Armenians in America1

DENNIS PAPAZIAN

Armenians were among the first Europeans to come to America. A man called ‘Martin ye Armenian’ was among those who lived in the British colony at Jamestown (founded in 1607), arriving either 1618 or 1619. Later, to help with the raising of silkworms, two more Armenians were invited to the colony. One of them, ‘George ye Armenian’, according to the records, was offered an inducement of 4,000 pounds of tobacco to persuade him to remain and continue his work.2 Nothing, apparently, came of these efforts to raise silkworms in America. Aside from such isolated cases, we have no record of other Armenians reaching America until the early nineteenth century, when young men from the Ottoman Empire first appeared seeking an education. The first of these, apparently, was a student named Khachik Oskanian who arrived in 1834. To understand his appearance, we must go back in history.

Problems in the Old Country Most Armenians who came to America in the nineteenth and early twentieth century came from the Armenian heartland, central and Eastern Anatolia, which had fallen under the sway of the Ottoman Empire. Mohammed, the founder of Islam, considered Christians and Jews as “People of the Book”, namely those who accepted the sacred scriptures. He placed these people in a

1 Of necessity, an essay of such a short length dealing with such a large topic must be selective in coverage and simplified in its presentation, thus requiring broader generaliza- tion than those with which the author is comfortable. Necessary nuances are lost, and exceptions, perhaps important ones, go unrecorded. Since many items in this essay can be substantiated from numerous sources, I will limit my citations to standard books and arti- cles which can be of further use to the interested reader and those sources which have made a unique contribution to and understanding of this subject. A thorough bibliography is appended to aid those who wish to find more detailed information or who would like to pursue research on various topics. 2 R. Mirak, Torn Between Two Lands: Armenians in America 1890 to World War I (Cam- bridge, MA, 1983), p. 36. Mirak’s book is the most dependable and thoroughly researched history of the Armenians in America up to World War I. 312 D. PAPAZIAN category above pagans and idolaters, but below Muslims, and deemed them worthy to be “protected” as long as they submitted to Muslim rule, accepted subordinate status, and paid a military exemption tax. Customarily, only the “faithful” of Islam could “draw the sword” to fight for Islam.3 Christians and Jews in Muslim politics were called dhimmi.4 Since Islam tends toward theocratic rule, and since the dhimmi had no status within an Islamic state, the Muslim rulers organized the dhimmi into religious communities (millets), also theocratic in their structure. The head of the community – the chief rabbi or the patriarch, as the case might be – was responsible for his people to the ruling caliph or sultan and his laws. When the Ottoman Turks overran the Byzantine Empire and Armenia, they instituted the millet system for the Christian and Jewish minorities. The millet system was progressive for its day, inasmuch as it allowed the non-Muslim religious communities to maintain their own language and customs from below while accepting an alien political authority from above. This system recognized non-territorial nationality as compared with the territorial specific nationality more prevalent today.5 An Armenian living anywhere in the Ottoman Empire was an Armenian and a member of the Armenian millet. As the Empire began to deteriorate in the nineteenth century, however, the millets came to be seen by the ruling Muslims as an exploitable and despised underclass.6 In the early 1800s, the Protestant Churches in America regarded missionary work among the heathens to be their bounden duty. To coordinate their missionary activities, these Churches established the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions in 1812.7 The American Board sent

3 The Ottomans apparently made some exceptions to this rule, at least in the Balkans, where certain Christian noblemen became allies of the Turks. See A. Hastings, The Construction of Nationhood: Ethnicity, Religion and Nationalism (Cambridge, 1997), pp. 130-137. 4 Bat Ye’or, The Dhimmi: Jews and Christians under Islam (London, 1985). 5 Hastings, Nationhood (see n. 3). In this book, Hastings gives nationalism and nations a thorough re-analysis. He challenges current ‘modernist’ and Marxist orthodoxies, such as that in Hobsbawm’s Nations and Nationalism Since 1780 (New York, 1990). Hastings sees Armenian nationalism extending as far back as early Christian times. 6 S.H. Astourian, ‘Modern Turkish Identity and the Armenian Genocide: From Prejudice to Racist Nationalism’, in Remembrance and Denial: The Case of the Armenian Genocide, ed. R. Hovannisian (Detroit, pp. 23-49). See also Bat Ye’or, The Dhimmi (see n. 4), for a more general analysis of the treatment of dhimmi in Muslim society. ARMENIANS IN AMERICA 313 out missionaries/explorers to most parts of the ‘pagan’ world to investigate the feasibility of sending missionaries and establishing mission stations. One of the areas in which they decided to work was among the Muslims of the Ottoman Empire – in Egypt, greater Palestine, Syria, and Anatolia (present- day Turkey), including historic Armenia. The first of these American missionaries arrived in 1820.8 Since it was quite illegal to proselytize among the Muslims or for a Muslim to convert to Christianity, such an act being punishable by death, the missionaries decided to work first among the indigenous Christians.9 The missionaries wished foremost to reform the ‘corrupted’ ancient Apostolic Churches and, if that were not possible, to establish a Protestant community among these native Christians. The missionaries believed that by producing upright Christians – charitable, loving, physically clean, and materially successful – these native Christians could serve as a light to the heathens and eventually effect their voluntary conversion. Who would not like to emulate the noble lives of the self-sacrificing missionaries and their exemplary wards?10 The Greek Orthodox community showed little interest in what the American Protestants had to offer, but the Armenians, eager for education and a chance for advancement, flocked in great numbers to the Protestant schools, medical clinics, and churches. To meet the great demand among the Armenians, the American Board enlarged its program until the Turkish field became the largest in the world.11 At the height of their work, the American Board had established five institutions of higher education in historic Armenia12 and numerous parishes, schools, and medical clinics

