Recently, we frequently encounter individuals of differing opinions whose repertoire sometimes opens the door to historically unfounded questions regarding the foundations of the Armenian Democratic Liberal Party, the advocate of the popular principles of the ideology of the Armenian national liberation struggle, and sometimes regarding the most important of that party’s formative roots—the Armenakan Party, which was born in August 1885, in the heart of Vaspurakan, in Van, and operated within various districts, with the city of Van as its center. According to the party’s bylaws, Van was called the First District. As a matter of fact, we wish to affirm once again that the Armenakan Party was and operated as the first of the political currents in Armenian reality, and the only one born in the heart of the Armenian people’s historic land—Western Armenia—during the difficult days of the Ottoman Empire, to prepare Western Armenians for the claim to their ancestral land.
Perhaps the organizational life of the Armenakans was short-lived, but as a confirmation it must be said that the symbol of the Armenakan Party remained the slogan “Freedom or Death.”
Unfortunately, the heralds of partisan credit and self-interest tried to underestimate and often disparage the strength and role of the Armenakans, attempting to reduce it to the level of a programless union. Historical truth reminds us that during that harsh period of the Armenian national awakening, the Armenakan program declared the party’s purpose with manifest and clear force.
“The purpose of the Armenakan organization is to obtain for the Armenian people, through revolution, the right to govern themselves freely, by which alone they can find the means to live as human beings and implement them according to the demands of the times.”
Equally liberal and bold were the Armenakans’ political-social understandings. They were not people with provincial backward, conservative, and prejudice-bound minds, as the distorters of history try to portray them. More than 115 years ago, on the eve of the 1905 revolution of the Russian Social Democrats, an Armenakan circular clarified the party’s viewpoint on the matter.
“The social, socialist revolution is a distant idea connected to our reality, to which we must aspire in the future, when, thanks to political orders and economic conditions, a new society will emerge among us—similar to European society—that is, when the struggle between labor and capital begins among us.”
Krikor Achemyan (father of the renowned novelist Gurgen Mahari), a member of the Armenakans’ 1885 founding body, became the last chairman of the executive board of the First District at the 1907 General Assembly.
The party’s activities had expanded within various districts—Salmast, Urmia, Baghesh, Tiflis, and Plovdiv (Bulgaria). It was after the murder of the prominent Armenakan figure Sepuh in 1908 that the party increasingly became the object of persecution and began to weaken in Van.
On October 31 of that same year, 1908, the Armenian Constitutional Party was born in Alexandria, which in the future would merge the Armenakan Party and the Reformed Hunchakian Party, born in London in 1898, under one name. The Reformed, under the leadership of Mihran Damadyan, Arpiar Arpiaryan, Mihran Svazlian, and Vahan Tekeyan, operated with Egypt, Greece, France, England, and the United States as their districts. Within certain districts, the Reformed initially did not become part of the Armenian Constitutional Ramgavar Party; they operated as the National Liberal Party until October 1, 1921, and with their merger, the Armenian Democratic Liberal Party came into being on Kinali Island in Constantinople. It is worth adding here that the leaders of the National Liberal Party were Arshak Chobanian and Hrach Yervant.
Unfortunately, the historical facts noted above were followed by a concerning phenomenon that must be regarded as dangerous to the mission adopted by the Armenian Democratic Liberal Party and its milestone achievements, which had only the purpose of serving the Armenian people and the patriotism struggling along the path of its eternal Great Dream.
After the proclamation of the Third Republic of Armenia in 1991, during the presidency of L. Ter Petrosyan, when the “Law on Parties” prepared by Ktrich Sardaryan was adopted, we often heard and heard repeated the strained refrain of the return of the traditional Armenian parties to the Motherland.
The Armenian Democratic Liberal Party, founded after the Sovietization of Armenia, operated for 70 years in the Diaspora as a diaspora-born reality, but it must not be forgotten that the Constitutionalists operated during the period of the First Republic of Armenia as the Ramgavar Party of Armenia (RPA). In the ranks of this party were thousands of Vanetsis, who through their Armenakan lineage had already become “Ramgavars.” The Ramgavar Party of Armenia had 11 seats among the 80 deputies operating in the Republic’s parliament. The chairman of the regional administration of Armenia was the Vanetsi benefactor and former mayor of Van, Artak Darbinyan, who was arrested in October 1920 by the government headed by Khatisyan; with him was also the Vanetsi Ramgavar Reverend Arsen Kevorkian, and both were exiled to Constantinople in those days. Other Vanetsi Ramgavars remained—Ghevond Khanjyan, Krikor Achemyan, and others—who in 1922 welcomed Artak Darbinyan, this time as a delegate of the ADL Central Board, who had come to meet Alexander Myasnikyan.
During the years of repatriation, 1946-1948, Diaspora Armenian Democratic Liberals kept their vow to always serve the homeland.
Decades later, Armenian Democratic Liberal students who arrived in Armenia operated within the homeland faithful to their vow, under the principle of the slogan “With the Homeland and for the Homeland.” Moreover, they formed the Arshak Chobanian Club of the ADL in Yerevan, which operated with pride in the homeland. In other words, the ADL was already in the homeland and had no need to return.
The Armenakan heritage, which forms the ADL’s native lineage, also remained on its pedestal when, within the ADL’s Western America district, the party’s youth unit was named the Armenakan Youth Movement in 1982.
Strengthening its place on that pedestal, the ADL Central Board of the day, welcoming that reality, also implemented the Armenakan Youth Movement program in various districts in 1985, on the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Armenakan organization. On the occasion of the 120th anniversary of the Armenakans’ founding within the re-independent homeland, in 2005, the name Armenakan was registered as a public-youth organization.
This is how it was possible to keep the Armenakan name burning bright from generation to generation, as the birth of Ramgavarism and its unwavering ideology.
The Armenian Democratic Liberal Party’s merger work also included its unified program and its democracy-spreading bylaws. The democratic ideology operating with the homeland and for the homeland must take on a unified character and remain as the ADL, with its Armenakan, Reformed, and Constitutional past lineages.
Within the re-independent homeland and for the ranks of the ADL worldwide, it is essential to cling to the supreme interests of the Armenian people and not allow the supreme purpose of serving the Armenian people to be destroyed by subversive acts. For a political and traditional organization operating with the dream of the eternal homeland and desiring the rise of the Republic of Armenia, there is no room for decline, especially when we acknowledge that the dual citizenship law adopted by the country can also contribute to the unified and single-purpose sacred mission of Homeland-Diaspora.
Ara Aharonian
