ARMENIA: NAZISM IS WELCOME HERE - PART III

ARMENIA: NAZISM IS WELCOME HERE - PART III

10/30/2018   Armenia, Armenian falsification In English, armenian terrorism, Azerbaijan, In English,

http://regionplus.az/

Oleg KUZNETSOV, Moscow

Nzhdeh and his "Racists" in the service of the Third Reich intelligence

The Soviet intelligence and counter-intelligence services have long kept an eye on Garegin Nzhdeh considering him an ideological opponent of the USSR rather than an accomplice of intelligence services or other institutions of the Third Reich, which were later recognised as criminal by the International Military Tribunal (IMT) held in Nuremberg, Germany. His name has never been mentioned in the directives of the Main Directorate of Counter-intelligence (SMERSH) regarding the detection of foreign intelligence or counter-intelligence agents except once in a special SMERSH directive no. 29200 dated April 14, 1945 ordering the search of Dashnaks in the East European countries. It was this document that contributed to the arrest of Nzhdeh in Bulgaria on October 12, 1944. On April 24, 1948, at a special meeting of the USSR Ministry of State Security, Nzhdeh was sentenced to 25 years for counter-revolutionary activities including the organisation of anti-Soviet uprising in February-April 1921 in Zangezur, proclamation of the Republic of Mountainous Armenia and the massacres of communists during this uprising (much to the outrage of Nzhdeh, who knew that the accomplices were pardoned in 1921).

At the same time, the verdict did not mention anything about his collaboration with the Nazi intelligence services against the Soviet Union. This information appeared six months later, when the identity of Peter Kamsarakan (see: Part II, R+) was established, and he provided evidence about his service at the VI Department of the Reich Main Security Office (RSHA) and the German military intelligence service (Abwehr). By that time, Kamsarakan had been held captive in the USSR as Peter Karer, a Wehrmacht corporal and a security officer of the German Embassy in Romania.

At least twice, on November 18, 1949 and January 10, 1949, the handwritten testimony of Peter Kamsarakan was reprinted and sent to Joseph Stalin for personal review. More than half of his 28-pages second testimony of typewritten text described the collaboration of Nzhdeh with the VI Department of RSHA responsible for foreign intelligence services (Ausland-SD). This second testimony is also available at the State Archives of the Russian Federation (GARF) as part of the correspondence held between the Secretariat of the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs and Stalin in January-May 1949. It is an extension of the first testimony providing the details of activities of both Kamsarakan and those Armenian nationalists whom he recruited to serve the intelligence services of the Third Reich. Kamsarakan's role in this case was fundamental because he was personally responsible for identifying eligible candidates, holding initial talks with them and remunerating the most successful agents and undercover groups. Since he was responsible for all the "technical" aspects of ensuring collaboration of the Dashnaks and other Armenian nationalists with the special services of the Nazi Germany, his evidence was extremely important and is of exceptional historical value today.

Kamsarakan's confessions can still be found as part of the confidential cases of the NKVD stored at the GARF. Front pages of corresponding archive records bear codes and special notes, although the academic community has been aware of their existence and content since at least 2010. All electronic catalogues of GARF contain redirection links to these documents, which means their availability to researchers. Nevertheless, the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs is insisting that the country's leadership does not have sufficient evidence of Nzhdeh’s connections with the Nazis, implying that the glorification of Nzhdeh's personality and teachings does not violate the principles of international law and is an "internal affair" of Armenia, albeit this statement fundamentally contradicts the historical reality. In fact, it is not difficult to verify this, if the Russian political leadership bothers looking into its own archives.

Kamsarakan's testimonies contain fragments indicating even a closer-than-official type of relations between Nzhdeh and Nazis. Therefore, we excluded such quotes from the following text while trying not to disturb the plot and logic of the narrative. So, let's listen to Peter Kamsarakan:

“Until leaving the SD (Nazi security service, R+) in early 1942, I had not worked directly with the famous Dashnak general Ter-Harutyunian, also known as Nzhdeh, and his collegues. But I had known Nzhdeh personally since 1937, when I first met him in Sofia while being there for private affairs. We have met quite often afterwards. He has not been involved in intelligence work because the VI Department of the SD had agreed with the Dashnak representatives to recognise the monopoly of the Dashnak Party over the cooperation between the SD and Armenian émigrés.

Thanks to this agreement, Nzhdeh, who was absolutely pro-German, and his supporters have been used on a very limited scale until 1942, when I moved to the Abwehr. Nevertheless, German intelligence was interested in Nzhdeh as in the leader of an Armenian émigré organisation, the Racists, which he represented in the U.S. in 1935, and which had supporters in a number of countries. <…>

He rejected the Communist system and any chance for cooperation with it as much as he rejected any possibility of a peaceful resolution of the Armenian question with Turkey. On the other hand, he used to tell me about his great admiration for Adolf Hitler. He highly respected and honoured Germany, both ancient and present, expecting that it would redivide the world and would resolve the Armenian question. He hoped that Nazi Germany would help creating Armenia and both countries would be closely linked to each other.

Nzhdeh actively used his pro-fascist views among the youth. He said that he had a large group of adherents, Armenian nationalists, in Bulgaria. Even supporters of the Dashnak Party in Bulgaria and other countries respected him despite his expulsion from the party.

In early March 1940, after receiving instructions from the representative of the VI Department of the SD in Vienna, Hauptsturmführer Wilhelm Höttl, I met with Nzhdeh in Sofia. My task was to contact prominent political figures of the Armenian émigré community and to convince them of cooperation with Nazi Germany. I told Nzhdeh openly about my intention. In principle, he agreed to work with Germans but advised me to talk to one of his politically-savvy friends from the Dashnak Party, Araratian, who lived in Bucharest. At that time, I also met with one of his closest associates, Dr. Hayk Assaturian, the editor of Armenian newspaper Razmig, which was published by racists in Sofia. Assaturian was also a big fan of the fascist Germany. Nzhdeh gave me a letter of recommendation for Sarkis Araratian, who helped to get the members of the Dashnak Party collaborate with the Germans.

