Returning and Redemption
[51] II
TRANSFER OF MIDDLE EAST CHRISTIAN MINORITIES
Repatriation of Armenians to Soviet Armenia
NEXT to the Jews, the Armenians are the most “classic” minority people in the modern world. Not more than 1,201,591 Armenians live in a state of their own,1 the Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic,–these are about two-fifths of the Armenian nation. Even within the Soviet Union the Armenians of Soviet Armenia represent only 61 per cent of the 2,151,884 Armenians registered by the all-Union census of 1939, the largest groups being concentrated in the Georgian and Azerbaijan SSR, as well as in North Caucasus and Crimea. About one million Armenians are scattered over Europe (where there are approximately fifteen groups totalling 170,000); throughout the Middle East and Asia (where there are sixteen groups totalling about 425,000); and in North and South America (where there are seven groups totalling 235,000).
Both the present numerical smallness and the utter dispersion of the Armenian people are the direct result of a Turkish policy of extermination and deportation. In 1890 there were two and one half million Armenians in Turkish Armenia and Turkey proper; by 1919 fewer than 100,000 remained. More than a million and a half had been massacred or had perished as a result of deportation, and about a million had survived by escaping to other lands.
A considerable part of the survivors found refuge in the Russian Caucasus. In 1915 some 220,000 Armenians from Turkey and Persia arrived there; in 1916, 160,800 Armenian refugees were reported assisted by the Empress Marie Committee–this number does not [52] include unassisted refugees and those within 15 kilometers of the front. In 1918, the number of Armenian refugees reached 408,000;3 in 1921-1925, some 13,300 Armenian refugees from Turkey arrived in Soviet Armenia4 by way of Greece, Persia and Iraq.
Migration, famine and epidemics, particularly of typhus, accounted for the drastic reduction of this refugee mass. A total of only 120,068 Armenians born outside the USSR was registered by the 1926 census in all of Transcaucasia (Armenia, Georgia, and Azerbeidzhan).5 V. Quisling puts the total number of refugees settled on land in Armenia at about 102,500.6 In 1926-1936 new groups totalling 15,500 immigrated to Soviet Armenia, largely from Greece, followed in 1937 by 6,000 immigrants transferred on the basis of a Greco-Soviet agreement.7
The pre-World War II distribution of Armenian war refugees outside Soviet Armenia, the Americas, Iran, Iraq and Turkey is shown in the following table-8
Country Number (in thousands)
Syria and Lebanon . . . . 100,0
France . . . . 63,0
Greece . . . . 25,0
Bulgaria . . . . 14,5
Rumania . . . . 6,0
Cyprus . . . . 2,7
Other European Countries . . . . 3,8
The number of Armenians in Iran was approximately 100,000, in Turkey 57,599 (1935 census), and in Iraq 6,900.
A plan for resettling Armenian refugees upon reclaimed and irrigated land in Soviet Armenia had been drawn up in 1924-25 by Fridtjof Nansen. The Government of the Armenian SSR was ready to receive a considerable number of Armenian settlers from countries of the Near East, to give the land necessary for their settlement free of charge, and to exempt them from taxation for the first three years. Nansen estimated that in addition to cost of transport, [53] a settlement loan of nine million gold roubles would be required, which would provide for land reclamation, irrigation work, and the cost of settlement of 25,000 refugees.9 The plan was abandoned in 1929 due to failure to raise the necessary funds.10
2.
It was revived on a much larger scale and along predominantly political lines, after the end of World War II. This time the initiators of the plan were the Armenians themselves and their aim was not piecemeal transfer of small groups of refugees but wholesale repatriation to Soviet Armenia of the million Armenian refugees scattered over the world.
The term “repatriation” can, of course, be used only figuratively in this connection. The overwhelming majority of the Armenians living in the Middle East, in European countries or in the United States never lived in what is now Soviet Armenia, and they can no more “return” to this territory than the Baltic Germans could be “repatriated” to the Reich. They are either natives of the countries in which they now live, or refugees from Turkish Armenia who escaped the wholesale extermination of 1915-1919. Their transfer to Soviet Armenia is repatriation in the spiritual sense only. It is in that limited sense that the term will be used in the following pages.
“The inducements to leave do not all come from the Russian side,” wrote the London Economist on January 11, 1947. “The growth of xenophobia and of Moslem nationalism in the Arabic-speaking states–particularly in Egypt and Syria–is closing more and more doors to outsiders. It is impelling many to go.” The mood prevailing among the Armenian communities in the Middle East was described in 1946 by A. H. Hourani as follows-11 “The great majority of Armenians . . . practically all of them, except the small minority who have property or large interests in Syria and Lebanon . . . desire ultimately to return to the Caucasus and rebuild their [54] national life there.” Differences exist only “on the manner of their return”- some have accepted the inclusion of Armenia in the Soviet Union and are therefore willing to return immediately and unconditionally, while others object to Sovietization and desire to return only when Armenia becomes an independent State.
This description applies fully not only to the 250,000 Armenians in the Arab lands, but to the entire Armenian diaspora. The urge to put an end to their insecure minority existence and to “live in the shadow of Mount Ararat”12 is felt passionately not only by those Armenian refugees who have not succeeded in adequately supporting themselves and their families but also by more settled and prosperous elements. “Their reason for leaving is not necessarily economic, or that they are unhappy in the countries where the families of some have lived for hundreds of years, but their desire to live as a national group in their own country after centuries of persecution and massacres,” stated a spokesman of the Armenian Repatriation Committee in Jerusalem.13
This longing for statehood and national normalcy has apparently overcome doubts concerning the desirability and advisability of a “return” to a Soviet-dominated country and has established a certain community of interests between the imperial tendencies of the Soviet Union and the repatriation action of the strongly nationalistic, generally non-Communist, Armenian organizations abroad.
In fact, the movement for the mass transfer of scattered Armenian minority groups to the Armenian SSR was closely linked in its early stage with the demand for the expansion of Soviet Armenia’s present territory through the incorporation of the Armenian provinces of Kars, Ardahan, Erzeroum, Trebizond, Van and Bitlis held by Turkey. These provinces were part of the Armenian Republic as established by the abortive Treaty of Sevres (August 20, 1920)- the Armenian population they had before 1915 was massacred, deported or forced to flee, so that they are now both “Armenian-free” and underpopulated.14 Armenian national organizations argued that, apart from the historic and moral claim for [55] the unification of these provinces with Soviet Armenia, their 40,000 square miles are essential to the resettlement of the million prospective Armenian repatriates. Soviet Armenia, they pointed out, is a small country with an area of 11,580 square miles and a population of about 1.5 million–almost 130 persons per square mile. More than two-thirds of the area is mountainous country unsuitable for agriculture, whereas more than two-thirds of the Armenian population (915,183) are agriculturists and only 366,416 are town dwellers.15 Most land flat enough for cultivation is covered a good part of the year by dust that is driven by strong winds; rainfall is scarce and rivers and brooks run in deep ravines. Hence, an acute land crisis exists which accounts for the fact that many Armenians are compelled to seek work outside Soviet Armenia in other parts of the Soviet Union.
