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Yeghishe Charents (Armenian: Եղիշե Աբգարի Սողոմոնյան; March 13, 1897 – November 29, 1937) was an Armenian poet and public activist. Charents was one of the most outstanding poets of the twentieth century, touching upon a multitude of topics that ranged from his experiences in the First World War, socialism, and, more prominently, on Armenia and Armenians.[1] An early champion of communism, Charents joined the Bolshevik party, but as the Soviet state clamped down on nationalism in the 1930s, he gradually grew disillusioned with Stalinism and was later executed during the 1930s purges.
[edit] Biography[edit] Early lifeYeghishe Charents was born Yeghishe Soghomonyan in Kars, then a part of the Russian Empire, in 1897 to a family involved in the rug trade. He first attended an Armenian, but later transferred to a Russian, technical secondary school in Kars from 1908 to 1912.[1] In 1912, he had his first poem published in the Armenian periodical Patani.[2] Amid the upheavals of the First World War and the Armenian Genocide in the Ottoman Empire, he volunteered to fight in a detachment in 1915 for the Caucasian Front. Sent to Van in 1915, Charents was witness to the destruction that the Turkish garrison had laid upon the Armenian population, leaving indelible memories that would later be read in his poems.[1] He left the front one year later, attending school at the Shanyavski People's University in Moscow. The horrors of the war and genocide had scarred Charents and he became a fervent supporter of the Bolsheviks, seeing them as the one true hope to saving Armenia.[1][3][4] Charents joined the Red Army and fought during the Russian Civil War as a rank and file soldier in Russia and the Caucasus. In 1919, he returned to Armenia and took part in revolutionary activities there.[1] A year later, he began work at the Ministry of Education as the director of the Art Department. Charents would also once again take up arms, this time against his fellow Armenians, as a rebellion took place against Soviet rule in February 1921.[1] [edit] PoetSome of Charents' experiences would later appear in his poetry. He had two daughters Arpenik and Anahit. [edit] Death A victim of Stalinism, he died in prison. He was rehabilitated in 1954 after Stalin's death. [edit] LegacyHis works were translated by Valeri Bryusov, Anna Akhmatova, Boris Pasternak, Louis Aragon and others. His home at 17 Mashtots Avenue in Yerevan was turned into a museum in 1975. The Armenian city Charentsavan was named after him. The first monograph on Charents was published by Simon Hakobyan (1888-1937) in 1924 in Vienna. Among the other researchers of Charents' poetry during that period were P. Makintsyan, H. Surkhatyan, T. Hakhumyan. After the Stalinist terror in 1937 charentsology was banned for 17 years. In 1954 N. Dabaghyan (who previously attacked Charents in the 1930s) published "Yeghishe Charents" critical monograph. Researches on Charents were published by H. Salakhyan, S. Aghababyan, Almast Zakaryan, Anahit Charents, D. Gasparyan and others. [edit] WorksHis last collection of poems, "The Book of The Way", was printed in 1933, but its distribution was delayed by the Soviet government until 1934, when it was reissued with some revisions. In this book the authors lays out the panorama of Armenian history and reviews it part-by-part. Charents also translated many works into Armenian, such as "The Internationale."
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