The Armenian-American Revolutionary

This is the third installment of Bedros A. Keljik’s Armenian-American Sketches, which were translated and annotated by Aris G. Sevag. “No Good Comes From Having Children in This Country,” along with a short biography of Keljik, can be found here and the second story here.

Vart Vruyr was the name of this revolutionary, who was a short man with a pointed curled mustache, a goatee hanging from his lip, loosely tied necktie, and a nicely shaped head with long, curly hair.[1] In those days, long hair was characteristic not only of esthetes but also revolutionaries.

He was a Western Armenian but, like all the other revolutionaries, he spoke Eastern Armenian, mixing in foreign words like proletariat, reaction, agitation, masses, bourgeoisie, capital, revolution, and other such words, the majority of which were incomprehensible to me.

He belonged to an old party. After becoming a suspect in Constantinople, he had come to America two months prior to my having met him in a public park in Boston in the summer of 1891.

We soon became friends, although he was older than I.

In those days, the Armenian youth were prepared to make every sacrifice for national liberation; the liberal ideas expressed by him, together with his patriotic spirit, made us friends and ideological comrades.

Vruyr used to receive more than one copy of H … from Athens and held on to them with utmost piety. He would only give them to those whom he considered worthy and capable of understanding H’s ideas and, particularly, its incomprehensible style. He would speak about unfamiliar Armenian individuals — Shah Azizian, Nazarbekian, Melikzadian, Khanazatian — a series of mysterious such surnames incorporating such names as Shah, Bek, Khan, Aziz and Melik. The old bourgeoisie revolutionaries knew well the psychological effect of names because when you heard those names for the first time, they had a considerable and somewhat mystical impact on you.[2]

Vruyr had taken a job as janitor in the home of a wealthy resident of Commonwealth Avenue. In this way, he had secured his livelihood to a certain extent.

Every Saturday he used to go to the Boston post office and buy fifty postcards, which served as the weekly paper edited by him. Printed with red ink, it consisted largely of excerpts from Marx’s Das Kapital or Engels and his German and Russian pupils. He would send these cards to certain individuals who were intelligent enough to become socialists. Every Monday I used to receive one of those postcards, signed at the bottom “Vart Vruyr, yours in socialism.”

The H. Party was the only political party which existed in the Armenian-American community, and Vruyr used to say, with utmost pride, “I am its forerunner.” He would take the lectern at patriotic meetings and read the H’s editorials. He would attempt to explain their deep meanings. H consisted of one editorial which, in the main, was copied from the works of Marx and which served the long-term aims of the party through its connection to our national liberation and revolutionary life.

They were beyond the grasp of the people and, quite often, him too, yet somehow he would make them believable to us naive ones. Then he would descend from the stage, showered with applause, as he wiped his steamed-up eyeglasses. Besides the editorial, H. contained a long list of contributors from Diasporan Armenians; for example, from “Sea” city, the “Iron” group, “Khorkhoruni” and “Bznuni” chapters, whose names and locations were known only by the Center.

When we attendees would request information about these secret organizations, he used to speak in such a way that he aroused greater interest and rapture in us. Only he had a photo of Nazarbek, the founder of Hunchak, and he wouldn’t show it to every mere mortal. He lived an unusual life: instead of sleeping in a bed, he preferred the floor, saying that “from now on we should get used to the difficult and Spartan life of revolutionaries.” Hanging from one of the walls in his room was a bag of soil, which he had brought from his birthplace, but he wouldn’t tell anyone his real name or that of his birthplace. He was as mysterious as the organization whose “forerunner” he was.

One spring day in the same year, I received a postcard written in red ink with the following contents:

Lynn, Mass.

Dear Comrade,

At ten o’clock next Friday morning, His Excellency Mr. Nshan Karapetian, the plenipotentiary representative of the Hunchak socialist party, shall come to town by express train. You are hereby instructed to be present at the station to greet the first and senior apostle of our great organization.[3]

Yours in socialism,

VART VRUYR

So a dozen of us youths went to the Lynn station and waited for the express train bringing the most eminent apostle of the socialist party.

When the train arrived, out came a short man with Oriental features, large black keen eyes, long black hair and black beard. He smiled like someone who had a superiority complex; he was hunchbacked and he carried a pathetic-looking suitcase.

After embracing one another, we were all taken to Vruyr’s room. Every time we asked Nishan a question, he would say, “I bear greetings from all the comrades at the Center.” The second day, we began to organize meetings in various cities, all in New England, at which he would lecture and promote the revolution and, furthermore, the long-range goal of the organization — Socialism.

