Zatikyan was born on June 20, 1946 in Yerevan to a family of craftsmen; his parents were refugees from the Western Armenia. He received his primary education at the Mikayel Nalbandian Secondary School in Yerevan, graduating in 1963 with a gold medal. In the same year he entered the Faculty of Chemistry of the Yerevan Polytechnic Institute. Zatikyan's life was marked by the mass demonstration on April 24, 1965 in Lenin (now the Republic) Square; the protestors condemned the 1915 Armenian Genocide and raised the issue of the return of Armenian lands. Encouraged by these ideas, the next day Zatikyan went to the city pantheon to lay flowers at the grave of the great Armenian composer Komitas. He was arrested by police near the grave and detained for fifteen days. There he met Haykaz Khachatryan, who was also arrested near Komitas's grave.