7 R.L. Daniel, American Philanthropy in the Near East, 1820-1960 (Athens, OH, 1970). 8 F. Andrews Stone, Academies for Anatolia: A Study of the Rationale, Program and Impact of the Educational Institutions Sponsored by the American Board in Turkey: 1830-1980 (New York), p. 27. Often these stations consisted of a school, a church, and a clinic or hospital, along with medical missionaries and teachers. 9 J. L. Grabill, Protestant Diplomacy and the Near East: Missionary Influence on American Policy, 1810-1927 (Minneapolis, 1971), pp. 7-8. These indigenous Christians consisted mostly of Greek Orthodox, Armenian Apostolic (members of the pre-Chalcedon ‘Lesser Orthodox’ community), and Assyrian Christians. 10 B.J. Merguerian, ‘Saving Souls or Cultivating Minds?: Missionary Crosby H. Wheeler in Kharpert’, Journal of the Society for Armenian Studies 6, 1992, 1993 (1995), p. 36. 11 Grabill, Protestant Diplomacy (see n. 9), p. 33. 12 These institutions were Central Turkey Colleges at Aintab and Marash, Euphrates College at Kharpert, Anatolia College at Marsovan, and St. Paul’s Institute at Tarsus. The 314 D. PAPAZIAN managed by over one hundred American missionaries, assisted by numerous native coworkers. As one might expect, the missionaries brought to their work a mixture of Christianity and American New England culture, one often indistinguishable from the other, at least not by the missionaries themselves. Good Chris- tians, the missionaries assumed, should resemble good Americans.13 And the good Armenians who became good Christians, and who thought and acted like good Americans, began to attract the attention and apprehension of the Muslim authorities. Armenians were being educated and socialized beyond their station in Muslim society. Armenians, naively, believed that their new status endowed them with new rights, especially as wards of the Americans. What the Armenians could not see, and what became crystal clear at the end of the Armenian Genocide, was that the missionaries were primarily interested in the Turks, for it was the Muslims whom they actually wished to convert, and the Armenians were only a means to an end.14

Coming to America Young students who graduated from the missionary schools, like Khachik Oskanian, often sought to make their way to America to complete their education, primarily (but not exclusively) in schools of medicine, pharmacy, theology or engineering.15 A select few of these young men were sent by the missionaries, and most but not all of them returned to teach in the missionary schools, become ‘native pastors’, or work in the clinics as expected.

Apostolic Institute at Konya and the International College at Smyrna, in both cases outside historic Armenia, were also established by the Protestants. For more information, see: Stone, Academies for Anatolia (see n. 8). 13 Grabill, Protestant Diplomacy (see n. 9), p. 18. 14 The Armenians in America were shocked in the 1920s to see that their cause was abandoned by the missionary establishment which hoped that it would be allowed by the new nationalist government of Turkey to directly proselytize the Muslims. That expectation failed to materialize, and the missionaries finally abandoned their properties in Turkey. See, D.R. Papazian, ‘The Changing American View of the Armenian Question: An Inter- pretation’, Armenian Review, 39 (Winter 1986), 4, pp. 47-72. Also see S. Moranian, ‘The American Missionaries and the Armenian Question: 1915-1927' [Ph.D. diss., University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1994], especially pp. 501-604. 15 In a study done by me in the 1970s, it was shown that there were more Armenians, in proportion to their total numbers in America, teaching in medical schools than any other nationality. Directory of Armenian Scholars in American and Canadian Academic Institu- tions (Washington, D.C., The Armenian Assembly, 1976), p. 2. ARMENIANS IN AMERICA 315

The remainder, along with the others, made new lives for themselves in America. This exodus of missionary-educated young Armenians caused the missionaries more than once to question whether too much education was ultimately inimical to their mission work. Armenians need remain in the Ottoman Empire if they were to serve as an example to the Muslims. By 1854, only about twenty Armenian immigrants can be identified posi- tively in the American records, and by 1870, that number had reached around 70.16 Undoubtedly there were many more, but the U.S. government kept no record of Armenian immigrants per se. Many of these newer arrivals were no longer the elite graduates of the American missionary schools but rather youths belonging to the traditional Armenian Church,17 with little or no education, who came at great sacrifice to seek their fortune in the New World. While these men soon found that the streets of America were not paved with gold, and that jobs were difficult, dangerous and hard to acquire, most of them found employment as unskilled ‘hands’ in the numerous fac- tories and mills of Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania. As harsh and debilitating as factory work might be, it was still better than the poverty, dangers and everyday humiliation of living in Turkey. As with other immigrant communities, one person followed another and people from any one village in the Old Country tended to congregate together in the same American city. The immigrants also tended to work in the same industries and live in the same, rundown, working-class section of town (either because of their meagre incomes or because of imposed segre- gation), where they found mutual support and fellowship. In this close envi- ronment, a few Armenian small businesses emerged, such as coffee houses, grocery stores, shoe repair shops, rooming houses, and other such services

