Categories: History

From A Letter By Hovhannes Tumanyan To Avetik Isahakyan

“I don’t want and cannot write long and in detail about our country, your inquiry notwithstanding. I’ll write to you briefly. We have destroyed our country from within and from without. Mostly we.

I say ‘we’, and it is true. Some are interfering scoundrel, some are thieves and robbers, and some – the helpless and unfortunate. And no crowd – not even the smallest group of people – exhibited a reviving spirit and moral vigor.

Among so many calamities and defeats, we didn’t see the perpetrators – no one was held responsible, no one answered for it. And it goes on. With the same people and via the same routes.

And not even one of them committed suicide, which would have proven the existence of shame and conscience in these people. But what am I saying? They didn’t even bother to grieve, or pretend that they are grieving.”

December 9, 1921, Polis-Venice.

Source: Հովհաննես Թումանյան

Vigen Avetisyan

Recent Posts

Hayravank Monastery: The “Father Monastery” of Lake Sevan and the Legend of the Doves

On a rocky promontory above the southwestern shore of Lake Sevan, at an elevation of…

10 hours ago

Scythian Ceremonial Swords and the Art of the Van Kingdom (Urartu)

Among the most arresting objects to survive from the Early Iron Age Near East are…

3 days ago

Abandoned by an Ally: The French Armenian Legion in Cilicia and the Road to the Smyrna Catastrophe

How a promise made to genocide survivors was traded away for peace with Ankara —…

6 days ago

The Vilgort Cup: A Silver Masterpiece of Cilician Armenia (c. 1150–1159 A.D.)

A Fragment That Traveled Across Continents The gilt-silver medallion shown above — two richly dressed…

1 week ago

Hannibal and Artaxias the Great: The Carthaginian General Who Helped Build the “Armenian Carthage”

Few episodes in ancient Armenian history capture the imagination quite like the tradition that Hannibal…

2 weeks ago

The Priestess of the Kingdom of Van: A 9th-Century BC Bronze Figurine in the British Museum

Five angles of one small bronze figure — and what emerges is not an abstract…

3 weeks ago