Construction of extensive irrigation canals has increased the cultivable area fivefold in the past twenty-five years, and industrialization of the country has provided a livelihood for large sectors of the population. But resettlement of almost a million repatriates within the narrow boundaries of already heavily populated Soviet Armenia with its unusually large natural increase (the Armenians have the highest birthrate among all the peoples of the USSR) would present insuperable difficulties. The repatriation movement initiated by the Armenian national organizations in 1945 was therefore organically linked with demands for the territorial expansion of Soviet Armenia.
In April, 1945 the Armenian National Committee (an offspring of the otherwise traditionally anti-Soviet Revolutionary Federation Tashnags) presented to the United Nations Conference on International Organization (UNCIO) in San Francisco a memorandum demanding the incorporation into Soviet Armenia of some of the eastern provinces of Turkey promised the Armenians in the Treaty of Sevres, and the transfer to Armenia of the remnants of the Armenian minority in those regions.16 A month later, a delegation of the Armenian National Council of America, representing fifty [56] Armenian organizations in the United States, presented a similar demand- that “opportunities be granted Armenians abroad to return to their own homes and pastures, their cities and villages and live there their own lives.” The memorandum also demanded the incorporation into Soviet Armenia of the Armenian provinces now forming part of Turkey. “We want no less,” stated the delegation, “than the joining of our historic land of Armenia to the existing state of free and independent Armenia, and the repatriation there of all Armenians abroad who wish to go there.”17
Inasmuch as the San Francisco Conference was “not delegated to settle questions relating to repatriation and settlement of boundaries,” the Armenian National Council in July, 1945 presented a similar request to the Potsdam Conference of the Big Three. Recalling Turkish persecution of the Armenian population in the last century and pointing out that during recent years the Turkish Government “had worked out new means of expropriating and subjugating the small Armenian population in Turkey,” the Armenian memorandum went on as follows- “Fortunately, in one part of Armenia–that which formed a part of Russia before the First World War–an independent Armenian Republic has been created, forming an integral part of the Soviet Union. In the course of its years of existence Soviet Armenia has made giant strides in its development and has provided Armenians with the security which was absent in their past . . . At present 1,500,000 Armenians live outside Soviet Armenia and in other parts of the Soviet Union. The overwhelming majority of them desire to return to the lands of their forefathers and to take part in their reconstruction. The Americans of Armenian descent urgently ask the Potsdam Conference to put the question of the Armenian Nation on its agenda so as to guarantee a just settlement of the Armenians desiring once again to live in their historic land, Soviet Armenia.”18
The Potsdam Conference disregarded this Armenian appeal. Undeterred by the setback, the Armenian National Council approached the Moscow Conference of Foreign Ministers (December [57] 16-26, 1945), calling their attention “to the cause of the one-and-a half million Armenians scattered over the earth, victims of Turkish terror and persecution. The overwhelming majority of these refugee Armenians desire to return to their birthplace, which is still under Turkish control. They can only be repatriated when their homeland becomes a part of Soviet Armenia.”19 A similar appeal to the Moscow parley was sent by the Armenian Catholicos, George VI, asking for the “return of the Armenian vilayets to Soviet Armenia to enable the refugee Armenians to live peacefully in their fatherland.”20
These Armenian actions, intended to mobilize international sympathy and support for the wholesale repatriation of the Armenian diaspora to Soviet Armenia and for the enlargement of that country’s territory, did not produce the expected results. The Governments of Great Britain and the United States were particularly reluctant to favor any expansion of Soviet territory at the expense of Turkey and were inclined to consider the entire Armenian campaign a Soviet-instigated device. Foreign Secretary Bevin stated that Soviet Armenia has no right to claim the provinces of Kars and Ardahan on ethnical grounds since, as the result of “movements of population,” there are no Armenians there now. This statement was bitterly criticized by the Armenian press.21 The Armenian National Committee in the United States sent Mr. Bevin a cable, pointing out that the absence of Armenians in Kars and Ardahan was caused by the massacre and forced flight of the 230,000 Armenians in those provinces when the Turks occupied them in September 1920.22 This and other arguments have, however, failed to change the negative attitude of the Western Powers towards the Armenian demand for territorial changes in favor of Soviet Armenia.
The repatriation action was accordingly initiated as a purely Armenian enterprise, enjoying the blessing and support of the Soviet Government only.
[58] 3.
The delegates of the Armenian communities in France, the Balkans, and the Middle East to the Armenian Ecclesiastical Congress in Emchiadzin (June 15 to 25, 1945) were instructed by their constituencies “not to return without securing the definite promise of the Armenian Government to take practical steps for the repatriation of the refugee Armenians in the world.”23 The newly elected Catholicos, George VI, fully endorsed this wish of the Armenian Diaspora and expressed great concern over the state of the Armenians dispersed in the countries of the old and new world. The Government of Soviet Armenia resolved, on November 12, 1945, to allow the repatriation of Armenians from abroad.24 This decision was approved by the USSR Government in Moscow. On December 2, a special communique was published, stating that preparations were under way for receiving and accommodating Armenians living abroad who wished to settle in Soviet Armenia.25
A governmental Committee to Receive and Resettle Armenians was appointed in Erevan, the capital of Soviet Armenia, and instructed to establish ties with appropriate Armenian organizations in other countries. The repatriates were to be encouraged to bring with them, free from custom duties, their tools, furniture and personal property. The Soviet Government earmarked a fund for the payment of 50 per cent of the cost of building individual houses for the settlers.
According to the Erevan Committee, repatriation was to start in June, 1946 with the immigration of 50,000 Armenians in the course of several months–these were to come from Iran, Syria, Lebanon, Greece, Bulgaria and Rumania. At the request of the repatriation committees of certain countries, their quotas were raised, so that a total of about 65,000 people were supposed to enter Armenia by the end of the repatriation season in the fall of 1946–approximately 20,000 from Syria and Lebanon, 30,000 from Iran, [59] and the rest from the other countries. Actually, however, only some 51,000 were repatriated.26
The Armenian diaspora responded enthusiastically to the call for repatriation. “When the news of the action of the Armenian Government reached Alexandria, Egypt,” says Rev. Vertanes, “the people flocked to the Church with a deep sense of gratitude for the ‘beginning of the end’ of their tribulations as a dispersed people. Similar expressions of joy were in evidence in other countries.”
