Aghasi Khanjian

Aghasi Ghevondi Khanjyan (Armenian: Աղասի Ղևոնդի Խանջյան; Russian: Агаси Гевондович Ханджян, Agasi Gevondovich Khandzhyan) (January 30, 1901 – July 6, 1936) was First Secretary of the Communist Party of Armenia from May 1930 to July 1936.[1]

Aghasi Khanjyan
Khanjyan in 1934
First Secretary of the Communist Party of Armenia
In office May 1930 – 6 July 1936
Preceded by	Haykaz Kostanyan
Succeeded by	Amatuni Vartapetyan
Personal details
Born	January 30, 1901 Van, Ottoman Empire
Died	July 6, 1936 (aged 35) Tiflis, Georgian SSR, Soviet Union
Political party	Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks) (1919–1936)

Biography

Khanjyan was born in the city of Van, Ottoman Empire (today eastern Turkey).[2] With the onslaught of the Armenian Genocide, his family emigrated from the city in 1915 and settled in Russian Armenia.[1][3] In 1917–19, he was one of the organizers of Spartak, the Marxist students' union of Armenia. He later served as the secretary of the Armenian Bolshevik underground committee.[3]

Nestor Lakoba, Nikita Khrushchev, Lavrenti Beria and Aghasi Khanjyan at the opening of the Moscow Metro in 1936, the same year Khanjyan and Lakoba were killed on Beria's orders. In 1953, Khrushchev had Beria executed.

In 1920, Khanjyan became first secretary of the Yerevan City Committee of the Communist Party of Armenia and in 1930, the first secretary of the Armenian Communist Party.[3] He proved to be a charismatic Soviet politician and was very popular among the Armenian populace.[1] He was a friend and supporter of many Armenian intellectuals, including Yeghishe Charents (who dedicated a poem to him), Axel Bakunts and Gurgen Mahari.[3] Khanjyan also tried unsuccessfully to have Moscow annex Nagorno-Karabakh to Armenia.[4] He was arrested in 1936 and died while being interrogated.[5] Ronald Grigor Suny describes the circumstances of his death as follows:

But by the mid-1930s Khanjyan had come into conflict with the most powerful party leader in Transcaucasia, Lavrenti Beria, a Georgian close to Stalin. Early in July 1936 Khanjyan was called to Tiflis. Suddenly and unexpectedly it was announced that the Armenian party chief had committed suicide.[2] Though the circumstances of his death are murky, it is believed that Beria had ordered Khanjyan's death to remove a threat to his own monopoly of power.[6]

According to Robert Conquest, Khanjyan was shot by Beria when he visited the latter's office.[7]

Along with an entire generation of intellectual Armenian communist leaders (such as Vagarshak Ter-Vaganyan), Khanjyan was denounced as an enemy of the people during the Great Purge.[1]

Khanjyan was officially rehabilitated after the death of Joseph Stalin.

Aghasi Khanjyan's commemorative plaque in Yerevan

See also

• Armenian SSR
• Vagarshak Arutyunovich Ter-Vaganyan

References

1. Zev Katz, Rosemarie Rogers, Frederic Harned. Handbook of Major Soviet Nationalities. New York: Free Press, 1975, pp. 146-47.
2. Suny 1993, p. 156.
3. (in Russian) Great Soviet Encyclopedia. Aghasi Khanjian
4. Armenian History: History of Artsakh, Part 2, Yuri Babayan
5. Khronos biography.
6. Ronald Grigor Suny, "Soviet Armenia", The Armenian People From Ancient to Modern Times, Volume II: Foreign Dominion to Statehood: The Fifteenth Century to the Twentieth Century, ed. Richard G. Hovannisian. New York: St Martin's Press, 1997, p. 362.
7. Robert Conquest, The Great Terror: A Reassessment. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008, p. 225.

Sources

• Suny, Ronald Grigor (1993). Looking Toward Ararat: Armenia in Modern History. Indiana University Press. ISBN 978-0253207739. Aghasi Khanjyan born in van.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)