16 Armenians were listed in U.S. immigration records as immigrants from the Ottoman Empire, along with Turks, Greeks, Assyrians, Jews and other Ottoman minorities, making it difficult to discern the actual number of Armenians. See Vartan M. Malcolm, The Armenians in America (Boston, MA, 1919; reprint, San Francisco, CA, 1969), p. 57. 17 No one term is sufficient to modify the title Armenian Church (the ‘Church of the Armenians’ in the Armenian language). Some append the term ‘Orthodox’, although the Armenians are technically members of the Lesser Orthodox community, consisting of the Armenian, Ethiopian, Syrian, Coptic, and Indian Churches. In the past, some – particularly among the Russians – have used ‘Gregorian’, indicating that Armenia was converted by St. Gregory the Enlightener. Today in the West, the term usually used is Apostolic, indicating that the Armenian Church is an ancient church founded by Thaddeus, one of the Seventy, and Bartholomew, one of the twelve apostles. 316 D. PAPAZIAN for the small community. By 1890, the number of identifiable Armenians in America had reached over 2,000.18 Almost all of these early immigrants were younger men, some married but most bachelors. In the early days most believed their sojourn in America to be temporary, hoping first to send money back to support their families and then at some point saving enough money to rejoin them. Wages in the early capitalistic ventures in America were kept low by open immigration and by having immigrants compete with one another for the available jobs, so the process of saving money required hard work and self-sacrifice. Armenians were not known to be drinkers or gamblers. They were considered ideal employees. One Armenian merchant, Hagop Seropian, who came to Worcester to establish an enterprise found the harsh winters to be inimical to his health. On investigation, he decided to settle in Fresno, California, where he and his half-brothers, George and John, arrived in 1881.19 The climate and agri- cultural conditions were much like that of historic Armenia, fertile valleys surrounded by mountains, soil which could be made abundantly productive by irrigation.20 The brothers wrote to relatives and friends in their native city of Marsovan urging them to come to Fresno. And, indeed, in 1883, a group of 45 immigrants arrived in Fresno ready to grow “boat-sized water- melons, egg-sized grapes, and nine- or ten-pound eggplants”.21

New Troubles Abroad Conditions in the Ottoman Empire for the Armenians at the end of the nineteenth century took a sharp turn for the worse, impelling a new, large scale immigration to America. The Enlightenment in Europe brought forth the concept of ‘citizen’ as adverse to ‘subject’. A ‘subject’ was the servant of the ruler, a ‘citizen’ enjoyed inalienable rights independent of the state. The concepts of the Enlightenment, as we know, spread out from France to con- tiguous areas in Europe and beyond.

18 A.S. Avakian, The Armenians in America (Minneapolis, MN, 1977), p. 40. 19 W.D. Wallis, Fresno Armenians to 1919 (Lawrence, KS, 1965), p. 36. 20 In the summer of 1994, I travelled the length and breadth of Anatolia with Prof. James Russell of Harvard, from Istanbul and Izmir in the west to Mush, Van, Mt. Ararat and Ani in the east. Once we crossed the Euphrates, I felt I was in the central valley of Cali- fornia (but without the air pollution and smog). 21 Avakian, Armenians (see n. 18), p. 41. ARMENIANS IN AMERICA 317

The idea of the ‘rights of man’ engendered revolutionary movements all over Europe in the first half of the nineteenth century and then spread to the Russian and Ottoman empires in the second half of the century. In Russia, with a vast uneducated population, the revolutionary movement was led by a small, self-appointed intellectual elite generally known under the rubric of Populist and Populism. This Russian movement inspired a similar movement among the Armenians of the Russian Empire, first the Hnchak22 party was founded in 1887 and then the Dashnak23 party shortly afterward in 1890.24 In Turkey, a narrow strata of enlightened members of the ruling elite wanted to reform the Empire along modern lines and instituted the tanzimat, or constitutional reform movement. The movement, paradoxically, effectively came to an end in 1876 when Abdul Hamid II made a show of adopting the constitution which had already been prepared, but made a mockery of it as regards Christian minorities.25 It soon became apparent that the decaying Ottoman Empire was far from recognizing and instituting the emerging European standards of human rights and political equality for all citizens, particularly for Armenian Christians. Accordingly, Armenian revolutionaries from the Caucasus, the Hnchaks in particular, infiltrated into Turkey in the hopes of rallying resistance among the peasant masses. Several small incidents persuaded the sultan, Abdul Hamid II, that the spirit and will of the Armenians in their historic homeland had to be broken once and for all. Using the Hnchaks as an excuse,26 Abdul Hamid instituted a series of massacres from 1893-1895 in which nearly 400,000 Armenians in the interior of Turkey, the Armenian homeland, were either brutally massacred, fled or forcibly converted to Islam.27

