This weekend marks the centennial of the Armistice that ended the first World War. For Armenia, that war was already over. The Treaty of Brest-Litovsk signed between the Bolshevik government in Petrograd and the Central Powers in March 1918 was a final blow to the Armenians’ hopes for the liberation of Western Armenia.
But little is known about the role that Vahan Terian, the Armenian poet turned Russian government official, played in the events.
In 1917, 32-y.o. Terian was a literary celebrity famous both in Petrograd and Tiflis and blessed by literary luminaries like Hovhannes Tumanyan and Maxim Gorky. Avetik Isahakyan called him “Vanik jan.” Terian’s biography, published in Tiflis in 1910, was titled “Vahan Terian: a singer, thirsty for madness and reconciliation.”
Terian, a Marxist, supported the October Bolshevik Revolution. Soon after it, he was received by Lenin. The Red Prime Minister asked Terian to draft a decree for a new policy towards Armenia. Terian also took charge of Armenian affairs at the People’s Commissariat of Nationalities headed by Joseph Stalin. In a report presented to Lenin and Stalin, Terian described the horrors of genocide and insisted that the Russian army stay in “Turkish” (or Western) Armenia.
His recommendations were dismissed. Instead, the declaration “About Turkish Armenia” was published in Pravda on January 11, 1918. It’s first article embraced the “withdrawal of Russian troops from Turkish Armenia.” For the same issue, Stalin penned an op-ed in which he condemned the “pogroms and massacres of Armenians” but criticized “the sons of Armenia — the heroic defenders of their native land” for allying with the Western powers (or “the beast of imperialist diplomacy” in Stalin’s jargon). Instead, he offered a political panacea: the worker’s revolution.
Reading the proceedings of the Brest Litovsk Peace Conference (Nov. 21, 1917 — March 3, 1918) is not unlike reading a Facebook thread on a heated issue. Both sides engage in a lengthy and repetitive discussion with no clear outcome — except for wasting time. For about a month, Trotsky’s goal was to stall the talks. Bolsheviks were hoping for a socialist revolution to happen in Germany.
…Halfway into the document, there’s a plot twist. The Russian account of the January 30 plenary session lists Terian, expert for Armenia among Russian delegates. Meanwhile, according to the German official account, a plenary session on January, 30 “was opened under the Presidency of the Turkish Grand Vizier, Talaat Pasha.”
From other sources, we know that Vahan Terian was in the Russian delegation sent to negotiate peace with the Germans. There can be no doubt: Terian and Talaat were in the same room on the same day. A slow, awkward handshake and scowl of hate on Terian’s face… A future scriptwriter will have to make that up. Unfortunately, we don’t have such details. All we know is that the architect of the Armenian Genocide and one of Armenia’s most renowned poets were in the same room. Negotiating peace.
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