KEYNOTE ADDRESS
TO THE 2005 NATIONAL REPRESENTATIVE ASSEMBLY

Delivered by Prof. Hratch Zadoian
Granite City, Illinois
May 19, 2005

Your Eminence, Reverend Clergy, Esteemed Delegates, Dear Friends.

It is indeed a distinct pleasure to be once again at the National Representative Assembly of our Prelacy, and a real privilege to address an assembly of Armenians dedicated to the service of our Church and therefore to the preservation of Armenian culture and the Armenian Nation. Your work, with all the travails, difficulties and occasional conflicts, insures the continuity of our community, indeed our national existence on these shores, half way around the world from the lands of our forefathers.

This NRA meets in a year of significant anniversaries. One is the 90th commemoration of the genocide perpetrated by Turks against our nation, the attempt to extinguish any trace of our national existence in the very lands the Turks invaded, the lands over which they exerted their cruel rule, the lands on which three millennia of Armenian history were sealed with the blood of our martyrs, lands which were thus forever marked as Armenian. The other anniversary is that of the creation of the Armenian alphabet 1,600 years ago by Mesrob Mashdots, an event that not only opened the path to the development of Armenian culture, but just as significantly was indispensable to our endurance as a Nation, our endurance even in the face of genocide and dispersion. The purpose of my address today is to show how these two events are connected in their importance to our national existence, our lives and the very work that brings you here.

A few weeks ago, around the world, from New York City where many of you were present, to the West Coast, to Paris and Beirut and Yerevan and as far as Australia, unprecedented crowds gathered to mark the 90th anniversary of the genocide. We gathered to show respect for our martyrs, to remember them to the world. We gathered to reassert our demand for justice and to point an accusing finger at the present Government of Turkey which, by virtue of its attempts to deny, belittle or justify the Genocide, has made itself an accessory after the fact to the great crime. But let us be clear, we also gathered, as we do in greater numbers each time, to show that the murderers have failed to destroy our proud nation, to show that we grow in numbers and determination and that far from a faded page in long past history, the story of the Armenian Genocide is better known, and with it the strength of our claims is stronger than it has ever been. Many of you will remember the times when in the very infrequent newspaper mentions of our history, the words “Armenian Genocide” were always preceded by the word “alleged.” And you might also remember, for instance, how twenty years ago when we had the ingathering of the survivors in Washington DC, none of the Washington papers would deign to notice and report how thousands of Armenians, young and old, had come to attend a week filled with events. Neither the capacity crowd at Constitution Hall, nor the crowds overflowing the open air auditorium at the Monument of the Unknown Soldier, nor the night-long candlelight vigils in Lafayette Park across the street from the White House, and not even the dozens of aging survivors who had come to bear witness were noteworthy for the national press. In those days we were invisible and few found it politic to remember what had happened to us.

Those times of universal amnesia are largely gone. Twenty years ago the Turks might well have convinced themselves, quite logically, that by now no one except a few aging Armenians would remember, and that the world would surely not find the time or the inclination to care or even notice. And yet, today after the hundreds of millions of dollars paid by the Turkish government to public relations firms, after endowing University chairs in Turkish Studies, looking for academic guns for hire, after bringing the weight of diplomatic and economic pressure to bear in an effort to cover up the genocide, it is the government of Turkey that finds itself on the defensive. Many parliaments or national legislatures have already voted to recognize the Armenian genocide. The European Union raised the issue of the genocide in the discussions of Turkey’s admission to the Union. Pope John Paul II raised the issue. Numerous books on the subject of genocide, ethnic cleansing, the Holocaust or crimes against humanity deal with the Armenian genocide in substantial detail and accurately, often criticizing the Turkish denial. (I browse in the College Bookstore through the books assigned in various courses and I cannot get over how frequently the Armenian genocide is discussed, and how frequent it is described as genocide.) Increasingly, Turkish scholars, writers and publicists – including some who discover Armenian roots in their own families, are questioning the official denials, thus risking imprisonment and public opprobrium. Even the angry, near-hysterical denials in much of the Turkish press keep the topic alive and publicize it as an issue. And in an extraordinary irony, a few months ago Paul Wolfowitz, at that time deputy Secretary of Defense, a known friend of Turkey, was quoted as telling the Turks that unless they cooperated more, Washington would find it difficult to stop the adoption of the Armenian Genocide resolution by Congress. Now you know we have traveled a long way when Washington needs to use the threat of the ANC and the Armenian lobby to pressure the Turks.