When Nzhdeh learned about the contacts between the Germans and the Dashnaks without his participation, to which he had contributed with his letter of recommendation to Araratian, he became extremely angry and used to reproach me during our subsequent meetings.

In Plovdiv, Burgas, Varna, and Ruse, Nzhdeh introduced us to his people, young Armenians, who were ready to do anything under his command. Nzhdeh mainly called them by first names being reluctant to call their last names. I remember only a few of them: in Varna, he had only Seto Jamalian, a Russian-speaking schoolteacher who headed a large group of young Armenian racists. He was considered suitable to act as the eldest of Armenians selected to be sent to the Eastern Front.

... SD representatives in Sofia, Koob or Obersturmführer Vollmann, who was working there as an employee of the German embassy, loaded these people onto a German steamboat (illegally, without visas and passports) heading to Germany. I think it was at the Vidin Port. Later, they were accommodated in a small farm near Erkner, not far from Berlin, to serve under the command of two training officers. In autumn 1942, Nzhdeh himself took Dr. Hayk Assaturian as an interpreter and left for Berlin to intensify cooperation with Germans. He was afraid that Dro could outride him when the German troops occupy the Caucasus.

In January 1943, Nzhdeh was in Berlin, while his ten people from Bulgaria continued to live in the farm near Erkner. Nzhdeh used to visit them and watch them prepare for the Eastern Front. In February 1943, he quarrelled with Jamalian and managed to withdraw him from the group thanks to Hengelgaupt from the VI Department. SD later helped Seto Jamalian be employed at one of the factories in Hamburg. Shortly after my return to the SD, Hengelgaupt ordered the dispatch of these ten people to the Crimea because the Germans hoped to launch an offensive in the Caucasus and to use them for intelligence work... However, in autumn 1943, they were sent back to Germany because the military situation had worsened making the use of these people in Armenia impossible. At the insistence of Nzhdeh, they all returned to Bulgaria, and Nzhdeh left for Sofia.

Since Turkey suspended its diplomatic relations with Germany, and Bulgaria plunged into turmoil because of the deteriorated situation on the Eastern Front, in July 1944, Höttl ordered me to meet with Nzhdeh in Sofia to strengthen our intelligence in Bulgaria and in the Middle East. A research officer from Section E responsible for Bulgaria, Hauptsturmführer Pratsch, who no longer trusted his Bulgarian informers, was particularly interested in the outcome of our meeting.

I was instructed to get Nzhdeh’s consent to let his people collect intelligence data in Bulgaria. I was also instructed to contact in Sofia with a representative of the Section E under the VI Department of the SD, Hauptsturmführer Koob, to solve all the issues concerning the organisation of work with Nzhdeh…

... We left with Koob to Nzhdeh, to whom I introduced Koob under the name Kolberg. After Nzhdeh and Koob agreed to work together, Koob asked him about funds that would be needed to accomplish these tasks. We agreed that I would pay the people responsible for information supply at my own discretion. Koob said that he was ready to pay a hundred thousand levs each month for these purposes. After that, Nzhdeh and I went to his people.

Nzhdeh and I instructed these people to report on any actions or instructions of Bulgarians against the Germans, activities of Bulgarian communists, as well as the connections and activities of the Turks, especially the Turkish consuls.

In August 1944, I left Vienna for Budapest to meet with Höttl. He instructed me to meet with Nzhdeh in Sofia and to find more people for intelligence. My last meeting with Nzhdeh was around August 21. With no practical results, I left for Bucharest, where I was captured on August 25, 1944 along with the entire staff of the German embassy in Romania.

Although the German intelligence preferred Dashnaks instead of cooperation with Nzhdeh and his supporters, Nzhdeh was one of their loyal agents, who had made all his potential available for the Nazi Germany.”

As follows from Kamsarakan's testimony, his recruit, Nzhdeh, collaborated with two different sections of the SD: VI C (responsible for political intelligence in the USSR, Central and Eastern Asia, and the Far East) and VI E (responsible for the study of attitudes in hostile states). Incidentally, his collaboration with Section VI C was based purely on ideological reasons. In other words, he did this work practically free of charge compensated only for the incurred expenses, whereas his work for Section VI E was a paid job. It seems that Nzhdeh's hatred for the USSR, which expelled Dashnaks from Armenia, and for anything more or less associated with Russia was so great and irrational that he was ready to fight for free. Nevertheless, he agreed to be a Nazi spy in Bulgaria, which provided him with a shelter in difficult times, only for money.

Remarkably, Peter Kamsarakan gave his second testimony only after one of the most senior Soviet political leaders has acquainted with the first, who then demanded additional information about cooperation with the German intelligence agencies during World War II. This request concerned not the Dashnak Party, about which the Soviet leaders and intelligence services knew almost everything, but the collaboration between the Hitlerites and a part of the Armenian diaspora that was not Dashnak. Given that the subsequent testimonies of Kamsarakan are a part of the correspondence between the Secretariat of the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs and J. Stalin, we can fairly assume that the latter was personally interested in information about the collaboration of Nzhdeh with Nazis.

I think such a close attention of the Soviet leader to Kamsarakan can be explained only by the Soviet Union's territorial claims to Turkey at that time. USSR was preparing to demand the return of the territories in the South Caucasus (Kars, Artvin and Ardahan) ceded during the First World War. For this purpose, the repatriation of Soviet Armenians had been declared and the deportation of Azerbaijanis from the Armenian SSR had begun in order to liberate this territory for temporary relocation of Armenians. Therefore, the top political leadership of the Soviet Union was extremely interested in information about its other opponents, besides the Dashnaks, inside the Armenian diaspora. It was necessary to take adequate and proportionate preventive measures to neutralise them by the state security forces, which required the most complete and accurate information on this issue.

