Bagrat Ulubabyan

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Bagrat Arshaki Ulubabyan (Բագրատ Արշակի Ուլուբաբյան; December 9, 1925 - 2001) was an Armenian writer and historian, known most prominently for his work on the histories of Nagorno-Karabakh and Artsakh.

Contents 1 Early life and education 2 Works 3 Later life 4 References

[edit] Early life and education

Ulubabyan was born in the village of Mushkapat in the Martuni region of the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast (NKAO) on December 9, 1925. In 1944, he graduated from Shushi's Pedagogical Institute. Two years later, he received his degrees in Armenian language and Armenian literature from Baku's Pedagogical Institute. From 1949 until 1967, he returned to Nagorno-Karabakh and was the head of the province's Writers Union. During those years, he was also a writer for the newspaper Sovetakan Gharabagh (Soviet Karabakh) and a deputy to the head of NKAO's executive committee. In 1968, Ulubabyan moved from the NKAO to Yerevan, the capital of the Armenian SSR, and in the following year, became a senior researcher in the history department at the Armenian Academy of Sciences.^[1]

[edit] Works

Ulubabyan's first works were in the field of poetry. In 1952 and 1956, he completed two works, "Songs about Work and Peace" and "This Morning." He, however, shifted his focus and began writing short stories as well as epics: "Aygestan" (1960), "Tartar" (1963), "The Grain Never Dies" (1967), and "Lamp" (1976). He also wrote two novels, Armenian Land in 1959 and The Man in 1963.^[1] One of his most prominent works was the historical novel "Sardarapat".

Many of Ulubabyan's work concern the Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh. In 1975, he published The Principality of Khachen, From the 10th to 16th centuries, a political and cultural history of the medieval principality of Khachen. In 1979, he published A Gold Chain, a collection of historical essay's from the stories of Movses Kaghankatvatsi till the era of the Principalities of Karabakh, depicting the role of Nagorno-Karabakh in the history of Armenia. Several years later, in 1981, he published Studies in the History of the Eastern Provinces of Armenia and Gandzasar. More recently he authored A History of Artsakh: From the Beginning Until Our Days (1994).^[1] Another work on the region, The Survival Struggle of Artsakh, was published in the same year and was a study focusing on the Nagorno-Karabakh during the Soviet era (from 1918 until the 1960's).

As an expert in Classical Armenian literature; he translated two works from of the fifth century Armenian chronicler Ghazar Parpetsi, A History of Armenia and A Letter to Vahan Mamikonian, in 1982.

[edit] Later life

In the late 1980s, with the beginning of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, Ulubabyan took part in the demonstrations in Yerevan which called on Soviet authorities to turn Karabakh over to the control of Armenia.^[2] During the 1960s, Ulubabyan had also been the author and one of thirteen signatories of a letter sent to Moscow, asking that the Soviet Union to consider Karabakh's incorporation into Armenia.^[3]

On May 7, 2001, in honor of his work in regards to Armenian history, he was decorated with the Order of Saint Gregory the Illuminator by the Nagorno Karabakh Republic's then-president, Arkady Ghukasyan.

[edit] References