Finally, in June 1933, the board of directors succeeded in scraping together five thousand pounds. It was willing to put the money at Yerevan’s disposal in exchange for a formal guarantee that at least two thousand five hundred refugees would be brought from Greece and Syria to Armenia in the following six months.75 Yerevan replied that the transfer could not be arranged until April 1934, when construction of the required housing was to be completed.76 The Union then remitted part of the five thousand-pound sum, yet resettlement was repeatedly postponed. Etvart Melkonian explains in his study of this episode that the repeated postponements were motivated by social, political, and ideological considerations. The newcomers found living conditions in the USSR unbearable, frequently changed jobs, and moved from place to place. In some cases, they even fled the country, an unacceptable phenomenon in the Soviet regime’s view. Melkonian underscores the Armenian authorities’ apprehensions that the “repatriates’” reaction might infect the local population with a similarly rebellious attitude. The consequence was that they postponed further “repatriation and set a limit on the number of repatriates.”77
Only one more transfer actually took place in the following years, in May 1936. It brought 1,801 refugees from France to Armenia. The AGBU paid their transportation costs, including board, as far as Marseille, spending a total of £2,000.78 Two hundred sixty-seven members of this convoy settled in Nubarashen.79 It was in the course of this operation that the AGBU also organized the transfer of Gomidas’s remains to Yerevan.
What kind of a reception did these refugees get in Armenia?... Read all
T. Shahvertian, the representative of the Council of Commissars responsible for repatriation (Coll. Bibl. Nubar/Paris).
Sahag Ter Gabrielian, Chairman of the Soviet Armenian Council of Commissars (Coll. Bibl. Nubar/Paris).
The AGBU and Soviet Armenia