelacy, from the Armenian national foundation of Persia, and from the government as well. At the same time I give the Bureau notice that if this business does not succeed I will cross into the Land, and I take letters of recommendation to the comrades of the Land besides. Receiving Khrimian Hayrik's blessings and his recommendations, toward autumn I set out for Julfa and reach the Monastery of the Nakhavka, which is very close to Julfa.^t2

The Monastery of the Nakhavka lies all alone on the bank of the Araxes, ringed by Turkish villages; at its side it has one Armenian-inhabited village, Darashamb. From the nineties on, that ancient monastery and the village had been put to revolutionary uses, given that a transport road opened from there out of Transcaucasia toward Tabriz, Khoy, Salmast and the Monastery of the Apostle Thaddeus.

My own wish was that the representatives of the would-be emigrants should agree for the people to settle the villages lying on the Nakhavka–Khoy and Khoy–Thaddeus roads, many of whose khans (landlords) would have smoothed the way for that resettlement with great joy. Unfortunately, the representatives did not take to the climate or to the kind of soil, saying that the region was unsuited to tobacco plantations.

After that we pass on to Tabriz, where I present myself with my letters of recommendation to the Central Committee of the Dashnaktsutiun; with Hambardzum Arakelian's letter, to Nazarbek, who was tajer-bashi (chief of the merchants); and through this last to the valiad, that is to say the Heir Apparent, who at that time was Mehmed Ali.^t3 All of them are interested in the question of the emigrants' coming to Persia, though each from a different point of view. The Central Committee's motive was plain. The valiad, who was a thickset man with the look of a butcher (I was disillusioned that Shahs could be men of that kind), was interested in having a hard-work-

ing people that would be a counterweight against the Kurds, who troubled him without pause. He met my proposal with joy and gave letters of recommendation to the governors of Khoy, Urmia and Salmast, commanding that every kind of assistance be shown me. Nazarbek, for his part, hoped to people with Armenians the villages that made up his property and to draw a sufficient profit from his lands. The Kurds and Turks who live in his villages did not answer so well.

Thus the field of choice lay open before us. But there was, of course, no thought of settling our people either at Sochdagh^t4 or even at Urmia. Those places offered no advantage over Sukhum and Sochi, given that they too were far from the Armenian centers, and those emigrants would likewise have been given over to loss. There remained, then, Salmast, which was suitable in every respect — if only there had not been other circumstances of an obstructive kind.^t5

Armed with the same recommendations, we go to Salmast. The representatives of those wishing to emigrate take to Salmast's soil and water. From there we go on toward the borders of Derik, Jatali, Salani,^t6 and in those places too they find everything good. Nor do they halt before the difficulty of having to contend with the Kurds, because they trust in the fighting mettle of their own people. But suddenly an unlooked-for obstacle comes up in the middle. The Ottoman Consul has already caught the scent of our undertaking. He puts questions to the Persian government, and on the other side he puts it about in every quarter that the Armenians have come to drive all the Kurds out of their places and sit down there themselves. It soon became clear to us that we had gone wrong in our reckonings — that the Persian government is so weak that it will be unable to show us any positive assistance, and is powerless to resist Turkish interference and the intrigues it had strung. Even if we brought the emigrants onto the land

and settled them there, in spite of the Turks, the latter would turn the place into a ground of continual war, and if they did not succeed by means of the Kurds, they would intervene with forces of their own. Forced to it, we give up the plan of creating a base. My fellow representatives return to the Caucasus, and I stay on at Salmast, to carry out my plan of crossing into the Land.

I stayed at Salmast a month or two as a circuit-rider. I went round the villages and came to know the people and the party organization. From there I passed to Tabriz, where likewise I worked a month or two as secretary of the Central Committee. But the monotonous, tedious activity of that region did not fire me, so I resolve to drop everything and cross into the Land.

*

But before I tell the story of my crossing into the Land, let us look at the method of organization applied in Persia and at the party work carried on there.(\*)

One day at Khoy, in 1904, Nikol Duman was giving counsel:

— There is no revolution where there is no cause and no aim for it. The cause and the aim are worthless things when there is no force and no organization to carry them out. Force and organization are harmful if they are [sic?]^t7 the true image of the aims of the revolution and of the interests of the people. I have no havas (desire) to explain this to you; when you come across Hovnan and Kotot (Rostom),^t8 they will tell you.

There was no need to see them, since the traces of their works were plain to be seen.

Long before the year 1904, the Armenakan party, born in Van,

grown swollen and out of its own borders, had, by all accounts, spread across Persia. To it had been added the Hnchakian party as well. The eye-catching figures of these parties — Khan-Azat, Nerses, Avetisian, Paramaz and others^t9 — had captured the field with their visits and become familiars of the people. To all appearances, there was to be no room left for the newborn A. R. Dashnaktsutiun to work and find a place. A field was found, however. Within a very short span of time the Dashnaktsutiun won a supremacy over the whole of Persia that approached a monopoly — thanks to Rostom, who, being a Goghtn man, knew that country, and thanks to Hovnan Davtian, who was a Gharadagh man (Persia), educated at Shushi.

Of these two founders of the Dashnaktsutiun we know very little, and even what we know is generalities. Of Hovnan we barely know the name, though the Program and the Rules that he and Rostom drew up we know by heart, like the gospel. These strange founders would appear like ghosts in different parts of Persia and then be lost. They did not come out into the open; they neither preached, nor disputed, nor wrote. Only — wherever they visited, life would begin to boil behind them, a newly created organization of the Dashnaktsutiun would come forward, and the Armenakan and Hnchakian parties would melt away and vanish like the snows of spring. The cause of that swift and stunning success lay in the work of those strange masters and in their way of drawing near to our aims.

"We are not a Catholicos, to keep preacher, vardapet, ter-ter. We have no government, to hand down binding laws. Among us there is neither agha nor servant, that we should wait upon command and compulsion. We are all of us equal, without distinction of sex, age, creed, class, services or sacrifices. We read this Program of the Dashnaktsutiun, which is a few pages long, and we became believers. You, who are more schooled and cleverer than we — we ask that you

read it and, if it is wrong, argue us out of our error; but if it is right, become believers like us, and let us know of it. And this is the Rules, written for the believers — so as to form a brotherhood, a force. Now: we have no center; the real leader is you. We have no king, no ruling power, no authority, no interference. The part of all those belongs to you. We have no binding blueprint of activity for each locality. That hangs on you and on your initiative. It is you who must decide what you are to do, according to the conditions of the place. We have no binding forms, material, physical or other. The one to decide that must be your brotherhood. Since all this concerns you, and you are independent, the decisions you take must be binding for you — and for us, unbreakable law. One thing only is binding: to accept the program and the rules of the revolutionaries unchanged, to accept them of your own free will, and to vow to remain faithful to them"…

This unreserved trust toward the sworn, this decentralized form, were deadly to the centralist parties propped on the spell of authorities, such as Armenakanism and Hnchakianism were. The Dashnaktsutiun breathed and thought with all the parts of its membership, and as a consequence of that, Dashnaktsakan kernels sprang up of themselves like mushrooms, with their manifold undertakings, schools, arms workshops and so on. In fact the Bureau had only one piece of work left to do — namely, to tie the kernels of the different localities to one another and to bring their initiatives into a single channel.

That form of organization we owe first of all to Hovnan, and after him to Rostom. And it led to initiative, to victory and to the spreading of the ideas.

This organizational form did not lead to anarchy, but to the decentralization of rule. Those decentralized bod-

ies were not "Branches" but in fact independent units — joined to one another by the Dashnaktsutiun and by its common aims. And this proved deadly for the other organizations, and became the cause of the new party's growing strong and spreading wide.

The centralist Hnchakian party rapidly gave ground before the decentralized newborn Dashnaktsutiun. The Armenakan party, the moment the Dashnaktsutiun appeared, melted into it. The "philanthropic" rifles, which had already become objects of use among the small number of Dashnaktsakans of Van, stamped with the Dashnaktsakan emblem, made it mysterious and legendary.

