This is an important point to consider, as we can accept the tales he tells that he was directly involved in as the truth, for the most part. (Interestingly, he does not dwell on the part he played during the many slaughters he was involved in, contrary to the admission he made to his boss in the book’s introduction. He prefers to show himself as performing humanitarian deeds which, to his credit, I believe he did.) However, when he gives his opinion about historical matters that he heard secondhand... we can understand he has come to believe the Armenians’ own propaganda at best, or serves to deceive, at worst. Appressian is a proud Armenian patriot. While he acknowledges the Dashnaks as fanatics and does not hero-worship them, we can see how the terrorist organization has played an important part in his development. Dashnaks went in and out of his father’s home, for example (“Armenian secret society whose purpose was to secure the independence of Armenia. Members called Dashnacks....I was aware that strange men came to my father's house from far places and that these men were Dashnacks... To me, a boy of 13 years, the name Dashnack became one of glorious though sinister intelligence”), and even his wife’s father was the Dashnak leader and head of government at Alexandropol. Appressian had a duty to maintain the party line.

Therefore when he tells us the Ottoman Turks were “sunk in barbarism,” that they “oppressed and restricted in every way” the Armenians, and that “Turkish Armenians could not rise above the level of their masters,” none of that makes sense in a nation where Armenians were allowed to rise to the highest ranks of society and government, and where Armenians were generally members of the wealthy upper class (as examined on this page). As a Russian Armenian, either he heard the horror stories and believed in them, or felt it was his obligation to “embellish” the truth.

For example, when he relates the tale that two-thirds of the 3,000 Turkish P.O.W.’s under Armenian care were cruelly put to death, we can believe him; he saw the events with his own eyes. (And probably participated in the murders, although he says he wished he could have lodged a protest.) But when he says the Turks got their revenge by, for one thing, cramming a church with Armenian peasants, and then setting it on fire... that is a story he only heard about. (Not to say it couldn’t have happened; it probably did. But once again, the Turk-damning testimony is only based on hearsay... as usual.)

My moment of discovery that the man was not a credible witness describing events he was not a direct party to occurred when he stated on pg. 206 that “The Georgians invaded Armenia in an effort to seize Armenian territory.” That is absolutely false. It was the Armenians who attacked Georgia, forcing the leader of that country to state this very revealing passage.

There is no question that Appressian experienced pure hell relating anecdotes where men behaved worse than animals, as he poignantly keeps reminding us that “Men are like that.” He gets married and has two children (one of whom dies), and it’s heartbreaking to see the many times he had to leave his loved ones to a questionable fate, so that he could go off and perform his slicing and dicing, and other duties.

One tale about how a “giant” Azeri Turk faced a whole group of Armenian soldiers (P. 200 or so) was particularly moving. Around pg. 300, we are reminded of the despicable conditions of the countryside where famine and disease claimed untold Armenian victims... a reminder of how many Ottoman citizens lost their lives during the war years, where even Ambassador Morgenthau reported in his phony book that thousands of Turks were dying daily, and where even Turkish soldiers were dying in the thousands. This is an important point to bear in mind, because we can better understand the bulk of the Armenians in the Ottoman Empire did not die from massacres as is usually presented, but by the same factors that claimed all Ottoman citizens.

(Pp. 96-106):
(Armenia) was badly governed by the Russians. It suited the Russian policy to keep the people in ignorance and the country backward economically and socially. The Russians, it is true, built a railroad through the country and a number of hard surfaced roads; but this construction was dictated by military considerations. Russian ambition was fixed on obtaining Constantinople. Armenia was to the Russians merely a step toward the attainment of that goal. Some of the roads built by the Russians ran as straight as the flight of a bullet to the Turkish border, where they stopped abruptly. Beyond their point of termination was a wilderness of desert and mountains. Any purpose the roads could serve in the economy of the country was merely incidental to that for which they were built, the military invasion of Turkey.

I stress this point because Russians boast that they are responsible for the only developments in modernization that are to be found in Armenia, and they instance the military roads and the railroads as proof of the progress and benevolence of Russian rule. I think it is important to understand that such benefits as accrued to Armenia were incidental and not intentional. Armenia under the Czar was in fact a victim of imperial exploitation. However, as a rule, good order was kept throughout the country and there was security for life and property.

