I read with great interest the article by Razmik Panossian dedicated to Haroutiun Kurkjian’s “Karasunk.” I must say that it took me back to those heady times when our generation started evaluating the past and debating what the future should be — a classic pastime for every young generation.
For contextual purposes, I should mention that I belonged to a group of bourgeois youth, the majority university students, who could engage in such dialogue, as our fathers and grandfathers were primarily focused on survival, the lower levels of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. There were also other vectors. Firstly, there was an international vector. In 1968, student movements took place both in Europe (especially in Paris, France) and the United States.The youth revolted against authority and the Vietnam War. We read newspapers every day and wondered what “these other kids” were doing and thinking. It was the time for our barricades.
Secondly, there was a regional perspective. The 1967 Six-Day War and the defeat of Arab armies came as shocks to many people. The Palestinians were convinced that their national liberation was their responsibility and no one else’s. Old structures, including Arab armies, lost credibility, and there were attempts to erect new ones, such as the Palestine Liberation Organization. Lebanese and Arab communities were also going through a renaissance of their own. As a result, the Armenian community did not have a majority in the number of professors at the American University of Beirut or of students in select departments and specializations. In the zero-sum game of comparative advancement, we were losing our edge.
Western Armenian national identity is primarily based on the renaissance of the Istanbul community (pre-1915), the 1915-1920 massacres and deportations, the diasporan refugee camps, where geographic distances were compressed and Armenians from different towns of Anatolia lived together, and patriotism towards host countries. This is why we are called Syrian-Armenians, French-Armenians and American-Armenians. It was this Armenian diasporan identity that was the subject of dialogue. Existential issues and future orientations were identified and compared. Throughout the 1960s, there was a conscious effort toward Armenian language purification. This primarily involved speaking Western Armenian as the common language (lingua franca) as opposed to communicating in Turkish or in a Western Armenian dialect.
There were also other developments. Throughout the 1950s, professionals and entrepreneurs had already left the refugee camps. These camps had turned into ghettos, as the bourgeois kids called them. The basic tenet was getting out of the ghettos physically and psychologically. It is through leaving the ghettos behind that the concept of confronting the odar (foreigner) comes into context.
It was ironic that the youth (at least in Lebanon) did not know Arabic, the language of the Middle Eastern countries where they lived and expected to work. This was a systemic sociological deformation. For example, Djemaran, the Armenian school in Beirut founded in 1930 by Levon Shant, Nigol Aghpalian and Kasbar Ipegian, was notoriously weak in teaching the Arabic language. The Arabs made fun of the Armenians for their lack of fluency in Arabic. We were called baron, a self-proclaimed title for people who professed to being above the common folk. The youth wanted to mingle with the odar without the hesitations of Vazken Shoushanian. We were confident that we could overcome the obstacles and prevail.
Armenian identity evolution through a process of leaving the ghettos, confronting the odar, forging a new identity through science and technology and forming new organizational structures was not accepted by some youth. Using the continuum scale of evolution versus change, I will try to briefly delineate some alternate viewpoints.
Firstly, there was the “status quo” youth. These young folks shifted the discussion from the communal to the personal level. They asserted that our fathers and grandfathers set a good foundation and it was time for “personal Jihad progression.” It was at the personal level that community identity evolution would take a natural progression.
Then, the “anarchists” had a slogan: “We have created the Diaspora, and we can destroy it.” These kids read Turgenev’s Fathers and Sons. They proposed the classic approach of destroying first and rebuilding later. Their role was the destruction, while others would come later and rebuild on firmer foundations. Needless to say, this was a minority, and the classic rebuke was, “You did not create the Diaspora. It was your fathers and grandfathers, who you are now rebelling against.”
There was also the “exodus” group. They focused on the right of return to the historic Armenian homeland. They presumed that there was no need for grandiose, complex concepts of diasporan identity and its evolutionary trajectory. The exodus and resettlement would resolve all the issues. This group tried and failed to propose where to resettle — the six vilayets, Cilicia or Soviet Armenia — and how to achieve the resettlement. It should be mentioned that the resettlement concept was widely debated in the Middle East regarding the return of the Palestinians, and similarly, the means of how to accomplish this resettlement was a regular argument. The Armenian “exodus” group also failed to answer the question: where would we wander for 40 years of preparation, as Moses did in the Sinai? Preparing in the Middle Eastern Diaspora was impractical, as the Palestinian experience suggested. The “exodus” group waited for their messianic Moses.
The “national liberation” group was influenced by the anticolonial movements of the 1950s and 60s and the Palestinian resistance movement. They strove to engage the nation in its liberation and avoid the avant-garde party concept from pre-1915. They read and analyzed Mao Zedong’s writings, especially his focus on helping people in their daily work. In Lebanon, self-sustaining community concepts were incorporated into the National Covenant. This form of government structure was itself an extension of the Ottoman millet system. The “national liberation” group saw the ethnic community as an essential component of national identity.
The leadership of the day not only allowed these debates but participated in them. There were many conflicting ideas, and sometimes discussions were loud and even acrimonious. But the next day they would continue. In fact, these discussions are still ongoing, even though some of my generation have passed away and some have gotten old and given up.
I personally think that Razmik Panossian’s conclusion, “Alas, the revolutionary approach Kurkjian called for (he never used the word ‘revolution’ himself) did not materialize,” emphasizes the wrong point. The civil wars in Lebanon and later Syria revealed that we needed to have these revisionary debates and restructure the Diaspora. The diasporan identity debates are still valid and need attention, beyond the generation of ‘68.
On a final note, as I was typing these lines, I realized that I was murmuring a song by Charles Aznavour called “Camarade.” Rest in peace, unger Haroutiun.
When I was at the Jemaran studying Armenian, I would audit Kurkjian’s Armenian class. I sensed something special him, he was much younger than the other Armenian teachers, and had a different generational perspective and world view. I felt a kinship with him that was rekindled when I read of his untimely passing. He leaves behind a body of literary works, including his textbook on learning Armenian, which reflect his lifetime passionate devotion to the Armenian language and culture.