The transport line of the Apostle Thaddeus, and above all Derik, which was so close to the border — the legendary stories of the Dashnaktsakans' fighting spread from mouth to mouth and stirred wonder. Already in Vaspurakan they could hear the voice of the saz of Sako of Sev-Kar, who had made the roads of Van secure. Van had drawn so near to Persia that by way of Chukhi or Boghaz-Keasani^t10 one could reach Hayots Dzor or the districts of Aghbak in a single night, from which the road on to Van is a free one.^t11

Years later, in 1909, when I came to know Hovnan Davtian in Geneva, he and his Armenianized wife, Hortans, were suffering from consumption. I remembered Nikol's charge, and I asked Hovnan about our aims and our Rules.

— What am I to tell you? Let me say it in one word: without the Federation neither our country nor our people will be saved. I have done nothing; I have only grasped what I saw. Our Rules are the image of the Federation made real. If you want to understand more — you have come to Switzerland: look around you and you will be convinced. Khazhak came, and was convinced.

According to what Nikol said, this sick man and Kotot (Rostom), from the 1890s onward, breathed inspiration into men — they did not make speeches. "We are Armenians, but we are not to impose our Armenianness on anyone. We stand for the freedom and the independence of all nations. We are enemies of all those who violate the rights of nations. Russia and Turkey are a slaughterhouse of the small nations, or else their prison; for that reason we must be the enemy of those two. All the oppressed nations are our brothers, be they Armenian, Yezidi, Assyrian, Jew, Kurd or Arab. Their freedom is a factor of civilization and of peace. Their brotherhood, and their alliance with one another — a factor in the downfall of tyranny."

These inspirations that Rostom and Hovnan breathed did not stay hanging in the air as empty words. They became an echo in the souls of the first generation. That is why the leader of our first fighting band became Kukunian of Ulkha,^t12 and, as his soldier, a Jew of Urmia whose name I have forgotten. That is why, among those who went toward the Land and did not spare their blood, there were Kurds like Muto and Aldo,^t13 and there were Assyrians like Gre and Sahak. It was the fruit of that inspiration that the khans Tatar Baghir and Sattar made common cause with Nikol-Duman and with Keri, and the Bakhtiar Persians with Yeprem.^t14 That is why a handful of Armenians, under Rostom's breath, became the leaven of the new regime in Persia — against the Russian empire, against the ruling elements^t15 — and brought joy to those who wanted free, democratic order and stood for Persia's freedom and progress.

They would say: "We are of the Illuminator's faith, and we have our traditions. That is a matter of our conscience, and we do not want anyone to meddle in the affairs of our conscience. But neither are we going to mix in the affairs of anyone else's conscience. All religions and confessions, taking unbelief in among them, are

consolations of the conscience; so in that solace let men be free. We are an exploited nation and an exploited class. Our interest is to be with the exploited and to be against the exploiters."

It was in this atmosphere that Nikol-Duman and Vardan, when they landed at Salmast and found there doctors, as well as men of other schooling — even an architect, Dikran Beglarich^t16 — said in astonishment:

— What have you turned the country of the "Hamsharis"^t17 into? You have done everything here, finished it all.

And I exclaim in spite of myself: "Sixty years have passed since those old days. Instead of going sixty steps forward, have we not gone sixty steps back from Hovnan and Rostom and from those days?"

The provinces of Salmast and Urmia — between the lake of Urmia and the Zagros chain — are Persia's border provinces with the Ottoman state. They are beautiful, fruitful, well-watered provinces. Crossing the border from their districts of Targavar and Margavar, one can go straight to the valley of the Zab, to the Assyrians' center — Kochanis, Diar-Diub.^t18 And crossing the border from Salmast's districts of Jara^t19 and Kotur, one can go to the Armenians' center — Van.

These provinces, then, may be reckoned the door of Armenia. On that doorstep lived some 40,000 Christians, Armenian and Assyrian taken together. Their relations with one another were so close that they seemed one nation belonging to different confessions and dialects — understanding one another, each grasping the other's tongue and culture.

This closeness, however, was being poisoned on one side by the Russian consul and the Orthodox churchmen he brought in, and on the other by the European Christian missionaries, who broke down the undivided authority of Mar Shimun^t20 to such a degree that, by the power of money, they brought forth within Assyrian

families three religious confessions — for the one side a source of income, for the other a prop of influence.

The same corruption had less success in the community of the Illuminator's faith. The short-sighted missions had become sowers of discord, and not of union.

The Dashnaktsutiun met this ill in advance with the principles it had set forth: "Religion and confession are a matter for the conscience of the individual and of the community. We take no interest in them; but we judge it a thing to be condemned that men should want to turn conscience into an object of trade and profit. Against that we set the freedom of all the oppressed peoples, and their brotherhood, in accordance with the principles of the A. R. Dashnaktsutiun."

These principles became a balm to those provinces. The Assyrian Dr. Abraham, who had been reared and schooled thanks to the missionaries and had officially accepted Protestantism, had become for all that a fervently nationalist Assyrian and a defender of Nestorianism. He had joined the Dashnaktsutiun and stood for an Armeno-Assyrian-Kurdish alliance. And — what was essential — he was a member of the committee of those districts, a fellow-laborer and an organizer of those delivering the Land. Nor was he alone: he had his Assyrian comrades, whose luminous faces are before my eyes at this moment, though I have forgotten the names.

In 1904, when I was going with Nikol Duman from Davalu to Araksu to cross into Persia, I put a question to him:

— What sort of country is Khoy — Salmast? When I get there, what work am I to do?

Nikol laughed and said:

— Ten years before this, when I was going to Persia for the first time, I put that same question of yours to Hovnan. And what do you suppose he up and answered to a question I thought so serious? "We know that country little. We have scattered a handful of seed and passed on. We do not know which

seed has sprouted and spread, and which has taken no root. You have two eyes — you are not blind; you have nostrils — you can catch a scent; you have ears — you will hear. If the seeds have put down roots, do not sow new seed over what is there; if they need water, you will water them; if they have shot up tall, you will weed around them. More than that, what am I to say?" Rostom was present — a man I counted for nothing at all: he sat snuffling into his nose. But he proved the more open-handed; he drew out his notebook, gave the names of an Armenian or two, an Assyrian or two, a Tatar or two, and of others, and said: "You know how to write and read. And if there is nothing to write, nothing to do, then — to get to know the place — you will write to us. You will be a schoolmaster in the village, and you will write about your condition."

— Do you know why the laughter comes over me? he asked.

— No, I answered.

And without waiting he began to explain:

— From Hovnan I had taken the impression that he was a real choban^t21 (shepherd); from Rostom, worse still — that he was a poor, meek, wordless creature. In Shushi our young men had split into two. We came to blows with one another. We were few, they were many, and they had us pressed hard. Rostom and Hovnan looked on like spectators and took no part in the fight. Suddenly Hovnan flared up, snatched a cudgel into his hand, and called us to pull back behind him. There was no coming near him from any side, so fast did he keep the cudgel wheeling round his head. So, all alone, he advanced on the adversaries, who stood massed together. The tip of the cudgel caught one of them in the small of the back, and he was stretched flat on the ground; another's arm, and his arm was broken. They scattered, but Hovnan kept calling: "Don't scatter! Come along now, gather round, and carry on the meeting like decent men!" From that hero of the cudgel I expected no other kind of grace, — Nikol recounted, and laughed like a child.

By now I could keep his laughter company myself.

