THE FIRST DOCUMENTALIST OF THE ARMENIAN GENOCIDE. SHAVARSH MISAKIAN – 2021-3

Ed. by Ye. Pampukian

Armen Ts. Marukyan
In 2017 in Antilias (Beirut), edited, with a foreword and noted by Honored Historian Yervand Pambukyan, the work of a member of the ARF Dashnaktsutyun Central Committee of Constantinople – a well-known publicist Shavarsh Misakyan was published, which is a collection of letters, articles and memoirs of the author. Based on the information obtained from the letters and articles of Misakian at the moment of the crime, the successive stages of the genocide policy pursued by the Turkish authorities in relation to the Armenian population of the Ottoman Empire are revealed.

The indisputable value of Misakian’s work lies in the fact that in the fateful period of history for the Armenian people, the operational and reliable information sent by him from the Ottoman Empire informed the international community about what was really happening with the Armenian population, despite the misinformation about the mass extermination of the Armenian population spread by the Turkish state and its allies. In his letters and articles, he provided such information that at that time it was simply impossible to obtain from other sources, which was later confirmed and supplemented by documents and materials published later.

It can be stated with confidence that from the point of view of objective documentation of the history of the Armenian Genocide, Sh. Misakian’s work is a valuable source, the materials of which, when compared with other sources, will allow compiling an objective history of that crucial period for the Armenian people in a clear chronology.