22 Hnchak, ‘alarm bell’ in Armenian, was named after Alexander Herzen’s radical Russian populist newspaper, Kolokol (Russian for alarm bell). 23 The Armenian Revolutionary Federation. 24 The Armenian People from Ancient to Modern Times, ed. R. Hovannisian, II (New York, 1997), pp. 214-215. 25 E.J. Zurcher, Turkey: A Modern History (London, 1993), pp. 52-78. See also Ch. Walker, Armenia: The Survival of a Nation (New York, 19802), pp. 107-108; and Arme- nian People, ed. Hovannisian (see n. 24), p. 207. 26 C. Hamlin, ‘The Genesis and Evolution of the Turkish Massacre of Armenian Subjects’, Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society, New Series, 12 (Oct. 1897- Oct. 1898), pp. 288- 294. 27 Armenian People, ed. Hovannisian (see n. 24), pp. 212-226; Walker, Armenia (see n. 25), pp. 125-173. The ‘body count’ of the Turks and European investigators comes 318 D. PAPAZIAN

Under the circumstances, thousands of Armenians from the interior of Turkey fled, some to make their torturous way to America aided by meagre funds borrowed at home or sent from friends and relatives in America. Unfor- tunately, the recession of the 1890s in America made the time of their arrival less than optimal. They faced unemployment and had to make do as they could. The Armenians, however, engaged in self-help and refused to accept public assistance which would have brought shame upon them and their families. On the contrary, the Armenian community looked after its own. Thus, it was during the last decade of the nineteenth century and the first decade of the twentieth century when the largest groups of Armenians arrived in America, including whole extended families. By this time Armenian communities had extended to Midwestern factory towns such as Cleveland, Ohio; Detroit, Michigan; Chicago, Illinois; East St. Louis, Missouri; and Racine, Wisconsin. Large groups also made their way to California to engage in agri- culture.28 Many Armenian Protestants, who in general were more highly educated than the adherents of the Armenian Church, moved to upstate New York to work in the electrical and chemical industries in Troy, Syracuse, Buffalo, and others towns.29 Many of the uneducated Armenian immigrants took courses in night school to try and learn English and, perhaps, pass the citizenship exam. As suggested earlier, the Armenians in America organized themselves in groups to meet their material and social needs. Most Armenian immigrants knew little or no English and had little or no money. Compatriotic and charitable societies sprung up in almost every town. The Armenian political parties, chiefly the Hnchaks and the Dashnaks, had clubs in every city. And in the coffee houses many found companionship, relaxation, played backgammon, and exchanged information and ideas. The communities also organized to meet their spiritual needs.

Further Immigration In the final years leading up to World War I, the Turko-Italian War of 1912 and the Balkan Wars greatly diminished emigration from the Ottoman

to around 360,000, but there needs to be an accounting of those who ‘disappeared’, hence my figure. 28 Mirak, Torn (see n. 2), pp. 123-133. 29 R. Koolakian, unpublished manuscript in the collection of the Armenian Research Center, the University of Michigan-Dearborn. ARMENIANS IN AMERICA 319

Empire. Between 1914 and 1924, nevertheless, about 25,000 Armenian immigrants came to America.30 Then, in 1924, the Congress passed more restrictive immigration laws which gave a quota to the number of people allowed to come from any one country and favoured Northern Europeans over Southern Europeans with effective exclusion of Asiatics. The quota for Turkey, in total, was a paltry 100 persons per year.31 Armenians fleeing the Ottoman Empire between 1914 and 1925 sometimes went to the Caucasus to be under Russian protection. Others immi- grated to Canada, Latin America, Cuba, and Mexico, and a few found places in Europe. The majority, however, came to the United States. The reason why the Armenians fled the Ottoman Empire once more is well known. In 1908 the Young Turks overthrew Abdul Hamid’s government and declared the reestablishment of the constitution of 1876, allegedly converting the Empire into a constitutional monarchy. As Turkey became involved in a series of devastating wars, more and more radical groups took over the leadership of the party until a dictatorship came to power under a triumvirate of Enver, Talat, and Cemal pashas. In 1914 the triumvirate led their country into World War I on the side of Germany against the Entente, chiefly Russia, their historical enemy. Accusing the unarmed Armenians of giving aid and comfort to the enemy on the Russian front, the triumvirate decided to eradicate the Armenians from the length and breath of Anatolia and to reserve that space for a Turkish homeland, an incipient Turkish nation state. The systematic and premeditated massacres and lethal deportations began early in 1915 and were carried on throughout that year and the next on an intensive scale, demonstrating genocidal intentions.32 Further genocidal activities took place up to and including the invasion of the Caucasus after the fall of Russia and the burning of Smyrna after the Greek troops had departed.33 Many Armenians in Eastern Anatolia survived by virtue of the advance of Russian forces and the wise decision to leave with these forces as they retreated into the Caucasus. These survivors were of all ages. The Armenians