In accordance with the appeal of the repatriation committee in Erevan, Armenians abroad formed special committees, enlisted the cooperation of existing organizations, and opened offices to register the repatriates and raise funds for them. Official representatives from Armenia to the countries from which the repatriation would start in 1946, cooperated in the preparation of the lists of repatriates, and generally supervised and facilitated the emigration. Soviet Consulates helped where they could. Persons of all ranks registered for repatriation–laborers, farmers, artists, businessmen, students, professionals and intellectuals. Within one month, 20,000 Armenians had registered in Iran, 35,000 in Syria and Lebanon, and thousands in Greece, Egypt and Palestine. By August 1946 the number of those applying for repatriation reached 200,000.27 The figure of 800,000 applications given in March 1947 by an Armenian author28 seems to be highly exaggerated.
The repatriation movement went on partly by land, mostly by sea. The only group which entered Armenia by land were the Armenians from neighboring Iran, whose situation has in recent years become steadily worse. They used to occupy rather important posts in the Iranian administration, but are now being increasingly replaced by Persians.29 Their positions in agriculture and gardening as well as in trade and business have also been undermined to a great extent. By the end of 1946, some 60,000 Armenians registered for repatriation,30 and 30,000 actually left. In one day 12,737 persons crossed the Iranian-Soviet border.31
Repatriation from all other countries proceeded by ship. [60] Repamates who embarked in the Mediterranean ports went through the Dardanelles and Bosporus to Batum, and thence to Armenia. The Soviet Government provided two of its best vessels. One of these, the former Italian Saturnia, rechristened Rossia, was the largest vessel ever to pass through the Bosporus; the other was the Transylvania.
The Armenian Government decided that the first group to be repatriated and rehabilitated would be Armenians from Greece (100,000 found refuge there after their expulsion from Turkish Asia Minor in 1922), who had suffered more from the war than Armenians in other countries.32 About 5,000 were repatriated to Soviet Armenia in 1940;33 the first group, numbering 2,000, left in late July.34 In the same month 3,500 Armenians began their journey from Bulgaria.35
The most numerous and most impatient group among the 1946 repatriates were Armenians from Lebanon and Syria. The 70,000-75,000 Lebanese Armenians and the 120,000 Armenians in Syria are recent settlers in those countries. Most of them entered in successive waves during and after the war of 1914-18, fleeing from persecution or from anticipation of it. A number arrived in 1939 after the cession of Alexandretta to Turkey. The overwhelming majority arrived penniless. But in the last two decades, thanks to their own efforts and to those of the Nansen Office, their economic situation improved considerably. Almost all of them live in towns where they are craftsmen, small traders and office workers, and constitute a half-isolated community centered around their churches, clinging to their national language and maintaining their own schools. Even in the predominantly Christian Lebanon, “they have not always been popular with the Arabs,” states A. H. Hourani. “Arab nationalists complain that their presence has given rise to an additional minority problem, and one particularly difficult to solve. Lebanese Moslems regard them as one of the factors making for Christian predominance; had it not been for their immigration, the Moslems would now have a majority in Lebanon.” The [61] Armenians are also “not popular” with the Christians who dislike them “for having come into the country destitute and being now prosperous . . . Being concentrated in a relatively small number of urban dwellings, they are peculiarly open to attack,” Hourani remarks ominously.36 It is only natural that the urge for repatriation has always been particularly strong among them. As early as July, 1945, several months before the call for repatriation was issued, members of the middle and lower classes in Syria and Lebanon began to register for transfer to Soviet Armenia.
The first group of 1,600 repatriates from the regions of Damascus, Rayak and Beirut left Beirut on June 23; on July 8, a second ship sailed from Beirut with 1,834 repatriates aboard, and on July 13, a third ship with 2,300 passengers departed from the same city.37 Entire Armenian settlements have emigrated. A Soviet correspondent reports that in the settlement of Ainchar on the Beirut-Damascus highway, established in 1938 by 5,000 Armenian refugees from Alexandretta, 3,000 left in 1946 and 1,200 more in 1947.38
The remnants of the Armenian minority in Turkey were the first slated for repatriation (see the above quoted memorandum of the Armenian National Committee). Their number was given as 57,599, of whom 39,821 reside in Istanbul.39 Although statistics are vague with reference to Armenians in Anatolia, a reliable source estimates as many as 15,000 living there, whereas figures for the ten provinces for which statistics are available total 11,701. No statistics are given for such eastern provinces as Kars, Van, Erzurum, Mush, Siirt, and Agri, where large numbers of Armenians lived before World War I. It is not known whether all the Armenians in these regions have been exterminated or removed. Armenian sources estimate that there are 170,000 Armenians in Turkey, but over 100,000 of them have been Turkified by force or so isolated that they are regarded as lost to the Armenian nation.40
The move of the Armenian National Committee in the United States aroused a great deal of fear among the Armenians in Turkey. They anticipated that the Turks would be utterly displeased with [62] the transfer demand–particularly in view of strained Soviet-Turkish relations–and might retaliate by applying administrative and economic pressure on the Armenian community. The Turks particularly resented the fact that the Soviet Consulate in Istanbul started enlisting Armenians for repatriation without consultation with the Turkish Government.41 Well-informed observers of the Turkish scene expressed doubts as to the willingness of the Istanbul Armenians, who form over two-thirds of the remaining Armenian community in Turkey, to leave for Soviet Armenia; it was argued that they belong to the petit bourgeois class and do not form a politically conscious and nationally well organized group. In fact, some 30,000 Turkish Armenians registered for repatriation.42 Their departure was made impossible by increasing political tension between Turkey and the Soviet Union.
During the summer of 1946, 50,761 repatriates arrived in Soviet Armenia. Inclement weather interrupted the repatriation movement during the winter months; the work was resumed in the spring of 1947. The original schedule for 1947 provided for the reception of 100,000 people.43 Later the number was reduced to 60,000.44 In addition to continuing the repatriation from Greece, Syria, Bulgaria and Iran, it was decided to start receiving repatriates from Egypt, Palestine, Iraq, France and the United States.
In June, 1947 a Soviet Armenian delegation arrived in Salonica to supervise the repatriation of about 17,000 more Armenian refugees.45 Early in July, the Soviet ship Pobeda left Beirut carrying 2,230 Armenians from Syria and Lebanon, and on September 7, 2,550 more repatriates embarked on the same ship.46
The first party of 1,600 Armenians from Egypt sailed early in September from Alexandria.47 The Armenian community in Egypt numbers between 30,000 and 35,000. About one-half of this number came as refugees from Turkey during and after the first World War. At least one-third of the total are Egyptian citizens. The community is, on the whole, prosperous, preserves its language and cultural traditions and is one of the most important centers of [63] Armenian national culture. Notwithstanding this rather satisfactory status and despite the fact that “there is no prejudice against them,”48 the urge for repatriation seems to be very strong.
