Khanjyan never joined the Communist Party (something highly expected for having success in the Soviet Union) and had opted for nationalist instead of Soviet very often. For example, for his graduation work he chose the topic of 1907 Communist Congress in London, but pictured Stepan Shahumyan (ethnic Armenian) instead of Joseph Stalin (as expected) next to Lenin. In 1965, for the All-Soviet Exhibition of Graphic Art Khanjyan sent his illustrations of Paruyr Sevak's "The Unsilenceable Belfry" - a story of Armenian genocide.