Alexander Movsesi Atabekian (; 2 February 1869 – 5 December 1933) was an Armenian physician, publisher and anarchist communist.
Born in the region of Nagorno-Karabakh, he moved abroad to study medicine, enrolling in the University of Geneva in Switzerland. There he began working as a typesetter and became experienced in publishing while working on the journal Hunchak, the organ of the Social Democrat Hunchakian Party (SDHP). In 1890, he became a disciple of the Russian anarchist Peter Kropotkin and joined the anarchist movement. In Geneva, Atabekian established the Anarchist Library, which published several seminal anarchist texts in the Armenian and Russian languages, with the intention of smuggling them into the Russian Empire. He also made links with the nascent Armenian Revolutionary Federation (ARF), helping to set up publication of its newspaper Droshak in Geneva.
He pursued his medical studies to Paris, where he began publishing the journal Hamaink, the first anarchist periodical in the Armenian language. He wrote extensively about the oppression of Armenians by the Ottoman Empire and European countries and elaborated his vision for a social revolution in Armenia. He ceased publication after hearing news of the Hamidian massacres, after which he re-established connections with other anarchists within the ARF. Together they issued a declaration to the Second International, denouncing both the actions of the Ottoman Empire and the complicity of its European allies. After graduating as a Doctor of Medicine, Atabekian moved to Rasht, in Iran, where he worked as a physician and published a Persian edition of Hamaink. He also worked as a combat medic during World War I, during which he treated refugees that had fled the Armenian genocide.
Following the Russian Revolution of 1917, he moved to Moscow and began writing works of anarchist theory and critique. He was critical of the rise of the Bolsheviks, whom he saw as working in opposition to the will of the people. He instead advocated for the strengthening of the co-operative movement, seeing particular promise in Moscow's house committees as a means to establish socialist anarchism. He also acted as Kropotkin's personal doctor and confidant, staying by his side until his death. He then participated in the management of a museum of Kropotkin, which he maintained throughout the period of the New Economic Policy (NEP).
Atabekian suffered a stroke and died in his home in Moscow in 1933, although reference literature would end up reporting that he had died in the Gulag, following the repression of the anarchist movement during Joseph Stalin's rise to power. He has since been held as a key example of an anarchist from outside the Western tradition, and his work on anti-authoritarianism, co-operative economics and tenants rights has been studied in Russia and Ukraine.
Biography Early life and activism Alexander Movsesi Atabekian was born on 2 February 1869, in Shushi, a city in the region of Nagorno-Karabakh. He was born into an Armenian noble family and was the son of a physician.
After he graduated from secondary school in his hometown, in 1889, he left the Caucasus and went abroad to study medicine at the University of Geneva. During his undergraduate education, Atabekian worked as a typesetter for Avetis Nazarbekian's newspaper Hunchak – the official organ of the Social Democrat Hunchakian Party (SDHP) – which publicised reports about rising anti-Armenian sentiment in the Russian and Ottoman Empires.
He left the SDHP and became an anarchist communist in 1890, after reading Words of a Rebel, a collection of writings by Peter Kropotkin. Atabekian then began working at a Ukrainian publishing house, which he used to print translations of anarchist works in the Armenian and Russian languages. He also published a number of open letters, on behalf of the international anarchist movement, to Armenian peasants and revolutionaries.
Before long, Atabekian had met numerous prominent members of the anarchist movement, becoming close friends with Kropotkin, Reclus and Jean Grave. He also met Max Nettlau, Paraskev Stoyanov, Luigi Galleani and Jacques Gross; with whom he printed a poster in memory of the Haymarket martyrs, which they plastered throughout Geneva.
Anarchist publishing work
After the outbreak of the Russian famine of 1891–1892, Atabekian initiated an effort to begin smuggling anarchist propaganda into the Russian Empire, intending to print texts in both the Russian and Armenian languages. Atabekian and Stoyanov travelled to London, where they visited Kropotkin. They informed him of their intentions to start delivering pamphlets to Ukraine and the Caucasus, where they had established connections with some individual anarchists. Atabekian then returned to Geneva and established a printing press in his own bedroom; he called it the Anarchist Library (), and it would become the first Russian anarchist propaganda circle since Zamfir Arbore's own in the 1870s.
He had planned to start by publishing a Russian language edition of Words of a Rebel, but Kropotkin was overwhelmed by work and unable to translate more than a few chapters, leaving the rest to Varlam Cherkezishvili. Atabekian also initially lacked the resources to publish a periodical, so decided to start out publishing individual pamphlets. His first publication was a Russian language edition of Mikhail Bakunin's The Paris Commune and the Idea of the State, which was followed in 1892 by Kropotkin's The Destruction of the State. In 1893, he published Kropotkin's Political Rights, Anarchism and Spirit of Revolt, as well as Reclus' To My Brother the Peasant, and Errico Malatesta's Between Peasants, the latter of which Atabekian wrote a preface directing it towards Armenians. After publishing the first batch of pamphlets, he considered selling his printing equipment to the Free Russian Press, but was dissuaded by Kropotkin, due to their ideological differences.
