Book Review: Letter to Yerevan

I had heard of this poem of course, but never read it. It had generated a certain antipathy in me—for both Abov’s tirade and Tzarukian’s ‘rebuttal’. I had been variously urged to read it as a great work of ‘truth’, or else been told that it is a distillation of the awfulness of the ARF that should never have seen the light of day etc. etc.
Two years ago I was given a copy of a 1960s edition from Beirut by some very ardent acquaintances who were convinced I should read it. Again, I was put off, this time when I saw that the poems are in Eastern Armenian. So, this translation by Tatul Sonentz-Papazian and Rupen Janbazian is a boon for me—and I cannot praise it enough.
Also of great value is the ‘Eight Introductions: Variations on a Common Theme’ by Vahe Habeshian, who explains much about the Soviet-Armenian animosity for the ARF (an aversion which persists in Armenia today, I venture). Bolshevik propaganda was highly effective it seems, even leading to the fall of the first Republic of Armenia. And too often we forget—or air-brush out of the modern Armenian narrative—the persecution and imprisonment in Russia, Yerevan and Baku, of political and military figures; many heroes of independence battles, and the eventual murders of some 50 of them in Yerevan’s jails in 1921. The purges of Armenian artists and political figures—often accused of being nationalists, ARF members and sympathisers–during Stalin’s Great Terror (in Armenia starting in the mid-1930s) continued unabated, even after the disbanding of the ARF within Armenia.
Abov’s work was part of the campaign to undermine the ARF during the Soviet programme of repatriation of Armenians from the Diaspora to Soviet Armenia. Abov squarely blames the ARF for all of the ills of the nascent Soviet Armenia. It is of course, written with an eye to Stalin, and a vindication of the Soviet in the aftermath of World War Two when Stalin deployed huge numbers of Soviet citizens—not forgetting the nearly one third of the population of Soviet Armenia.
The ARF made overtures to Germany in the hope that Armenia could be freed of the Soviet yoke, should Nazi Germany be victorious. This is the great betrayal at the centre of Abov’s poem ‘We have not Forgotten’. And this is why the ARF is called ‘Dashnak dogs’ over and over again, and their ‘master’ the ‘ravenous wolf’ or ‘the bloodthirsty Black Molloch’. Ironically the latter two would have made rather good epithets for Stalin.
Abov implies that that sin of allying themselves with the Nazis, is the greatest and most unforgivable sin against the (presumably) benevolent regime of Soviet Stalin.
The ‘letter’ from Tzarukian is an often meandering and rather long rebuttal of Abov’s assertions. Tzarukian brings to life the grieving of genocide survivors (as he was):

“What does he have? No father, no shelter, no child,
Not a single sliver of land in this wide world,
Nowhere under the sun to call home:
In constant struggle to find his daily bread,
He has nothing, except sorrows…”

and he chastises Abov for discounting the pain from which the Republic was born, and the sacrifices of the fedayi. He reminds Abov of the dreadful years of the early Armenian Soviet, when militant nutcases such as Avis Nurijanyan, imposed Soviet rule on an already impoverished, starving, and uncomprehending peasantry. He rightly eulogises those who brought about the Republic against the odds

“The timid slave turned to warrior”

and describes it with wonderful imagery:

“…Seas of blood and sorrow.’

“The sky was frozen and God was absent…”
“We, travellers forgotten at the shore…”

It ends with a paean to Yerevan, and its endurance against all odds. The one sentiment which I did not understand is the one in the stanza:

“Yerevan, my only one,
Until I turn to ash and dust
I will sing of your red flag
For it guards your body from the hyena’s fangs…”

Is Tzarukian saying that the (1944) Soviet is good after all? That it is the protector of Armenia? I did not understand who the hyena is.
However, even if I still have not grasped the whole of the poem’s sentiments, it is of value and does have some elegiac passages of great beauty.
In these days when Dashnaktsoutioun has been discredited and more or less hounded out of the Republic of Armenia, it is important to have made this poem accessible to all. For it does put in perspective the importance of the Dashnaks in the history of the struggles for an independent Armenia.
Sonentz-Papazian and Janbazian have done a great job in translating this very difficult, important, and misunderstood work.