We still have a way to go. But we have come this far in large part because of your work, because of the sons and daughters you have raised and because of the nurturing you and your children have received in our churches, in our schools and in our national organizations. But let me also suggest to you that the light now cast on our history has a major source in the events that took place 1,600 years ago when with the Good Lord’s guidance, Mesrob Mashtotz created the Armenian alphabet. In every one of our Churches we have icons depicting St Gregory the Illuminator who brought Christianity to the Armenian People and established our national Church, the Vartanants Saints, leaders and symbols of sacrifice, of struggle for our faith, of resistance against assimilation by powerful neighbors and St Mesrob, who developed the alphabet. Have you ever wondered why is he part of this trinity? It is easy to see the place of Sts Gregory and Vartan as powerful spiritual and historical influences on our national character, our survival and our continuity as a nation. But I submit to you that our endurance as a nation, was just as much made possible by the development of the alphabet. I will suggest to you that not only was our distinct culture and our endurance made possible by the alphabet, but that even the recent success in bringing the Genocide issue to the world’s attention was aided and made possible, in good measure, by the blessed event of sixteen centuries ago.

A brief, simplified historical context is necessary to clarify this point. When we think of Armenia’s past, all of us like to remember some of the great periods, the heroic moments, the times of Tigranes the Great in the first century BC, when an Armenian Empire stretched its borders from the Caspian Sea to the Mediterranean. But the more common condition of the ancient past, a condition largely dictated by our geographic position, was that of being the coveted object of great empires, and the pathway for invading armies and barbarian hordes. Greeks, Romans, Persians, The Byzantine Empire, all fought for domain over the Armenian lands, sought to remove and appoint Armenian rulers, fostered intrigues, manipulated various Armenian nobles and princes and sought to enlarge their own power at the expense of our sovereignty. Armenians did fight back, did take every opportunity to reassert independence, but the weight of warring empires often prevailed. At times, Armenian sovereignty depended on the need for a buffer state between competing empires. At other times, the empires drew the lines demarcating their spheres of influence through Armenian lands and exerted their domination, while allowing territorial integrity under vassal rulers. The lines between the spheres of influence shifted back and forth and Armenian borders too, shrank or expanded with the fortunes of war, with the rise and ebb of the warring empires. Yet the maps of the ancient world always showed a land named Armenia and even when Persian or Roman emperors appointed Armenian kings over their respective spheres of influence, it was over territories recognized as Armenia.

But that was soon to change. In the century between the adoption of Christianity and the development of the alphabet, the conflict between Rome and Persia over Armenia intensified, and so did the manipulation of Armenian kings and nakharars who took sides or shifted allegiances during this struggle. Yes, this was the time when a new capital was built at Dvin, a time when the first Armenian Church council was convened by catholicos Nerses I, but the prevailing developments were those of war, of internal conflicts that also involved the Church , of a devastated economy, and of weakened Armenian elites. First Persia prevailed, then Rome responded, battles were won and lost often involving the participation and loss of Armenian princes and generals. Finally, in 387 AD Persia and Byzantium (or the Eastern Roman Empire), divided Armenia, no longer as spheres of influence, but as lands actually incorporated into their respective empires. Byzantium received the smaller share, West of modern-day Erzerum and after the death of king Arshak II did not appoint another Armenian ruler. Persia took the lion’s share, attached some of the Armenian lands to Georgian and Caucasian Albanian provinces but allowed an Armenian to rule the remaining territories as a vassal king.

This, then, was the situation on the eve of the development of the alphabet. Armenia had been divided and incorporated into Byzantium and Persia. What made the partition of Armenia a greater threat to our existence as a nation was precisely the absence of a written language. Yes, most Armenians spoke Armenian, albeit in slightly different dialects, but most Armenians were illiterate and without the territorial integrity, even that language was threatened with extinction. Consider the following: as written languages Armenians used Greek, Latin, Middle Persian and Syriac. The church liturgy used Syriac – an Eastern Aramaic dialect – thus increasing the influence of the Syriac Church in Armenian religious life. Zoroastrianism still prevailed in parts of Armenia where the and conversion to Christianity was made more difficult by Persian rule and by a liturgy in a language incomprehensible to the common man. It was under these conditions that Catholicos Sahak and King Vramshapuh asked Mesrob Mashtots, an experienced scholar who had studied Greek and Syriac as well as law and military science, to develop an alphabet unique and suited to the Armenian language. After years of study by Mashtots and his students, in 1405 the alphabet of 36 letters, which we use even today, came into being.