— Do you know, Nikol went on, when Hovnan and Rostom gave so indefinite an answer to my question and sent me on my way with generalities, without practical instructions, I did not understand the meaning of it, and I explained it to myself another way. I thought: "These men solve the indefinite with the indefinite; and the fool is I, who wait for thought-out, planned orders and directions from these chobans." I crossed over to Salmast. And what should I see there! The Dashnaktsutiun, then only beginning, had already spread and organized itself there. The Armenakan and Hnchakian parties were like a block of salt or a sugar ghand (loaf), and the Dashnaktsutiun the water that was melting them into itself. There I saw men who had paced out the whole of Russia and other countries in trade and other business. I saw intellectuals from outside and from within, whose equal did not exist in Shushi. Arghutian was there, and Vardan, and Sako — men one could talk with. What amazed me was the conversation I had with the Assyrian Dr. Abraham. He explained to me the principles of the Dashnaktsutiun and the results it had won. He said to me: "Of course Persia is weak, backward, feudal. This country would be strong if all that were not so. But let her be weak or strong, one thing has to be clear, and it is this: that she stands in danger from Russia and from Turkey, who are the executioners of us all. And for that very reason we must count Persia our natural friend. Our salvation is in the brotherhood of all the oppressed nations. For the Assyrians and the Armenians, that must be counted a thing already realized. On the other side of the border, Mar Shimun too is in sympathy with it. Nor is it hard to bring the Yezidis as well into that brotherhood. As far as Sinjar, Mar Shimun has ties and influence. Already our own (the Dashnaktsutiun) are friends to the Yezidis along the road that leads to Van. There remain the Tatar-

Turks, who are both number and quality. They, by good fortune, are Shia; as such, they can be regarded as our natural allies, since they are against Turkey, which is a state of the Sunnis. The mushdeids^t22 we must regard as being every bit as useful as our own clergy. Our insoluble and difficult problem is the Sunni Kurds, who have taken hold of the mountains and the roads and part us from our masses in the Land. To have them with us and to part them from Turkey was tantamount to our ideas and to victory over Turkey, and.^t23 To have them for an enemy is tantamount to our failure. There is our task."

When I looked in astonishment at the Assyrian Dr. Abraham, who in this backward province was voicing thoughts of that kind, I could not help asking:

— Where are these programs from? Are they personal, or the views of the whole?

Dr. Abraham, lowering his voice, said:

— Can it be you have not seen Hovnan and Rostom?

— I saw them, but they said: "Go, look, and write about what you see." I understood nothing from them.

— They told you a great deal. That is their way of making a man. They give you the rice — the making of the pilaf they leave to you. They give you the bread — the chewing they leave to you. And my opinion too is this: if you like, be a schoolmaster for now among the Assyrians, in the village of Khosrova; if you like, among the Armenians, at Havtvan or at Ghalasar. And if you know Kurdish and Turkish, we will send you round their villages — until your water falls into its own channel.

It was very hard to come down from heaven and walk on the ground. But that is what I did. I became a schoolmaster, and I wrote to Rostom — who had become another man in my eyes. I wrote likewise that I had nothing to do here, since the Assyrian is even more of a Dashnaktsakan than I. I received no an-

swer, because, as I learned afterward, he had crossed into the Land.

Nikol, without answering the question I had put, seemed to have found his occasion to bury himself in what he carried within him and not to look me in the face. And I kept searching for the meaning of his story, thinking to myself: "What sort of men are these, Hovnan and Rostom, whose names were all I had ever heard? Why have they grudged counsel and direction to a close comrade of theirs? Why did Nikol, instead of answering my question, tell me this story of his — a story ten years old by now — and fall darkly silent? Can it be that this man, who is a legend to us all, has resolved to cross into the Land, where there is a going and no coming back, and wants to learn my taran (my weight) and send me on to his Assyrian Dr. Abraham?"

I was not mistaken. He kept me under trial until the fight of Kotur, of Raghi,^t24 whose story I have already told.

The essential thing, in what Nikol told, is to know the atmosphere and the works that went forward in Salmast and Urmia from 1890 until 1897 at the least. To Salmast had come, out of Caucasian Armenia, from all its corners, man by man, intellectual and fighting sworn men. They were brisk and merry, and they were like the bulls led to the altar of St. Karapet.^t25 Sako of Sev-Kar, never parted from his rifle, would strike the chongur.^t26 The Hambarak^t27 Hovsepians and the Khechos told fables and sang songs. Vardan, with his kind smile, gave encouragement, while somber Nikol, with his deep-sunken black eyes — you could not tell whether he was laughing or angry. To this company had been joined another little band, come out of Turkish Armenia, which was the complete counter-image of the first — heads hung low, sad, as though they were the tired pack-horses of St. Karapet. They were in the main the voshiks^t28 of the Taurus — andradet,^t29 stubborn, brooding — and they spoke a tongue through whose rasp you could barely make out that it was Armenian. Among them were Zato and She-

ro, Darmo and Pokhik, Agho and Akhper^t30 and many others, who would shake their heads and say: "With these gharibakans (that is, the Caucasus men) everything is in its place; one thing only is wanting — they do not speak our tongue."

Beside these two companies there was yet another, small group. They were not Armenians: they were Assyrians, like Gre and Sahak, and Kurds, like Mato. They felt themselves kin to them all, but they preferred the voshiks — as though these were of their own blood.

At the sight of these three different groups joined together and become one body, Vardan — laughter on his face, bustling hand and foot — wanted to make his happiness plain to everyone, while Nikol, his quills up like a hedgehog's, watched and, deep in thought, kept his own reckonings within himself.

These men of different tongue and different origin felt what their aim was, but it was not very clear to them how those aims were to be reached. They thought:— "We have understood: every house has its hearth and its chimney, and all of us are equal. But every flock, when it takes the road, must without fail have a keosh (a lead goat). Which is our head — who is our leader?"

Whenever the question came to this difficult point, all eyes turned toward Vardan and toward Nikol — who later earned the name of Duman. On these two the glances were bent, not because these two were the most idealistic, the bravest, the most tested, the best loved, nor because they had a tayfa (a following) of their own. No. These two Karabagh men became the axis for them all, and every man trusted his life and his mind to these stranger Armenians, because on the hardest questions they had neither wavering nor any "if," but a plain and clear either "yes" or "no." They thought and acted by the following logic, which formed the working blueprint as well:—

1.— We are first of all for the Land — with our every-

thing, and with those aims of ours which our Program has formulated and fixed. Whoever finds that objectionable is not of us; with him we have no business.

2.— When the wheat has been poured into the barn, but there is no sower to cast it on the ground, and no eater to make bread of it and eat, that wheat will stink and rot. The Land has need of the sowers of our Program, of schooled field-workers. Those forces we have. If we do not pass those forces into the Land, on the one hand the Land will lie untilled, and on the other those forces will rust and turn into a curse. Therefore: whatever we have must be got through to those who fight.

3.— These are wishes, and they become real when we open a safe road at least as far as Van; and if we cannot open one, then we too are superfluous, and our work with us. The roads we have, if they are not safe, if they are long, must be changed. The Salmast–Derik–Van road is about 160 kilometers, and Derik–Van, 100. Khoy–Apostle Thaddeus–Van is 200, and Apostle Thaddeus–Van, 100 kilometers. Therefore: Salmast and Khoy must be counted the rear, and — whatever it costs, in whatever way — our point of departure must be made the ruined monastery of Derik and the still-standing monastery of the Apostle Thaddeus. By this, the link with the Land will be shortened by half and twice quickened.

4.— Carrying arms over for the Land is a necessity, so long as no internal market has been created there — and there is no hope that one will be. There are no arms worth the name in Persia, and the ready-made arms out of Russia, with their transport costs, come so dear that they are beyond our pockets. Without arms, our existence and our intentions come to nothing; so our believing craftsman comrades must be called to the work: workshops must be opened in Tabriz and in Salmast to make the wooden stocks of the arms and those of the iron parts that can be made. By this, half the cost of purchase and transport, and half the dangers, will be spared. Those parts of the rifle — barrel, bolt and so on —

which it is impossible to produce by our own means and which must be bought with money, one must not hesitate to obtain from the works of Oryol and of Tula, by bribery or by theft, and to transport over — at less cost and with fewer dangers.

It is known that these different works came off side by side, and the workshops were opened, where Toros, Karo, Samson, Bedros and the rest worked. From 1893 on, the Russian Mosin rifles were assembled in the workshops of the Dashnaktsutiun and, stamped with its emblem and under the name "philanthropic," they outclassed the Turkish Martini rifles.^t31

No one has written the full history of those thankless labors. The players are dead, killed, and their worth has remained unfixed. Only the Kurds sang:

In this passage the singer has been struck by Sako's cherkeska and by his chongur.