Turkish Armenia was far more backward than was Russian Armenia. Such education and. culture as were possible of attainment by Armenians living under Turkish rule was due to the generosity of America, France and Germany. These countries established schools and colleges in the Turkish province for the benefit of Armenians.

Turkey was sunk in barbarism. Turkish Armenians could not rise above the level of their masters. Under the government of the Turks there was no security for life or property from one day to the next. Armenians were oppressed and restricted in every way and often were the victims of massacres at the hands of the Turks or the allies of the Turks, the Kurds and Tartars. For this reason there was more need for some force to oppose the government in Turkish Armenia and more justification for extreme measures than was the case in Russian Armenia. En consequence the Dashnack organization developed more rapidly in the former province.

Within a few years, following the beginning of the movement, an invisible government of Armenians by Armenians had been established in Turkish Armenia in armed opposition to the Turkish Government. This secret government had its own courts and laws and an army of assassins called “Mauserists” (professional killers) to enforce its decrees.

Ramifications of the organization took root everywhere throughout Turkey and to a lesser extent in Russian Armenia. Its strongholds were the American, German and French schools and colleges in Turkey. In perhaps every one of these, chapters or branches existed, usually under the guise of literary societies. It was from among the students of the schools and from the Armenian members of the faculties that the leaders were recruited.

The Dashnacks were in continual open rebellion against the Turkish Government. The Turks took severe measures to stamp out this society but without achieving any great success because they had nothing tangible against which to direct their rage. It was as though they were battling with the air. The Russian Government joined with the Turks in this effort, for while Russia had no love for Turkey it was not in the Russian plan to see an independent Armenia thrown across the road to Constantinople, to say nothing of the dislike of the Russian governing class for revolutionary movements of all kinds.

Russian fear of revolution was even greater than Russian greed. This was shown when for a time it became the policy of the Dashnacks to stir up trouble between Russia and Turkey in the hope that Russia would conquer Turkish Armenia from the Turks and unite it with Russian Armenia. The Russian Government would have nothing to do with any movement inspired by revolutionaries, even when, as in this instance, the intention was to give Russia a pretext for seizing additional Turkish territory.

In 1896 the Dashnacks engineered a general revolt of Armenians in Turkish Armenia under the mistaken belief that European nations would intervene and secure independence for Turkish Armenia. The Turks were absolutely merciless in putting down this revolt. The massacre of one hundred thousand Armenians was but an incident of its suppression. England intervened to the extent of extorting certain concessions for herself from the Turks. The revolt was suppressed; nevertheless the Dashnack party continued to exist.

The Dashnacks were fanatics and as ruthless as the Turks were merciless. In planning the great revolt of 1896 the leaders knew full well that they had not at their command the strength necessary to success and that the Turks would retaliate with indiscriminate massacres of Armenians. Their one chance for success lay in European intervention, and to secure this they counted on the inevitable massacres that the Turks would perpetrate.

The revolution in Russia in 1905 following the Japanese-Russian War made it seem possible for a time to secure the independence of Russian Armenia. The Dashnacks took advantage of this situation and extended their revolutionary activities into the Russian province. They instituted a campaign of terrorism and employed threats and force in securing contributions to the party funds from rich Armenians. A wealthy man would be assessed a stipulated sum. Refusal to pay brought upon him a sentence of death.

Every member of the party was pledged to carry out orders without question. If a man were to be assassinated, lots might be drawn to select an executioner or the job might be assigned to one of the mauserists of the party.

The revolution in Russia was reflected also in the adoption by the Dashnack Party of certain socialistic principles. However it retained its own national aims and remained entirely independent of the Russian Socialistic Party. The introduction of socialism caused a split in the ranks of the Dashnacks that has never been mended, one branch remaining purely nationalist and the other national socialistic even to the present day.

The Russian Government through its agents, in order to suppress the revolutionary movement in Russian Armenia and in other provinces in 1905 when her hands were full with revolution at home, incited a Tartar-Armenian war throughout the Caucasus, some of the events of which I witnessed as a boy in Shusha, and which I have already described.

