The Communist Party of Armenia (, ) was a branch of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union within the Armenian SSR, and as such, the sole ruling party in the Armenian SSR.
History The first Marxist group in Armenia was founded by Stepan Shaumian in 1899 in Jalaloghli (modern-day Stepanavan). In 1902, Shaumian, Bogdan Knunyants and Arshak Zurabov jointly established the Union of Armenian Social Democrats in Tiflis (Tbilisi) as a branch of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party. Like its parent organization, it split into a Bolshevik and Menshevik faction.
During the existence of the First Republic of Armenia (1918–1920), the Armenian Bolsheviks actively struggled against the government led by the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (Dashnaktsutiun). In September 1919, the Bolshevik organizations of Armenia created the Armenia Committee (Armenkom) of the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks). In May 1920, they led a failed armed uprising against the ARF-led government. Many of Armenian Bolsheviks were executed or forced to flee to newly Sovietized Azerbaijan following the failed uprising, and the communists' activities in Armenia practically ceased.
On 30 June 1920, the Russian Communist Party authorized the creation of the Communist parties of Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia, which were to be subordinated to the Kavbiuro of the party. In November 1920, the Armenian Revolutionary Committee (Armrevkom, chaired by Sarkis Kasyan) was created in Baku to facilitate the Sovietization of Armenia. On 29 November 1920, Armrevkom crossed into Armenia from Azerbaijan together with the 11th Red Army and declared the Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic.
The Communist Party of Armenia's first congress took place in January 1922, the same year that the Soviet Union was officially founded with the Transcaucasian SFSR (and with it Soviet Armenia) as a constituent member. The party published the daily newspaper Sovetakan Hayastan ("Soviet Armenia") and the monthly magazine Leninyan Ughiov ("On Lenin's Path") . During Joseph Stalin's Great Purge, many of the party's leaders were accused of being Trotskyists, Dashnaks, or Specifists, and were executed or exiled. Most were later rehabilitated during Nikita Khrushchev's Thaw.
In Soviet Armenia, there was "heated controversy" about the founding date of the Communist Party of Armenia. While the party governing the Armenian SSR was founded in 1920, the poet Gurgen Haykuni established an earlier Communist Party of Armenia in Tiflis in 1918, "with the aim of promoting the Bolshevik cause among Ottoman Armenian refugees who had fled the 1915 [Armenian] Genocide." Earlier attacked or ignored in Soviet Armenian historiography, Haykuni's Communist Party was later "given belated recognition in histories of Soviet Armenia" during the Khrushchev era. In a meeting with Soviet Armenian historians in Yerevan in March 1962, Anastas Mikoyan declared that there was "no need to deny the positive role of the 'Communist Party of Armenia' headed by Comrade Haykuni." Mikoyan also acted as a consultant on an article on the issue, co-authored by Lev Shaumyan and published in the journal Kommunist in April 1962.
The Communist Party began to lose influence in Armenia during Mikhail Gorbachev's glasnost and perestroika, amid the Karabakh movement. In the elections for the Supreme Soviet of the Armenian SSR in 1990, it came in second to the non-communist Pan-Armenian National Movement. On 4 August 1990, Levon Ter-Petrosyan was elected chairman of the Supreme Soviet. This was the first time that a non-communist party had come to power in a Soviet republic. The 19th Congress of the Communist Party of Armenia, held on 7 September 1991, decided to dissolve the party. The party's last leader, Aram G. Sargsyan, created the Democratic Party of Armenia. The same year, the new Armenian Communist Party was established under the leadership of Sergey Badalyan, which considered itself the successor of the Soviet Communist Party of Armenia.
Leadership Picture Name Took office Left officeFirst Secretary1Gevorg Alikhanyan(1897–1938)December 1920May 1921General Secretary2Askanaz Mravyan(1885–1929)May 1921January 1922First Secretary3Ashot Hovhannisyan(1887–1972)January 19226 July 19274Hayk Ovsepyan(1891–1937)6 July 19278 April 19285Haykaz Kostanyan(1897–1938)8 April 19287 May 19306Aghasi Khanjian(1901–1936)7 May 19309 July 19367Amatuni Amatuni(1900–1938)21 September 193623 September 19378Grigory Arutinov(1900–1957)23 September 193728 November 19539Suren Tovmasyan(1909–1980)28 November 195328 December 196010Yakov Zarobyan(1908–1980)28 December 19605 February 196611Anton Kochinyan(1913–1990)5 February 196627 November 197412Karen Demirchyan(1932–1999)27 November 197421 May 198813Suren Harutyunyan (1939–2019)21 May 19885 April 199014Vladimir Movsisyan(1934–2014)5 April 199030 November 199015Stepan Pogosyan(1932–2012)30 November 199014 May 199116Aram Sargsyan(1949–)14 May 19917 September 1991
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