It appears to be even stronger among the 11,000 Armenians in Palestine who are a predominantly urban community of craftsmen and traders. Some of them are prosperous, although they are less important economically than in Egypt. Many families have been settled in Palestine for two hundred years; the rest came as refugees after the first World War.49 Some registered with the Soviet Repatriation Committee for transfer to Soviet Armenia.50 The first group of 1,200, including mostly tradesmen and skilled workers, left late in October, 1947 on the Pobeda. Of these, 640 were from Jerusalem, 250 from Jaffa and 310 from Haifa.51
Their departure was delayed by the late arrival of a group of seven hundred Armenian repatriates from Iraq who were scheduled to leave on the same ship.52 The Armenian colony of Iraq which numbered 6,900 members in 1935, is predominantly an urban trading community. While carefully preserving their language and traditions, they are too few to be able to avoid some measure of assimilation,53 and many of them responded readily to the call for repatriation. Before leaving Baghdad, the seven hundred repatriates issued a statement thanking the Iraqi people for their hospitality and friendship.54
The London Economist (January 11, 1947) aptly points out that the departure of the Armenians from the Arabic-speaking lands “is depriving countries which stand in great need of skilled labor of an industrious and hardworking element that they can ill afford to lose. To wave goodbye to a minority of the type of the Armenians may feel like good politics, but it is bad economics.”
The deep and widespread Armenian longing for national normalcy brought repatriates even from France and the United States to Soviet Armenia. The first group of 3,500 to be repatriated from France embarked on September 5 in the harbor of Marseilles on the [64] Soviet steamer Rossia, transporting with them their furniture and tools.55
On April 21, 1947, the Soviet Embassy in Washington approached the State Department with the request that the American Government “render assistance to those Armenians who desire to return to their motherland by permitting them to leave, export property which belongs to them, relinquish their foreign citizenship, etc.” Replying to this note, the State Department stated on May 28 that “the Government of the United States will interpose no objections to the departure of persons of Armenian origin from the United States to the Soviet Union . . . No exit visas are required, and such emigrants are at liberty to take their personal property with them. American citizens may voluntarily relinquish their American citizenship by making a formal declaration of allegiance to a foreign country in accordance with the laws thereof.”56
Of the approximately 180,000 Armenians in the United States, about one thousand (250 from Boston which has an Armenian-American population of 15,000) registered for repatriation to Soviet Armenia. Among them were native Americans and hundreds who had held United States citizenship for periods of from ten to forty years; some were wealthy and had occupied high positions.57 The first group of 153, mostly from New England states, sailed on November 1, 1947, on the Rossia. According to Szot I. Chepurnykh, Soviet Vice-Consul in New York, all American citizens in the group accepted Soviet citizenship when they agreed to be repatriated. Several of the passengers, however, stated that they retained their American status and would return to the United States if they did not wish to remain in Armenia. There was also a controversy as regards the costs of the passage. The Vice-Consul stated that all expenses of the trip were borne by the Armenian Government, but this was contradicted by Mr. Mgrditch Pragouni, executive secretary of the New York Committee to Aid the Repatriation of Armenians, who insisted that all the repatriates were paying for their own passage.58
[65] The Moscow radio asserted on November 1 that these American Armenians were disillusioned with life in America; some of them were quoted as having complained of unemployment and discrimination. The repatriates themselves, before their departure, issued a statement saying- “America gave us refuge when the Armenian people were on the brink of total extermination following the brutal massacres by the Turks during and following World War I. The democratic institutions of America afforded us an opportunity to build life anew. We did our utmost to serve America well.” The return to Armenia, the statement added, “was impelled by one of the deepest emotions of the human heart–the desire to live and work in the land where for countless generations before us our ancestors have lived, struggled, and brought forth a matchless civilization.”59
4.
At the Black Sea port of Batum, the gateway to their Promised Land, the repatriates received a heartwarming reception from the population. From Batum they proceeded by train to Erevan. On the way, as the train crossed the Armenian boundary line, they were welcomed again with a great pomp and ceremony by officials, farmers, workers and friends. The same warm reception was given them at Erevan. Speeches of welcome were exchanged by representatives of the Government and of the repatriates.60
On their arrival the newcomers were given medical examinations. Nearly 60 per cent were found to be suffering from malaria, trachoma or dysentery. In a short time, dysentery was wiped out, the number of trachoma patients was reduced considerably, and malaria was well under control.
Plans for the permanent housing of the repatriates had been under way long before their arrival. The Government had planned to construct 1,115 new homes within three months in Erevan alone. By January, 1947, 135,000 square meters of living space was to be [66] ready for occupancy. The Five Year Plan of the city of Erevan made provision for the establishment of suburban settlements. Industrial enterprises set about to provide housing facilities for the new workers they expected. Erevan and Arabkir were joined by a wide avenue, to be named after General Bagramian; and nearly all the lots flanking it, as well as those in adjacent districts, were to be available for private homes. The repatriates were granted loans totalling 19,000,000 rubles. Families received credits for home construction from 25,000 rubles, in the case of farmers, to 30,000 rubles, in the case of city dwellers, payable within fifteen years. Transportation facilities, construction materials, and the necessary workers were made available.
Plans had also been made to provide work for the repatriates. All leading industrial enterprises submitted lists of personnel they needed to the Government’s Reception Committee. In Erevan the repatriates were classified according to occupation, interest and background, before being assigned to their new homes and jobs. If not satisfied with the initial assignment, they were free to settle where they pleased.
During the summer of 1946, of the 50,761 repatriates who had arrived in Armenia, 20,000 adults were given jobs in their chosen profession or occupation–for example, tailors, textile loom operators, goldsmiths, metal workers, collective farmers, engineers, teachers, technicians, physicians, artists, etc. Scientists and writers were given work in institutes and foundations. Some were offered responsible positions as managers and executives. There were instances where new jobs were created to meet existing needs and to utilize the talents of workers and specialists.61
The educational facilities of the Republic were put at the disposal of the repatriates. More than six thousand young people entered the schools, many of them to receive instruction in their mother tongue for the first time. About six hundred enrolled in the technical schools. About twelve hundred were accepted in the University of Erevan and the medical, agricultural and teacher’s [67] institutes. The repatriates enjoyed the opportunity given them to study the mother tongue, while being fully relieved from financial cares.