Since its conquest by the Russians, Russian Armenia has been the spearhead of the threatened Russian advance to Constantinople. A pretext for the invasion of Turkey by Russia was usually available in the never-ending disturbances in Turkish Armenia that frequently reached a climax in the wholesale massacring of Armenians by the Turks. Although these disturbances were frequently fomented by the Armenian Dashnack Society, it must be remembered that the society had its genesis and justification in Turkish misrule.

It was not the strength of Turkey but the unwillingness of the governments of Europe to see Russia in command of the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles that held the Russians at bay. It required only a situation in which the great European nations would be powerless to intervene to start the Russian invasion. In anticipation of this longed-for opportunity the Russian Government kept a large army in instant readiness in Russian Armenia. Great army bases were built and strategic positions, chief among which was the city of Kars, were strongly fortified.

Russian administration did nothing to develop the resources of the country either in its people or industries, existing or potential; and the great mass of the population lived, as it had always lived, in a condition of extreme primitiveness, ignorance, squalor and poverty.

Ruins of the dwellings of the ancient Armenians testify that there has been no improvement in the homes of the peasants during the past thousand years. Now, as in the remote past, the houses are one-storied affairs with walls built of undressed stone, and floors sunk several feet below ground level. The roof of a house is constructed of soil and sod, supported by a few brush-covered rafters. A pit in the center of the floor serves as a fireplace; a hole in the roof permits the smoke to escape. Windows are nonexistent or a rare luxury.

Too often the live stock share these semisubterranean huts with the family. In the summer when the live stock is kept in the open, conditions are bearable; in the winter they are bad beyond description. The door is kept tightly shut. The only ventilation is that provided by the hole in the roof intended for the escape of smoke. In this almost air-tight chamber the family lives shut in with the cattle, sheep, chickens and dogs. Naturally there are many diseases epidemic among the people and the animals; measles, typhus, smallpox, malaria and tuberculosis being very common. In whole villages there is scarcely a person not suffering from trachoma.

The only fuel used, because it is the only fuel available, is dried animal manure, and the use of this is confined almost exclusively to cooking. The body heat of the animals occupying the huts with the people suffices for heating purposes except in extremely cold weather when a leuzzi or toniz is used. This is a large stool covered with a quilt or carpet. Fire of dried dung is placed in a pot and put beneath the covered stool. The members of the family keep warm by sitting around this contrivance, with their feet beneath the quilt.

The people live on the floor. Chairs, couches and beds are a rarity. For sleeping purposes a mattress protected by a grass mat is spread on the dirt floor. During the day the bedding is folded and placed in a corner. The bedding is always damp. For this reason rheumatism is common, especially among the women, as they spend a much greater portion of their time in the house than do the men, In their persons the people are extremely filthy. Vermin are a commonplace.

Hard work in the open throughout the summer enables the peasant to survive. He arises at daybreak, eats a piece of bread washed down with a glass of vodka, and goes to his work in the fields. At about eight o’clock he eats a breakfast of bread and water. At midday he has a lunch of bread and inatzoon or cheese. In the evening he finishes whatever remains from lunch and then returns to his home. Just before going to bed he dines again.

Women occupy an inferior status in the household. They take their meals with the children apart from the men. In the home, food is served in a single clay pot from which all help themselves with their fingers. At the end of the repast should anything remain in the pot, it is customary to offer it to the bachelor present if there be one. The host presents it to him with the admonition, “Clean the pot well if you wish for a brave wife.”

A typical village in Armenia exists largely independent of the rest of the world. Every man is his own mechanic. He builds and maintains his own house. The building materials are wholly indigenous to the locality; and so while the houses of all villages are alike in that they represent almost absolute minimum of shelter and comfort necessary in a home, they differ in that the houses of one village may be built of rough stones and those of another of sundried mud. In sections where clay suitable for tile-making is available, the houses are usually roofed with tiles. It is typical of the economic condition of the country that tile roofs are never seen elsewhere than close to the claypits. Tiles are never transported to districts where clay suitable for tile-making is not found. This is explainable in the mountainous nature of the country, which makes transportation both slow and costly. Away from the railroad, goods are carried on oxcarts and pack animals. As a consequence there is comparatively little intercourse or exchange of goods between different sections of the country. Each distinct region has therefore developed an economy sufficient unto itself and peculiar to itself.

