Journal ArticleOpen Access

The Problem of Armenian Statehood and Hunchakyan Political Party (1918-1921)

Hovhannisyan, Gegham · 2024

This article examines the Social Democrat Hunchakian Party's approach to the restoration and preservation of Armenian statehood in the critical years 1918-1921. Hovhannisyan traces the party's positions primarily through its organ Young Armenia and the writings of ideologue Stepan Sapah-Gyulyan. The study analyzes how international political events, the Paris Peace Assembly, the mandate discussions, and the resurgence of Russian power, shaped Hunchakian assessments of the Republic of Armenia's prospects. It follows the party's evolving stance from the First Republic through the establishment of Soviet Armenia, showing how regional threats forced pragmatic recalculations of the statehood question. Hovhannisyan draws explicit historical parallels between the dilemmas of 1918-1921 and contemporary challenges facing Armenian statehood. The article was translated from Armenian by Gevorg Harutyunyan and is freely available.

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Published in

Fundamental Armenology, No. 2 (20) (2024), pp. 31–41 (National Academy of Sciences of the Republic of Armenia, Yerevan)

Year

2024

Language

English

Citation

Hovhannisyan, Gegham 2024. The Problem of Armenian Statehood and Hunchakyan Political Party (1918-1921). Fundamental Armenology, No. 2 (20) (2024), pp. 31–41 (National Academy of Sciences of the Republic of Armenia, Yerevan).

What this offers a reader

For students

While the ARF governed the First Republic, its rival Hunchakian party wrestled with the same brutal question, how a small besieged Armenia survives, and this article follows their answers.

For academics

A party-press-based study of Hunchakian political thought on statehood, 1918-1921, filling a historiographical gap dominated by ARF-centered accounts of the First Republic.

For the community

A window into the debates our grandparents' generation of party intellectuals waged over how to keep an independent Armenia alive.

For a general reader

How one of the oldest Armenian political parties thought about defending Armenia's short-lived first independence a century ago.