Alexander Atabekian

**Alexander Atabekian** is an Armenian revolutionary Anarchist currently residing in exile in Sevastopol for his socialist views and hatred of Garegin Nzdeh.

## Alexander Atabekian

### *Importance*

Socialist writer and prominent voice for opposition against Garegin Nzhdeh

### *Loyalty*

MakhnoviaArmenia (supported the now dead AAS)

### *Political Party*

N/A (pro-anarchist, refuses to participate in electoral politics)

## Early life

Alexander Movsesi Atabekian was born on February 2, 1868 into an Armenian aristocratic (princely - melik) family of a doctor, in Shusha. Atabekian initially studied in a college in his native town, graduating in 1886, and then went on to study medicine at the University of Geneva (1889–96) and at Lyon. From 1888–1890, during his early years in Geneva, Atabekian participated in the Social Democrat Hunchakian Party, contributing to the typesetting of its periodical *Hinchak* (*Sound of the Bell*), which was published by Avetis Nazarbekian.

## Radicalization

He left the party and became an anarchist in 1890 through reading *Words of a Rebel*, a series of essays written by Peter Kropotkin in 1879 for the paper *Le Revolt* later collected for publication in 1885 by Élisée Reclus. Thereafter he published Armenian and Russian translations of Kropotkin and other anarchist authors, and established relations with the militants and anarchists in the Armenian Revolutionary Federation. He also founded the Anarchist Library of Geneva.

His university studies impeded the publication of revolutionary propaganda, in 1893 the idea arose to transfer his printing equipment to the Free Russian Press in London, which printed and distributed literature that was banned in Russia - both revolutionary and liberal. Along with Bulgarian anarchist Paraskev Stoyanov, Atabekian met Kropotkin, who asked Atabekyan to keep his printing equipment, rather than give it to people whose views were very far from anarchism. The group instead used Atabekian's printing press to issue 4 brochures in Russian, including the beginning of Kropotkin's *Words of a Rebel*. In 1894 he edited *Community*, the only Armenian anarchist periodical, which ran for five issues.

During the Ottoman Revolution, Atabekian reportedly had conflicted feelings, supporting the Armenian fight for liberation especially as reports from Anatolia filtered out to the wider public, revealing the sufferings of the Armenian Christian population at the hands of the Ottoman Muslims. At the same time he heavily criticized Russia's involvement, but he knew without it the Revolution would have been a lost cause. This did not stop his fierce criticism of the event and it got to the point where he was sidelined from the Hunchakian and Dashnak parties.

After graduating from the university in 1896, Atabekyan settled in Bulgaria (as he was banned from entering Russia), and gradually abandoned political activities. Between 1896 and 1917 he worked as a doctor in Northern Persia; from 1914 to 1917 in the Imperial Russian Army as head of a field hospital on the Caucasian front. Upon the dissolution of the imperial army following the February Revolution, he again met Kropotkin and became an active anarchist in Moscow. He served as the editor of the anarchist periodical *Pocin* from 1919–1923, representing the anarcho-cooperative trend in the libertarian movement.

## Return to Armenia and the Armenian Anarchist movement

However, with the end of the Great War and anti-socialist policies being the enacted in the Russian Republic, Atabekian, to avoid being forced out of Russia again secretly left Moscow for Erevan, where he kept a low profile but was the creator of the new Armenian anarchist movement. At first the movement was very little, consisting of a very small group of people, but gradually, especially in around 1923-1924 anarchism grew in popularity in Armenia, especially with industrial workers and the peasant class.

Atabekian left Moscow in early 1919 before the German Civil War and was traveling when it began, and he would document the progress of the war and keep up with its progress even as he was going across the country. Once Berlin was captured, Atabekian then began to expose himself to syndicalist theory to study the ideology, wanting to understand the German workers' point of view on the situation. Through researching the ideology and keeping up with the German Union's advancement as a country, he claimed himself to be an anarcho-syndicalist in the early 1920s, moving away from anarcho-communism as he saw syndicalism to be more successful than communism with the aftermath of the German Civil War. Thus, the Armenian anarchist movement grew from anarcho-communism to anarcho-syndicalism, industrial democracy and unionism which was very attractive to Armenian industrial workers who felt frustrated with the new Russian government even after the Tsar was gone.

Considering that Armenia was very unindustrialized the movement could never grow quite as far as Atabekian hoped, and his attempts to popularize so-called "agrarian-syndicalism" were not successful.

With the outbreak of the Russian Civil War, Atabekian supported the downfall of the Moscow government but did not support the new Bolsheviks rising to power, seeing them as nothing more than a battle for "different shades of power". The Bolsheviks never got far however, but instead libertarian forms of socialism prevailed once again, most famously the anarchist seizure of Ukraine under Nestor Makhno. Armenia largely avoided the bloodshed that some regions received, but the country was still a part of the Caucasus Conflict which Atabekian also opposed, stating "This war is based purely in nationalism, the worst kind of nationalism. The one that tears people, neighbors and ancestral lands apart". Nevertheless, Armenia emerged unscathed for the most part and the new government was lead by the left-leaning Hunchakian Party who lifted many restrictions that censored different political groups and people, including Atabekian.

Without the government looming over him or his group, the Armenian Anarcho-Syndicalist Society saw immeasurable growth, to the point where his failed plans of "Agrarian-Syndicalism" saw a revival, in a way. Although he was an anarcho-syndicalist himself, he rebranded and renamed the group away from syndicalism to just anarchism, encompassing a wide range of sub-ideologies, but it opened up the Armenian Anarchist Society to a broad scope of people and the AAS saw even more people joining them, ranging from anarcho-communists to anarchist peasants and even what has been dubbed "anarcho-agrarianism".

However, the coup of 1931 in the country changed everything. Armenia was no longer a left-leaning democracy but now it was under the control of a militaristic far-right coalition of army generals and officers who created and installed various laws prohibiting Armenian socialism from having a proper voice. Although many wanted this to be an opportunity for a revolution to come to Erevan, it never did as socialism never was as influential as it was in other regions in the former Russian Republic. The growth of the AAS was stopped immediately and its leaders arrested, including Atabekian who was arrested just 5 days after the coup took place. With the head cut from the snake the AAS collapsed as every other Armenian socialist organization was banned, its leader and members either fled, killed or arrested. Fortunately for Atabekian, he was able to escape prison, narrowly avoiding being subjected to a firing squad by 2 days and fleeing from Ghars across the country to Pontia, where he left via the port of Trebizond to permanently flee into exile in Makhnovia, specifically Sevastopol.

He remains there to this day, being a politician in the Syndicalist International alongside working with the anti-Nzdeh resistance still within Armenia who are very weakened since the 1931 purge.