Those were such memorable days! Vart Vruyr proudly performed the role of deacon accompanying this great apostle. He emceed the meetings, introducing our great guest; he called him the new Vartan or referred to him by the names of all the heroes mentioned in Raffi’s works, which Karapetian didn’t like.[4]

His conversations were a novelty for us emigrés from the provinces and villages, because they were incomprehensible to us, for the most part. He would preach from Marx’s Das Kapital, then jump to Sultan [Abdul] Hamid, and extol economics and political freedom. Many used to say that he spoke in such a highfalutin and profound manner so that everybody wouldn’t understand him.

The patriotism of the Diasporan Armenians was pure and unmitigated. Having newly left their fatherland in turmoil, the youths made unparalleled sacrifices for its liberation. At every meeting, six to seven hundred dollars — all in cold cash — were collected from these poor working-class Armenians, who were few in number. On Mondays we used to take those sums of money wrapped up in a handkerchief to Brown and Shipley Bank and purchase a check to send to the Center. I was Karapetian’s interpreter; he always used to accompany me to purchase the check and say to me:  “Have the check made payable to Avetis Nazarbekian; it will be easier if he cashes it.” At the time, I was naive about this arrangement but later on, when the delegates went to London to receive an accounting, we found out why those checks were sent, made payable to an individual.

The next year, when Khrimian was elected catholicos, he was the object of unprecedented respect shown by Armenians in all the cities he passed through, from Jerusalem all the way to Etchmiadzin.[5] When he sent his first encyclical of greetings to the Diasporan Armenians, we Boston Armenians arranged a meeting on Washington’s Birthday to have it read in public. All the important Armenians were invited, including Nshan Karapetian. However, the latter refused to go, saying, “You worship an ignorant clergyman like an idol. I’m scheduled to attend the meeting where the socialist Dr. Kornikov will speak.” From that day on, the people turned against Karapetian, and, during a meeting in Providence, we helped him escape from the bathroom window late at night in order to save him from certain harm.

Enraged against his “apostle,” Vart Vruyr burned the Hunchak paper and sent its ashes in an envelope to the Center, with a note declaring his permanent resignation from the party. Shortly thereafter, Vruyr fell gravely ill, to the point where he could barely whisper when speaking. Subsequently he left Boston for California.

In order to earn a living, he sold flowers on a well-known street corner in Los Angeles. Although we stated that he was an eccentric and fanatical party man, we must admit that he was sincere in his patriotism and loyal to the philosophy of the life he had adopted. He didn’t like money; he just wanted to live and he exerted himself in the service of the principles he believed in and his long-suffering people.

He kept a certain portion of the money he earned from selling flowers to pay for his daily expenses, and used the rest to buy grain to feed the pigeons. The pigeons knew the day and place, and thousands of them used to assemble around him, with many of them perching on his shoulders and head. The city papers wrote about this man, calling him an exceptional personality.

One day he wrote to me, “Now, with much experience in life, I am as naive as the pigeons and as clever as snakes. I owe the world nothing and the world owes me nothing.”

One day we heard that, for the past three days, the pigeons had come to the florist’s corner for their daily supply of grain and hadn’t found him there. His acquaintances found him dead in his bare room; besides this poor man’s clothes and a few books, they found two bags of grain for the pigeons and the bag of soil he had brought with him from his homeland and treasured for many years.

ENDNOTES

[1] Vart: rose.

[2] “H… = Hunchak (“Bell”) was the official organ of the Hunchak Party from 1887 to 1915 [Montpellier (1887-91), Paris (1891-92, 1904-15), Athens (1892-94), London (1894-1904)]. Shah Azizian might be a fictionalized variation of Yervant Shahaziz, Madteos Shahazizian or Sempad Shahaziz, all of whom figure into the history of the Hunchak Party. Avedis Nazarbegian was one of the founders of the Hunchak Party and one of its Russian-Armenian Marxist pillars. Khanazatian might be a fictionalized variation of Ruben Khanazat, another founder of the party, or Firuz Khanzatian, one of the party activists on the Cilician front.

[3] Nshan Karapetian (Azat Khan, Yerevan 1862–Tabriz 1929) was one of the seven founders of the Hunchak Revolutionary Party in 1887 at Geneva. In 1890 he took part in the formation of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation in Tiflis and worked for a short time for the party. He did extensive party work in the U.S. in 1893, then retired from politics completely twelve years later.

[4] Raffi (Hagop Melik Hagopian, Salmast, Persia 1835–Tiflis 1888) was a teacher, renowned poet and prolific writer who inspired the spirit of freedom in the Armenians. Much of his writing served as a guide and stimulus for organizing the Armenian revolutionary movement.

[5] Megerdich Khrimian, affectionately called “Hairig” (“Papa”) (Van 1820–Etchmiadzin 1907) was elected Catholicos of Etchmiadzin in 1897. He was one of the most revered and renowned religious leaders of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. He is recognized as the spiritual leader of the Armenian Revolutionary Movement.