The enrollment of the children gave rise to educational problems, since the teaching methods and curriculum in the Soviet Union differ from those in other countries. To meet these problems, the Armenian Ministry of Education tested the aptitudes of the children concerned. As a result, special classes were instituted for grades 1 through 4. For grades 5 to 7, courses in the Russian language, history, geography, chemistry and the Soviet Constitution were introduced. For grades 8 to 10, there were special evening classes, to enable pupils to complete their secondary education. For students on college level, similar one-year adjustment programs were set up.
The repatriation movement was financed by Armenian communities all over the world, by the Armenian Church and national organizations in Soviet Armenia and other Soviet Republics, and by the Armenian Government. In America, the Armenian General Benevolent Union launched a million dollar campaign, which exceeded its goal, thanks to the support of the League of Armenian Compatriotic Societies, and other constituent organizations and local chapters of the Armenian National Council of America. In Salonica the local repatriation committee resolved that repatriates who were more or less well off financially should participate in the transportation expenses of their less fortunate brethren. It carried through the plan by grading the repatriates according to ability to pay the fare, as follows- those in Category A, 300 Drachmas per person; in Category B, 100 Drachmas per person; in Category C, 50 Drachmas per person; in Category D, free. In Salonica, special effort was devoted to soliciting contributions toward a $50,000 repatriation fund, of which $30,000 had been collected throughout Greece by the fall of 1946.
The small Armenian community of Lyons, France, raised one million francs for the cause the first night of the campaign. Other communities in France raised larger sums.
[68] In Aleppo, Syria, the local chauffeurs offered to help transport repatriates. Those who planned to drive their taxis to Armenia expressed willingness to take along with them as many others as they could accommodate. Those who had no taxis were willing to drive privately owned automobiles free of charge.
Yet as early as August, 1946, the Armenian Bulletin issued by the Armenian National Committee in the United States, stressed that while “until now all the money necessary for the transportation of the refugees has been supplied by the Armenian communities in foreign lands . . . it is now obvious that the money which will be required for the task ahead is beyond the financial means of Armenians abroad. Greater sums and greater facilities for transportation are essential for the success of the enterprise. This can be accomplished by either of two means. The first is by appropriation of a sizeable sum of money for this purpose by the Government of the Armenian Republic. The other method is by means of an international organization which might expedite the transfer of Armenian refugees in the same manner as is now being used for the millions of victims of the war.”
The Government of Soviet Armenia assigned considerable sums for the accommodation of the Armenian resettlers. A credit of 40,000,000 rubles was appropriated for the construction of homes in 1946. Later, the Ministry of Municipal Economy of the Republic earmarked 6,500,000 rubles for the construction of homes in 1947.
Particularly generous was the response of the Armenian national institutions and of the Armenian population. The Catholicos, George VI, diverted the use of the building fund of the Cathedral of Echmiadzin to aid the return of his “beloved children.” The people in the rural districts and in the cities inaugurated drives of their own. The collective farmers of the Artashat District were the first to respond. They asked each worker to subscribe from four to five days wages, and each collective farmer to contribute a definite sum from his savings. In forty-four villages of this District and the District Center, over a million rubles were collected in a [69] very short time; 569 rooms were found that could be put at the disposal of the arriving repatriates; and the construction of new homes was begun. The Artachat peasants then extended a call to their fellow-citizens in the Republic at large to do their share in the common cause and received the unstinted support of the people all over Armenia. On the collective farms and the machine and tractor stations in the Amassia District, 211,000 rubles were collected on the opening day of the campaign. In the village of Kishlagh, the collective farmers raised 140,000 rubles in one hour’s time. In the Nor Bayazet District, they raised 500,000 rubles in one day. In the cities, workers turned in weekly salaries to the Repatriation Fund. In Erevan, in the Stalin District, they contributed 1,255,000 rubles; in the Mototov District, 1,200,400 rubles; in the Kirov District, 1,028,812 rubles; and in the Spandarian District, 500,000 rubles. Each worker of the Erevan Flour Mills donated the equivalent of five to fifteen days wages.
There is little non-Soviet information regarding the installation of the repatriates in Soviet Armenia, According to the usually well-informed London Economist, it appears “that the conditions they (the repatriates) are encountering are not at all what some of them expected. After the easy-going life of Cairo or Damascus it is a shock to encounter the shortages and difficulties that are the lot of the Russians today.” But, the Economist admits, “the newcomers see around them the promise of educational and medical facilities far beyond anything the Middle East had to offer. What matters if, for the moment, the grant for a house is valueless because there are no building materials for the money to buy?”62
In the course of 1946-47, some 110,000 Armenians were transferred from ten countries (Iran, Lebanon, Syria, Palestine, Iraq, Egypt, Greece, Bulgaria, France, the United States of America) to Soviet Armenia. This is in itself a very appreciable achievement, particularly in view of the complexity of the political, psychological and practical problems involved. But the number of repatriated Armenians represents only some 11 per cent of the Armenian diaspora, [70] and the results so far attained must be considered merely the promising commencement of a larger project.
It is too early to pronounce definite judgement on the prospects of the whole scheme. Much depends on the progress of the resettlement of the first groups of repatriates. It is not quite clear as yet whether Soviet Armenia in its present boundaries is in a position to absorb many hundreds of thousands of new settlers, and whether the Soviet Government is ready to continue its present repatriation policy without hopes of territorial expansion. If, however, the repatriation action is carried out successfully, it will solve one of the world’s most intricate and pathetic minority problems.
The Abortive Assyrian Transfer
On June 17, 1948, in the British House of Commons, Mr. Skeffington-Lodge raised the matter of the Christian communities in the Moslem Middle East. These age-old Christian minorities, said the outspoken Member of Parliament, “live dangerously; they live almost as the Christians of the pre-Christian Roman Empire lived.” In Iraq, “Moslems are denouncing and speaking of Christians, who are their neighbors, in terms which the German Nazis reserved only for the Jews.” But, added Mr. Skeffington-Lodge, no section among the Christian communities in the Middle East “is in greater risk and danger at the present time than that body known as the Assyrian Christians . . . they are facing virtual annihilation.”63
The British M.P. did not exaggerate.
The Assyrians are Christians. Their Church is one of the oldest 2nd most aristocratic in Christendom. Centuries ago they were a great and advanced people of about forty million whose contribution to science and culture was numerous and valuable. Assyrian [71] historians stress that at the dawn of the Middle Ages the services rendered by the Assyrian (Nestorian) Church to the propagation of Christianity, education and enlightenment throughout the continent of Asia were unsurpassed.