Advocates of Nzhdeh and his theories actively disseminate information that this Nazi henchman has repeatedly offered his services and connections in the Armenian diaspora to the top Soviet political leadership and intelligence services to fight against Turkey. Stalin, Beria, Molotov and others have indeed discussed this proposal, which also explains their interest in the past of Nzhdeh during the World War II. 

However, the proposal was rejected, for Nzhdeh's infamous background overpowered any benefits from cooperation with him. In fact, none of the Stalinist people's commissars was an angel; each of them had a certain degree of pragmatism that triumphed over ethics and humanism. However, Garegin Nzhdeh's associations with the Nazis was a taboo so strong that they could not defy despite lack of political principles. Otherwise, the totalitarian communist regime would have faced the Tseghakron theory of Nzhdeh, which was even more totalitarian in spirit and practice; an idea that the communist system could not implement fearing of destruction. That is why Nzhdeh ended his days in the Vladimir prison of the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs, despite his intention to serve the Bolsheviks, a job he had previously did for the Nazis.

Fifty years ago, the top Soviet political leaders knew perfectly well that Garegin Ter-Harutyunian, also known as Nzhdeh or the Guest Worker was not just a Nazi supporter but also an interpreter, populariser and promoter of the Nazi ideas and racial theory for Armenians. It is therefore surprising that the political elite of modern Russia considers the erection of Nzhdeh's monument in Yerevan an “internal matter” of Armenia. This is just a new form of glorification of Nazism and racism, which is absolutely incompatible with the provisions of the resolution adopted by the UN General Assembly on December 18, 2013 'Combating glorification of Nazism and other practices that contribute to fueling contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance' (A/RES/68/150).

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ARMENIA: A STATE of LEGITIMATE NAZISM - CHAPTER TWO

ARMENIA: A STATE of LEGITIMATE NAZISM - CHAPTER TWO

10/03/2018   Armenian falsification In English, armenian terrorism, Azerbaijan, In English,

How Armenian nationalists attracted Hitler's attention

Author: Oleg KUZNETSOV, Moscow

Until the mid-1930s, the Soviet security authorities considered Armenian nationalism and its main driver, the Dashnaktsutyun Party, as their conceptual rather than ideological opponents who were not spied upon or subject to any collective or individual repression until they committed any illegal acts. Simply put, the Dashnaks were under surveillance and in some cases the most active ones were sent into exile or imprisoned in the concentration camps of the State Political Directorate (SPD) (the practice of using free labour of prisoners in favour of the national economy had not been yet popular in the Soviet Union). They were considered rebels and terrorists rather than political and ideological rivals, as opposed to any religion and clergymen against which the state security authorities used all the power of its repressive system.

in July 1933, the Director of the State Political Directorate (SPD) of Armenian SSR, 1st class State Security Commissioner Armenak Abulian wrote an analytical memo where he clearly indicated "the organisation of reckless attempts such as the deployment of many gangs and their chieftains from Persia to Armenia and the organisation of terrorist acts against the state officials" as the main threat to the Soviet government. Dashnaks were not considered suitable for serious large-scale operations. This top-secret document was officially called Comparative data on the most important aspects of the decisions adopted by the 11th and 12th congresses of the Dashnaktsutyun Party and only the high-ranked SPD officials could have access to it and share as much information as necessary for the operational staff to fulfil their official duties. The copies were sent to the heads of relevant directorates in Azerbaijan SSR, Georgia SSR, and Nakhichevan Autonomous SSR. Based on the information received, they had to ensure the work of subordinate departments in situ. A copy of the analytical memo is still reserved at the State Security Service of the Republic of Azerbaijan. Surprisingly, the author of the memo died under mysterious circumstances in the following year either in a car accident, or was shot dead in office by Lavrenti Beria, the then First Secretary of the Transcaucasian Regional Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks (VKPb) and a member of the commission responsible for drafting the Regulation and Special Convention of the Soviet NKVD, who called Abulian to Tbilisi for a report.

The Dashnaks became ideological opponents of the Bolshevik Party in 1933, when Garegin Ter-Harutyunian, also known by his party nickname Nzhdeh, founded on July 16 the Tseghakron organisation in Boston, MA, which was later renamed to the Federation of Armenian Youth. Thus, he managed to turn his theory of Armenian Aryanism into practice. Almost at the same time, two more and apparently unrelated events happened. On January 30, the leader of the National Socialist Workers Party of Germany (NSDAP), Adolf Hitler, was appointed Reich Chancellor of Germany. Also, a French anthropologist G. Monthodont, who has been known neither before nor after the events, declared the existence of a separate "Armenoid race", the same "ancient" race as the Aryans from the racial theory of the Nazis. It is not by accident that all three events took place at the same time. Having been well aware of the complete impotence of his associates in the USSR and Turkey, Garegin Nzhdeh consciously founded his organisation to attract the attention of the newly minted führer of the German nation, to join the Nazis and use their military-technical power in the interests of Armenian nationalism. Obviously, Nzhdeh was not a German Nazi per se because he believed in the dominance of the "Armenoid" race, not German, and only pretended to be a Nazi by filling its external form with a completely different content, Tseghakronism. Despite these disparities, however, the identity of both racial theories, Nazism and Tseghakronism, still remains an objective reality.

It has long been known that when Armenian authors or public figures introduce new Armenian words to scientific or political terminology, they try not to translate their meaning into other languages. Therefore, only a handful of people know today what G. Ter-Harutyunian’s party nickname (Nzhde) truly means. Literally, it can be translated as "a man who left his homeland to work abroad"; in modern interpretation, it simply means a guest worker or a vagabond, rolling stone. Similarly, the word Tseghakron has been once used both as the name of Nzhdeh's organisation and as a term defining the essence of his theory. Today, Armenian politicians and journalists are trying either one of two: to remain silent or to interpret these terms as they think fit the most euphonious analogies in other languages. Meanwhile, the contemporaries of Nzhdeh who lived in the middle of the last century comprehended and interpreted them differently.

