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Contested Memories, Divided Diaspora: Armenian Americans, the Thousand-day Republic, and the Polarized Response to an Archbishop's Murder
BEN ALEXANDER
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ON DECEMBER 24, 1933, at the Holy Cross Armenian Apostolic Church (which still stands and functions today) in the Washington Heights section of New York City, Archbishop Levon Tourian, elected primate of the Eastern Diocese of the Armenian Apostolic Church of America, marched in solemn procession, opening the morning's service of Divine Liturgy over which he was to officiate. As the procession made its way down the center aisle, a group of men suddenly jumped up from the pews, surrounded Archbishop Tourian, and stabbed him to death with a large butcher knife. The room instantly broke into pandemonium. Parishioners began beating up some of the apparent assassins, while others among them fled. The police arrived shortly and arrested two men; by the end of the week they had a total of nine in custody. The suspects all belonged to a political organization known as the Armenian Revolutionary Federation, or Tashnag party (alternatively transliterated as Dashnag and Dashnak). They stood trial and were convicted early that summer. Throughout this saga, Armenians followed every development of the proceedings with great interest and with intense convictions as to the rightful outcome. But these convictions divided them sharply, for throughout the whole affair—and then for decades to follow—one set of Armenians considered the nine Tashnag suspects, and by extension the Tashnag party at large, unequivocally guilty of the crime. The opposing camp believed with equal fervor in the innocence of the nine. They also, and perhaps with even greater fervor, regarded Archbishop Tourian as a traitor to his nation.1 |
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The deed that caused Tashnag Armenians so to regard the archbishop had taken place on July 1 of that year, in a pavilion for the celebration of Armenian Day at the Century of Progress Exposition in Chicago. Archbishop Tourian, upon his arrival to deliver an invocation, had ordered the removal of a red, blue, and orange flag known as the Tricolor from the stage before he would step out on it. From the archbishop's stated point of view, appearing beside this flag would provoke the wrath of Armenia's Soviet government. Such diplomatic reasoning had total validity for the primate's supporters. For one thing, they accepted the situation wherein the church's ultimate seat of spiritual authority still lay in the Holy See at Echmiadzin, within the borders of Soviet Armenia; the Catholicos at Echmiadzin felt bound to keep peace with Soviet authorities, and Archbishop Tourian maintained a consistent loyalty to the Catholicos. Moreover, for those Armenians who held the most love for Archbishop Tourian, the flag in question held at best little or no significance. To Armenians of the Tashnag persuasion, however, the flag had paramount significance, and to order it taken down constituted an unforgivable act of treason. The Tricolor had served as the emblem of the short-lived Republic of Armenia, which existed from May of 1918 to November of 1920 in the eastern portion of the historic homeland, on soil that had been part of czarist Russia prior to the 1917 revolution. Tashnag Armenians remembered the republic as embodying the vision of a free and independent Armenia and looked upon the flag as the sacred symbol of the Armenian nation. During those same years, to non-Tashnag Armenians, that republic fell far short of personifying the Armenian nation; they viewed a completely different set of players as holding the key to their beleaguered homeland's future. The contested memories from 1918–20 played a direct and decisive role in shaping the conflicting responses to the events of 1933–34.2 |
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