Hovhannes Katchaznouni

Hovhannes Katchaznouni (Armenian: Յովհաննէս Քաջազնունի) (Akhaltsikhe, Georgia 1868 – Yerevan, Armenia 1938) was the first Prime Minister of the Democratic Republic of Armenia from May 30, 1918 to May 28, 1919. He was a member of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation.

Personal life

Hovhannes Katchaznouni was born in 1868 in the town of Akhaltsikhe, then part of the Russian Empire, now part of Georgia. He attended secondary school in Tiflis from 1877 to 1886. In 1887 he moved to St. Petersburg and was accepted into the Citizens' Architectural Institute, graduating from there with honors in 1893. During his time in St. Petersburg he joining the Dashnaktsutyun political party, eventually becoming one of its most important members. After graduating he worked at the Baku provincial administration from 1893-1895 in the construction department, then as an architect in Batumi from 1895–1897, and then from 1897-1899 as regional architect at the Tiflis provincial administration. He worked as a senior architect in Baku from 1899–1906, designing hospitals and apartment buildings. After 1906 he devoted himself to political and social activities. In 1911 he was required to leave the Caucasus region by a St. Petersburg court ruling because of his activities involving Dashnaktsutyun.^[1]

In 1914 he was able to return to his homeland. He became a member of the Armenian National Council in 1917 and was the Dashnak representative in the Seym (the Caucasian Parliament) until 1918. He was on the Armenian committee that conducted peace talks with the Ottoman Empire in Trabzon and Batoum. After the dissolution of the Transcaucasian Federation, he became the first Prime Minister of the independent Armenian state in 1918. He held this position until August 1919. He was arrested after the Bolsheviks came to power in Armenia in 1920. He left Armenia after the 1921 counter-revolutionary revolt against Bolshevik rule was suppressed. Between 1921 and 1924 he lived in Bucharest. In 1925 he returned to Soviet Armenia, to work as an architect in Leninakan. He also taught at Yerevan State University's technical department, giving lectures on construction and architecture. He joined the Construction Institute on its establishment in 1930 and attained the title of professor there.

Katchaznouni became a victim of Stalin's Great Terror. He was arrested in 1937 and imprisoned. The exact date of his death is unknown, it happened in 1937 or 1938.

Report to the 1923 ARF Congress

Katchaznouni prepared a critical report for the April 1923 ARF congress in Bucharest^[2][3][4][5] titled "The Federation Has Nothing More to Do," which called for the dissolution of the Party and Armenian support of Soviet Armenia.^[6][7][8][9] Its incendiary claims immediately drew rebuke from the party.^{[10][11][12][13]} Until recently, the report was best known through its abridged English translation by Matthew Aram Callender, The Armenian Revolutionary Federation (Dashnagtzoutiun) Has Nothing to Do Any More and edited by Avedis Boghos Derounian. The translation emanated from the New York branch of the Armenian General Benevolent Union's Armenian Information Service.^[14][15][16] The booklet's elusive nature can be attributed to the fact that the Congress was "highly secret and closed to the public" with little information about its circumstances being released,^[17] and the fact that remaining copies have been "banned from ARF clubs and libraries for decades afterwards."^[3]

Recently, a historian from Istanbul University named Mehmet Perinçek^[18] found an unabridged Russian copy (printed in Tblisi, 1927) of the book in the Russian State Library in Moscow.^[19] Perinçek said that he was the first person to have entered the Russian State archives (due to a simple absence of applications),^[20] and that he has spent seven years studying them.^[21]

Though this story might be credible, it is disputed by some Armenian intellectuals like Viken L. Attarian, who claim that all of this "discoveries" are actually forgeries of this document, made by alleged Turkish unscrupulous historians to rebuke the fact of the Armenian Genocide^[22], which is proven by the fact that translations of the text into several other languages were published by Kaynak Press, Istanbul, as part of a book series titled "The Lie of 'Armenian Genocide' in Armenian Documents".^[23]

Bibliography

• Katchaznouni, Hovhannes (August 1955). John Roy Carlson (Arthur A. Derounian). ed. The Armenian Revolutionary Federation (Dashnagtzoutiun) Has Nothing to Do Anymore. Matthew A. Callender. New York: Armenian Information Service.  (Book cover)

References