The State Archive of the Russian Federation (GARF) stores a number of interrogation records taken by the USSR National Commissariat of Internal Affairs from a German soldier of Armenian origin from Shamakhi, Peter Kamsarakan (Kamsarakian), who lived in Austria before the World War II. He was an agent of the Reich Main Security Office (RSHA), who took an active part in recruiting the leaders of Armenian nationalists in Europe to serve the Third Reich. The fate and testimony of this person will be a topic of one of our subsequent publications. During the interrogations first held by the officers of the Soviet Main Counter-intelligence Directorate (SMERSH) and then by the investigators of the NKVD and the Ministry of Internal Affairs, Kamsarakan repeatedly and quite definitely translated the name of the organisation Tseghakron as "racists". Thus, Nzhdeh is close to Hitler at least because he also authored a theory of racial superiority, the representatives of which are not the Aryans but the Armenoids. So, the leaders of the Soviet state security authorities knew very well that Nzhdeh was not just an ordinary Nazi apologist but also one of the main interpreters of this ideology for the peoples of the Soviet Union. That is why the issue of his release after Stalin's death or his posthumous rehabilitation has never been considered, at least at the level of public debates.

In his testimony, Peter Kamsarakan gave a very detailed account of how he personally recruited Nzhdeh and his ideological followers to the service of the Nazi Germany after receiving direct instructions from the SS Obertsturmbannführer (Lieutenant Colonel) Wilhelm Höttl, the RSHA representative in Austria. Quote:

"... [Höttl] told me that he would like to reach out to those Armenians that supported the Nazi Germany. I replied that he could not find the right people among the small Armenian businesses in Vienna, which could provide interesting information or be suitable for political cooperation. However, I knew a couple of politically active Armenians, who lived in Sofia. One of them was General Nzhdeh, the founder of a fascist organisation called the Racists. The other one was Arshak Jamalian, one of the leaders of the Dashnaksutyun Party, who lived in Paris.

I also told Höttl that Nzhde was a staunch supporter of Germany and he could trust him absolutely; and that Nzhdeh, like the Dashnaks, was definitely anti-Soviet. Although the Dashnaks had always been oriented to the West, i.e. UK and France, one could assume that in that situation they would cooperate with Germany. Having believed in the power and future of Germany, I thought that the cooperation with Armenians would definitely be beneficial for both the Dashnaks and the Racists also because of the anti-Soviet position of these parties, which seemed to me a sufficient guarantee of such cooperation."

Austrian Armenian Peter Kamsarakan was a very important and valuable source of information for the Soviet special services and law enforcement agencies. That is why his case was personally supervised by the Soviet Minister of Internal Affairs, Colonel-General S. Kruglov. On November 18, 1948, he signed a top-secret document addressed to J. Stalin, V. Molotov, L. Beria, and G. Malenkov. Later, on December 1, another copy of this document was sent to Lieutenant-General of State Security A. Kobulov, Head of the Directorate S under the Soviet Ministry of State Security, predecessor of KGB, which indicates the extremely high level of secrecy attached to this document. In fact, only the top political leadership of the USSR and only few leading, operational and technical staff members of the Soviet state security agencies knew about the content of the documented testimony of Kamsarakan and his physical existence in general. The document was later found in the GARF archives by the Doctor of History, Prof. Jamil Hasanli, who is the largest Azerbaijani researcher of modern history.

Below is an excerpt from the same document about the cooperation between the special services of the Third Reich and Armenian nationalists:

"... the Dashnaks collect information for Germans in all countries where they have committees, primarily in the Soviet Union, Central American countries, and the United Kingdom. In particularly important cases, the Dashnaks have to establish direct contact with German representatives in these countries… In addition to intelligence data, the Dashnaks, as instructed by their German patrons, were engaged in the illegal sale in Romania (summer 1940) of diamonds and other jewellery collected by Germans as a result of robbing individuals and companies in the Netherlands" (that is, the jewellery expropriated from the Dutch jewellers of Jewish origin, O.K.)… The Dashnaks also asked Germans to do some favours in return such as the establishment of an Armenian state within Germany in the event of a war with the USSR, where Dashnaks would be the government party. Also, apart from attaching the Armenian districts of Turkey to Armenia, the country would had been expanded thanks to the annexation of Nagorno-Karabakh in the east and the Borchaly region of Georgia in the north."

In other words, the Dashnaks were ready to establish yet another Reichskommissariat in the South Caucasus, similar to those that the Nazis had already established in other occupied territories. The only difference was that in other regions of Europe, the Nazis had no other choice than to implant their Aryan theory of racial superiority in Europe forcefully, whereas in Armenia there was already a group of potential functionaries of the occupation regime who carried the racist Nazi ideology of Tseghakron.

The most interesting part of the document, however, is the last paragraph:

"Kamsarakian’s testimony and his role in recruiting Dashnaks for cooperation with the Germans is confirmed by the convicted leader of Armenian emigrants Ter-Arutyunian, also known as Nzhdeh, who has been serving his term in the Vladimir Prison of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the USSR."

In this case, the fact that the testimony of one Armenian accomplice of German Nazism was verified through the interrogation of another one is not important, as this is a completely common practice used by special services in any country of the world. It is important, however, that Garegin Nzhdeh confessed that he and his supporters from the Dashnaktsutyun had collaborated with the Nazis consciously and purposefully since the 1940s; that the name of his organisation (Tseghakron) was translated from Armenian as racists; and that his party members had collaborated with the Nazis not only to provide military and economic intelligence, but also to do marketing and sales of the property of Holocaust victims. In other words, Nzhdeh personally confirmed that he was a supporter of German Nazism, his ideology of Tseghakronism was openly racist, and he was no other than a war criminal.

