Sixty years ago, in 1921, some of the most enlightened sons of the Armenian people, such as Mihran Damadian and Vahan Tekeyan, representing the Ramgavar, Liberal, Reconstituted and Popular parties and currents, were laying the foundation of today’s Armenian Democratic Liberal Party. This new party, born of the union of old and diverse but like-minded currents realised in that year, was the imperative demand of the situation of those days. The fragments of the Armenian, cast out of his centuries-old homeland, escaped from the hell of exile and massacre, found themselves before the necessity of settling on new and foreign shores and preserving the existence of the “remnants”.
On the other hand, the long-standing existence of the crippled and wasted Republic of Armenia having already come to an end about a year earlier, Soviet Armenia, corresponding to the new thinking and new aspirations of the day, had been brought to life, opening new horizons of hope before the suffering Armenian people.
Behind this politically correct and realistic orientation that created this new homeland, the ADL Party saw the understanding of an old and timeless wisdom, according to which friendship with powerful and neighbouring peoples is a vital necessity for the peaceful and secure existence of a people. We find one of our party’s first circulars, bearing the date of 13 December 1920, also imbued with this understanding of wisdom, where it is said: “In the present conditions of Transcaucasia, the Armenians cannot expect practical help from any other quarter to secure their physical existence, as well as, one might say, their political rights, against the threat of the Turks and Tatars, except from Russia alone. The Armenian Ramgavar Party… in the present transitional period, may attach secondary importance to the influence that the revolution of Soviet Russia has brought upon the social order of Armenia.”
At the most fateful juncture in the history of the Armenian people, the ADL came to the fore, on the one hand to organise the Armenian colonies being established in the diaspora, and on the other hand to support materially and morally the newly created homeland.
In honour of our party’s old leadership, it must be said that the ADL knew how to realistically assess the new situation and to lead Armenian life with pan-communal activity, on the one hand impelling the Armenian General Benevolent Union to broad-scale orphan-care and charitable activity, while at the same time founding schools, churches, clubs and the press, to give, gradually, the features of organised communities to the fragments of the migrant Armenian.
Our party’s devoted-to-the-people and devoted-to-the-homeland activity, its sound national course, earned wide appreciation, and throughout the entire diaspora Ramgavar thinking grew and strengthened. We see proof of this not so much in the number of our rank-and-file militants, as in the acceptance that our ideology and national policy have found among non-partisan masses and intellectual circles. They think and act like a Ramgavar in relation to the most vital questions of the Armenian people — the homeland, the Armenian Church, the Armenian Cause and various important problems of the diaspora Armenians. There are not few either those who, while showing themselves anti-party for various reasons, moreover waging an anti-Ramgavar struggle, yet walk together with the ADL’s line, because there is no more sound-minded and nation-serving course than ours.
And today, we have reached a place where the greatest mass of diaspora Armenians has its eyes fixed on our party, expecting from it realistic and sound-minded leadership. The essential thing is to realise how ready we are to assume that role. And at this juncture we have no right to show signs of retreat, however heavy the work expected of us may be, and however much certain reasons delay us from undertaking that heavy and responsible work. It is thanks to the credit of our past that they expect that work and leadership from us, from the homeland to the far corners of the diaspora. But, unfortunately, for a long time now, it is the just credit built by our great benefactors — devoted and modest servants, our intelligentsia and our disinterested workers — that we are consuming. However, it is time to realise that this capital is not inexhaustible.
In what does the popularity that our ideology, our national course, has found consist?
Who is the Ramgavar?
The Ramgavar, above all, bases his activity on truth, justice and right, rising with all his strength against their trampling. Because he is convinced that democracy, which constitutes the essence of Ramgavarism, rests on those three sacred things. And without the application of democratic and Ramgavar principles, tyranny and individualism come forward, which sooner or later bring about the weakening and then the collapse of a collective, an organisation, a state.
The Ramgavar fights with all his soul for the application of moral principles, because, in their absence, the moral atmosphere is corrupted, and in a corrupted atmosphere healthy generations cannot be raised.
Without overlooking our glorious revolutionary past, which was bequeathed to us by the Armenakans, the ADL Party is essentially the party of diaspora Armenians.
The Ramgavar Liberal is a genuine Armenian and a loyal and conscientious citizen of the country in which he lives.
The Ramgavar Liberal is the disinterested patriot, the one who wishes the well-being of the modern Armenian state and its people, the one who warmly appreciates the immense nation-building work accomplished and still being accomplished — he does so without tying this positive stance of his to the regime prevailing there. Because homeland and regime are things independent of each other.
The Ramgavar Liberal is the pained critic of the negative aspects, the shortcomings, of the homeland’s reality — without being its adversary.
The Ramgavar Liberal was the faithful organiser of the repatriate, and continues to be the advocate of that sacred movement, consciously assuming various sacrifices of daily life. Because the Ramgavar believes that gathering and multiplying on the homeland’s soil is the guarantee of our survival. The material and daily difficulties existing in the homeland cannot be considered justifiable reasons for emigrating by abandoning the homeland’s soil. In that emigration the Ramgavar sees the shattering of the sacred work of nation-building, of our Great Dream.
