Gaidz Minassian
It is inappropriate to attribute words to the dead, and the intention here is not to commit such an indiscretion. But it is also evident that the history of the ARF during the second Armenian Republic (1991-2015) is marked by the leadership of Hrayr Maroukhian and his legacy.
Born in Iran and settled in Lebanon and Greece, the former Secretary General of the ARF was totally immersed in:
- The promotion of the Armenian Question on a global scale.
- The campaign for the rights of the Armenian people in international forums.
- The return of the ARF to Gorbachevian and post-Soviet Armenia.
He was the ARF General Secretary from 1972 until his stroke in July 1994. For 20 years, “Unger Hrayr” as he is called was perhaps the last real political leader of the ARF during these last four decades. A leader whose political thoughts have not died out and his memory still soar in the minds of ‘Dashnaktsagan’s. A leader who did not have his proper successors, because they were divided into several factions with none had the legitimate claim to ‘Maroukhianism’.
While there is nothing unusual in the diversity of thoughts of those who knew him closely, the profile of this extraordinary man is complex and rich. He leaned towards the left and was an internationalist and a progressive. An engineer by training, Hrayr Maroukhian was a master of the balance of power. Pragmatic, flexible when he had to be and firm when it was necessary. The leader of the ARF was endowed with a great political flair, a political animal as the ancient Greeks used to say. Unger Maroukhian had a Florentine touch with a mixture of culture and diversity of identity. He was successful in discerning new international forces and internalizing them all the while being faithful to the Dashnak century old history. Charismatic and bon vivant, a warm educator who was close to the youth and also attentive to the elderly, he was capable of adapting to different scenarios while retaining his consistency. He was the heir to:
- Rostom with his internationalist convictions.
- Dro with his pragmatism.
- Simon Vratsian with his social democratic ideals.
- Vahan Navasartian with his populism.
This elasticity was essential for reinventing himself and integrating dialectic phenomena all the while keeping the ARF in balance for the new battle order.
Unger Hrayr’s entire political career was a succession of challenges:
- He urged the transition from the cold war to Third World Dashnakism in the 1960s and 1970s.
- He led the transition from extra-territorial Dashnakism to Yergir Dashnakism at the end of 1980s.
- He embodied the evolution of war Dashnakism to globalized Dashnakism between 1988 and 1994 during the Karabakh liberation struggle and Armenia’s independence.
Unger Hrayr’s view of the world is not that of a nationalist ideologue, nor a prophet of socialism. As he said: “The ARF maintains relations with all those who have interests in the defense of the Armenian Cause”.
He crisscrossed the Middle East, the USSR, Europe, America and the countries of the southern hemisphere to promote the Armenian Question as part of human dignity and social justice. He fought against the exploitation of the Armenian Question by the East and the West; while finding the means to instrumentalize Americans, Europeans, Soviets and Middle Easterners for the objective of unblocking the Armenian Question. For example, when he saw the rapprochement between the Capitalist bloc and the Communist bloc in the mid 1980s, Hrayr Maroukhian saw the opportunity to negotiate with the United States while emancipating from the Soviet Union weakened by the cold war.
It was at this East-West rapprochement time that Unger Hrayr favored the relations with France, an ally of the West but a nonaligned state at the same time. Thus he informed François Mitterrand in 1985 (whom he had frequented since the beginning of 1970s) about the meaning of the rise to power of Mikhail Gorbachev and the geographic upheavals to come. As a result, François Mitterrand received an ARF delegation in March 1986 in Paris as an initiative of the recognition of the Armenian Genocide by the European Parliament on June 18, 1987. He also anchored his message by settling in Greece (a relatively new member of the EEC) and integrated the ARF into the Socialist International.
Finally, after his expulsion from Armenia as a “persona non grata” in June 29 1992, by Levon Der Bedrossian for spurious reasons; Unger Hrayr got back to his activism. The day after the expulsion, as he set foot at Roissy-Charles de Gaulle airport, he distanced himself from the radical branch of the ARF especially in Armenia and France.
The problem in these situations of extreme flux, is that the disciples do not necessarily remember the teacher’s precepts. The ‘Missi Dominici’ such as Hrant Markarian, Khajak Der Krikorian, Edik Hovannessian and his son Vahan Hovannessian distorted the message of Dashnagtsoutiun and botched the return of the ARF to Armenia. For example, during the Armenian presidential campaign of October 1991, Khajak Der Krikorian, representative of the World Bureau in Armenia, announces ‘urbi et urbi’ that the victory of the Dashnak candidate, Soss Sarkissian is guaranteed for success from the first round of elections.
Result: Soss Sarkissian gets 4 percent of the vote and Levon Der Bedrossian is elected as the head of Armenia. As a consequence, Khajak Der Krikorian (who ought to have resigned for his colossal failure) and the party ‘activists’ propose a rationalization – electoral fraud. This same justification has been proposed for repeated electoral defeats ever since.
These ‘Missi Dominici’ over the years transform themselves into political commissars with a reign of terror within the party, with Hrand Markarian as the head of paramilitary affairs and Vahan Hovannessian as the head of political affairs. Thus the editorial staff of ‘Azadamard’, a World Bureau weekly publication in Yerevan, managed by the chief editor of ‘Sovetakan Hayastan’, resembles a micro-cell of the former communist party. The journalists have morphed themselves from former apparatchiks of the CPSU (Communist Party of Soviet Union) to nationalist activists.
However, it is not enough to replace “The struggle of the proletariat” by “The struggle for national liberation”. It is not enough to replace the words of ‘Sovietism’ while the communist rhetoric remains. The Diaspora organization sees through this veil; and Unger Hrayr also perceives the results of being a “persona non grata”.
As the 25th World Congress opened in Tours France, Unger Hrayr was abandoned by the radical branch and his old comrade Hratch Dasnabedian did not agree on a joint list of the future Bureau. He was also deprived of an entry visa to France. Nevertheless, he was elected in the second round of the ballot.
The rupture with the ‘Dashnak Revolutionary Guard’ or the maximalist guards is now open. Unger Hrayr promotes executives like Aghvan Vartanian and Kevork Kepenekian to counterbalance the extremists.
But it is too late. On the morning of July 17 1994, he is struck by a stroke on the shore of Varkiza beach, a suburb of Athens. He plunges into a deep coma and 4.5 years later dies in his home on December 21, 1998.
In the meantime, the Der Bedrossian regime in Armenia tried to destabilize the ARF from within. As part of the Dro Affair (Hrand Markarian), 30 Dashnak members were arrested for the suspicion of fomenting a coup d’état in Armenia. ‘Mutic’ Khajak Der Krikorian died after a long illness and the unruly Edik Hovannessian followed him shortly.
Notes:
- ‘Missi Dominici’: Latin meaning envoys of the lord.
- ‘urbi et urbi’: Latin for “to the City and to the World.”
- ‘Mutic’: lacking the usually defensive parts (as teeth or claws).