Roving Revolutionaries: Armenians and the Connected Revolutions in the Russian, Iranian, and Ottoman Worlds by Houri Berberian

Author:Houri Berberian [Berberian, Houri]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: history, World, Middle East, Iran, Turkey & Ottoman Empire, Russia & the Former Soviet Union
ISBN: 9780520278936
Google: Ge-EDwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Published: 2019-04-16T00:19:35.732523+00:00

A BALANCING ACT: BETWEEN ORTHODOXY AND REFORMISM

A close look at Mikayel Varandian’s Hosank‘ner (Currents), published in 1910 in Geneva, gives us a good idea of the array of intellectual currents and debates with which Armenian socialists familiarized themselves and helps us understand how and why they settled on their syncretic brand of socialism. In many ways, Varandian’s book captures the contemporary intellectual environment and underscores the significance of socialism in the period not only for Armenians but also for fellow subjects in the Russian, Ottoman, and Iranian states. Although it is difficult, if not impossible, to come by quantitative data about the number of copies printed, circulated, and/or read, we can ascertain the study’s importance from the author’s own presence as a prolific author of books and articles in the contemporary press (e.g., in Mshak, Murch, and other periodicals), sometimes using the pseudonym Ego or Mikayel Hovhannisian, and as a member of the editorial boards of Drōshak and Haṛaj. Varandian was also an ARF leader, serving on the Western Bureau and representing the party at the Second International Congress in Stuttgart in 1907. He is probably best known for his two-volume history of the ARF.109

Varandian divides Hosank‘ner into three sections: orthodox Marxism (with subsections on the Amsterdam Congress of 1904 and orthodox Marxism in Russia and the Caucasus), anarchism (on the two periods before and after the 1860s), and revolutionary syndicalism. Before moving to his presentation of socialism, it is valuable to see how Varandian portrays other European movements of the time.

Varandian traces revolutionary syndicalism’s history and development by focusing on the movement’s major figures of Georges Sorel, Arturo Labriola, and Enrico Leone. His assessment of the movement is very critical. He finds fault particularly in its complete reliance on what he views as the “direct action” of workers, “contempt” for intellectuals, and denial of any role for the intelligentsia, asserting that the focus on deed is insufficient without its ally, theory. He likens the movement to a sailor thrown into an unfamiliar ocean “without map and compass.”110 Varandian also objects to its critical stance on nations, stating that its “declared cosmopolitanism seems completely metaphysical delirium. . . .”111 Anarchism fares better, perhaps because Varandian recognizes some similarities with socialism. Varandian seems to respect the “brilliant theoreticians” of this “rich and original” ideology: Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, Max Stirner, Mikhail Bakunin, Pyotr Kropotkin, Élisée Reclus, and Louise Michel of Paris Commune fame. He critiques, nevertheless, anarchism’s support of “absolute freedom” in contrast to socialism’s “relative freedom,” finding that anarchism exaggerates human solidarity and harmony, expecting men to “turn into angels,” and he disparages it as utopian, “a splendid dream, but . . . a dream.”112

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