The press and the young generation in the 1930s

Special Issue: 90 — Informing, Connecting, Inspiring The Armenian Weekly, October 2024 In the 1930s, the Armenian political parties in the United States were determined to keep the American-born young generation connected to their Armenian identity and to the work of the respective partisan organizations. Two of those parties, the Tashnags and the Ramgavars, launched English-language newspapers — Hairenik Weekly and the Armenian Mirror, respectively — to ensure that the youth were part of the conversation. (The Mirror merged into the Mirror-Spectator at the end of the decade.) Through editorials, the party leaders attempted to advise and instruct teenagers and young adults about how to navigate the dual identity of being Armenian and American. Young readers talked back to their elders, as well as to each other, making the Armenian American press a virtual village square, and making their conversations easy for later generations of historians to eavesdrop on. (The Armenian Progressive League also published an English-language weekly, but that paper was heavy on pro-Soviet politics and Marxist theory rather than items specific to Armenian life.) Side by side and interconnected with the press was the founding of youth organizations: the Tashnags’ Tzeghagron (later renamed the Armenian Youth Federation) and the Ramgavars’ ADL Juniors, both of which ran athletic tournaments, dances and other events to provide outlets for the second generation to socialize with and date members of their own ethnic community (and political party within that community). The aims of these organizations, as reflected on the partisan editorial pages, were both similar and distinct. They shared in common the belief that Armenians in America (later rebranded as “Americans of Armenian descent”) should be good Americans as well as good Armenians, with no contradiction between those ideals. Both parties celebrated when Armenian American high-schoolers got high honors, won music competitions and were chosen to edit their classes’ yearbooks. But the parties differed on their feelings about the Soviet regime in their ancestral homeland, and that made a difference in the messages they gave their young. Armenia, after being governed for two-and-a-half years by a Tashnag-dominated independent republic, became part of the new Soviet Union in December of 1920. The Tashnag party regarded this arrangement as a case of enemy occupation, while the Ramgavars accepted Soviet rule and did their utmost to maintain friendly relations with the Soviet state. This meant that for the Tashnags, Armenian identity had an inherent struggle. Thus, when cultural issues were discussed in the Tashnag press, one found the stakes to be a bit higher than in the Ramgavar papers. It should thus come as no surprise that it was the Hairenik Weekly, not the Mirror, that asked readers whether they thought intermarriage was a good or bad thing. While the responses were not all negative, they tended to use the language of race — as in, the strength of the Armenian “race” — to make their point. One writer, identified as Devrish, wrote that when an Armenian marries an outsider, “the other party is a stranger to us in disposition, traditions, in physical harmony, in domestic mode of life, in food, in religion, in moral conception, and lastly in quality of love…European races have a certain degree of affinity making intermarriage possible, but we Armenians are the children of the Orient and our centuries-old tradition and character makes it impossible for us to harmonize with those of European make up.”1 B. M. Kachadourian of Brockton, Massachusetts, had a different way of looking at it: “We are suspended in a midway position. We are not strong enough to win and we are not weak enough to die — so we continue living, getting fat, talking, filling ourselves with our importance and if possible telling other people how important we are.” The solution: “What we need is new blood — new blood brought in from other races. These new elements might spoil our stock — yet they might improve it.”2 Both respondents, though coming at it from different angles, clearly considered the stakes very high. The newspaper editors, as well as most contributors, took care not to speak ill of the host society, even while suggesting that Armenians might have some special qualities to contribute to it. When Mihran Saroyan wrote to the Hairenik Weekly and ironically queried whether Armenians should “adopt the new world with most of its cheap glimmerings” and suggested that Armenian men should avoid emulating the “‘slick’ Americans,” the paper ran the letter but followed it with a response from editor James G. Mandalian noting that, while some American males might fit Saroyan’s unflattering profile, “we have a very high opinion of the typical American. And our aim in educating our Armenian youth in the high standards and the ideals of our race is only in order to further raise the average standard of the American and to bring our contribution to the culture of the country we have adopted.”3 The Mirror, representing the Ramgavar party to the English-speaking generations, also wanted the youth to remember their Armenianness and to care about the future of their homeland. An editorial in the paper’s premier issue advised young readers that their future children would “supply Armenia with architects, mechanics, engineers, intellectuals, and artists tomorrow.” Armenian history, the editorial observed, “embodies the finest virtues of any age: idealism, courage, piety, and love of liberty and country.” Armenianness had an intrinsic quality that worked its magic, even for those who were barely aware of it. “It is this natural endowment of those who have grown up in the American community life, calmly unaware that their inheritance is of such fine stuff, that has spurred them to high intellectual attainments in American universities, to auspicious careers in the professions, to successful application of the principles of good citizenship. It explains the eagerness, resourcefulness, intelligence, and sturdiness of character that have marked their participation in American business and civic life. It explains their intense pride in the achievements and success of their countrymen.”4 But the sense of struggle in maintaining