In 1894, he published Kropotkin's Revolutionary Minorities and Grave's Why We Are Revolutionaries. The first pages of these pamphlets included the words "Authorised by the Ministry of Education", printed in the Turkish language. These pamphlets were circulated widely among Armenian immigrant circles and later in Armenia itself, following Stoyanov's own distribution efforts. Despite their efforts, Atabekian was largely unsuccessful in smuggling the pamphlets into the Russian Empire, but their work was taken up only a few years later by another Russian anarchist group in Geneva. During this period, he also formed links with the nascent Armenian Revolutionary Federation (ARF) and helped to publish its newspaper Droshak, together with Stepan Zorian.
After graduating with his bachelor's degree, Atabekian moved to France in order to continue his medical studies. He moved first to Lyon, where he spent a few months working at a state-of-the-art clinic. During his time there, he witnessed the assassination of Sadi Carnot by Sante Caserio, as well as the subsequent anti-Italian reprisals, which turned him against the anarchist strategy of "motiveless terrorism". His publishing work slowed down at this time, but did not stop entirely, as he waited for further sheets of Words of a Rebel and began preparing to publish a magazine in the Armenian language. He then moved on to Paris, where he began publication of Hamaink (), the first anarchist periodical in the Armenian language. It ran for five issues, each made up of eight pages, which contained articles about anarchism and the Armenian national movement. Atabekian thought that Armenia was ripe for revolution, due to the conditions created by the Ottoman Empire's despotism and the exploitation of Armenian labour in Europe and America. He called for the collectivisation of land and the establishment of self-governance in Armenia. Although he was staunchly opposed to Ottoman rule in Armenia, he also cautioned against an intervention in the region by the Entente powers. Atabekian also published articles by the ARF, but supplemented them with his own criticisms of the authoritarianism and centralisation he had experienced within the structures of Armenian political parties. While it focused largely on Armenia, the journal also gave attention to the revolutionary anarchist movements in France, Italy, Poland, Russia and Spain. Atabekian himself did not sign any of the articles he wrote, in order to protect himself from prosecution for his anarchist activities. Hamaink quickly gained popularity among the Armenian diaspora throughout Europe, with Stoyanov helping to distribute it in the Balkans, Caucasus and Turkey.
Move east Atabekian ceased all of his publication activities after receiving news of the Hamidian massacres, which emotionally devastated him. As Armenian resistance to the anti-Armenian massacres in the Ottoman Empire manifested, he established connections with anarchist and libertarian socialist activists within the ARF. The anarchists of the ARF blended socialist anarchism with a form of Armenian nationalism, influenced in part by the Russian nihilist movement. Together with other Armenian libertarians, Atabekian wrote a declaration to the London Congress of the Second International; he argued that European powers were complicit in the Hamidian massacres and declared the beginning of a social revolution in West Asia.
In 1896, Atabekian graduated as a Doctor of Medicine. Prohibited from returning to the Russian Empire due to a sentence of exile for his anarchist activities, he moved first to Bulgaria, where he provided medical assistance to Armenians that had fled the Hamidian massacres. His correspondence from this time indicates that he then travelled through Istanbul and İzmir, where he attempted to promote anarchism among the local Armenian communities. By the turn of the 20th century, he had settled in Rasht, in the Gilan province of Iran. There he worked as a physician and published an Iranian edition of Hamaink, which received a Persian language translation. During this time, he also trained the young Ardeshir Ovanessian as a pharmacist, after which Ovanessian went on to become a leader of the Iranian Communist Party.
After the outbreak of World War I, Atabekian was granted permission to return to the Russian Empire, which was experiencing such a shortage of combat medics that it began ignoring their backgrounds. Atabekian was quickly appointed to head a field hospital in Baku, but he fell severely ill with typhoid fever and went on sick leave. He recovered by early 1915 and was appointed to head a military hospital in Kars province, where his wife Ekaterina was working on a residency. Here he treated not only wounded soldiers but also civilians, including refugees that had fled the Armenian genocide. He travelled constantly to different fields during this period, witnessing the aftermath of battles in Karakilisa, Khnus and Muş. By the end of 1916, his hospital had run out of medicine, and his requests to Moscow for resupply went unfulfilled, which led to most of the medical staff dispersing and the hospital effectively dissolving. Atabekian left the front line and returned to Rasht.
Revolution writings in Russia In the wake of the February Revolution of 1917, Atabekian moved to Moscow, where he once again returned to political activism. After the subsequent October Revolution, he wrote a series of articles for Anarkhiia, calling for anarchists to lead a social revolution and criticising the Bolsheviks' seizure of power. He also published an open letter to Kropotkin, in which he sharply criticised the Imperial Russian Army's attacks against the local Armenian and Kurdish populations, comparing them to the German occupation of Belgium.