Karen Demirtschjan

Demirtschjan was a redirect to this article. For the Cypriot-Armenian singer Howik Demirtschjan see Hovig Demirjian

Karen Demirtschjan, (1999)

Karen Demirtschjan on an Armenian Post stamp (2000)

Karen Serobowitsch Demirtschjan ( Armenian Կարեն Սերոբի Դեմիրճյան ; Russian Карен Серобович Демирчян ; born April 17, 1932 in Yerevan ; † October 27, 1999 ibid) was a politician of the CPSU in the Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic and later in the Republic of Armenia .

Life

Political career in the Armenian SSR

Karen Demirtschjan grew up as an orphan and after attending school in 1949 began studying engineering at the Yerevan Polytechnic Institute . After graduation , he began working as an engineer at a research institute in Leningrad in 1954 , but returned to Armenia a short time later to work in an electrotechnical factory in Yerevan. After he became a member of the CPSU in 1954, he also became party secretary of the factory.

In 1959 he began studying at the party college of the CPSU and after completing his studies in 1961 returned to Armenia, where he was first chief engineer and some time later director of the Yerevan electrical engineering factory. In 1966 he was appointed Third Secretary of the Communist Party of Yerevan, before he became Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Armenia in 1972 .

On November 24, 1974, he finally became First Secretary of the Communist Party in the Armenian SSR.

He was released from this position on May 21, 1988 by the Politburo of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union after failing to cope with the growing nationalism and sovereignty movements in Armenia. On the other hand, the protests in the population were also about resistance to the Mezamor nuclear power plant .

For his services to the Armenian SSR he had previously received several awards and received not only the Order of the October Revolution , but also the Order of the Red Labor Banner twice . In the following years he withdrew from political life.

Political career in the Republic of Armenia

Demirchjan only reappeared politically in mid-1996 when he supported Levon Ter- Petrosyan's candidacy in the presidential elections on September 22, 1996.

In 1998 he made a political comeback : after Ter-Petrosyan was forced to resign from the presidency in February 1998, he was one of the twelve candidates in the early presidential elections and based his campaign on the one hand on himself, on the other hand he reminded the voters of the greater prosperity and more acceptable conditions during his tenure as First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Armenian SSR. He succeeded in particular in addressing poorer sections of the population who were particularly hard hit by the economic crises of the period after independence. To this end he stated:

“There is a longing for a decent life, not for cheap sausage. People remember their dignity. We will give them back. "

“There is a nostalgia for a dignified life, not cheap sausage. People remember their dignity. We are going to return it to them. "

In the runoff election for president, however, he was defeated by the incumbent non-party Prime Minister Robert Kocharyan . Demirschjan refused, however, to accept the election result of the runoff election and claimed victory for himself. After his electoral defeat, he founded the People's Party in 1998 and then formed an electoral alliance with Defense Minister Wasken Sarkissjan , who was also chairman of the Republican Party of Armenia , for the upcoming elections to the Armenian National Assembly (Ազգային ժողով) on May 30, 1999.

Grave in the Karen Demirchyan Complex

After the election of this alliance, Zarkissyan became Prime Minister, while Demirchyan became President of the National Assembly. On October 27, 1999, he was killed in an attack in the parliament building together with Zarkissyan and some ministers and members of parliament. The background to the attack has not yet been fully clarified, but it is suspected that they were murdered "on orders from above": because they categorically opposed any solution to the Karabakh problem on the basis of an exchange of territory.

In his honor, the Yerevan Metro in Karen Demirtschjan Metropolitan Yerevan was later named, as was the Karen Demirtschjan sports and concert complex, in which, among other things, some preliminary games of the 2010 Men's Ice Hockey World Championship were held.

His son Stepan Demirtschjan also ran unsuccessfully for the office of president in 2003.

Web links

Commons : Karen Demirchyan  - Collection of Images, Videos and Audio Files

• Biography on Rulers.org

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Soviet Union: One People, One Country . In: Der Spiegel . No. 13 , 1988 ( online - March 28, 1988 ).
2. ↑ Marianna Butenschön: The spirit is out of the bottle. In: Zeit Online . April 24, 1987, Retrieved June 8, 2015 . 
3. ↑ WORLD SOCIALIST WEB SITE: Armenia after the elections (July 9, 1999)
4. ↑ Died: Wasgen Sarkisjan . In: Der Spiegel . No. 44 , 1999 ( online - Nov. 1, 1999 ).
5. ^ Aschot Manutscharjan, Boris Reitschuster, Gudrun Dometeit: ARMENIA: Kamikaze in Yerevan. In: Focus Online . October 30, 1999, accessed June 8, 2015 . 
6. ↑ Annual report Armenia 2000 (Amnesty International) ( Memento of the original from April 16, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
7. ↑ Yerevan sees no connection with the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. Armenia's leadership: deed was an individual action. In: Berliner Zeitung . October 30, 1999, accessed June 8, 2015 . 
8. ↑ Jean Gueyras: Two criminals and a sorcerer. Armenia has a new president and a new opposition. In: Le Monde Diplomatique. April 11, 2008, accessed June 8, 2015 . 
9. ↑ Jean Gueyras: attempts at a solution in the conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh. Area swap in the South Caucasus? In: taz . March 16, 2001, accessed June 8, 2015 .