AVC Multimedia e-Book Series e-Book#3: AGBU 100 Years of History (Vol. I) | Page 117

In the same period, the Sovietization of the Transcaucasian countries notwithstanding, NER continued to look after twenty thousand orphans in Armenia. The great majority were concentrated in Alexandropol. British Relief6 was also involved in providing humanitarian assistance to the Caucasus. It distributed food and clothing to nine thousand refugees in Ghumarlu, in the Arax River valley, maintained an orphanage in Yerevan, and distributed food to some five thousand children in Georgia and Baku. It was through the channels provided by these British and American organizations that the AGBU sent large quantities of medicine, clothing, and other goods to Armenia.

The most important contacts between the Union and the Soviet Armenian leadership were, however, forged in Moscow, where a member of the AGBU’s central board, Mikayel Papajanian, arrived on 1 December 1922. Papajanian was an Armenian from the Caucasus who had served as a member of the Russian Duma; he settled in Paris when the Soviets took power. Initially, his voyage to Russia had a political purpose. Since 21 November, delegations of the Western powers and Turkey had been attending the Lausanne Conference, which, the Armenians still... Read all

Mikayel Papajanian (??-1929), member of the central board of directors and former member of the Russian Duma. To Papajanian goes the credit for forging the first contacts between the AGBU and the Soviet Armenian regime (Coll. Archives Bibl. Nubar/Paris).

Lukashin (Sargis Srapionian, 1883-1937), chairman of the Soviet Armenian Council of Commissars (Coll. Archives Bibl. Nubar/Paris).

NER's Armenian orphans in Alex­andropol in the early 1920s

(Coll. Bibl. Nubar/Paris).

The AGBU and Soviet Armenia