Of this ancient glory little has remained. Centuries of dispersion and persecution reduced the Assyrian people to insignificance. The Assyrians were truly described by the Information Section of the League of Nations as a “Nation-Church” bearing “the shadowy heritage of the ancient name of Assyrians.”64 At the outbreak of World War I their number was estimated at 155,000, comprising three main groups- 80,000 inhabited the Tigris valley in what is now Iraq, 35,000 lived in Persian Azerbaijan; and 40,000 in the Hakkiari mountains in the vicinity of the frontiers between Turkey, Russia and Persia.65 When Turkey entered the war in November 1914, both the Turks and the Russians bid for the support of the Hakkiari Assyrians. In the spring of 1915 the Assyrians decided to join the Allies. In spite of their courage and fighting spirit, they were driven by the Turkish forces from their mountain homes. Some forty thousand took refuge in Persia at the end of 1915. Together with the Persian Assyrians they fought on the side of the Russians until the Russian front collapsed. In the summer of 1918 the seventy thousand Persian and Hakkiari Assyrians had no alternative but to retreat toward the British forces in Mesopotamia. Moving three hundred miles southeastward with their families, livestock, and possessions, they suffered from perpetual attacks by the Turks, Kurds, and Persians. Fewer than fifty thousand ultimately reached the British garrison in Hamadan.
Later, some of the Persian refugees returned to their villages. But the Hakkiari mountain tribes numbering some 15,000 persons remained in Iraq. The Hakkiari district was assigned to Turkey by the League of Nations in 1925, and the Kemalist Government barred the repatriation of the tribes.66
It became necessary to face the prospect of establishing a “permanent home” for more than twenty thousand Assyrians scattered [72] over the Iraqi province of Mosul. However, no place for their resettlement was found within the boundaries of Iraq. The failure of all the resettlement schemes considered can certainly not be ascribed to the scarcity of Iraq’s land resources. Iraq is one of the most underpopulated countries in the world. Its area is 140,000 square miles and its population in 1920 did not exceed 2,850,000. The real cause of the failure of all attempts to settle the Assyrians in Iraq in a single homogeneous community was cautiously and en passant described by the League of Nations Information Section as “ill-feeling between certain sections of the Arab population and this [Assyrian] small Christian minority, the greater part of which was not indigenous to the country.”67 The idea of a closed Assyrian settlement in Iraq was abandoned.
The alternative solution–individual absorption of the Assyrians into the Iraqi population, their religious freedom being maintained–was frustrated by the Anglo-Iraq treaty of June 30, 1930, which provided for the surrender by Great Britain of the Iraq Mandate and for independence of Iraq. This new development created much anxiety among the Assyrians, who were well aware of the dangers awaiting ethnic and religious minorities in an independent Arab state. In October, 1931 Assyrian petitions, presented to the League of Nations, stated that “it will be impossible for them [the Assyrians] to live in Iraq after the withdrawal of the [British] Mandate.” They therefore asked that arrangements be made for the transfer of the Assyrians in Iraq to a country under the rule of the Western nations, or, if this were not possible, to Syria.68 The Iraqi declaration in May 1932, including guarantees for the protection of minorities, had by no means dissipated their apprehensions. In 1932, when Iraq became a member of the League of Nations, the League’s Council had before it petitions from the Assyrians asking that they be either transferred or settled in Iraq in a compact community possessing local autonomy. The Council adopted the view that the demand for administrative autonomy [73] within Iraq could not be accepted; no territory for a compact community of Assyrians in Iraq was made available.69
Disappointed at the results of their representations, some eight hundred men, leaving their families behind, crossed the Syrian border on July 22, 1933, in the belief that the French authorities would provide them with land. They were, however, ordered by the French to return to Iraq. After they recrossed the frontier, a clash with local detachments of the Iraqi Army occurred. Many of the Assyrians were killed and wounded. Some 550 took refuge in Syria, where they were interned by the French authorities. As a result of this incident, passions were inflamed on both sides. A violent agitation convulsed Iraq. It culminated in the wholesale massacre of Assyrian men in Simmel on August 11, 1933, while in sixty neighboring villages robbing and looting continued during the following days. Lieutenant Colonel A.S. Stafford, British Administrative Inspector in Iraq, gives a blood-curdling eye-witness account of the Simmel massacre- “Machine gunners set up their guns outside the windows of the houses in which the Assyrians had taken refuge, and . . . fired among them until not a man was left standing in the shambles.”70 Women were ripped open with knives and then made sport of while they were in a state of agony. Little girls of nine were raped and burned alive. The survivors, some 1,500, mostly women and children, were sent by the Iraqi Government to a camp at Mosul.71
2.
These tragic events convinced all the parties involved that the Assyrian problem in Iraq was beyond local remedy. The Iraqi Government impressed upon the Council of the League of Nations that it was essential to provide a new home for those Assyrians “who wished to leave or were unable peaceably to be incorporated into the Iraqi State.”72 The Council was unanimously of the same opinion. On September 15, 1933 it set up a Committee of Six to [74] prepare a scheme for transfer and permanent settlement of the Iraqi Assyrian community.
“From October 1933 to the middle of 1935,” reports an information publication of the League of Nations, “the Committee searched the world for a suitable place in which to settle the Assyrian people, and there is not a continent in which it did not consider possibilities.”73 Investigation commissions were sent to the state of Parana in Brazil and to British Guiana. The Parana report was favorable, but the project had to be abandoned owing to the adoption by the Brazilian Parliament of a law restricting immigration. The investigation in British Guiana led to the conclusion that it is “more than doubtful whether the Assyrians could be settled there on a sufficiently large scale.”74
The Committee, therefore, concentrated its attention on the possibilities of transfer and settlement of the Assyrians in Syria, where a precedent had already been established in 1934 when the 550 Assyrians, who had taken refuge there in August 1933, were settled provisionally in the valley of Upper Khabur. There was a further influx, and by September 1935 some six thousand Assyrians were living in the Khabur area; they were rapidly becoming self-supporting as regards the more important foodstuffs.75
Both Turkey and Iraq were, however, averse to the mass settlement of Assyrians in Khabur which was in proximity to their frontiers. The French authorities finally agreed to allow the permanent establishment of the Assyrians (not only of those who had been provisionally settled in Khabur, but also of those who had remained in Iraq and wished to settle elsewhere) in the sparsely populated and marshy Ghab plain in the Alaouite territory. This area had the advantage of being remote from the Turkish and Iraqi frontiers, while the immediate neighbors of the prospective Assyrian settlers were Christian groups. It was also stressed that the administrative authority to which they would be ultimately subject was the separate state of Latakia, administered by a French Governor and inhabited almost exclusively by non-Moslem groups. Some 24,000 [75] Assyrians then in the Mosul area–even those who had property and did not complain of conditions–expressed the unconditional wish to leave for the Ghab “without asking for any details of their future settlement.” Similar results were registered at Kirkuk and Baghdad. The Assyrians were ready to go. The Iraqi Government was ready to let them go and even offered a contribution of £125,000 (3500,000), calculated on a basis of £10 for every Assyrian leaving Iraq up to 12,500 persons.76 Later it doubled this offer.77 The cost of the whole Ghab settlement scheme was calculated at £1,075,000 ($4,300,000), of which some £937,000 were secured by contributions promised by the French, British and Iraqi Governments, as well as by the League of Nations.78
The Information Section of the League of Nations hopefully stated early in 1935 that the League “has now initiated and helped to finance a scheme for their (Assyrian) transfer from Iraq and settlement in the Levant states–a work of humanity and appeasement.”79 The Khabur settlement was considered a temporary expedient, pending the completion of the Ghab scheme.
