Avis (Avetis) Soghomoni Nurijanyan (; 3 December 1896 – 16 September 1938) was a

Bolshevik The Bolsheviks (russian: Большевики́, from большинство́ ''bol'shinstvó'', 'majority'),; derived from ''bol'shinstvó'' (большинство́), "majority", literally meaning "one of the majority". also known in English ...

revolutionary and

Soviet The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen nation ...

politician of

Armenian Armenian may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to Armenia, a country in the South Caucasus region of Eurasia * Armenians, the national people of Armenia, or people of Armenian descent ** Armenian Diaspora, Armenian communities across the ...

origin who served as the People's Commissar for Military Affairs of the Armenian SSR from 1920 to 1921 and People's Commissar for Internal Affairs in 1921. He is infamous for his role in carrying out mass repressions immediately following the

Sovietization of Armenia The Red Army invasion of Armenia, also known as the Sovietization or the Soviet invasion of Armenia, the Soviet occupation of Armenia, or Soviet intervention in Armenia was a military campaign which was carried out by the 11th Army of Soviet Ru ...

Biography

Avis Nurijanyan was born in 1896 in the village of Vachagan (now a part of the city of Kapan) to a peasant family. He graduated from the Shusha Real School, then studied at the faculty of economics of the Kiev Commercial Institute from 1913 to 1917. He abandoned his studies after his fourth year at the institute and participated in revolutionary activities. During

World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...

, he served in the Russian Army on the Caucasus front. Nurijanyan was a member of the

Armenian Revolutionary Federation The Armenian Revolutionary Federation ( hy, Հայ Յեղափոխական Դաշնակցութիւն, ՀՅԴ ( classical spelling), abbr. ARF or ARF-D) also known as Dashnaktsutyun (collectively referred to as Dashnaks for short), is an Armenian ...

(ARF) in 1917. In 1918, he joined the

Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks) "Hymn of the Bolshevik Party" , headquarters = 4 Staraya Square, Moscow , general_secretary = Vladimir Lenin (first)Mikhail Gorbachev (last) , founded = , banned = , founder = Vladimir Lenin , newspaper ...

. He took part in revolutionary activities in Baku and the creation of the

Baku Commune Baku (, ; az, Bakı ) is the capital and largest city of Azerbaijan, as well as the largest city on the Caspian Sea and of the Caucasus region. Baku is located below sea level, which makes it the lowest lying national capital in the world ...

in 1918. He was elected a member of the Baku underground committee of the Russian Communist Party, but was arrested and expelled from

Azerbaijan Azerbaijan (, ; az, Azərbaycan ), officially the Republic of Azerbaijan, , also sometimes officially called the Azerbaijan Republic is a transcontinental country located at the boundary of Eastern Europe and Western Asia. It is a part of t ...

in the summer of 1919. He then held a leading position in the Bolshevik organization in

Alexandropol Gyumri ( hy, Գյումրի, ) is an urban municipal community and the second-largest city in Armenia, serving as the administrative center of Shirak Province in the northwestern part of the country. By the end of the 19th century, when the city w ...

(modern-day Gyumri,

Armenia Armenia (), , group=pron officially the Republic of Armenia,, is a landlocked country in the Armenian Highlands of Western Asia.The UNbr>classification of world regions places Armenia in Western Asia; the CIA World Factbook , , and ' ...

). In January 1920, he was elected a member of the Armenia Committee (Armenkom) of the Russian Communist Party. While in Alexandropol, he took part in the organization of the failed May Uprising of 1920 against the ARF-led government of the

Republic of Armenia A republic () is a "state in which power rests with the people or their representatives; specifically a state without a monarchy" and also a "government, or system of government, of such a state." Previously, especially in the 17th and 18th c ...

. After the suppression of the rebellion, he fled to Azerbaijan. In September 1920, Nurijanyan participated in the meeting of the communist organizations of Armenia in Baku and was elected a member of the Central Committee of the newly created Communist Party of Armenia. He was also a member of the Revolutionary Committee of Armenia (Armrevkom) formed in Azerbaijan, which made up the new government of Armenia following its Sovietization in November-December 1920. From November 1920 to May 1921, he served as the People's Commissar for Military Affairs of Soviet Armenia. Although the Bolsheviks had initially agreed to grant immunity to the former political and military leadership of Armenia, Nurijanyan and his allies were eager to take revenge for the violent suppression of the May Uprising and destroy the remnants of the "bourgeois, nationalist regime" of the ARF. He was one of the chief perpetrators of the forced exile and repression of numerous political and military figures of the First Republic of Armenia in January 1921. Bakhshi Ishkhanyan, an Armenian Marxist author, described Nurijanyan as "the