In this passage the singer expresses, by his own understanding, Nikol's true character and countenance, which the magic cap (sər kyulan) gives him.

The singer's imagination has been kindled, with good reason, by the fedayis' rifle.

The "philanthropic" rifles fitted out in our workshops were nothing other than the Russian Mosins, whose bullet carried to 2,700 meters — against the Martini, dapakhsli^t35 and Berdan rifles of the same period, which were used by the Turks and the Kurds, with a top range of 800–1,200 meters. While the rifles inside Derik killed at a distance of 800–1,200 meters, those of the men who came against it killed at 200–400. While the rifles of Derik's fighters gave out a short, sharp nəlləst^t36 sound and had no smoke, the rifles of those who came against it roared and, throwing out smoke, betrayed the rifleman's position. So one side saw where its enemy lay and killed from afar; the other could not fix the place, and, without ever dislodging him, got killed.

This inequality of arms turned into legend for the one side and condemned it to helplessness, while into the other it breathed disdain and audacity.

I have paused on these side questions so that it may be understood how a handful of fighting men, twenty to fifty souls, were able to make their nest in the monastery of Derik and keep it in their hands for years on end. It was a miracle, and it was brought to pass by Vardan's and Nikol's plan and with their own part in it. To climb the mountains of Zaghosh,^t37 to enter their winding folds, where the fortress of Dzaran^t38 stood sentinel, where sat Jafar agha of Avdo (the father of Simko),^t39 whose country neither

the Persian nor the Turk had been able to enter, and to settle in a ruined monastery — this was a thing like a miracle. To carry the line of the Land's link some forty kilometers forward, and to be ringed by Kurds who followed like wolves, was downright unbelievable. But it was reality.

In 1909, when I was with Nikol at Varna, I said to him:

— Of all your adventures and all your works, the most fruitful, the most audacious, was the settling in at Derik. But I have not understood the reason of the success.

He felt deeply pleased and happy.

— No one has made that appraisal, he said; I too am of that conviction. But you — why do you think so?

— From Derik's position, and from the legends told of it, I answered.

— You are right, and so are the legends they told. Take this and hang it on your ear like an earring: when you have neither numbers, nor quality, nor force, do not strike at your enemy — deal your blow so as to set his imagination on fire. Look into the eyes of the beast that springs at you: he will draw in his tail and turn into a sheep. This is the secret of Derik's success.

In these approaches of Nikol's lay the secret of the miracles he worked — at Derik, and just so in the fights of Boghazkeasan and of Baghu.^t40 But his formula would have been better [sic]^t41 had it been put so: "If you have neither numbers nor force, but you have quality, look the beast in the eye so boldly, and make a leap so unlooked-for, that he is dazed and dumbfounded. If you have no numbers, do not fight your enemy with an equal weapon; have one weapon that he does not have, and that is the greater. It is that weapon that beats numbers."

That weapon Derik had, in the person of the Mosin "philanthropic" rifle, whose fame had taken hold of the world and captivated not only the Kurd but the Armenian as well.

I count it superfluous to give a description of the many Homeric fights and adventures that took place on the Persian and Turkish borderlands and around De-

rik. They are sung by the Kurds. About them there exist fragmentary writings too. Here it is enough to say this much: that Nikol and Vardan, nested in that place, Sako and Khecho, Pokhik and Darmo, Zato and Shero, Gre and Sahak (Assyrians), and their comrades, in the beginning did not let a day pass without a fight. Those fights led, in the end, to the free coming and going of the fedayis from Dilman to Derik — which was exactly what our men were after.(\*)

*

The center of the Central Committee of Atrpatakan^t42 was at Tabriz. Being the capital of Atrpatakan and a safe place, it could keep contact with the world abroad, with the Caucasus and with Turkey. From the Dashnaktsutiun's first beginnings, party work had been done here at the hands of certain field-workers, and, if I am not mistaken, a few numbers of Droshak saw the light here. From Tabriz, literature went into the Caucasus, and even a telegraphic link was kept up by way of Tabriz between the world abroad and the Caucasus. The chief thing of all, however, was the Tabriz arms workshop, which was being founded there in the 1890s.

Among the field-workers of the first period are Fatanian,^t43 Ishkhan Arghutian,^t44 Miss Satenik Madinian (in the future Mrs. Arghutian), Dr. Hakovbian and others, who busy themselves with the party's organizational affairs and, in step with them, with teaching and medicine as well. Toros (Galust Aloyan),^t45 Samson, Levon and others worked without interruption in the arms shop until the year 1896. The count of the arms they turned out must have been past a thousand. It was thanks to this arsenal that the Dashnaktsutiun was in a condition to mount large military undertakings on the border.

That workshop, with more or less success, wor-

ked on until the Turkish Constitution.^t46 Its most brilliant period, however, was the years around '97, when Toros, Samson, Levon and Karo (Zorian) worked there.

After the year '97, all the forces named above were either killed or gone from the field. At that time begins the participation of local forces in the party's affairs. And to the local men were added new forces from outside, who came to Tabriz to teach in the city's Armenian schools.

Tabriz, so it is told, had for whole decades been divided into two quarters, and along the line of those quarters there had been two currents in the city. The quarter of Lilava always stood under the influence of the Dashnaktsutiun, and the Ghala under the Hnchakians'. And between those two quarters the struggle was never wanting, both on party ground and over the school and prelacy elections. In Lilava the Dashnaktsakans always carried the day, and its teaching staff was Dashnaktsakan. After 1898 the schools grow strong with our teachers, among whom were old comrades such as Hovnan Davtian, Dikran Rashmajian, Martiros Harutiunian, Mikayel Zarafian, Dr. Pashayan and so on. And later, down to the year 1908, of the field-workers from outside there were there Stepan Stepanian, Doctor Stepanian (the dentist), and, as gunsmith, Bedros, with a few of his apprentices. These forces, following one upon another, had managed to prepare, in the schools and outside them, a revolutionary generation which not only ran the local organization's affairs with a sure hand, but also gave modest and well-prepared field-worker comrades for the far corners of Persia and for the Caucasus. In 1904, when I was at Tabriz, affairs were being run almost wholly by the young local forces — Vahan, Zora, etc. — who were helped by Doctor Stepanian and Stepan Stepanian (Balajan). And Bedros wanted to help as well, but he was more

of a hindrance.

What were the aim and the worth of the Central Committee-ship of Tabriz?

Subject to it, from the party point of view, was the Armenian population of Persia from Tabriz to Gharadagh, Resht, Ghazvin, Maragha, Tehran, Ispahan and even Meshed. In those far-off places, where the Armenians' tie to the Illuminator's confession had slackened and where the danger existed that the Armenians might melt away, the Dashnaktsutiun had become a confession in its own right, and its preachers and field-workers filled the place of vardapets and priests. In all those who were bent on their selfish interests and had forgotten public and national consciousness, it woke patriotism, and it bound them fast to Tabriz.

The party's second chief work was to raise the educational level of that people, given over — and yet to be given over — to loss. This it did by helping not with money and subsidies, but by supplying idealist teachers at very cheap pay, and at times for nothing. The party did this with two aims: first, because it bound the people to itself and saved it from assimilation and loss; and second, because its field-workers, under the name of schoolmasters, making the teaching serve as a screen, carried their revolutionary work forward — the more so as they were expected, as far as might be, to live on their own means. The party could place its field-workers in the schools with ease, because these men, for all that they held the higher schooling, did not think of high pay, and were willing to serve for the most modest daily keep in the most backward of villages — provided those places were fit to become a prop of the revolution, or lay on a transport line.

