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Topic:Medz Yeghern
Showing 2 of 2 matching publications (200 total) · catalogue updated 2026-07-22
Journal ArticleOpen Access

Manifestations of the Theme of the Memory of the Medz Yeghern and Germans' Complicity During the Years of Stalin's Regime

Marutyan, Harutyun, 2024
Ցեղասպանագիտական հանդես / Journal of Genocide Studies, Vol. 12, No. 2, pp. 57–81 (AGMI Foundation, Yerevan); DOI 10.51442/jgs.0057

Marutyan examines historical novels, autobiographical fiction and prose published in Soviet Armenia during and after the Great Patriotic War in which the Armenian Genocide was depicted in realistic and grim colors. He shows these works portrayed not only Turkish and Kurdish atrocities but also justified attention to German participation in the Genocide, and in some cases attacked European bourgeois diplomacy for obstructing a solution to the Armenian Question. Many of the texts also carry obligatory praise of the Soviet order and of Stalin. The study covers Gegham Saryan, Garnik Stepanyan, Hrachya Kochar, Kristapor Tapaltsyan, Onik Panikyan and Paruyr Sevak.

genocide memorySoviet ArmeniaStalin eraArmenian literatureGerman complicity
ArmenianRead Manifestations of the Theme of the Memory of the Medz Yeghern and Germans' Complicity During the Years of Stalin's Regime (opens in a new tab)
Journal ArticleOpen Access

Medz Yeghern, the Silenced Name: Language, Politics, and the Armenian Genocide

Matiossian, Vartan, 2022
International Journal of Armenian Genocide Studies, Vol. 7, No. 1, pp. 26–48 (AGMI, Yerevan); DOI 10.51442/ijags.0028

Matiossian traces the genealogy of the word yeghern and the shift of its primary meaning from 'evil' to 'crime,' 'massacre' and 'genocide' over the past century and a half. He shows that a nineteenth-century learned conflation of the Classical Armenian homophones yeghern (crime) and yegher (lamentation) produced the secondary sense 'tragedy, calamity,' collapsing cause and consequence into one word. Because yeghern is used only with active verbs, he argues, it indicates cause and points to the perpetrator. That ambiguity was then exploited in Turkey and the United States, with interpretive denial adopting 'Medz Yeghern' precisely to avoid the word 'genocide' by rendering it 'Great Catastrophe.' He proposes the correct literal translation is 'Great Crime.'

denialterminologyMedz Yeghernrecognition politicsWestern Armenian philology
EnglishRead Medz Yeghern, the Silenced Name: Language, Politics, and the Armenian Genocide (opens in a new tab)

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