It is noteworthy to recall here that fifty years ago, the top political leadership of the USSR was well aware of the fact, which nowadays is almost completely forgotten in Russia, that Garegin Ter-Harutyunian, also known as Nzhdeh or the Guest Worker, was not just a Nazi accomplice but also an interpreter of its racial theory for Armenian nationalists. He did a lot to promote the Nazi ideas. Therefore, it is very surprising that the Russian political elite considers the recent installation of the Nzhdeh monument in Yerevan "an internal matter of Armenia", hence ignoring one of the revived forms of glorification of Nazism and racism. This is in no way compatible with the provisions of the UN resolution adopted by its General Assembly on December 18, 2013: Combating glorification of Nazism and other practices that contribute to fuelling contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance.

Furthermore, the monument to Garegin Nzhdeh in Yerevan is against the basic principles of the UN Declaration on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination adopted at the World Conference against Racism held in Durban, South Africa in August 31 – September 8, 2001. The preamble of this document clearly states that

"… racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance, where they amount to racism and racial discrimination, constitute serious violations of and obstacles to the full enjoyment of all human rights and deny the self-evident truth that all human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights, are an obstacle to friendly and peaceful relations among peoples and nations, and are among the root causes of many internal and international conflicts, including armed conflicts, and the consequent forced displacement of populations…"

The glorification of Nzhdeh's personality and his openly racist theory of Tseghakronism, as well as the adoption of Tseghakronism as the official state ideology of the Republic of Armenia also contradict almost all the provisions of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination adopted by the UN General Assembly's Resolution No. 2106, dated December 21, 1965.

Today, with more than 90% of its population being ethnic Armenians, Armenia is a monoethnic country surrounded by multinational states of Azerbaijan, Georgia, Iran, and Turkey. The presence of heavily Armenianised national minorities, the Aisors and Yezidis, does not contradict the official state ideology of Tseghakronism. According to the doctrine of the "Armenoid" race, these peoples are also "Armenoids", which completely excludes any external disparities between form and content. Considering the closure of all Russian schools in Armenia, as well as the expulsion of all the representatives of Turkic peoples from the country, then we can clearly declare that Armenia is not only a country of permitted Nazism but also a victorious racism.

The Russian authorities should bear in mind that constant protests against the glorification of Nazism in Ukraine and the Baltic states only do not imply that one can remain indifferent and ignorant to similar events in Armenia. Especially when there is evidence in Russian archives that directly point to the Nazi and racist nature of Nzhdeh's Tseghakronism. In legal terms, the monument to Nzhdeh is a kind of immoral practice that contributes to the escalation of contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia, and related intolerance. On June 10, 2016, during a press conference, the official representative of the Russian Foreign Ministry, Maria Zakharova, made the following statement, which was absolutely inappropriate in this case: "It’s not clear why the monument was erected because we all know about the immortal feat of Armenian people during the Great Patriotic War and the World War II". The monument to Nzhdeh is a monument to the Nazism that won in Armenia, hence it must be destroyed like any other image serving to glorify anti-humanism.

ЧИТАТЬ ПОЛНОСТЬЮ

ARMENIA: A STATE of LEGITIMATE NAZISM - CHAPTER ONE

ARMENIA: A STATE of LEGITIMATE NAZISM - CHAPTER ONE

9/24/2018   Armenia, Armenian falsification In English, armenian terrorism, Azerbaijan, In English,

Region Plus begins publication of articles by the Russian historian and lawyer Oleg Kuznetsov. His materials are based entirely on the declassified documents of the Soviet security authorities

Author: Oleg KUZNETSOV, Moscow

Winston S. Churchill is credited with the following brilliant phrase: "The only thing we learn from history is that we learn nothing from history." We recall it every time there is a chance to study the documents of the Soviet security authorities concerning their activities against Armenian nationalism, extremism, and terrorism. Unfortunately, the political class of modern Russia (and other countries with deep anti-fascist traditions) either forgot or is reluctant to remember and learn from the past, which is the main reason why the civilisation has completely lost influence on the establishment of the state ideology of modern Armenia.

Region Plus begins publication of articles by the Russian historian and lawyer Oleg Kuznetsov. His materials are based entirely on the declassified documents of the Soviet special services, which always had a clear understanding about the true and permanent enemy of the Russian statehood in history no matter who ruled the state – the emperor, the Bolsheviks, or the Soviets. And as soon as the Kremlin had a different (not that of the NKVD) view of the situation behind the Great Caucasian Range, it would immediately lose its geopolitical positions in the region one after another.

In the second half of 2016 and throughout 2017, the Russian-speaking media in various countries of the world was actively discussing the installation of a monument to the main ideologist of Armenian nationalism Garegin Nzhdeh (Ter-Harutyunian). The debates eventually split the information space into two antagonistic camps. Armenian press called Nzhdeh a national hero of the Armenian people and the founder of Armenia's state ideology, while the mass media of Russia, Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan and some other post-Soviet countries called him a fascist and protested against the glorification of a Hitlerite henchman in Armenia. Meanwhile, official Moscow, as well as other capitals of Europe and America decided to consider these actions as an "internal affair of Armenia." The situation was most evident in Russia though, when Russian political class, which had always been known for its raving condemnation of the glorification of any manifestation of Nazism and fascism in the Baltic countries and Ukraine, flatly refused to do so with regard to Armenia as it did not want to "offend" its only ally in the South Caucasus. Thus, seeing Russia's reluctant stance, the rest of the countries of the former anti-Hitler coalition, who lost 50 million of souls in the struggle against German Nazism and Italian fascism, did not bother either.