Enjoying a certain measure of freedom, and being in a peaceful state, Tabriz kept up regular relations by letter with its distant districts and its most remote cor-

ners. It reported on the most burning questions of Armenia and of the Caucasus, and carried news back in return. Thanks to that regular tie, it put the farthest corners into relation with the Land and with the Caucasus. And there was one more circumstance that favored this. The point is that among Persia's telegraph clerks the Armenians made up a great number; they were organized, and through them the Central Committee kept contact with the various districts and received its information with speed.

*

Tabriz was the overseer-in-chief of the districts of Salmast and Khoy, which stood as the center of Atrpatakan's living activity. There the party's significance was not cultural and moral only. Salmast and Khoy were a kind of depot of the Land's fighting forces and of its munitions alike. Those districts have rendered great services, and without them, perhaps, the activity of Vaspurakan would not have had the sweep and the color that it had. Taking this circumstance into account, it is worth pausing briefly on the revolutionary history of the Salmast–Khoy districts.

It was still at the end of the eighties that there come to these provinces of Persia the first heralds of our revolution — Agripasian and Goloshian,^t47 who take upon themselves a purely propagandist part. Staying there a short while, they cross into Turkish Armenia, to build something more fundamental. But before they have reached Van, at the gedük of Zukhi^t48 they are killed by Kurds.

Their worth must be looked for in their idealism and their self-sacrifice. It was they who, for the first time, opened the road of death with their own blood; sacrificing their lives, they became an example to the generations that followed, handing down the lesson that for the salvation of the Fatherland it is necessary

to be sacrificed. That is the reason these fore-runners are always remembered with reverence by those who take their stand on the road of dying for the fatherland.

Agripasian and Goloshian showed no separate activity of their own, but their death draws the attention especially of many idealist field-workers of the Caucasus and of Armenia, who come one after another to Salmast and the surrounding provinces with the aim of working for the Land. This goes on in the years '90–94, when the parties were still being confounded with one another and no plain and clear division yet existed between them in men's consciousness. It is from those times that there come to Salmast Dikran Beglarich, Bagrat Vardapet (Tavakalian), Ishkhan Arghutian, Avetisian (Armenakan), Sako of Sev-Kar, Peto, Vardan, Jallat, as well as Toros, Yervand Taghianosian, Sarkis Ohanjanian, Movses, Dr. Hakobian and others. Their aim was to send field-workers for the Land, to get forces through to it, to organize, and then to establish courier relations with the Land. For Salmast to be a firm base for the Land, the people of that province too had to be organized and won through with revolutionary ideas. Thus the axis of their whole activity was this — staying at Salmast, to become a support for the Land. It is from there that the first strong field-worker, Peto, is sent to Vaspurakan. So that the organization should be far from the eyes of the people and of the Turkish and Persian governments, they decide to make the monastery of Derik their anchor, and to that end they take its renovation in hand. The monastery and its surroundings were in fact subject neither to the Persian nor to the Turkish authorities. There were only Kurdish ashirets (tribes) there. A few tens of fedayis, taking over the monastery, found there a kind of half-independent rule of their own. The fedayis spread their protection over a few villages lying near Derek^t49 as well (Hakhveran,^t50 Parik, Aslanik and so on).

Derik was under Kurdish attack without cease, fallen as it was almost into the very heart of Kurdish country; but the soldiers gathered there, who were famed for their bravery, threw those attacks back. The monastery had thus become a living training-ground for growing hardened to battle. There were Vardan, and Sako of Sev-Kar, who — the chungur^t51 on his shoulder, together with his rifle — went round those dangerous roads and kept the watch. There were Shero, and Zato — who was killed inside the monastery of Derik by chance, through the bursting of a rifle. There was Movses, who had raised a name for bravery among the Kurds (but who is killed in the course of a clash of his own with Kurds), and Karapet the Vanetsi, and many others, who went by turns into the Land and came back again.

In the year 1894, when the fedayis had already grown strong both at Salmast and in the monastery of Derik, it is decided, in order to help Peto, to send the first zinatar band. Until then, the carrying of arms was done by men singly, one by one, or was managed through Kurds. Vardan crosses to Van, where he stays with his band until the fights of '96. This successful trial becomes the cause of other bands' being formed.

The Armenakans were strong in Van. They had force enough at Salmast too, the more so as that party's animating spirit and its leader was to be found at Salmast. Emboldened by Vardan's example, Avetisian forms a large band, about 100 men, among whom are the Armenakan field-workers Ughun,^t52 Sev Lach, Zarvadar,^t53 Arsen, Mushegh and others. That band reaches Van by the same road.

After that band, the Dashnaktsutiun decides to send a second band into the Land, under the leadership of Nikol, who at that time was at Salmast as a teacher. About 60 soldiers gather, and in October, when it was already

about to snow, they set out toward the Land. They were in haste, because there were whispers of massacre. With the band was Teroyan, who had come from the Land. To the band are joined 12 men of the Armenakans as well, among them the well-known Usta Panos.

When the band takes the road, the snow begins to fall and to cover the ways. On reaching Khoshab, some propose turning back, but Nikol digs in and decides, cost what it may, to cross into the Land. They move forward and reach Saray. Some ten men go into a barn, to shelter from the cold. The other part stays on the mountain, under the snow and the blizzard. The Kurds and the troops notice them, and they come and lay siege. A furious fight begins, which lasts the whole day. It was there that Usta Panos's feet froze.

The band, giving a few victims, succeeds by night in tearing through the enemy's chain, and moves forward toward Vaspurakan. In a river the soldiers are soaked through, and one man in ten of them freezes and stays on the road. Teroyan, who with 12 men had sheltered among the barns, succeeds in reaching Van by another road, while Nikol, with the remnant of the band, enters the village of Boghazkeasan. They have barely taken a little rest when the previous day's fighters come up and besiege the house where the band has taken refuge. A fight takes place fiercer still. The Kurds and the troops bring brushwood, set it around the house, and light it. Out through the fire and the flame the fedayis leap, and with point-blank fire they kill numerous Kurds, among them two tribal chiefs, Sha and Jndi.^t54 The Kurds are thrown into terror and confusion by this fight, the most furious of all, and the band, profiting by it, comes out of the village and carries on the fight, climbing the nearby mountain. Cleaving the snow, hounded by Kurds all the while, the fedayis move forward and, losing their trace in the night, reach Varag and are saved.

After that band's hard crossing into the Land, they do not sit idle in Salmast, and they begin with greater force to prepare men and munitions. That winter passes

in preparatory work.

In the spring of '96 those who had gone return from Vaspurakan, so as to carry new forces out of Salmast. The hero of Boghazkeasan, Nikol, gathers round himself some 10 riflemen and some 40 unarmed soldiers, to arm them and take them back to Van. The Armenakan Nerses likewise returns, by the Khoy road, with 10 to 12 men, to carry arms over. Misfortune befalls both of these bands. Nerses, though he reaches Khoy safely, is arrested there; and Nikol reaches Derik — which in the spring of '95, together with a few villages, had been razed by the Persian government, under the compulsion of the Turks. Nikol shelters in the ruins, but there he is besieged by Kurds. Our men try to persuade the Kurds not to fight; they, however, counting this a sign of weakness, all the more boldly press the ring of the siege tight around the monastery, seize the commanding positions, and kill Shero and one comrade of his.

Armed with only eight rifles, the fedayis defend the doors of the monastery. The Kurds fire from the ruined dome. Nikol fills the monastery with hay and daler,^t55 sets it alight, and shields himself with the smoke. When night comes down, the fedayis leap out through the monastery door and, killing a few Kurds, get free. A small part of the band goes to Sanamerik, and the rest enter Kohna-Shahar,^t56 where all of them, Nikol among their number, are arrested. Later, by bribery, they get free of the Persians' hands. In this way the bands' return to the Land is delayed. And that deals great harm to the fights of 1896 in Vaspurakan.

