In accordance with its traditions, the Union strove to develop its own projects in Armenia autonomously, the more so as it was under strong pressure from the HOG, which had launched a worldwide fund drive whose proceeds were to be used to construct housing for the thousands of Armenian refugees resettled in Armenia. The diaspora’s biggest donors were, as it happened, close to the Union. Its U.S. Central Committee, supposed to be the richest in the world, even declared that it was ready to participate unreservedly in the HOG’s campaign. Manifestly, the
central board did not share the Central Committee’s enthusiasm. As Nubar saw it, the HOG’s attitude was not “such as to encourage us to strike down the same path.”90 The AGBU therefore decreed that the moneys raised during the new fund drive should be “centralized in the treasury of [its] New York chapter” and that “the funds should then be transferred to Armenia by the AGBU’s executive board.”91 Thus began the Nubarashen project.
Although it kept a low profile in the face of the HOG’s continuous harassment so as not to jeopardize its programs in Armenia, the AGBU was dumbfounded by the HOG’s methods. While the U.S. Committee was in the thick of the Nubarashen fund-raising campaign, Arshag Karagheusian, chairman of the fund drive (and future president of the AGBU), gave vent to all his bitterness over the HOG’s maneuvers in a speech delivered before an October 1927 meeting of the central board in Paris. His vitriolic polemic was directed at both this Soviet organization and those responsible for its machinations - that is, the Yerevan regime. His language was severe; rarely does one find such sharp attacks on Soviet leaders in the board’s minutes. “It is no secret for anyone,” Karagheusian fumed, “that the HOG, which is without a doubt inspired by Yerevan, is doing everything in its power to thwart the Union’s activities. We must make the Armenian ... Read all
Arshag Karagheusian (1872-1963), president of the Nubarashen fund-raising campaign. Karagheusian later served as president of the AGBU
(Coll. Bibl. Nubar/Paris).
A rare photograph of Haygaz Karageuzian (right, wearing a hat and holding a cane), the AGBU's representative in Soviet Armenia from 1928 on. Karageuzian was executed by the Stalinist regime in 1937. To his left, K. Vartanian (wearing a beret and a tie), president of the HOG. This photograph was taken in Nubarashen in 1932 (Coll. Bibl. Nubar/ Paris).
The AGBU and Soviet Armenia