Garegin Nzhdeh, whose monument is flaunting in front of the Armenian government headquarters, left an infamous mark on history by committing the massacre of the Muslim population of Thrace as a member of the Bulgarian army during the 1st and 2nd Balkan wars (1912-1913), as well as the subjects of the Ottoman Empire as a member of the Russian Caucasian Army during the First World War (1914-1918), civilians in Azerbaijan and Northern Iran as a serviceman in the army of the Dashnak Republic of Armenia (1918-1920), as well as the founder of the Tseghakron Theory (Tseghakronism), which actually spurred the heated discussions around his monument in Yerevan as an act of hailing (or condemning) the fascism in Armenia. In fact, the motive for debates has developed since 2004, when the Republican Party, ruling in Armenia until recently, published a brochure entitled Garegin Nzhdeh and his teaching, which explained the essence of Nzhdeh's theory and declared it as an official state ideology of the country. In other words, for Armenian political establishment, the monument of Nzhdeh was a logical conclusion of a fifteen-year process of implanting the Tseghakronism into the mass consciousness of Armenians and a triumphant evidence of this ideology.

According to Wikipedia, Tseghakronism in essence is a "nationalist ideology, which claims that the highest value for an individual is his nation beyond which he cannot fully exist. The objective of Tseghakronism is the unification of all Armenians on the territory of their historical homeland under a unified Armenian state." Tseghakronism has not been finalised as a valid theory based on a philosophical treatise or an independent conceptual publication; rather it was developed through a series of articles. According to the anonymous author of the above-mentioned brochure, Garegin Nzhdeh and his teaching, Tseghakronism should not be confused with Italian fascism, German Nazism and Jewish Zionism, as it is an independent intellectual phenomenon specially developed for the Armenian people. Yet another article in Wikipedia ("Armenoid race") confirms that this ideology still officially exists in Armenia. According to the article, Armenians are no longer representatives of one of the peoples under the Semitic group, but an independent race of people rooted thousand years deep in the past. Incidentally, it was the French anthropologist G. Monthodont who originally claimed the existence of "Armenoids" in 1933 – precisely at the time when Nzhdeh began formulating his theory of Tseghakronism.

However, this view, which was readily accepted by the Russian authorities and the media under their control, followed by institutions of other countries, did not exist always. In the 1930s, when this ideology was only formulated, the attitude towards it in the USSR was completely negative.

While studying a set of selected documents of the State Security Directorate (SSD) of the People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs (NKVD) of the Transcaucasian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic (ZSFSR) for Azerbaijan SSR, a formerly-classified "top secret" SSD directive no. 138 to its territorial divisions (city departments and local branches), dated April 7, 1935 drew my attention. It was surprising that I found it on the first pages of a large archive file. The document mostly included local reports about the implementation of instruction, hence providing full and detailed evidence on one of the large-scale operations carried out by the Transcaucasian officers of the NKVD. The directive began with a detailed analysis of the problem and demanded fully concentration of forces from all regional units of the Soviet state security authorities to solve the problem (the original text was adjusted to be in line with the grammar of the modern Russian language):

"It is clearly visible that the Dashnaks became active after the 12th Congress of the [Dashnaksutyun] party both abroad and in the country and this activity is gradually develops into fascism.

Having remained as an uncompromising opponent of the Bolshevism, the Dashnaktsutyun has affirmed this struggle in the form of fascisation as the only way to strengthen its authority and militant spirit. To ensure a "consistent" transition to fascism, the Dashnak ideologists put forward the notorious theory of Aryanism for the Armenian nation.

These issues were most clearly formulated by the key figures of the Dashnaktsutyun in Europe. For example, Nzhdeh writes the following in his article "My word for the younger generation of Armenians":

"... Religion is a new wave raising the Armenian life and opposing our spiritual organism to the threatening death in an alien environment..."

"... Keep the Armenian spirit inaccessible to suicidal offensives of the Leninists..."

"... Bolshevism preaches that a nation must die to give life to the class; ...Fascism preaches that a class must die to give life to the nation..."

Strengthening of fascist tendencies is also observed among the Dashnak assets developed underground and is expressed as follows:

"If, after seizing the power, the Dashnaktsutyun's domination is based on its vague program of socialism, then we all will leave this party. We must finally learn action from Hitler".

At that time, Nzhdeh's call to "the younger generation of Armenians to learn action from Hitler" sounded quite symptomatic. That was way before the infamous Kristallnacht, an organised mass pogrom of Jews in Germany in 1938; the hellish gas chambers and crematoriums of the "death factory" in Auschwitz-Birkenau, although the theory of the "final solution of the Jewish question" had already been formulated and proclaimed; SS Untersturmführer Leopold Itz, Edler von Mildenstein had already established his Jews department under the auspices of the SD Central Board, and Otto Adolf Eichmann had already written a review of The Jewish State by Theodor Herzl, in which he recommended mass extermination of Jews as "enemies of the Reich". In other words, Nzhdeh urged his followers to learn doing the same with the Turkic and generally Muslim peoples as the Nazis will with the Jews in the near future – first in Germany, then in the territories of all the occupied countries of Europe. It was not something new for him anyway, as he had successfully practiced this in four preceding wars.

As can be seen from the above quotes found in the directive no. 138, for the security authorities of the Soviet Transcaucasia, the Armenian nationalism, as formulated by Garegin Nzhdeh, was nothing but fascism. Alas, the same cannot be said of modern Russia and other countries of the world, which still consider the case an "internal affair of Armenia", hence supporting and encouraging organised adherents and bearers of this ideology. And when the people of Armenia, who did not want to live according to the rules of Tseghakronism, which was considered a fascist theory in the USSR, hit the streets of Yerevan in April 2018 to fight for its freedom, dignity and democracy and to throw off the shackles of nationalism and fascism, politicians and public figures in Moscow expressed their resentment considering the events as a threat to Russia's national interests. Then what kind of Armenia does the political class of Russia need as its main ally in the Caucasus – openly Nazi or democratic?