A little after Nikol's and Nerses's coming out of the Land, the massacres and the fights of Vaspurakan begin. In those times, work went forward at Salmast with united forces. Men had gathered there from every side, field-workers and soldiers of all the parties, who were preparing to cross into the Land. A great band is organized, made up of Ar-

menakans and Dashnaktsakans. At that very time word is received that at Van the fighting and the massacre have begun. A few men of Mushegh's band, the vanguard of Avetisian's, escaping the Turks' and the Kurds' pursuit, come and tell of the fights of Van. They report that Van has been emptied of revolutionaries, and that the bands of Avetisian (Armenakan), of Peto (Dashnaktsakan) and of Martik (Hnchakian) have been caught on the road in fighting with the Kurds. At once the soldiers gather from all the villages of Salmast, about 200 men; within twenty-four hours all the horses are put under rekvizitsia^t57 (requisition), and they take the road for the Turkish border, to help the bands retreating from Van. But it was already late. The united bands of Peto and Martik had been cut down entire on the Kotur road (a single Assyrian had escaped); of Avetisian's great band, the greater part had perished near the Monastery of Bartholomew,^t58 the small part — 30 to 40 men — had fled to Salmast, and the remainder had fallen back again toward Van and its surroundings.

As I have said, numerous field-workers and soldiers had come to Salmast from every side, with the aim of going into the Land and of carrying arms. There had gathered there, so it is told, of the old field-workers the comrades Ohannian,^t59 Ishkhan Arghutian, Satenik, Nikol, and of the new, Semerjian,^t60 Gurgen and others. There were also numerous soldiers, Turkish-Armenian and Russian-Armenian. The little province of Salmast, which economically was in a wretched state, was unable to keep those hundreds of strangers, who were without any means of livelihood of their own and were fed at the local people's cost. And to the soldiers and field-workers must be added the people and the soldiers who had fled in consequence of the fights and massacres that had taken place in the Land, and who likewise weighed upon the inhabitants of Salmast.

All this had brought forth discontents on either side in Salmast, and had created an atmosphere from which mutual love and concord were absent. To come out of this situation, some way out had to be found. The question was put

thus: after the failed fights of Van, when the forces there were coming out of the country, was it right, after all, to go there with bands, or to send arms to Van?

On this question opinions differed. One part of the field-workers at Salmast, grounding themselves on the letters of Vardan and of Teroyan sent out of Vaspurakan, said that help must be got through and force sent there; the others thought that the forces gathered at Salmast should be given over to organizing a great expedition and taking vengeance on the ashirets that had cut down the bands. Warm partisans of the first view were Semerjian, Karo, Gurgen, Aramayis and the great part of the Turkish-Armenian soldiery, as well as Vaspurakan's provincial field-workers — the Haji of Nor Gegh, Baghik of Shatkh,^t61 Yokhni^t62 and so on. For the expedition were Nikol, Dr. Ohannian, Ishkhan, Satenik. Around those two questions real passions were stirred. The keeping of the soldiers was running into difficulties because of the economic straits, and if it was necessary to send them off, it had to be done soon. In the end a halt is made upon a middle road. It is decided to send one part of the soldiers into the Land at intervals, and to scatter the other part about the district.

The first band, it is decided, will be sent in mid-August under the leadership of Bedros Semerjian. Into that band go Gurgen — the future leader of Sasun — Aramayis, Khecho, Nikol, up to 13 men in number. These reach Van safe and unharmed, and there they join Teroyan's band. When this band arrives, and when, from the other side, word is received from the Land that the Dashnaktsutiun is not dead, that Vardan and Teroyan are both alive, a second band, of more than 35, is sent by Semerjian's road; and by way of the Apostle Thaddeus, through Abagha, a little band of 7 men, under Sahakian's leadership. Sheko's band takes the road toward September, by Semerjian's road, and arrives safely (they meet with one or two light and

insignificant incidents). But the band going by Abagha comes out later, when the cold had already set in. It is besieged by Haidarantsi Kurds; a furious fight takes place, and the band, after wresting from the enemy twice its own number in victims, is wiped out entire.

After these events a great band is made ready, of about 80 men, which under Karo's leadership was to cross to Van, to join Vardan and Teroyan. The band was already set to take the road when a telegram comes from Khoy that Vardan and his band have returned to Salmast. It comes out that the bands of Semerjian and of Sheko, on reaching Van in safety, drew the government's attention onto Van, and in the city fighting begins anew; after which they find themselves forced to leave the city and come out of it and, after giving one more fight near Gemi,^t63 to take refuge in Salmast — leaving Teroyan behind in Vaspurakan, in a sick state. Once the bands that had gone to the Land are forced, leaders and all, to leave the Land and come out of it, the sending of Karo's band loses its sense. Again that current grows strong which held that the forces gathered at Salmast should be used to organize an expeditionary force against the Kurds, to take the revenge of Avetisian, of Peto and of Martik. Nikol presses that view all the more strongly, though the idea of going into the Land and strengthening the Land was defended by a number of men, the greater part of them Turkish Armenians. The winter coming on puts a temporary end to these differences, by making impossible both the expedition and the sending of bands into the Land. They find themselves forced to disperse one part of the soldiers, sending them as far as Tabriz and the Caucasus, so that Salmast's condition might be lightened until the coming of spring.

That winter Sheko is killed at Tabriz by his own soldiers. He was an exceedingly rough man, though a very self-sacrificing one, and he could not deal with his soldiers and comrades. Over a common question — of tobacco or of

food — a quarrel takes place between him and his soldiers, one of whom, out of all patience, strikes him on the head while he is washing and kills him on the spot. They bury Sheko at Tabriz. For one of the soldiers who killed him, it is decided to cast him out of the comradely ranks until he should perform some great act of courage; for the other, teror is decided, and he is killed at Salmast by Karo's hand. The first soldier goes with Paramaz to the Land and is killed on the Van road.

The differences between the expedition and crossing into the Land go on until spring, and the question, I think, is decided at the last by the General Assembly, in favor of the expedition. But the struggles take on a sharp face, and the Bureau sends Shahrikian^t64 to Salmast, to smooth out the quarrels and give force to the preparations for the expedition. (Before that, they had also called Teroyan out of the Land, so that he might settle the matter; but he had met with failure.) In the consultations held with Shahrikian's participation, they decide to organize a punitive expedition, but at the same time also to send into the Land field-workers and a store of arms, for Vaspurakan and for Duran.^t65 When the mountains come free of the snows, they prepare to send two bands into the Land in June — one under the leadership of Teroyan, and the other of the Hnchakian Paramaz. Into Teroyan's band go those forces which were to pass from Vaspurakan farther still — on toward Duran. Among them were Gurgen, Parsadan, Andranik and the others. This band takes the road and arrives safely, while Paramaz's band, before it has reached Van, is caught up in fighting on the way, in consequence of which the greater part of it is cut down, and only a few men, together with Paramaz, succeed in reaching Van.

While those bands were going on their road, energetic preparations are to be seen for the expedition. The fighting and all the other forces of Atrpatakan are concentrated at Salmast. From Tabriz come Toros, Samson, Arghu-

tian, and the other field-workers of Salmast, such as Dr. Ohanian, Karo, Nikol, Vardan, Pokhik, Aramayis, Akhper, Sako, and other comrades and military men of different schooling and different standing. Among the gathered there were inner ferments against this or that individual. There was great discontent above all toward Nikol, to whom many did not warm (chiefly those who stood for passing a band through to the Land).

For Nikol the essential thing was to carry the expedition to success. Though he was the one man worthy to be the expedition's leader, or at the least to be the leader's deputy, they appoint him a mere commander of fifty; as leader of the force they choose Vardan, as his deputy Ishkhan Arghutian, as captains of hundreds Pokhik, Akhper and others whose names I do not remember; and leader of the horsemen becomes Sako. So a force of about 400 men takes the road toward the border in the middle of July. That was the first and the greatest band in the whole course of the Dashnaktsutiun's activity.

