In 1927, a second transfer of refugees to Armenia was effected, again with financial support from the AGBU: £11,910, the bulk of which had been raised in the United States,65 was remitted to the representative of the Soviet Armenian leadership, Taniel (Tanush) Shahvertian, who had been delegated by the council of the Commissariat for Repatriation. In theory, this money was to be utilized to promote the resettlement of refugees living in Syria, especially natives of Gürün, Korpe, and Habusi. However, after all the necessary administrative procedures had been completed and the lists of names drawn up, as the refugees were making preparations to board ship, Shahvertian sent a curt note to the Union informing it that the operation had been cancelled, with no further explanation.66 In 1927, only 1,609 refugees, almost all of them from Greece and Constantinople, were transferred to Armenia.67 The Greek government, too, helped defray their travel expenses, in spite of its own desperate economic plight, so as to lighten the burden on a country overflowing with hundreds of thousands of Greek Ottoman refugees. In 1930, although the Nansen plan was already dead and buried by then, Greece asked the League of Nations to transfer the thirty thousand Armenian refugees still living on its soil to Armenia, promising to help meet their travel expenses.68
Boarding ship in Piræus in 1932 (Coll. Bibl. Nubar/Paris).
A. Kotelnikov, Nansen Office representative in Greece. (Coll. Bibl. Nubar/Paris).
A 1933 poster by the French-Armenian painter Carzou announcing an artistic gala in Paris for the benefit of the Fund for Repatriation to Soviet Armenia (Coll. Bibl. Nubar/Paris).
The AGBU and Soviet Armenia