Referring to the present unhappy situation of the Lebanese Armenians, the Ramgavar cannot accept the migration of the masses to America or Canada in search of a more peaceful and tranquil life. The Ramgavar preaches by word and deed that, as loyal citizens of Lebanon, we are obliged, in these days of crisis of the Lebanese homeland, to become sharers of its pain, to suffer together with all the communities, and to participate in the solution of that crisis with every material and moral sacrifice, and if necessary at the cost of life, because we cannot enjoy its hospitality, the security of peaceful days and its prosperous life, and then abandon it in difficult days — unless we wish to be considered ungrateful citizens.
The Ramgavar Liberal is the vigilant guardian of the diaspora Armenian’s remaining Armenian, and is convinced that for our survival the close ties with the Mother Homeland are necessary, and that reservations or oppositions concerning the regime prevailing there must not serve to conceal those ties. Because the Ramgavar believes that above parties and regimes there are and remain the supreme national interests and the eternal homeland.
The Ramgavar Liberal is the warm defender of the Armenian Church — not necessarily carried away by religious fanaticism, but essentially reflecting on the role it has played and will play in preserving the nation, and with this awareness he places his services at the disposal of its strengthening. The Ramgavar is the fervent believer in the unity of the Armenian Church, recognising the Catholicosate of All Armenians of Etchmiadzin as the supreme authority. Holy Etchmiadzin is the centuries-old rock of the Armenian Church, on which is anchored the spiritual integrity of the Armenian people throughout the world. In this field too, the Ramgavar did not tolerate and does not tolerate that the regime prevailing in the Mother Homeland be used as a pretext for separatist aspirations and for the church to become an arena of political conflicts.
The Ramgavar Liberal is the unyielding fighter for Armenian rights, for the just solution of the imperishable Armenian Cause, and the Ramgavar is the claimant of the blood of our one and a half million martyrs.
He is convinced that through different forms and means of expression, from the homeland to the far corners of the diaspora, the Armenian people have the same aspirations in this regard. Armed with the understanding of one whole homeland and one whole Armenian nation, the Ramgavar assumed the greatest material and moral sacrifices and will continue to assume them, with increasing momentum, to pursue the realisation of our Great Dream, of which one of the greatest believers was the late comrade Kersam Aharonian.
The Ramgavar knows that these are not miracles to dawn with tomorrow’s sun. We fought for sixty years, and the Ramgavar still has the vigour and readiness to fight for another sixty years for the realisation of those sacred goals.
The Ramgavar Liberal believes that the diaspora must be preserved as victims surviving the Armenian catastrophe, the genocide, and rightful heirs of the victims, in order to return it to its ancestral lands after the return of the usurped homeland’s territories on a blessed day. And to do this, it is not only necessary to secure the material well-being of diaspora Armenians, but especially to preserve its Armenian character and to cultivate the consciousness of the claimant. Because a colony that is materially enviable but pale in its Armenianness is a lost number for the Armenian people. The fragments of Armenians, colonies, assimilated and lost in the distant and recent past of diaspora Armenians, constitute the fact of this sad reality. And to succeed in this direction, it is a vital necessity to further strengthen our relations with the Mother Homeland, because it is contact with our sacred soil and the people living in the homeland that feeds Armenianness. Therefore, by exaggerating or emphasising the homeland’s shortcomings and needlessly trumpeting them, we not only fail to help correct the homeland’s shortcomings, but on the contrary, we contribute to the impairment of our new generation’s national-patriotic feeling. The Ramgavar Liberal does not tolerate that criticisms concerning the homeland harm patriotic feeling, because he is convinced that without a bright and clear, uncompromising and boundless patriotism, it is impossible to keep the diaspora Armenian.
The Ramgavar Liberal is the earnest desirer of national solidarity and unity. Whatever has been accomplished as a success in this field since the fiftieth anniversary of the Great Genocide has been, for the most part, the result of our long-winded and consistent work. And if a certain change has come about in the national-political thinking of diaspora Armenians in favour of the homeland’s reality and the historically irreplaceable role of Holy Etchmiadzin, it is an undeniable reality that it is our sixty-year struggle that has borne its fruit. Today, if, going beyond partisan positions, we subject the national-political orientation of diaspora Armenians to deep analysis, then we shall undoubtedly see the adoption by the diaspora Armenian masses of our thinking, of the positions we have professed and preached on fundamental national questions, no matter that some of them may even belong, so to speak, to currents opposed to the ADL.
May we fully realise this pride-worthy fact, and with broader work, with more vigorous momentum, with fresher and more capable forces, harness ourselves to the task of leading diaspora Armenians towards complete and true solidarity, national unified integrity, always anchoring our work on the cornerstones of Homeland-Etchmiadzin-Armenian Cause.
Hagop Naggashian
Source: “Nor Or” Special Issue dedicated to the ADL’s 60th anniversary
1981
