Armenian victims of the Great Purge

In the 1920s, the private property of the church was confiscated and priests were harassed. Soviet assaults against the Armenian Church accelerated under Stalin, beginning in 1929, but momentarily eased in the following years to improve the country's relations with the Armenian diaspora. In 1932, Khoren I became Catholicos of All Armenians and assumed the leadership of the church. However, in the late 1930s, the Soviets renewed their attacks against Church,[2] culminating with his murder in 1938 as part of the Great Purge, and the closing of the Catholicate of Echmiatsin on August 4, 1938. The Church however survived underground and in the diaspora.[3]

The Great Purge was a series of campaigns of political repression and persecution in the Soviet Union orchestrated against members of the Communist Party, the peasantry, writers and intellectuals, and other unaffiliated persons. In September 1937 Stalin dispatched Anastas Mikoyan, along with Georgy Malenkov and Lavrentiy Beria, with a list of 300 names to Yerevan to oversee the liquidation of the Communist Party of Armenia (CPA), which was largely made up of Old Bolsheviks. Armenian communist leaders such as Vagharshak Ter-Vahanyan and Aghasi Khanjian fell victim to the purge, the former being a defendant at the first of the Moscow Show Trials. Mikoyan tried, but failed, to save one from being executed during his trip to Armenia. That person was arrested during one of his speeches to the CPA by Beria. Over a thousand people were arrested and seven of nine members of the Armenian Politburo were sacked from office.[4]

As with various other ethnic minorities who lived in the Soviet Union under Stalin, tens of thousands of Armenians were executed and deported. In 1936, Beria and Stalin worked to deport Armenians to Siberia in an attempt to bring Armenia's population under 700,000 in order to justify an annexation into Georgia.[3] Only in that year, around 25,000 Armenians were deported, and in 1948-1949 more than 200,000 more people suffered the same fate, many of whom died in exile.[5] Under Beria's command, police terror was used to strengthen the party's political hold on the population and suppress all expressions of nationalism. Many writers, artists, scientists and political leaders were executed or forced into exile.

Below is the incomplete list of Great Purge victims from the Armenian SSR or other Soviet people of ethnic Armenian origin.

Execution date & location	Person		Occupation	Rehabilitated?
9 July 1936[6] in Tiflis[6]	Aghasi Khanjian		First Secretary of the Communist Party of Armenia 1930-1936
25 August 1936[7] in Moscow[7]	Vagarshak Ter-Vaganyan		Bolshevik revolutionary
8 July 1937[8]	Axel Bakunts		Writer
21 August 1937[9]	Sahak Ter-Gabrielyan		Bolshevik revolutionary
September 1937[10]	Sarkis Kasyan		Bolshevik revolutionary[11]
20 September 1937[12]	Lev Karakhan		Bolshevik revolutionary
22 November 1937[13]	Movses Silikyan		Military commander in the Russian and Armenian armies
27 November 1937[14] in Yerevan prison hospital	Yeghishe Charents		Poet, "the main Armenian poet of the 20th century"[15]	11 March 1954[16]
27 November 1937[17]	Ruben Rubenov		Politician, First Secretary of the Communist Party of Azerbaijan 1933
10 December 1937[18]	Christophor Araratov		Military commander in the Russian and Armenian armies
11 December 1937[19] in Moscow	Hayk Bzhishkyan		Bolshevik revolutionary, military commander	1956
1937	Sargis Lukashin		Politician, the Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of Armenia from 1922 to 1925
19 March 1938[20]	Ashkharbek Kalantar		Archaeologist
6 April 1938[21] by NKVD[22]	Khoren I		Head of the Armenian Church
21 April 1938[23]	Suren Shadunts		Politician, First Secretary of the Communist Party of Tajikistan 1934-1937
18 July 1938[24][25]	Vahan Totovents		Writer
1 August 1938[26]	Alexander Bekzadyan		Soviet politician	1956
1938[27]	Hovhannes Katchaznouni		Former Dashnak politician, Prime Minister of Armenia 1918-19
26 February 1939[28][29]	Levon Mirzoyan		Politician, First Secretary of the Communist Party of Azerbaijan 1926-29, First Secretary of Kazakh Communist Party 1937-38
1943[30]	Zabel Yesayan		Novelist

Bibliography

• Manoukian, A.S. "Հայաստանի հասարակական-քաղաքական գործիչները ստալինյան բռնությունների տարիներին [Armenian public-political figures in the years of Stalin repressions]". Lraber Hasarakakan Gitutyunneri (in Armenian) (1): 27–41.
• Walker, Christopher J. (1990). Armenia: The Survival of a Nation (revised second ed.). New York: St. Martin's Press. ISBN 978-0-312-04230-1.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)