Armenian identity was largely absent in the Ramgavar press. In fact, contributors to the Mirror, and later the Mirror-Spectator, occasionally voiced concern that Armenian cultural life might not be keeping up with the American mainstream. Regular staff writer Paul Norehad told readers of the Mirror-Spectator in 1940, “The Armenian Tradition must prove its value to the young Americans of Armenian descent; it must in some way contribute to his social or economic advancement; in some tangible manner it must be conducive to his or her happiness, otherwise it cannot hope to win a place for itself in contemporary American life.” Norehad also, far from disapproving of intermarriage, feared that young Armenian women might be missing out on the opportunity for it on account of having “an outworn code of modesty” and might “remain spinsters in an exact ratio to the number of marriages between Armenian boys and American girls.”5 Contributors to both presses worried at times that the immigrant generation might be clinging too hard to old-world values. In 1938, a letter to the Hairenik Weekly suggested that such traditionalism made it hard for Armenian youth to date one another. The writer, identified only as The New Yorker, opined, “An Armenian girl enjoys as much privacy in her life as does the proverbial goldfish.” He then painted the scenario wherein the hapless Armenian male suitor attempted to court an Armenian girl. “His family tree falls subject to investigation under a ‘third degree’ assault of interrogatives; and if his status proves satisfactory the daughter is permitted to accompany him. Still there’s a catch to it. She must be back at a puritanical hour; and even though the boy and girl realize with sinking heart the unfairness of the ultimatum, both are willing to acquiesce for the sake of avoiding an argument which may jeopardize their chances for the evening.” He also noted that when two young Armenians began dating, the parents and neighbors quickly assumed that they were to marry and saw shame in the failure to do so. “What a sad commentary,” he concluded, “that a race with our potentialities should remain supinely fettered by the habits, customs and beliefs of an out-moded ancestry!”6 The young Armenians, as they encountered each other at the dances that the ethnic organizations ran, had plenty to say about each other’s comportment, and even their looks, on the editorial pages. The Mirror ran a flurry of such commentaries in the summer of 1935. It began when writer Albert Chakarian, in his column “The Talk of the Town,” observed that many Armenian girls possessed superior looks, but “because of a lack of proper training in the art of make-up, hair dressing and in wearing clothes remain the usual Armenian types.” Many Armenian men, he found, had good cause to lament, “Why is it that our girls can’t carry themselves as American girls do?” He opined, “If our girls would only, besides copying the ordinary mannerisms of the so-called Americans, who are such in name only, cultivate a little sophistication, and add a little grace to their carriage, acquire a little taste, simple yet effective, in their dress, they could easily have things their own way.”7 Chakarian concluded his tome with an invitation for “the fair sex to criticize Armenian males.” The invitation was accepted speedily. A letter in the following issue signed only by “Two of the Fair Sex” called Armenian men conceited and further charged that they neither knew how to wear clothes nor could cultivate “that certain nonchalance.” A longer letter in the same issue, signed by “Elsie,” who mentioned that she had been attending Armenian dances from ages 15-25, said of fashion tastes that “most of our Armenian boys wouldn’t know the difference between a Paris creation and a Filene $3.95.” As for how Armenian and American girls compared, “in every case where an Armenian boy brings an American girl, she is never dressed correctly. She generally wears a suit with sport shoes and looks as though she belongs in the State ballroom or at the Tent.” Of “our boys,” Elsie lamented, “they are nothing as far as looks are concerned and they still insist on attending formal dances with brown and grey suits.”8 Later that month, a female contributor wrote scornfully of “our ‘American’ sisters” for “forever dolling up like Easter bunnies” and praised Armenians for knowing that “fine birds don’t need fine feathers.” Yet she also appeared to concede that young Armenian women lagged behind their non-Armenian contemporaries in areas where they should catch up. “It is quite right that our girls don’t carry themselves as Americans do, but why say they ‘can’t’? Isn’t it all a matter of time? Armenian ethnics, customs, mannerisms, and ideas weren’t built overnight and cannot be changed so quickly as the shake of a lamb’s tail…The Armenian girl realizes her shortcomings and that is far more than the boys have done (masculine conceit, you know).”9 These writers appear generally to have agreed on a shared ideal: to effect a blend of innate, traditional Armenianness and modern, sophisticated Americanness, that is, to be modern-American, Armenian-style. Notions of East and West often came in: the East had the simple rural virtue and a touch of mystique, while the West (as exemplified by American youth) had the sophistication. The task of Armenians was to find just the right blend. That this principle was well understood can be most effectively gleaned from those letter writers who alluded to it with some irony, like the young woman who complained that at a recent New Year’s dance the music was too American, while the efficiency level of the ladies’ coat check was too Armenian.10 1 Hairenik Weekly, August 14, 1936, p. 2. 2 Hairenik Weekly, August 7, 1936, p. 2. 3 Hairenik Weekly, January 8, 1937, p. 2. 4 Armenian Mirror, July 8, 1932, p. 2. 5 Armenian Mirror-Spectator, February 1, 1939, p. 5. 6 Hairenik Weekly, April 8, 1938, p. 2. 7 Armenian Mirror, July 10, 1935, p. 2. 8 Armenian Mirror, July 17, 1935, p. 2. 9 Armenian Mirror, July 24, 1935, p. 2. 10 Armenian Mirror, January 8, 1935, p. 2.

The press and the young generation in the 1930s

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Benjamin Alexander

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Benjamin Alexander

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