Aghasi Khanjian

Aghasi Khanjian ( _hy. Աղասի Խանջյան; January 30, 1901—July 6, 1936; sometimes transliterated as Aghasi Khanchian or Agasi Khandzhan) was the first secretary of the Communist Party of Armenia from May 1930 to July 1936.Zev Katz, Rosemarie Rogers, Frederic Harned. "Handbook of Major Soviet Nationalities", p. 146-7. ISBN 0-02-917090-7]

Background

Khanjian was born in the city of Van, Ottoman Empire (today eastern Turkey). With the onslaught of the Armenian Genocide, his family emigrated from the city in 1915 and settled in Russian Armenia.ru icon [http://slovari.yandex.ru/dict/bse/article/00086/00500.htm?text=%D1%85%D0%B0%D0%BD%D0%B4%D0%B6%D1%8F%D0%BD%20%D0%B0%D0%B3%D0%B0%D1%81%D0%B8 Great Soviet Encyclopedia. Aghasi Khanjian] ] In 1917-19, he was one of the organizers of "Spartak", the Marxist student's union of Armenia. He later served as the secretary of the Armenian Bolshevik underground committee.

Career

In 1920, Khanjian became secretary of the Yerevan city committee and in 1930, the first secretary of the Armenian Communist Party. He proved to be a charismatic Soviet politician and was very popular among the Armenian populace. He was the friend and supporter of many Armenian intellectuals including Yeghishe Charents (who dedicated a poem to him), Axel Bakunts and Gurgen Mahari. Khanjian also tried unsuccessfully to have Moscow reunite Nagorno-Karabakh with Armenia. [ [http://www.armenianhistory.info/artsakh2.htm Armenian History: History of Artsakh, Part 2] , Yuri Babayan] Sadly, he and an entire generation of intellectual Armenian communist leaders (such as Vagarshak Arutyunovich Ter-Vaganyan) fell victim to Joseph Stalin's Great Purge.

References

ee also

* Armenian SSR
* Vagarshak Arutyunovich Ter-Vaganyan