Further down the text of the directive, we could see a list of achievements and drawbacks of the state security authorities of the Soviet Azerbaijan In fact, the list contains more drawbacks than achievements. The analysis of the real state of affairs concluded with a shocking statement: "It is particularly noteworthy that many peripheral authorities are completely inattentive and sometimes criminally negligent to reports about the presence of an important and worthy [Dashnak] object in their area". Specifically, the criticism concerned the Ganja city department, local branches in Shamkhor (Shamkir), Tauz (Tovuz), Aghdam and other areas. Towards the end of the document, we can see a set of guiding instructions or orders such as "Review all agents and get rid of the ballast of agents with low potential", "Improve educational work with agents", "Enhance vigilance against the Dashnak personnel who are still intact, returned from exile and moved to the region from Armenia or other areas, "Take the registration process seriously and under the guidance of our instructions, since there is no sound registration of Dashnaks in any of the regions..." (This is followed by the details of orders issued previously).

In other words, while the ideologists of Armenian nationalism and the Dashnaktsutyun Party did not publicly declare their adherence to fascism, the Soviet security authorities were completely loyal and even condescending to them. But when they started talking about the "Aryan roots of the Armenian nation" chiming in with German national-socialist ideology, preparations for mass repression of their party members began immediately. Until the 12th Congress of their party in the USSR, the Dashnaks and their ideology were not noticeable, but as soon as they openly and consciously switched to Nazi Aryan positions, they immediately became an object of interest and vocal opponents of the state security authorities.

State security agencies of the Transcaucasian Soviet republics registered the Dashnaks in three categories: 1) party members; 2) "participants of the Dashnak adventure in 1921", an anti-Soviet armed mutiny of Armenians in spring 1921 led by the last Prime Minister of the Dashnak Republic of Armenia, Simon Vratsian, who first handed over Armenia to the Ottoman troops and then the Bolsheviks. The rebels could seize a vast territory until Ganja and including Ninotsminde; 3) sympathizers. Two years later, in 1937, Dashnaks from the first two categories were executed systematically and methodically. Members of the last category were sent to the NKVD labour camps for "re-education". Security authorities of the Soviet Transcaucasia repressed the Dashnaks not because they were Armenians, nationalists, ideological opponents of Bolshevism or anti-Soviet, but because their leaders declared their support to Hitler and his misanthropic ideology. Garegin Nzhdeh and his theory of Tseghakronism (nothing else!) were the main reason why the Transcaucasian security authorities launched a bloody political repression against a significant portion of ethnic Armenians residing in the USSR.

Now Nzhdeh has a monument in Yerevan. Isn't it a glorification of Nazism in Armenia? Any form of friendship with fascists is immoral and no political reasons can justify this. Otherwise, the old Russian saying "Tell me who are your friends and I'll tell you who you are" becomes relevant.

P.S. On December 18, 2013, the 67th session of the UN General Assembly adopted a resolution "Combating glorification of Nazism and other practices that contribute to fuelling contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance" (A/RES/68/150). In compliance with §23 of this resolution, the erection of a monument to the founder of the openly Nazi ideology of Tseghakronism, Garegin Nzhdeh, is one of the modern forms of propaganda "based on ideas or theories of superiority of one race or group of persons of one colour or ethnic origin" and is a direct violation of Article 4 of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination. Also, in §12 of the same document the UN General Assembly "expresses concern at the human rights and democratic challenges posed by all extremist political parties, movements and groups." In addition, §19 emphasises "the importance of history classes in teaching the dramatic events and human suffering which arose out of the adoption of ideologies such as Nazism and Fascism."

Tseghakronism is Nazism, and its first victim during the second half of the 1930s was the Armenian people caught by Stalin's political repressions due to Nzhdeh's unwise public bravado in the world media. That is why his monument must be demolished and his name forgotten.

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“Anschluss” in the Caucasus: Thanks to complete negligence of the world community

“Anschluss” in the Caucasus: Thanks to complete negligence of the world community

3/17/2018   Armenia, Armenian falsification In English, armenian terrorism, In English,

https://moderndiplomacy.eu

By Fuad Akhundov 

On March 12, Austria commemorated a sad date, the 80th anniversary of the Anschluss, a bloodless “absorption” of the country by Hitler’s Germany. March 12 is an official Day of Remembrance in Austria. During a ceremony held in Vienna’s Hofburg Palace, Austrian President Alexander van der Bellen urged young people not to be “taken in” by neo-fascist and far-right ideologies. “The German armed forces came overnight to seize Austria. What did not come overnight was contempt for democracy, disregard for basic human rights and freedoms, militarism, intolerance and violence. Austria has a shared responsibility for the atrocities of National Socialism. Austrians were not only victims but also perpetrators, oftentimes in leading positions,” said van der Bellen.

Anschluss is translated from German as reunification. An Armenian word miatsum has a similar connotation used since 1988, half a century after the Anschluss, by Armenian fascists to label their claims to Azerbaijani Karabakh.

There are many parallels between the events of 1938 and 1988. Indeed, the Anschluss was a seemingly bloodless event, and most Austrians welcomed the annexation of their country by Germany, albeit unaware of the upcoming global consequences of this experience. Same as in Karabakh, when the crowds yelling “mi-a-tsum!” did not realise the cost they were going to pay because of their actions and that they were actually pushing their people to war. But most importantly, in 1938, the world community did not react to Hitler’s annexation of Austria as it should have reacted. It did not foresee the readiness of Nazi Germany to destroy the recognized borders behind the crowds who enthusiastically welcomed Reich Chancellor Adolf Hitler, an Austrian by birth. Nor did it foresee the territorial appetites of Hitler. Many researchers believe that if the world did properly react to the Anschluss of Austria and prevent the Munich agreement, it would be quite possible to avoid the Second World War.