Each village grows sufficient bread grains for its own needs. Fat-tail sheep supply meat, milk, cheese, wool for knitting, sheep-skins for warm overcoats, hats and bedding. It is necessary to obtain outside the resources of the community only a few articles and these mostly luxuries, such as tea, sugar and tobacco.

There is almost as great a diversity of climate in the small area that constitutes Armenia as in the whole of Europe. Climatic conditions, particularly rainfall, determine the type of agriculture, which in turn determines for the peasants, in their primitive mode of life, the architecture of their houses, their food and clothes and to a great extent their social customs and institutions.

Armenia is an old, old country. The origin of our people is unknown, though Armenian mythology credits us with being direct descendants, of the voyagers in the Ark. There is a small village at the foot of Mount Ararat which most Armenians believe to have been built by Noah. Mythology aside, there can be no doubt of our extreme antiquity as a people in this land of Armenia. Our occupancy through thousands of years has left its record plainly written in the ruins that dot the country, in the very rocks of the mountains.

The Armenian people have never known liberty, for even in the days of our independence the country was divided among a number of petty kings continually warring among themselves and holding the common man in serfdom; while during the past seven hundred years, during which time so many peoples have gained freedom and progressed far in civilization, we have been a conquered people under the galling yoke of Arab, Persian, Mongol, Tartar, Turk or Russian.

The conquerors have left an indelible Oriental stamp upon Armenia and her people. It is to be seen in our customs, dress and manners, our music and dances, our art and literature. There is one fundamental difference, however, that has served to mark us from the Oriental peoples with whom we are surrounded. I refer to the fact that we are Christians, it is said the oldest Christian people in the world.

The Armenian people were converted to Christianity during the third century of the Christian era. Since that remote day, wave after wave of pagan and Mohammedan peoples has swept across the country, reduced it and imposed the rule of the conqueror upon it; but still the country has remained Christian. By virtue of their religion the Armenian people have remained to their non-Christian neighbors alien, suspected, despised, hated and oppressed; and for the same reason they have retained their identity and unity.

Such was Armenia, a country of culturally primitive people isolated among the mountains of the Caucasus from all friends and allies, and surrounded by alien and hostile nations and races, when Bolshevism invaded the Caucasus, and the Armenian people, with no experience in self-government, divided among themselves into warring factions, were thrown upon their own resources upon the breakdown of the Russian administration.

 (p. 192):
The English were in possession of the town. The English soldiers were black men from India, though their officers were white. They were fine troops and splendidly equipped. They had everything in abundance, including artillery, machine-guns and tanks, doctors to care for the sick and wounded, medical supplies, blankets, everything in fact that we Armenians had so badly needed.

In the advance on the Kars the English troops went ahead. The Armenian forces followed them. The Turks did not fight, but merely retreated before us. In this way we entered the, ancient fortified city that had once been the capital of an Armenian kingdom, that had been the scene of innumerable battles and sieges, and that still was the keystone in the defenses of the country.

Great swarms of peasants who had come out of their hiding-places on the retreat of the Turks followed our army as it advanced. They were gruesome creatures that had been men, women and children—now only the semblance of such—starved and in rags, their emaciated bodies covered with festering sores. They dogged the footsteps of the army, scavenging and thieving. They entered into the city with the army and immediately began plundering the stores that had been left by the Turks. The attempt on the part of the English commander to prevent this resulted in mêlées in which several English soldiers were injured. The looters were emboldened by the fact that the soldiers were under orders not to shoot or use their bayonets upon the refugees. Finally, two soldiers were killed. This so enraged the English commander that he gave orders that all robbers be shot on sight. A number of peasants were killed on the day this order was given, but following that there was no further trouble.

