After the defeat of the Ottoman Empire in the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-78, the Armenian National Assembly and Patriarch Nerses II of Constantinople sent Catholicos Mgrdich Khrimian to the Congress of Berlin to represent the Armenians in the debate on the "Armenian Question". In his famous patriotic speech "The Paper Ladle" Mgrdich Khrimian advised Armenians to take the national awakening of Bulgaria as a model as the hopes of the Armenian people for self-determination.