And so began a period of great development in Armenian culture. With the strong support of King Vramshapuh and Catholicos Sahak, the Bible, the Church Cannons, the liturgy and liturgical literature and a wide array of religious and eventually secular works were translated into Armenian and were used in all the Armenian lands. The students of Mashtots opened schools in the Armenian lands ruled by Persia and Byzantium, initiating the development of a class of people literate in Armenian. Not long thereafter, original works in Armenian were being written, including the first Armenian Histories written by Armenians. Professor Michael Papazian will tell you more about the development of Armenian classical literature and its importance in the cultural heritage of the world. But beyond the importance of written language to the development of Armenian culture and civilization, the more immediate impact was on the very issue of national survival. The strength of an Armenian Christian identity fostered by an Armenian Church, by an Armenian Liturgy and by the Armenian schools established by the disciples of Mashdots would soon be tested in the Vartanank Wars which began in 1439 when the Persian ruler sent Zoroastrian priests to pressure Armenians to abandon Christianity. Tested on the plains of Avarayr, tested through nearly a half century of intermittent rebellion and war, the Armenian Christian identity and commitment would prove strong enough to earn from the infinitely more powerful Persian Empire the Armenians’ right to freedom of religion and national dignity. And it would prove strong enough to withstand the storms of misfortune which in the following centuries swept over our lands with the successive invasions by Arabs, Mongols, Seljuk Turks, with the fragmentation of Armenian lands under competing dynasties, with wars and with dispersion. Empires and nations, more powerful in numbers, and even some who conquered and dominated Armenia, rose and fell and are now lost in the mists of history. But we endured. We endured as a nation, we endured in our faith, we endured as a culture, and the written language was part of the glue that held us together.

With us as with others, the Church was the source and the repository of culture and education. In our case, the Church with the support of an enlightened ruler was the source of an alphabet distinctive to our language. Historians note that one of the necessary conditions for the development of a civilization is the existence of a written language. For us, as you will hear from this afternoon’s speakers, the written language led to the flowering of a distinctly Armenian Church and life of the spirit, as well as a distinctive culture. As the link between divided lands and communities scattered around the world, the written word provided the foundations of a national consciousness. The pride in our unique alphabet is reflected in so much of our heritage. From Artsakh to Ani or Cilicia, stone masons carved inscriptions in the high walls of churches and fortresses, women wove the Armenian letters in carpets, and always, always in our monasteries and churches monks worked painstakingly on illuminated manuscripts many of which are found today in the most important museums and are rightfully considered cultural treasures of world civilization. After centuries of foreign rule and oppression the Armenian cultural and political revival was also tied to the written word. An Armenian from Madras in 1771 paid for the first Armenian printing press in Etchmiadzin. His Madras compatriots supported the printing of various works, including the first Armenian periodicals. Printing presses made possible the spread of literacy, the dissemination of ideas and the strengthening of national consciousness. From Raffi’s novels to the political tracts and publications of the national liberation movements in late XIXth Century, our road to independence was opened by the pen as much as by the sword.

Earlier, I suggested a link between the dual anniversaries we observe this year. I suggested that the success in our struggle to claim our history and affirm our rights was made possible in part by the blessed work of Mesrob Mashtots. I mentioned earlier that after the development of the alphabet and the translation of the liturgy and church texts, after the emergence of Armenian religious literature, secular works followed, secular original works including the first Armenian histories written by Armenians. Consider the following: most of what we know about Armenian history before the Fifth Century comes from what foreign historians wrote about us. We learn about our early history from the Greek historians Herodotus, Strabo, and Xenophon, ands later from Roman and Persian sources. At best they saw the Armenians from the perspective of their own nations’ history, their own national interest. Some, like Xenophon whose work Anabasis is a major source of Armenian history, passed through Armenia with armies on their way to battles, others were foes of Armenia. No matter what their purpose, few came as friends and none could have had the perspective of native historians, none could be cognizant of local traditions, of indigenous culture and or the history and heritage transmitted orally through generations, none could easily earn the trust of those whose lands they were occupying.