There is a mountain, Aravul,^t66 which parts the border of Turkey from Persia; on that mountain's flanks is Khanasor, where the Mazrik ashiret had gone up to zozan^t67 — the tribe that had cut down Avetisian's band. The decision is given to root out that ashiret together with its tribal chief, Sharaf bek.^t68 For two days the force goes its way unseen through the mountains and keeps hidden in the folds of Aravul, and, marching by night, it surrounds the ashiret of the Mazriks. Before daybreak has yet opened, the force falls upon the Mazriks and cuts down whatever comes to hand. The Kurds, taken unawares, can show no resistance, and they begin to flee, abandoning everything. Sharaf bek too contrives to slip away, leaving his ashiret in the fedayis' hands. Of the Kurds many are killed; and our men, while the surrounding ashirets had not yet cut their rear, begin to fall back toward Salmast. From every side horsemen come up and labor to cut the roads of retreat. The fedayis fight, and they give of their own number 19 killed and

lost — among them Karo.(\*)

The force, having solved the task it had set itself almost with success, turns back to Salmast. But the Turkish government had already begun to make representations to the Persian government, demanding that curbing measures be taken against the Armenian fedayis. Serious complications might arise. Besides which, there was no longer any sense in keeping so many soldiers and field-workers in Atrpatakan. On these considerations, it is decided to move the soldiers by various roads over to the Caucasus and to other places, whereby Persia is emptied of fedayis. At Salmast there remains only one small company. The field-work-

———

(\*) What really happened to Karo, no one knows: there are opinions that he was killed by Kurds, while some suppose that he took his own life. No one saw him after the attack was over, during the retreat. Karo had already been seeking death for about a year. He carried a deep grief of soul, which had come of the love he bore toward Maro. Maro was a schoolteacher at Tabriz, and a Dashnaktsakan. She, for her part, was in love with Karo like one gone mad. But since in those times there reigned there (as in Turkey until quite lately) a psychology by which love and marriage stand as an obstacle to the revolutionary's free activity, and love, like a chain, fetters the flights of the sworn revolutionary, Karo and Maro strove to smother their natural feelings. And so that Maro might free the ardent Karo, forever straining toward the Land, from love's fetters, she takes her own life, and she leaves Karo a letter, telling from what motives she takes this step. Karo, after the death of the girl he loved, far from feeling himself freed of a fetter, is given over to deep despondency and torments of the soul. Life becomes empty and worthless to him. It is by that that his untimely and mysterious vanishing must be explained. Perhaps he went after Maro — went to look for her…

ers too withdraw to the Caucasus — except Samson, who stays on there to the end. Bribery on the one hand, and the Persians' traditional indifference on the other, become the reason that these events pass unnoticed. Only some ten men of Aghbak are arrested and handed over to the Turkish consul, who, seeing that they are no fedayis, sets them free — and with that the affair is closed.

The moral worth of the Khanasor Expedition proved great, from the standpoint of the party's revival and of making friends with the Kurds. After the year 1896 a general despondency ruled among the Armenians; the credit of the revolutionaries had fallen in the people's eyes. The Hnchakian party, which was the oldest and the strongest among the Armenian revolutionary parties, lay exposed in the greater measure to the blows of the reaction. The despondency had seeped not only into the people but into the very Hnchakian party, and while that party, under the weight of it all, was all but drawing its hand back from the Turkish-Armenian question, the Dashnaktsutiun, by the Khanasor Expedition, declared by deed that it would carry on the pursuit of the Armenian Question until that received a satisfying solution. The great event of Khanasor gave life to abandoned souls. The Dashnaktsutiun, thanks to that expedition, wrested large sections away from the Hnchakian party, and took them in and melted them into itself.

The expedition had a great effect on the psychology of the Kurds as well. They saw that the Armenian can punish the one who massacres him, and can do it organized and by means of forces of considerable size. They began to be afraid of the Armenians, and they understood that in the future they would be answerable, every time, for their acts against the Armenians. A deep impression was left on the Kurds, too, by the strength of the fedayis, which echoed in exaggerated shape in their imagination. From now on the Dashnaktsutiun figured to them as a state — one which, though weak by comparison with Turkey, had demands that were

just, and that might one day be realized. The Armenians, the Kurds supposed, might come to hold rule, and punish them. As a consequence of this they grow more cautious, they lean toward neutrality, and they even begin to nurse a certain sympathy toward the Armenians. These changes brought forth in the psychology of the Kurds were to serve in the future as a foundation for the principles of friendship and concord. For the Armenians, but for the Kurds above all, physical force is a thing to be prized and worshipped. If a man has no force, and leans only upon fine sermons, in the Kurd's eye he represents no worth at all. By the event of Khanasor, all the Kurds along the border felt that the Armenians could represent force as well. It is by this that one must explain the circumstance that after the year '97 the relations of the Kurds toward the fedayis did not worsen but, on the contrary, bent toward friendship or neutrality — in consequence of which, too, the activity of Salmast and of Vaspurakan changed root and branch. Until then, the transports of munitions were carried out by means of bands which, each man taking a single rifle, for the most part fighting their way through, and in the course of it giving victims in great number, went as far as Van. From there, one part of the band, leaving the arms behind, and the other part, in order to protect the crossing,^t69 taking along a portion of the arms that had been carried, returned again to Salmast, so as to arm themselves anew and turn back to the Land. Of the munitions carried over, only 15 to 20 percent reached their goal; the rest either was lost, passing into the Kurds' hands in the course of the fights, or was spent on the road in those same fights, or came back once more to Persia. The Land, in truth, drew very little profit from those bands; but there was no other means, so long as the Kurds, prompted by the Turkish government, irresponsibly searched and plundered every caravan that went, arrested every stranger, and killed every man, be he Armenian or Kurd, if he

fell under suspicion of transporting arms, letters or literature.

After the Khanasor Expedition, however, all the Kurds kept themselves in check, and, when the government's direct pressure was not upon them, they held a neutral stance and at times even helped our transport work. So that if, down to the year 1908 — for some ten years — the fights were few and few bands crossed toward Vaspurakan, our work was very fruitful. By way of Salmast and the monastery alone, millions of cartridges and thousands of arms are said to have been carried across, and the count of human victims and the losses of arms were far smaller than in the years '90–96.

In 1897 there remains in Salmast Levon, a teacher by the name of Hovhannes Khanadian,^t70 who writes and sends the letters and carries on the work of keeping contact all by himself. As there were no other men in Salmast to catch the eye, the attention of the Turkish and Persian governments drifts away from this point. Within that interval the Salmast men themselves had already stepped to the head of the work — among them the well-known Sarkis of Ghalasar. In 1898 Samson too comes, and sets the transport work, and the keeping of contact with the Land, upon firmer foundations.

At that time Vazgen Teroyan was in the Land. To help him, Sharo is sent with a band made up of 10 to 15 men. At Abagha, Sharo is caught up in a fight with the Kurds. The Kurds do not succeed in exacting the Mazriks' revenge; on the contrary, Sharo's little band works wonders, and by that it fastens all the more firmly the idea of the fedayis' power and invincibility. Though Sharo loses three of his soldiers — Amre,^t71 Karapet (the third one's name I do not remember) — he wrests from the enemies more than 20 victims and reaches his goal. The crossing of Sharo's band becomes the cause of the Turkish government's turning its attention once more

upon Salmast: searches are carried out, and a few men, local and from outside, are arrested, Sarkis among them; but soon, by bribes and fines, all of them get free.

After Bagrat Vard. Tavakalian, it was an Armenakan vardapet of Van, Arsen by name, who shepherded Salmast. In 1899 he is succeeded by Khachik Vardapet, with whom comes Yeprem — as a servant. In that year the Persian government, under the Turks' pressure, was turning a sharper attention upon Salmast. On the other side, the temper of the people of Salmast, in a good many villages, ran against the revolutionaries. Even leaving aside the general despondency that had come over the Armenians because of the failures of Turkish Armenia, there were certain justifying causes as well. First, there weighed upon the men of Salmast so great a number of soldiers that their keep was beyond the strength of that small and poor district. Second, the soldiers scattered through the villages at times committed disorders and acts of violence,^t72 and that, with justice, bred discontent among the people. The some 500 soldiers quartered in Salmast were not, all of them, persons pure in ideals and afire with the revolutionary spirit; in among them had slipped men highly suspect too, in their habits and in their conduct. Apart from that, the Persian officials, on the pretext of arresting fedayis, often came to the villages and took fines. This economic and psychological condition had become the cause of a certain antipathy toward the revolutionaries taking shape among the people — though the number was not small, either, of those who had stood firm in their sympathies and went on working together with our party.