30 Avakian, Armenians (see n. 18), p. 45. 31 Ibid., p. 46. 32 See V. Dadrian, The History of the Armenian Genocide (Providence, 1995), for a full discussion. 33 M. Housepian Dobkin, Smyrna 1922: The Destruction of a City (Kent, Ohio, 1988). 320 D. PAPAZIAN in central Anatolia were expelled from their homes, massacred in large numbers, and the rest driven on death marches into the Syrian desert. Armenians were also driven out of Western Anatolia, some transported by train before facing concentration camps in the desert. Since most of the men of fighting age had already been draught into the Turkish army and then slaughtered, it was women of all ages, old men, and children of both sexes who were herded toward the desert and into the final death camps. Consequently, it was mostly the hearty children and some young adults of strong constitution or good luck34 who survived to join Armenians already living in the then hospitable Arab countries. Most of the survivors in Greater Syria can attribute their salvation to the dedicated workers of the Near East Relief organization from America who established feeding stations, clinics, tent cities, and orphanages for children throughout Syria and Lebanon.35 It is not surprising, therefore, that most of the immigrants to America who arrived during this period had no family. Most of the families had been broken up during the death marches and few members survived. The vast majority of those who found their way to America in this period consisted of single individuals, orphans, and chance groupings of individuals who banded together for security and mutual support. To some extent, America became a meeting place for many individuals who had lost track of one another. The Armenian newspapers in America were filled with advertisements placed by people seeking knowledge of the whereabouts, or the fate, of family members and friends. The immigrants of this period had no illusions about returning to the Old Country. America was to be their new home, and they had to accommodate this fact as well as they could. One of the great tragedies of the Armenian Genocide, over and above the dreadful loss of life, was the disruption, in effect, of Armenian history. The writers, politicians, scholars, artists, clergy – in other words most of the Armenian intelligentsia of a whole generation –

34 R. Hovannisian in his article ‘Intervention and Shades of Altruism during the Armenian Genocide’, in The Armenian Genocide: History, Politics, Ethics, ed. R.G. Hovannisian (New York, 1992), pp. 173-207, shows that a large number of Armenians were saved by Muslims for various reasons ranging from altruism to taking Armenians as slaves. 35 R.L. Daniel, American Philanthropy in the Near East, 1820-1916 (Athens, Ohio, 1970), pp. 148- 170. ARMENIANS IN AMERICA 321 were wiped out. The pitiful refugees had but a vague folk memory of the substance and glories of Armenian history and culture, and the generation which was to educate the new generation was lost. It took over 50 years and a generation or two before Armenians could establish a rich cultural, intellectual and scholarly life in America. A way of judging this development would be to count the book titles on or about the Armenians published from year to year. In the 1950s, there were few books available on Armenian history and culture, while today dozens are appearing every year. The survivor generation turned inward. They wanted to preserve what was left of Armenianness and Armenian culture. Their children, just as the children of most immigrants, were torn between two cultures. The Armenians in America turned in stages from being Armenian, the immigrants, to feeling Armenian, the progeny of the immigrants.36 That is, those of the second and third generations, for the most part, could totally merge with American society or could voluntarily retain a feeling of being Armenian and relate to the community. The immigrants themselves, however, by language, custom, and education, were Armenian in fact. The survivors who came to America had to establish family units to survive and to produce offspring. Since there were no longer the matchmakers of the villages, or the societal relations of the towns and cities to bring the youth together, the process of finding a spouse was difficult. Matches were made through friends and relatives or even through newspaper advertisements, but few were love matches in the 1920s and 1930s: most were marriages of convenience. Many of the women were unequally yoked, forced by circumstances to marry men who were much older or beneath them in education or status. Yet, divorce was almost totally unknown, and it continues to be rare today. Many of the men, unable to find an Armenian bride, married outside Armenian circles, with drastically mixed results. The community as a whole, seeking self-preservation, insisted that its members speak Armenian and marry Armenians. Those men of higher status who married non-Armenian women would often encourage their wives to learn Armenian and integrate with the community. The non-Armenian spouse, however, was only grudgingly accepted in the early days. Armenians of the

36 A. Bakalian, Armenian-Americans: From Being to Feeling Armenian (New Brunswick, NJ, 1993). 322 D. PAPAZIAN lowest socio-economic status would consider themselves superior to the odar (outsider, foreigner) and tended to reject them, even those who might be of a much higher socio-economic status. Being Armenian was the highest status the community recognized. The men of lower status generally married ‘Americans’ of still lower status. Such matches, almost universally, were not accepted by the community, and the couple and their children drifted into non-Armenian circles. There were other cases where men and women had come from Turkish-speaking areas, such as Angora (Ankara) and Kayseri, and married Armenian speaking spouses. The spouse was required to learn Armenian. In the short term, the community would mix the Turkish and Armenian languages, Turkish and Armenian songs, and Turkish food and Armenian food. By the 1950s, however, the community insisted on ‘purifying’ their language and culture by eradicating Turkish influences. Since intermarriage, marriage between an Armenian and non-Armenian, is rather prevalent today in the Diocesan community, reaching 80 % in some parishes, and since the Diocesan community has been rather Americanized, non-Armenian spouses, particularly women, are welcomed into the community.37 No study has been made of intermarriage in the Prelacy community, but one may presume it is of a much more modest rate. Fortunately for the health of the community, the Old Country custom of the rich providing educational, cultural and religious facilities for the