Imagine, if you will, if all of our history were told by others, as it was before the development of the alphabet. Imagine if our history was told by those who have occupied our lands the longest, if our history were known only by what the Turks wrote about us. We live in a time when we can see how even the most recent history can be denied manipulated or distorted. Turkish historians do not only deny the Genocide, they seek to invent a whole new history that claims an imaginary Turk presence in the Armenian highlands long before their actual arrival, a presence that completely obliterates or minimizes our continuity on our ancestral lands. So-called Azeri historians manufacture a past in which they were the original inhabitants not only of Karabagh but also of Zangezur. For years, when questioned about the ruins of our churches or Cilician fortresses, the Turkish official explanation was that these were built by “the Christian Turks.” No mention of an Armenian past was permitted in Guidebooks for tourists and tourist guides could be jailed for mentioning anything about the Armenian presence in Cilicia, in the Armenian Plateau, or just about anywhere else on the territory of present day Turkey. Whether through omission, as in some of the well-funded exhibits of “Ottoman” cultural treasures, or through outright falsification, the denial of the Genocide has come to entail the denial and distortion of our entire past the denial of our very existence on our own lands. How much easier they would find it to do so, but for the gift of Mesrob Mashtots. How much stronger our position today because of the written evidence, because of the tradition of Armenian historiography made possible by his work.

Dr. Vazken Ghougassian will tell you, in his talk, how the letters carved in the stone walls of churches and castles centuries ago, bring their silent testimony to our case today, the proof of our historical presence, the evidence of our rights. Along with the histories, the memoirs of survivors, the archives, the documents, the letters, these are our weapons, weapons first forged by Mesrob Mashtots sixteen centuries ago, the weapons we use today in our defense against the genocide of memory.

I want to conclude my talk with a different example of the inextricable link between the legacy of Mesrob Mashtots and our national survival. Every time I go Armenia, I visit the Madenataran, the depository of priceless manuscripts going back to the Fifth Century. There are incredible cultural treasures on display, but I mainly go to see the largest Manuscript, the Homilies of Mush. This is a huge book, weighing about sixty pounds written and illustrated on parchment over 800 years ago. In 1915, when Mush was put through sword and fire, two Armenian women fleeing for their lives decided to save the manuscript. Too heavy for either of them, they broke the book in two and each carried half. They took it over the long and difficult terrain, over the mountains, through dangers and horrors that we can scarcely imagine until, in time, the two halves of the manuscript were reunited in Yerevan. Two women, in the midst of carnage and destruction, put their own lives in greater danger by carrying and protecting this large and heavy burden, trying to bring it to safety. I do not know anything about these women, I do not know even if they were literate. But I know that they understood that we survive as a nation not only in flesh and blood, but also in our spiritual and cultural heritage. The two women of Mush were ready to make a gift of their own lives to preserve the gift of our past.

The burden that so many of you have willingly carried so well for so long, mercifully, does not entail such dangers. It does however place you in the centuries-old tradition of service to the community and to the nation. It is a tradition equally rooted in our Christian and our Armenian heritage. As you proceed with the important work of the NRA, as you receive reports, perhaps air some of the disagreements of the past year, argue over budgets and set the agenda for the next year, in effect as you deal with our role in continuing the work of the generations before us, I urge you to remember the two women of Mush. I am sure that they were not all that different from us. They had their likes and dislikes, their conflicts and petty quarrels. It is human nature. But when it came to the responsibility to preserve our national patrimony, a responsibility which they themselves willingly assumed, they did not hesitate to place that responsibility above any other and placed their own lives in danger to do what they saw as their duty. We are not asked to endanger our lives, but we are expected to share the burden, to serve without vanity or rancor, we are expected to do our utmost, with love and withy respect not just for past heroes and martyrs, but for all those around us, for those who put their trust in us to serve. And if, in dealing with the business at hand, you find yourself tempted to anger or impatience, remember again the two women of Mush. The best way to honor their memory and the memory of the generation they represent, is to live and work in their example of selfless dedication to our church and nation.