In those times the Armenakan party vanished from Salmast altogether. As for the Hnchakians, they had remained in one village only, Payajuk, and there too in insignificant number; while in all the other villages,

if it was not master there, the Dashnaktsutiun at the least enjoyed sympathy. And the Dashnaktsakans, under the clothes of a teacher (like Samson), of a servant (like Yeprem), or of a plain villager and refugee, carried their labors on.

The party's work was carried in two directions. First, effort was poured into keeping up the transport relation with the Land, sending there zinatar bands formed by means of Kurds and of Armenians, "goods," and at the same time soldier bands as well. The party's second care was the cultural activity, to which it was harnessed with great zeal.

Of the bands sent into the Land, let us recall the band of Pokhik,(\*) which with about 15 men crosses unharmed as far as Van. But Teroyan was there no longer — he had been killed at the fight of Kurubash — and the keeping of a soldier band inside Van had become difficult. There too, in those times, hopelessness and despondency ruled. Pokhik finds himself forced to leave Van and turn back with 10 men toward Salmast. On the way he is caught in a fight, but he succeeds in slipping away and taking shelter in Mahlam, a village of Salmast.

The villagers of Mahlam take counsel and decide not to receive Pokhik's band, and they propose to them not to enter their village. But the soldiers, worn out and spent, their feet swollen, cannot go far from the village (and where were they to go?), and they settle down outside the village, among the vineyards, in the open air, while

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(\*) So that the government should pay less attention to Salmast, and the people too be left in peace, Samson, apart from Pokhik's band, sends to Van also the band of Akhper (in which was Darmo), by the road of the Monastery. This band, made up of 12 men, does not cross into the Land, however, and settles in the monastery and its surroundings, because word is received that Van is in a hard strait and the roads too are closed.

Pokhik, who was gravely ill, they carry to Ghalasar, to be doctored. The "great ones" of the villagers of Mahlam come to the representative of the Dashnaktsutiun, Samson; they tell him what has passed and they ask him to remove those soldiers from the village — in the contrary case, they will themselves go and give notice to Zardam^t73 and to the government. Samson persuades them to give at least a day or two's grace; but the village's representatives, thinking that he wants to gain time so that the soldiers, little by little, may find their feet again and enter the village, go straight to Zardam and ask that the fedayis be turned out of their village, or else imprisoned.

Of the 8 soldiers settled in the vineyard of the village of Mahlam, only 3 were with rifles. At daybreak, Persian sarbazes come and surround those soldiers. In Persia it was forbidden to make a fight against Persians; so our men, without a fight, try to move off and climb the mountain. On the way one of them is killed, and the others go and get inside a tower. There the Persians kill or wound one or two men, though ours show no resistance whatever, and then they arrest the others. Those unfortunates supposed that they would not be killed and would be able to buy themselves free with a bribe, as had been the way till then. But they had miscalculated: they kill them all, cut off their heads, and carry them to Dilman, declaring that they had killed them all in battle. At that news Yeprem, that very day, gathers 6 or 7 of the soldiers — among them Sarbaz Khecho, Darmo, Gre and the others — and, taking no account of the fact that Zardam's soldiers were seated in Mahlam so as to protect the traitors, he goes by night to that village, enters the house of Mughsi Davit,^t74 who was one of the authors of the soldiers' killing, and puts Davit and all the members of his family to the sword. Then, in secret again, he comes out of the village. In the morning, when Mughsi Davit's door does not open, the people, and the Persian soldiers who were in the village, go in from his house-door and see the terrible pic-

ture. This killing so works upon the sarbazes that, instead of continuing to stay in the village, they come out of it and go away. As for the traitors, who were two men — Arakel and Stepan — they flee from Mahlam. But they do not escape either: the one is killed soon after, while the other, who had fled to Russia, they succeed in killing only in the year 1905.

From the year 1899, when this event took place, until 1902 there pass altogether peaceful years. In those years they renounce the former system of sending men and arms into the Land. Many of the important comrades, such as Vardges and Vahan of Sasun, cross into the Land in disguise, by means of Kurds, without fighting and without ghalmaghal (uproar). In those years the "goods" (munitions) were received on the one hand from Tabriz, in special carts built there, and on the other they came from Julfa, by way of Khoy, and were kept, through Sarkis, in the stores. And Samson, who was the overseer-in-chief of all the works, prepared courier and transport lines, using for that purpose hired Kurds or Persians, and at times Armenians as well, mixed in among the Kurds. These went and came continually, and they carried and brought munitions, literature, letters, and now and then men.

At the same time the people — having caught its breath a little from the heavy duty of feeding the soldiers sheltered there till then, as well as from the Persian government's fines — was in a condition to give itself to cultural, and to peaceful revolutionary, labors. In that backward province regular schools are opened, libraries are founded, and theatricals are organized. And, life entering so natural and peaceful a channel, the Land's work too is carried forward more fruitfully and with greater vigor — by way of Salmast.

In the years 1903–4 a stir and bustle ruled in Salmast. Out of the Land,

more often than before, men came out to go, by way of Salmast, toward the Caucasus and the Balkans, and to take part in the General Assembly. In their number let us recall Yerkat, Joj Agha and others. And from outside, new forces and new field-workers entered the Land — such, for example, as Koms, Ishkhan, Sergei (Aram) and so on. Transports of arms were carried out more often and in great quantity. The greater part of the cartridges stolen from the depots of Alexandropol, and the arms that were bought from Tula and from Siberia, were concentrated at Salmast, in Samson's hands, in Sarkis's stores, and from there, by night or even in daylight, by means of Kurds' and Persians' caravans or of porters, they were carried unharmed as far as Van.

The transports were carried out in three directions. First, by means of the Monastery of the Apostle Thaddeus, of which I have spoken before this. Then, straight over Khoy and Kotur, without entering either the Monastery of the Apostle Thaddeus or Salmast. And finally, the third point was Salmast itself, which filled its stores by both roads. At each one of those points special men were at work. They wanted to open a fourth line as well, from Urmia toward Lernapar.^t75

The work was to continue in the direction described above until the year 1908. In those years the idea is conceived of establishing contact — with a view to joining them to us — with the Assyrians of Julamerik and Mar Shimun, and with the Kurds' Sheikh Tahia,^t76 so that in Vaspurakan a movement might be created with Armenians, Assyrians and Kurds together. In the years '95–96 that idea had smiled upon the Dashnaktsakan field-workers, and to that end they had sent two comrades to Urmia, to negotiate with Mar Shimun. These, however, had reached no practical result. A new attempt is made thereafter through Malkhas, who negotiates with the sheikh of Shamdinan and with the Assyrians, so that these should come out together with the Armenians against the Turks. Those negotiations, though they gave no great practical results, had this conse-

quence: that the antipathy toward us which had existed was lifted, and possibilities were created of linking up with the Land, at times, even by those long roads.

The border Kurds, who held the stretch running from Masis to Urmia, bore us no hostile attitude and were even friends. Even Sharaf bek, the Madrik^t77 chief, labored to be a friend, and that friendship of his had given our men such boldness that at times they traveled even in open day. Of their number was Shavo,^t78 who, dressed in Caucasian clothes and a cherkeska, with a few Kurds, sets out alone by way of Abagha toward Van. But when, bent over a spring on the borders of Abagha, he goes to drink water, he is killed by the Kurds escorting him. That killing is done, however, purely out of the urge to make Shavo's goods their own. A like sad fate falls to Joj Agha, who was returning from the General Assembly toward Van with a small band (5 men). On the way he is caught in a fight and killed, without ever being able to give his report on the General Assembly. But these small events were no hindrance to the transport and liaison work's running on in its own normal road.

Everything was thrown into disorder, however, by the fight of Duman's band — in which I too took part, and of which I have already told above.