There is no doubt that if the actions of Armenian nationalists were properly evaluated in 1988 without excessive complacency and if, after the collapse of the USSR, there would be a clear signal that the world would not tolerate any forceful redrawing of borders, I am sure that many of the existing acute political crises could be avoided.

Yet another warning of the Austrian President is more relevant than ever, that is the danger of fascination with neo-fascist ideas.

Today hardly anyone seems to believe in the urgency of reminders about the dangers of such ideas, especially in countries where these ideas were taken for granted as a guide to action. Surprisingly though, it is hard to realize that even today Nazi ideas are being promoted to the rank of state policy. This is exactly what transpires in neighbouring Armenia, which not only denies the “Anschluss-Miatsum”, but also promotes the Nazi accomplice Garegin Nzhdeh, the deputy commander of the Armenian Legion of the German armed forces and author of the racist theory of Tseghakronism as “a father of the nation” and “a symbol of patriotism”.

This Hitlerite butcher began his bloody career with ethnic cleansing of Azerbaijanis in Zangezur, later applying his rich experience in countless massacres of civilians including the children, women, and old people, whose only fault was that they belonged to a “wrong” nationality. The only difference was that in Zangezur the people was killed for being Azerbaijanis, while in Crimea – for being Jews or Karaites. A pompous monument has been erected in the centre of Yerevan for Nzhdeh the Butcher, and his ideology, Tseghakronism – officially promoted in Armenia as a state policy.

Yet Armenia is trying to mislead the world community by resorting to tricks typical to conmen but not the state authorities. The word tseghakron in Armenian means race. During his stay in the United States, Nzhdeh created an organisation from young Armenians that he would openly call tseghakron in Armenian, and racists in all other languages. If, for instance, someone is speaking about a race in anthropological sense of this word, tseghakron is normally translated into other languages as race. But as soon as it comes to Nzhdeh and his ideology, then the Armenians prefer using tseghakronism, a word of incomprehensible origin. But all these interpretation tricks do not make Nzhdeh’s ideology any less explicitly racist and fascist.

This cheap trick can deceive only the naive people unfamiliar with the situation in Armenia, where the fascist ideology of Nzhdeh is manifested in everything. The fascist tenet of “purity of blood” has turned into a series of ethnic cleansing events in Armenia. Being a hard-core fascist, Nzhdeh preached “the purity of Armenian language” forbidding Armenians to communicate in other languages but Armenian. In fact, education in any other language except Armenian is prohibited in Armenia. There is a small number of Russian classes in high schools but they are only for the children who have at least one non-ethnic Armenian parent.

An outrageous incident occurred recently during the selection of participants for the Junior Eurovision Song Contest started in Armenia. The head of the Armenian delegation at contest, Gohar Gasparyan stated clearly: “All children of Armenian nationality of 9-14 years old can participate in the Eurovision Song Contest, regardless of the place of residence. We are waiting for talented Armenian kids.” Then one named Anush, answering a question if children of other nationalities can participate in the selection, replied: “Actually, it is impossible according to the law. Generally speaking, if a participant is from Armenia, he or she must be of Armenian origin.” This is fascism in action, isn’t it?

In fact, the first Armenian president Levon Ter-Petrosyan was well aware of the danger of such ideology. Tseghakronism, ARF Dashnaktsutyun, etc. were strictly banned during his tenure. But then Ter-Petrosyan was overthrown as a result of the “creeping coup” and fascists like Robert Kocharyan and Serzh Sargsyan usurped the power. In one of his interviews, Kocharyan, in the spirit of the fascist Nzhdeh, tried to reason a “genetic incompatibility” between Armenians and Azerbaijanis. In his interview with Thomas de Waal, the incumbent president Sargsyan was boasting of his complicity in the massacre of the peaceful population of Khojaly: “Before Khojaly, Azerbaijanis thought that they could joke with us; they thought that Armenians are incapable of laying hands on civilians. We managed to break this (stereotype).” Needless to say that the irresponsible and aggressive behaviour of Armenian authorities remains a serious threat to the security of the entire region. But above all, this policy is dangerous for Armenia itself, whose citizens are better not to forget the outcome of fascination with the ideas of “racial superiority” and claims to the lands of neighbouring countries for Germany. Although, given the current statistics of emigration from Armenia, I believe that many of its citizens understand the implications of the dangerous game played by official Armenian authorities.

Furthermore, one can see a manifest of the fascist ideology on the symbol of the ruling Republican Party of Armenia (RPA), which is very similar to the symbolism of the Third Reich. The RPA logo depicts an eagle with stretched wings almost exactly repeating the coat of arms of Nazi Germany; even the head of an eagle looks at its left wing. It is not a shame to use an eagle as a symbol of party and country. But both symbols (RPA and Third Reich) match entirely, and such things cannot be accidental.

Today, one can find an image of a steel eagle neither in Germany, nor in Austria, let alone in any other country of the world. But in Armenia the authorities revived the eagle, which is flaunting not only on the emblem but also at all party congresses, like years ago at party congresses of the Third Reich. Armenian authorities have surpassed even the Fuhrer in his effort to spread the ideology of fascism. If Hitler dreamed of creating a mono-ethnic state in the Third Reich, destroying the most beautiful cities of Europe including Paris, Krakow, Prague, and Warsaw and changing ethnic identities of people living therein, none of his efforts were fruitful. It is hard to believe but the current leaders of Armenian nation have managed to do this, thanks to the complete negligence of the world community. As a result, Armenia is a mono-ethnic state, where no Azerbaijanis are living; the entire Azerbaijani architecture previously populating the historical centre of Yerevan and also the whole territory of Armenia has been destroyed; and absolutely all Azerbaijani toponyms and hydronyms have been changed to Armenian ones.

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