Herostratus Herostratus ( grc, Ἡρόστρατος) was a 4th-century BC Greek, accused of seeking notoriety as an arsonist by destroying the second Temple of Artemis in Ephesus (on the outskirts of present-day Selçuk). The conclusion prompted the creat ...

of Armenia. A sick young student operating under the influence of his constantly agitated brain, a total sadist and degenerate." The repressions that Nurijanyan conducted were one of the causes of the

February Uprising The February Uprising ( classical hy, Փետրուարեան ապստամբութիւն, reformed: Փետրվարյան ապստամբություն, ''P'etrvaryan apstambut'yun'') was an anti-Bolshevik rebellion by the nationalist Armenian R ...

of 1921, when Soviet power in Armenia was briefly overthrown by an ARF-led rebellion. The harsh methods of the Armenian Bolshevik leadership prompted Soviet leader

Vladimir Lenin Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov. ( 1870 – 21 January 1924), better known as Vladimir Lenin,. was a Russian revolutionary, politician, and political theorist. He served as the first and founding head of government of Soviet Russia from 1917 to 1 ...

to send

Alexander Miasnikian Alexander Fyodori Miasnikian or Myasnikov; russian: Алекса́ндр Фёдорович Мяснико́в. Also spelled Myasnikyan. His patronymic is variously given as Asatur, Astvatsatur, Fyodor and Bogdan. (28 January February1886 – ...

to take leadership and stabilize the situation in Armenia.

Later years and death

Nurijanyan left Armenia and held various positions in the Communist Party bureaucracy in

Leningrad Saint Petersburg ( rus, links=no, Санкт-Петербург, a=Ru-Sankt Peterburg Leningrad Petrograd Piter.ogg, r=Sankt-Peterburg, p=ˈsankt pʲɪtʲɪrˈburk), formerly known as Petrograd (1914–1924) and later Leningrad (1924–1991), i ...

and

Ryazan Ryazan ( rus, Рязань, p=rʲɪˈzanʲ, a=ru-Ryazan.ogg) is the largest city and administrative center of Ryazan Oblast, Russia. The city is located on the banks of the Oka River in Central Russia, southeast of Moscow. As of the 2010 Cens ...

from 1923 to 1930. He was a supporter of the

Trotskyist Trotskyism is the political ideology and branch of Marxism developed by Ukrainian-Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky and some other members of the Left Opposition and Fourth International. Trotsky self-identified as an orthodox Marxist, a ...

Left Opposition The Left Opposition was a faction within the Russian Communist Party (b) from 1923 to 1927 headed ''de facto'' by Leon Trotsky. The Left Opposition formed as part of the power struggle within the party leadership that began with the Soviet fou ...

and was consequently expelled from the Communist Party in 1927, although his party membership was restored in 1929. Starting in 1930 he worked as the chairman of the

kolkhoz A kolkhoz ( rus, колхо́з, a=ru-kolkhoz.ogg, p=kɐlˈxos) was a form of collective farm in the Soviet Union. Kolkhozes existed along with state farms or sovkhoz., a contraction of советское хозяйство, soviet ownership or ...

center of the

Transcaucasian SFSR , conventional_long_name = Transcaucasian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic , common_name = Transcaucasian SFSR , p1 = Armenian Soviet Socialist RepublicArmenian SSR , flag_p1 = Flag of SSRA ...

, but as of 1937 he was not working. He worked in

Tbilisi Tbilisi ( ; ka, თბილისი ), in some languages still known by its pre-1936 name Tiflis ( ), is the capital and the largest city of Georgia, lying on the banks of the Kura River with a population of approximately 1.5 million p ...

until 1937, when he returned to Armenia. Nurijanyan fell victim to the

Great Purge The Great Purge or the Great Terror (russian: Большой террор), also known as the Year of '37 (russian: 37-й год, translit=Tridtsat sedmoi god, label=none) and the Yezhovshchina ('period of Yezhov'), was Soviet General Secret ...

of 1937–1938. According some sources, he was arrested in June 1937 and died in prison that year, while another source reports that he was sentenced to death on 19 July 1938 and executed on 16 September 1938.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Nurijanyan, Avis Bolsheviks 20th-century Armenian politicians Soviet politicians 1896 births 1938 deaths