The situation, however, completely and abruptly changed in the spring of 1935, when the French announced their decision to apply for the termination of the French Mandate in Syria.80 In view of the growing nationalist feeling among the Syrian Arabs, who bitterly opposed the establishment of another Christian minority in the country, the prospects for successful settlement of the Assyrians in the Ghab area were practically eliminated.
The League’s Committee for the settlement of Assyrians was thus forced to recommend to the Council the definite abandonment of the Ghab scheme. On July 4, 1936, the Council approved this recommendation. It instructed the Committee to study the possibilities of “settlement elsewhere than in Iraq of the Assyrians of Iraq who still wished to leave that country.” But all these studies and investigations proved fruitless. The Committee, therefore, reached the definite conclusion that the settlement outside of Iraq of those Assyrians who still remained there did not at that time [76] seem to be practicable. It stated further that it was impossible to arrange for the transfer of the 8,800 Assyrians settled in the Khabur valley or in Syria.81
Thus, the transfer of Assyrians reached a blind alley. The League of Nations Council failed in its efforts to secure the settlement of some 25,000 to 30,000 Assyrians who had since 1919 been the object of international interest and attention. Admitting its failure, the Resettlement Committee decided that the Assyrians who remained in Iraq would “have to continue to reside in Iraq,” and the Committee would “not be called to deal with them; these Assyrians should, as far as possible, become incorporated in the Iraqi population as ordinary citizens of the Iraqi State.”82 The League’s Council took note of the vague declaration of the Iraqi Foreign Minister that the Assyrian community in Iraq will “enjoy the benefits of the declaration on the protection of minorities signed by the Iraqi Government . . . on May 19, 1932.”83
3.
It was very easy for the League of Nations’ Resettlement Committee to decree that the Assyrians should “become incorporated in the Iraqi population.” The implementation of this pious recommendation proved to be much more complicated. All students of Middle Eastern affairs are unanimous in stating that there is deep hatred and distrust between the Assyrian people and the Iraqi Moslem Arabs. This bad feeling increased in intensity after the outbreak of World War II. The Iraqi Arabs, like the Arabs in Syria, Egypt, Palestine and elsewhere, did not expect the Allies’ victory and were completely pro-Axis. Brigadier Glubb, the Commander of the Transjordan Arab Legion, openly admits that in the whole Middle East, from Libya to the Indian border, “every Arab was convinced that we were done for . . . Every Arab force previously organized by us mutinied and refused to fight for us, or faded away in desertion.”84
[77] The Assyrians, like the Jews, took a diametrically different attitude. They staked their all on an Allied victory, and they acted accordingly. In Iran they placed at the disposal of the Allied Powers a large number of efficient and reliable transport workers for transportation of American lend-lease goods to Soviet Russia. When the German armies stood at the gates of the Caucasus, thousands of Assyrians volunteered to join the Red Army and to play their part in stemming the German advance. And in Iraq they enthusiastically responded to the appeal of the British authorities and voluntarily joined the Royal Air Force ground forces at the meager pay of three pounds a month. They guarded airdromes, ammunition dumps and other important war materials, as well as lines of communication in the Middle and Near Eastern countries, among a deeply hostile Arab population. They also took an active part in the Mediterranean and Southern European theaters of war.
This attitude earned the Assyrians the violent hatred of the Iraqi Arab nationalists. This hatred came to a climax during the notorious pro-Axis coup organized in May, 1941 by the government of Rashid Ali al Gailani in Baghdad. It is generally conceded that Assyrian Levies, numbering about eight hundred, bore the brunt of the attack by an 18,000 strong Iraqi Army against the British-held Habbaniya airfield, and, together with small Jewish units from Palestine, saved that highly strategic point of British resistance. Thereby they averted a major catastrophe to the Allied position in the entire Middle East at a time when the Reich’s fortunes were at their highest point. The defeat of the anti-British rebellion was enthusiastically greeted by the Jews and the Assyrians. An anti-Jewish pogrom followed instantly, and some five hundred Jews were killed. Heavy losses inflicted by the Assyrian Levies on the Iraqi Army when the latter attacked Habbaniya were also not forgotten. The families of the dead Iraqi soldiers developed a violent personal grudge against the Assyrians and did not conceal their grim determination to pay off as soon as an opportunity presented itself.
[78] The situation became increasingly unbearable. After the announcement of the withdrawal of British troops from Iraq, the Assyrians lived in permanent fear of physical extermination. Some of them are still in the employment, and on the payroll, of the British Air Force. But this does not in the least alleviate their apprehensions. They are unanimous in their desire to be transferred to some Christian country where they will be able to live in safety. In the early autumn of 1944, they began an underground action for a unified representation to set their case before the world. Fearing Arab or British interference, they kept their plans secret and placed all their faith in the United States of America. They sincerely believe that the services they rendered the Allies during the first and second World Wars and their sacrifices for the Allied cause entitle them to appropriate representation among the United Nations. They demand that the Assyrian question be placed on the agenda of all United Nations’ conferences and they are confident that the victorious democracies “will find them a place to settle somewhere in the world.” An Assyrian delegation headed by Patriarch Mar Eshai Shimun XXIII came to the United Nations Conference at San Francisco and petitioned for “living space for the surviving Assyrians.” But they failed in their efforts to enlist the support of the Conference. Nor were they successful in making the headlines in the press, despite a case the merits of which no one can gainsay. At San Francisco the representatives of a small, poor and homeless people were scarcely noticed.
Later attempts by the Patriarch Eshai Shimun to draw attention to the fate of his people, proved no more successful.
On May 17, 1946, he presented to the U.N. Secretary General a memorandum on a “well-planned systematic persecution in the form of massacre, conducted by certain units of the Iranian military forces against the Assyrian Christians in the district of Rezaleh, Iran.” Five months later, on October 17th, he was informed that his communication “will be referred to the Commission of Human Rights for the information of its members when the Commission [79] next convenes.”85 The Patriarch’s appeal was buried in the archives of the Commission.
