page_title: Mikayel Nalbandian
section_title: Soviet period
hierarchical_section_title: Mikayel Nalbandian / Recognition and influence / Soviet period
caption_attribution_description: This is a photo of a monument in Armenia identified by the ID 1.6/134
context_page_description: Mikayel Nalbandian was an Armenian writer, poet, political theorist and activist.
  Nalbandian was born in Nakhichevan-on-Don, an Armenian town in southern Russia, and traveled extensively, although he visited Armenia itself only once. A radical intellectual, Nalbandian was an avid advocate of secularism and anti-clericalism, the use of modern Armenian and a vocal critic of the conservative clergy of the Armenian Apostolic Church. He also espoused anti-Catholicism. Inspired by the Enlightenment and the Italian unification, Nalbandian advocated reform, cultural nationalism and agrarianism among Armenians. In his later years he was influenced by Russian radicals such as Alexander Herzen and Nikolay Chernyshevsky. For his association with them, he was persecuted and died in exile at 37.
  A champion of modernism, he is seen as a follower of Khachatur Abovian. In turn, he influenced many others, including the novelist Raffi, Armenian nationalist revolutionaries, and Armenian Marxists, such as Alexander Miasnikian.
context_section_description: Soviet Armenian critics elevated Nalbandian to the status of a visionary for his left-wing and anti-clerical views. Daronian called him the founder of Armenian realism and criticism. Soviet Armenian philologist Aram Inchikian called him "the greatest figure of Armenian social thought of the pre-Marxist period and the precursor of social democracy in our reality." Historian H. Aslanian described him as a "militant materialist, the greatest figure in pre-Marxist materialist thought in Armenian reality, and irreconcilable enemy of all idealistic, reactionary views." Ashot Hovhannisian, an early Armenian Marxist and the first Education Minister of Soviet Armenia (1920–21), wrote a two volume book entitled Nalbandian and his time («Նալբանդյանը և նրա ժամանակը», 1955–56). In 1979 a scientific conference on Nalbandian's 150th anniversary was held at the Armenian Academy of Sciences.
  In 1921, in the first year of Soviet rule, one of the central streets of Yerevan was renamed after Nalbandian. A public school in Yerevan was renamed in his honor in 1941. In 1949 the Pedagogical Institute of Leninakan (current Gyumri) was renamed after Nalbandian. In 1950 a village known as Shahriar was renamed Nalbandian in his honor. In 1965 a 4.5-metre (15 ft) bronze statue of Nalbandian was erected in Yerevan. In Rostov-on-Don, in the part that was formerly New Nakhichevan, a street has been named for Nalbandian.
caption: Nalbandian's 1965 statue in Yerevan
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