Everywhere the Turks retreated without fighting before the advance of the English, until the former had abandoned all of their conquests and Armenia was free of hostile invaders. The English were just in their treatment of all people. They protected Moslems equally with Christians. They even put Turks and Tartars in positions of authority in districts where Moslems predominated. This policy was greatly resented by the Armenians.

As long as the English remained in the country they were the real government and authority. The government formed by the Dashnack Party was a government in name only. The English did not remain for long, however, and when they left, the Dashnacks again had full control.

There was a recurrence of jealousy, hate and dissension. Many men were murdered by their political foes. No one of importance was free from espionage, or knew but that at any moment he might be executed by some mauserist with a mandate from a secret tribunal. Terrible vengeance was taken upon Tartars, Kurds and Turks. Their villages were destroyed and they themselves were slain or driven out of the country.

(p. 218):
Russian troops did terrible things in the Turkish villages. The world knows the fate of the Armenians in Turkey. We Armenians did not spare the Tartars. It is all a circle of hatred and revenge, an endless chain plunging ever farther into the depths and bringing forth the worst there is in human nature. If persisted in, the slaughtering of prisoners, the looting, and the rape and massacre of the helpless become commonplace actions expected and accepted as a matter of course. Men are like that. We Armenians, brutalized by the horrors we had endured and inflicted during our war with the Turks, were to be no more merciful toward one another in the civil war that was soon to come.

We live in a universe beyond the understanding. The serenity of God troubles the spirit of the thoughtful. I have been on the scenes of massacres where the dead lay on the ground, in numbers, like the fallen leaves in a forest. They had been as helpless and as defenseless as sheep. They had not died as soldiers die in the heat of battle, fired with ardor and courage, with weapons in their hands, and exchanging blow for blow. They had died as the helpless must, with their hearts and brains bursting with horror worse than death itself. The earth in such a spot should rot, and the air above it be black forever; but always the sun shines as warmly there, and over it the canopy of the blue sky spreads itself as protectingly as elsewhere. Birds sing as sweetly there, and flowers bloom with as much beauty.

 

(p.300):
At that time railroad travel was free in conformity with the early extreme communistic theories of the Bolshevists. It seemed as though every one in the world was riding or seeking to ride. At every station an appalling mass, lured by the hope of better things elsewhere, fought to board the train that could hold no more. What pitiful human wreckage these people were! They had no objective other than to escape from where they were. In their flight death strode with them, and marked their way over mountains and plains with unnumbered bodies. Victims of famine and pestilence, the old and the young lay down by the wayside and died, while old and young with sufficient strength to continue on passed them by.

In Alexandropol I was successful in securing work with the Americans. During the period of acute famine I received a wage that was calculated as being sufficient merely to sustain life. Yet from this small sum I sent something each month to my wife.

It must have seemed to any observer in Armenia, during the year of acute famine, that the entire population of the country was doomed to extinction. Even Red soldiers in the Russian Army of Occupation died of starvation. ! It was a famine such as the country had never before seen. The contending armies had drained the country of its food. Pestilence added to the horrors of starvation. Typhus, cholera, typhoid and malaria reaped their harvest of death, more so than did the battles and massacres of the war. The people had no strength, and died as flies die with the coming of frost. I have, in my story, given you a brief account of horrible things, but things having to do mainly with the savagery and cruelty of wild people. I say wild people, because we, of this land, are not civilized. We are still living with the social and ethical conceptions of the days of the Mongol conquerors. Indeed, in many aspects of civilization we are not so far advanced as we were ,in those distant times. Awful as were the incidents I have described and related, they are not comparable in sheer horror with the happenings during the time of famine.

Compared with pestilence and famine all other calamities of war are merely mishaps. What words can convey the meaning of hunger and disease when these agents of death and bestiality have stricken an entire people! The young and the old lie dead on the streets, in the fields and on the roads. Each day in towns and villages the death carts rumble over the cobbles, bearing their ghastly loads to an open ditch in the fields. The wolves fatten and become bold. At night they range the streets to feast on the toll of the day.

I would not offend your ears with words about the awful acts of men at such times. Enough to say that men became beasts. But then there is a brighter side, for in such a pass there are men and women who become saints. There are those who give the last of their strength in the service of others, beasts and saints. Men are like that.