A year later, the Patriarch once again asked the United Nations for an investigation of the plight of Assyrians in Iran and Iraq, where, he said in his petition, the “Assyrian and other peoples were sacrificed on the altar of oil,” massacred and subjected to systematic persecution. Twenty-four Assyrian villages, the petition charged, were wholly or partially looted and burned in the Iranian province of Azerbaijan during the month of December, 1946, and some hundreds of Assyrians were brutally slaughtered by Iranian forces under Colonel Sarhang Zanghanai. Assyrian priests were cut to pieces, women and little girls were raped or paraded nude on the streets, numerous men tortured to death. “If a repetition of these tragic events is to be prevented,” insisted Patriarch Shimun, “the Assyrian question as a whole must be taken under the immediate consideration of the United Nations with a view to finding a lasting solution to the problem as a whole.”86
This appeal, too, remained unanswered. The United Nations has done as little for the Assyrian people as the defunct League of Nations in its time.
Even more strikingly, perhaps, the British Empire, which is so much indebted to the Assyrians, has manifested no willingness at all to help them. Replying to the interpellation by Mr. Skeffington-Lodge, Mr. McNeil openly told the House of Commons on behalf of the British Labor Government that “there can be no question” of resettling the Assyrians under the groundnuts scheme in the British-controlled territory of Tanganyika. While acknowledging the failure of the Assyrian attempt “to become good Iraqis,” Mr. McNeil declared- “When we have upon our hands so many desperate problems of resettlement of victims whose state is even more precarious and desperate, it is obvious to everyone in the House that it would be rash, and even dishonest, to say that I see any obvious opportunity of resettlement . . .”
The valiant Assyrians, heirs to a great civilization, fighting allies [80] of the western democracies, are thus, in the words of Patriarch Shimun, “being repaid for their loyalty by a series of broken promises and eleven massacres since 1914 . . . They are the innocent victims of power politics and their case constitutes the most glaring example of broken pledges and shameful betrayal.” Their case constitutes, as well, one of the most pathetic examples of the acute need for a solution based on population transfer.
NOTES TO CHAPTER II.
1. Simon Vratzian, Armenia and the Armenian Question, Boston, 1943, p. 162
2. S. Sulkewich, Territoria i naseleniye USSR, Moscow, 1930
3. E. Z. Volkov, Dinamika Narodonaseleniya SSR za 80 let, Moscow, 1930, pp. 35, 69, 73, 86, 92, 98
4. Sir John Hope Simpson, The Refugee Problem, London, 1939, pp. 36-37
5. USSR Census, 1926, Vol. 48, pp. 62-63.
6. V. Quisling, “Notes on recent arrivals of Armenian refugees in Armenia (1925),” Scheme for the Settlement of Armenian Refugees (League of Nations C. 699, M. 264, 1926, IV) p. 62
7. Simpson, l.c., Some of the groups who have settled in Soviet Armenia have built towns and villages of their own through the financial assistance of their compatriots in the United States, and gave them the names of cities in Turkish Asia Minor from which they originally came–for instance, New Sebastia, New Arapkir, etc. G.H. Pallian, Landmarks in Armenian History, New York, 1942, p. 86.
8. Simpson, op. cit., p. 558.
9. Scheme for the Settlement of Armenian Refugees, League of Nations, Doc, C. 669, M. 264, 1926, IV (1927). Also- Simpson, op. cit., p. 36
10. L. L. Lorwin, “International Economic Development; Public Works and Other Problems,” NRPB Technical Paper, No. 7 (1942), p. 59
11. A.H. Hourani, Minorities in the Arab World, London-Toronto-New York, 1947, p. 37
12. Letter to the New York Times (November 22, 1947) by Armin Alighanian, Chairman of the Armenian National Committee
13. Jewish Agency Digest of Press and Events, Jerusalem, October 26, 1947
14. According to the 1933 census, they have an average population of 10.5 per sq. km.
15. Vratzian, op. cit., p. 102-103
16. Armenian National Committee, A Memorandum Relating to the Armenian Question (April 1945)
[81] 17. The Case of the Armenian People. Memorandum to the United Nations Conference on International Organization in San Francisco, New York 1945
18. Soviet Home Service, July 22, 1945
19. Baikar (Boston Armenian daily), January 4, 1946.–(The figure of 1 ½ million is obviously an exaggeration.)
20. Lraper (New York Armenian tri-weekly), January 24, 1946
21. Hairenik (Boston Armenian daily), March 14, 1946; Baikar, March 9, 1946, Lraper, March 7, 1946
22. Published in Hairenik, March 1, 1946
23. Letter to Mr. Trygve Lee, Secretary General of the United Nations, by the Conference of Armenian Compatriotic Societies (May 3, 1946)
24. Rev. Charles Vertanes, “Lo, A Dispersed People Returns to Its Homeland” in Land and Life, March, 1947
25. Pravda, December 2, 1945
26. Vertanes, op. cit.
27. Armenian Bulletin, August 1946
28. Vertanes, op. cit.–According to the London Economist (January 11, 1947) the patriarch of the small Catholic Armenian community (the overwhelming majority of Armenians belong to the autonomous Armenian Orthodox Church) took a stand against repatriation because, he said, the Soviet Government demands severance of all relations with the Holy See.
29. William S. Haas, Iran, New York, 1946, p. 172
30. The Economist, London, January 11, 1947
31. Vertanes, loc. cit.
32. Letter to Mr. Trygve Lee
33. New York Times, June 11, 1947
34. Armenian Bulletin, August 1946
35. Ibid.
36. Hourani, op. cit., pp. 66-67, 84
37. Armenian Bulletin, August 1946
38. G. Devejian, “Beirut-Damascus (Travel Notes)” in New York Times, Moscow, Dec. 17, 1947
39. Istatistik Villigi, vol. XVI, 1942-43, pp. 47-48
40. Vertanes, op. cit.
41. New York Times, January 2, 1946
42. The Jewish Agency Digest, loc. cit.
43. Vertanes, op. cit.
44. The Jewish Agency Digest, l.c.
45. New York Times, June 11, 1946
46. Soviet News, July 9, September 10, 1947
47. Ibid., September 10, 1947
48. Hourani, op. cit., p. 49
[82] 49. Jewish Agency Digest, October 26, 1947
50. New York Times, October 20, 1947
51. Jewish Agency Digest, op. cit.
52. Ibid.
53. Hourani, op. cit., p. 103
54. Jewish Agency Digest, loc. cit.
55. Le Monde, September 7/8, 1947
56. New York Times, December 5, 1947
57. Ibid., October 31, 1947
58. New York Herald Tribune, November 2, 1947
59. Ibid.
60. The following description of the resettlement of the repatriates in Soviet Armenia is based on the unqualifiedly enthusiastic but fundamentally reliable report of Rev. Charles Vertanes in Land and Life (March 1947)
61. Erevan newspapers have, however, complained that the Ar