WORKING TOGETHER WITH ARMENIA"S SOVIET REGIME: A DIFFICULT TASL FOR THE AGBU
The fifteen years during which the AGBU actively helped construct Soviet Armenia were a painful experience for the organization. It was beset by untold problems and only rarely rewarded with the cooperation of the local authorities, without whose help it could not do much to improve the lot of the population. But these years of full-scale involvement in cultural, health-care, and humanitarian work were also a fertile period for it, and its achievement was by no means insignificant. Throughout this period, the Union remained primed for action and was able to invest major donations and the proceeds of its fundraising campaigns in projects in Armenia. Its leaders were sincerely convinced of the usefulness and importance of their work in this domain. They felt sure that their cooperation with the Soviet regime would ultimately redound to the benefit of the small state entity that had come into being in the Caucasus, the last fatherland of one segment of the Armenian people.
“Comrade Stalin and Helen Abramian, a worker in Leninakan's textile factory,” Soviet propaganda photo (L'URSS en construction: L'Arménie soviétique, no. 2, February 1936).
The letterhead of the office representing the AGBU in Yerevan (Coll. Bibl. Nubar/Paris).
The AGBU and Soviet Armenia