In one of the most crucial moments of Armenian history when the Turks and Bolsheviks conspired against the very existence of the Armenian people, heroic Syunik – like a fairy titan – put one hand over his native mountains to protect them from the enemy and the other hand over the Araks River to protect thousands of Armenians crossing it to escape to Persia.
In our mountainous region, the Red Army met the strong Armenian resistance of a magnitude unseen in Russia. Losing tens of thousands of soldiers, the Russians retreated.
For an entire year, Syunik – with a heroism so rare in our days – mocked the Transcaucasian forces of Moscow, inflicting the most serious damage to them, provoking them to attack, and leaving them in shame.
In the spring of 1921, the Armenian Tricolor still fluttered over our mountainous land. At dawn on May 28, squads and thousands of people from Zangezur, Tatev, and Karabakh descended from the mountains with songs and music to the capital of Syunik.
The martial Armenians of the region, grieving over the fate of the Ararat valley, rose on that day to angrily appeal to the conscience of mankind. Around noon, near the grave of those fallen from the hands of the Bolsheviks and Turks – Shirin, Khoren, Sako, Ashot, and others – rose a whole forest of bayonets, checkers, and banners.
Over the holy grave hill majestically and proudly glittered the sword and cross of Syunik – the former as a symbol of victory and the latter as a symbol of suffering.
That day, I realized that the moral greatness or insignificance of a state can be judged by any of its citizens. On that day, in the eyes of the Syunyetsis were visible all the power and strength of our nation.
Read also: Bolsheviks and Turks Against Armenia, The Death of Language is the Death of Nation, My Credo, Nationalist Who Loved the Whole World, “The Enemy is Afraid of Silence” – Garegin Nzhdeh
