Simon Wratzjan

Simon Wratzjan

Simon Wratzjan (common spelling Simon Vratsian , Armenian Սիմոն Վրացեան Simon Wrazjan ; * 1882 in New Nakhchivan , Russian Empire , † May 21, 1969 in Beirut , Lebanon ) was the last Prime Minister of the First Republic of Armenia .

Life

After attending Armenian and Russian schools, Wratzjan joined the Taschnaken Party (ARF) in 1898 ; he mistakenly assumed that he had joined the Huntschak party by walking through the wrong door. He received his higher education from 1900 to 1906 at the Gevorkian seminary . In 1907 he took part in the 4th General Congress of the Taschnaken in Vienna , where he advocated an orientation towards socialism .

In 1908 he traveled to Saint Petersburg to study law and education. He traveled through the United States in 1911 , where he edited the Hairenik newspaper . In 1914 he made his way to the 8th General Congress of the Taschnaken in the Ottoman city of Erzurum . There he was elected to the party office and exchanged views with the leaders of the Young Turks . In August 1914 he was imprisoned as an alleged Russian spy, but fled to Transcaucasia , where he came into contact with the Armenian volunteer organizations who fought with the Russian army . After the dissolution of the units, he attended the Moscow State Conference, the Armenian National Congress in 1917 and was elected a member of the National Council. Howhannes Katschasnuni asked Wratzjan if he would like to accompany him on his trip through Europe and America, but the British refused a visa because they saw him as a radical socialist.

On April 3, 1920 he was appointed Minister of Labor and Agriculture and State Property in the cabinet of Alexander Khatissyan ; he also took over the information and propaganda division. After the resignation of the government and the inability of Kachasnuni to form a government, Wratzjan assumed the office of Prime Minister on November 23, 1920. On December 2nd he surrendered Armenia to the Bolsheviks . He went underground and later became president of the Committee for the Salvation of the Fatherland. He also appealed to Turkey and Western Europe to resist the Bolsheviks. Wratzjan then traveled all over Europe and settled in Paris to publish the Troshag from 1923 to 1925 .

On December 29, 1926, the ARF office decided with four votes in favor and one vote against (from Shahan Natali ) to join the Promethic Alliance. This regards the Turks as defenders of the Caucasian peoples. Shahan Natalie's memoirs about Talât Pasha's murder were published in the weekly newspaper “Nayiri” (v. 12, nos. 1-6) published in Beirut . There is Shahan's instruction to Soghomon Tehlirian in Berlin : “You blow off the skull of the number 1 killer of nations and don't try to escape. You stay there, your foot over the corpse, and surrender to the police, who will come and handcuff you. ”Shahan Natalie's proposal was to transform Tehlirian's trial into a political trial for those responsible for the Armenian genocide , including the one Part was realized. However, there were people in the leadership of the ARF - notably Simon Wratzjan - who removed two chapters from Tehlirian's memoirs before they went to press, which dealt with Shahan Natalie's key role in the assassination of Talât.

Wratzjan also wrote in the Harach and Horizon magazines . In 1936 he went to South America , in 1939 back to Paris and then to the USA . In 1945 he presented a petition to the UN General Assembly in San Francisco demanding that Turkey restore Armenia according to Woodrow Wilson's plans . In 1951 he became director of an Armenian school in Beirut.

Web links

Commons : Simon Vratsyan  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Simon Vratsian at www.armenian-history.com