37 M.A. Jendian, ‘A Study of Intermarriage Among Armenian-Americans in Central California’, unpublished manuscript in the collection of the Armenian Research Center, University of Michigan-Dearborn. This work, based on archival research and interviews, makes use of social science theory to understand and predict Armenian marriage patterns. Jendian points out that 90 % of Armenian youths born in America, third and fourth generation Armenians in California, marry non-Armenians, while 80 % of the children of current immigrants marry non-Armenians in Central California. The statistics from other places in America would undoubtedly be similar. The first study of this type, 1983, was done by Aharon G. Aharonian among the Armenian Churches of New England. He shows that the intermarriage rate at that time was 50%. Most certainly by now, with a new generation born in America, the rate is well over 80%. (Intermarriage and the Armenian-American Community: A Socio-Religious Study of Intermarriage and the Armenian Apostolic Church in America, Shrewsbury, MA, self published, 1983.) The latest work on Armenians in the New York-New Jer- sey region, by Anny Bakalian, Armenian-Americans (see Bibliography, p. 341), shows that the intermarriage rate among third generation Armenians is around 90%. ARMENIANS IN AMERICA 323 community as well as charity for the poor was brought to America.38 The Armenian community in America for most of the twentieth century was made up of rich and poor, educated and uneducated, and of all social and economic classes. Millionaires and simple workmen in the early part of the century would belong to the same organization and attend the same meet- ings. As in such closed societies, the richer the man, the more intelligent he was presumed to be and the more worthy he was of giving leadership. While the rich and poor mingled in community activities, the rich occupied most of the leadership positions. Furthermore, the rich tended to recreate and intermarry with the rich. Many wealthy fathers, of course, as was the tradi- tion, looked for intelligent and educated young Armenian men, rich or poor, to marry their daughters. Yet no matter how little educated the rich man might have been, he under- stood the necessity of building churches and cultural halls (community centres), and in many cases schools. While these community leaders were respect- ful of academic and intellectual success, they were at first less supportive of those engaged in non-tangible intellectual activities, such as artists, writers, and musicians. It is to the credit of the community, however, that myriads of scholarships are available to needy students and that the Armenian community has established eleven chairs of Armenian studies at prominent universi- ties such as one at Harvard University (MA), one at Columbia University (NY), two at the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor (MI), two at the Univer- sity of California at Los Angeles (CA), two at California State University Fresno (CA), one at the University of California at Berkeley (CA), and one at Tufts (MA). The one established at the University of Pennsylvania was col- lapsed into an Armenian publication series. The community also established Armenian research centres such as the one at the University of Michigan- Dearborn, the Zoryan Institute (MA), the Zorhab Center (NY), and the Armenian National Institute (D.C.), as well as libraries and museums. Women, of course, were the backbone of the community. They were almost universally the homemakers in the early days, keeping the house, shopping, cooking, nurturing the young, and instilling traditional values.

38 For ten years I served as the chairman of the Alex Manoogian Cultural Fund and became personally familiar with most of the Armenian philanthropists in America and their activities. 324 D. PAPAZIAN

“Amot” (shame), kept the children in line. “Get an education”, the mothers would admonish. “Be somebody.” The women also formed the auxiliary organizations for the churches, schools, and the political parties. They taught in the schools, organized cultural and artistic programs, and prepared for the periodic great picnics and indoor festivals which were held until the late 1960s.39 Today, of course, most Armenian women are well educated and leaders in many of the professions. The early immigrants repressed the Armenian Genocide. The Old Folks would whisper about it among themselves but rarely discussed it with their children.40 The Armenian Genocide did not loom large in the community’s consciousness until the 50th anniversary in 1965. At that time, American-born Armenians took the initiative to organize public forums, demonstrations, and engage in political advocacy. The older generation, fearful of governments and embarrassed to expose their problems to the public, went along grudgingly. The commemorations of the Genocide on April 24 continue to the present day, with varying degrees of effectiveness. It is the Genocide which is the common denominator that marks the community’s present identification. That is why there was such an outpouring of support for the Karabagh movement41 and the third Armenian Republic after 1991. As Armenians in America realize, a present-day genocide in Karabagh or Armenia would spell the end of the Armenian people after 3,000 years of self preservation. In other words, the Armenian community in America came of age after World War II with the maturation of the first generation of Armenians born

39 Out of Turkey: The Life Story of Donik ‘Haji Bey’ Yessaian (Dearborn, Armenian Research Center, 1994) tells of such picnics both in the Old Country and among Armenian immigrants in America. These picnics were particularly popular when the immigrants lived in small, crowded houses in dirty industrial sections of town. They welcomed the chance to get out and enjoy fresh air. 40 See P. Balakian’s, Black Dog of Fate: A Memoir (New York, 1997), as an example of how young people born in America slowly learned of the Armenian Genocide from their families. See also M. Arlen Jr’s memoir, Passage to Ararat (New York, 1975), for a similar story. 41 The movement in Mountainous Karabagh (heretofore an Armenian province attached to Azerbaijan) and in Armenia proper to free the Armenians of Mountain- ous Karabagh from Azeri rule. The Armenians are currently in control of Moun- tainous Karabagh but no formal peace is in sight. See, Armenia and Karabagh, ed. Ch. J. Walker (London, 1991); and M. Malkasian, ‘Gha-ra- bagh!’: The Emergence of the National Democratic Movement in Armenia (Detroit, 1996). ARMENIANS IN AMERICA 325 on American soil. Those of the second generation are well accepted and successful in nearly all facets of American life.

Organizations The political parties played an important role in the Armenian community in America. At the turn of the century the Hnchak Party seemed to pre- dominate in America, but after several mishaps in Turkey caused by extor- tion of the rich and acts against the state which brought heavy retribution, they lost their predominance and have only reemerged in the last few years, supported by newer immigrants from the Middle East. The Armenian Revolutionary Federation (Dashnaks), which had lost status by its attempt to cooperate with the Young Turks, emerged as the radical party of choice. The Armenian Democratic Liberal (ADL) party (Ramgavars), a strongly middle class conservative party, also gained many adherents. Eventually, the Armenian political parties in America were more or less indigenised and began to see American politics as the key to Armenian community empowerment. A few of those Armenians who felt the Armenian political parties were not modernizing quickly enough, or who never had been members but wanted to become politically active, established the Armenian Assembly of America as an advocacy for Armenian causes.42 The Armenian Assembly has made great headway among the higher socio- economic groups among the Armenians. With the defection of the political parties from participation in the Armenian Assembly, the Armenian community has witnessed a healthy competition, as well as some cooperation, between the Assembly and the political parties for public support. The Dashnak community supports the Armenian National Committee (ANC) of America in Washington, D.C, with branches all over America. In fact, the ANC was the first Armenian group to work in American political circles. The ‘Armenian lobby’ is today considered to be the second most powerful ethnic lobby in America, only exceeded in influence by the Jewish lobby. The Armenian General Benevolent Union (AGBU), founded in Egypt in around 1906 by Bogos Nubar Pasha, was an active non-political, charitable, educational, and cultural organization with chapters, until recent times, all

42 I served as co-chairman of the national Board of Directors for several years and, after the establishment of the Washington office, I served for four years (1974-1978) as the first full-time Executive Director. 326 D. PAPAZIAN over the world and throughout America. In recent times, the AGBU has become more of a private foundation and the active regions and chapters have atrophied as supporting units of the organization. Many of the former activists in the AGBU have left that organization and have become financial supporters of the Armenian Assembly. The Armenian Relief Society, the Prelacy counterpart of the AGBU, is active both in America and abroad. The Knights of Vartan, who established the Armenian Research Center at the University of Michigan, Dearborn, is a national organization dedicated to preserving the Armenian heritage in America.

Spiritual Needs One of the major questions faced by the community was whether it was a colony of the Old Country or an Armenian toehold in the New. Would the immigrants ever return to the Old Country or were they destined to remain in America? Relating to that question were choices to be made. Should they attempt to Americanize or stay aloof in their own groups to preserve their own language and culture? Should they work toward assimilation or merely integrate? Finally, if they were no longer planning to return, then how would they meet their spiritual needs? Protestant Armenians found initial refuge in the American churches of their own denomination, usually Presbyterian. Placing their religion above their nationality, they were ready to become Americanized and integrate in the new society. Their welcome, however, was not always warm. Americans of that period were hardly sophisticated internationalists. What America demanded was assimilation, and there was little sympathy for foreign cultures. In fact, the words ‘foreign’ and ‘foreigner’ became derisive terms in America during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century.43 Accordingly, Armenian Protestants began to form their own churches, with their own Armenian pastors, relating, as with other local parishes, to the larger national organization of the denomination. Later, they formed the Armenian Evangelical Union of North America (AEU) and the Armenian Missionary Association of America (AMAA) as national organizations which united them. The Protestants, generally being educated on their arrival,

43 Mirak, Torn (see n. 2), pp. 144-147, 161-162, 278-280; in Wallis, Fresno (see n. 19), pp. 133, 144-146, 157, 162, 196, 272-273, 278-279, and 283. ARMENIANS IN AMERICA 327 moved into the professions – becoming doctors, dentists, pharmacists, lawyers, engineers, and professors. They frequently changed their names and sought, during this early period, to be assimilated.44 The very few Armenian Catholics (Uniates), worshipped in Roman Catholic churches until they built their own in several cities. The Armenian Apostolics at first had to make do with irregular itinerant priests who moved from town to town to perform baptisms, marriages, and, if prompt, funerals. They would also perform the Divine Liturgy, offer abso- lution, and give holy communion. These early immigrants were welcomed to use the facilities of the Protestant Episcopal Church (a part of the Anglican communion), which many did for many years and which some Armenian ‘mission parishes’ do even today. There has always been a warm relation between the Episcopal Church and the Armenian Church in America.45 Finally, in 1891 the first Armenian church, the church of the Holy Savior, was built in Worcester, Massachusetts, with money contributed by Armenians from 25 cities in America.46 The Armenian Patriarch of Constantinople, who had provided the first priests for America, decided it prudent for political reasons to transfer responsibility for an American diocese to the Supreme Patriarch and Catholicos of all Armenians in Etchmiadzin, at this time the noted Mgrdich Khrimian. Catholicos Mgrdich I, affectionately called Papa47 Khrimian by his flock, established the American diocese with an encyclical ‘To the Expa- triate Armenians in America’. Khrimian, after the ritualized formal greeting, characteristically – but without precedent – changed his words from the Classical Armenian (Grabar) to the comprehensible everyday language of his people (Ashkharabar). In the encyclical he writes: “It is the will of a myste- rious Providence that our nation should live in exile, as settlers in foreign lands. … The storm of violence in this world drove the Armenians from

44 Mirak, Torn (see n. 2), p. 401. 45 See [Fr.] A. Ashjian, A Century of Contacts between the Armenian and Episcopalian Churches in the U.S.A. (New York, 1991). 46 The Torch Was Passed: The Centennial History of the Armenian Church of America, ed. Ch. Zakian (New York, 1998), pp. 3-4. This book gives an excellent overview of the Armenian Church in America, although it is lacking in some of the finer details. 47 The term father is used in its diminutive form, Hayrig, implying love and affec- tion. There is no good translation in English, although the term ‘little father’ is sometimes used, as are the terms dad or papa, e.g. Papa Khrimian as in this case. 328 D. PAPAZIAN their native soil, scattering them to the far corners of the globe.”48 Then he goes on to offer words of consolation and inspiration to his little flock. The encyclical is worth reading in full today to get an understanding of the mind-set of these early immigrants to America and the Church which nur- tured them. It also points out the fact that the American diaspora was only one in a long series of Armenian diasporas dating back hundreds of years. The road to diocesan organization and church building would not always be an easy one. Political, social and clan factions vied with one another to achieve hegemony. These pointless quarrels were all the more exacerbated because they had little reference to the actual needs of the community and objective circumstances. What was significant for the Armenian people as a whole, however, was the money collected by the immigrants in America to send back to the Old Country for transportation of relatives, humanitarian relief, or for political activism. The root cause of the future disharmony within the Church, over and above the inclination in many people to seek their personal gain rather than the good of the community, was the catastrophe of the Armenian Genocide of 1915-1916 and the subsequent fall of the first independent Armenian Republic in 1920, which had been established by the blood, sweat and tears of the Armenian survivors of the Genocide and the indigenous Caucasian Armenians. The first Armenian Republic fell through no fault of its leadership, although they would be accused of grave mistakes, but because it was surrounded by powerful enemies: the Russian Empire was resurrected in the guise of an evolving Soviet Union and the Ottoman Empire was reborn as the belligerent Republic of Turkey. Both powers, supported by large armies, wanted to expand into the Caucasus – the Russians to establish their old borders and the Turks to replace their European and African losses by dominating the Caucasus and Turkish Central Asia. Confronted by the Bolsheviks on the one side and the Nationalist Turks on the other, the Armenian leadership – made up mostly of distinguished leaders of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation – decided that the Bolsheviks were the lesser of the two evils and surrendered to them. The Turks, if they had overrun Armenia as they attempted to do, would have completed the genocide

48 Zakian, Torch (see n. 46), p. 8. ARMENIANS IN AMERICA 329 which they began in 1915.49 The Bolsheviks who took over Armenia were young and inexperienced doctrinaire Communists who took the Marxist- Leninist idea of the class struggle to the extreme and began to kill or expel Armenia’s natural leaders and large parts of the population. Faced by mass and irrational purges, the Dashnaks revolted against Soviet power in early 1920, only to be defeated and to have Armenia confronted with worse purges and miseries. It is little wonder that the Dashnaks and their followers hated the Bolshe- viks with a blind passion, a hatred which was reflected in America. This hatred extended not only to the Communists abroad and to the few chic Bolsheviks who could be found here and there among the Armenian immigrants, but was also, irrationally, extended to all other Armenians who pas- sively accepted the new reality in Armenia. The theme was: “Those who are not with us are against us.” In Armenia, there was no alternative but to con- cede to reality no matter how distasteful it was. As bad as the Bolsheviks were, and there is no questioning their evil actions, they were better than the genocidal Turks. In any case, a whole nation could not flee. So, those who remained tried to make the best of an ugly situation. After all, the Armenians had survived under the Ottomans for 500 years and the Arme- nians of the Caucasus could expect they would survive the domination of the Bolsheviks. The Church in Armenia, of course, was particularly hard hit by the Bol- sheviks. The Bolsheviks attacked all the Churches in all the areas of the former Russian Empire which they controlled, killing churchmen, closing monasteries and seminaries, desecrating church building, and persecuting the faithful.50 The Armenian Church had survived under disastrous conditions for centuries. This new tribulation, as bad as it was, was also to be endured. The disaster in Armenia, as was noted, had its repercussions in America. Many Armenians in America believed that the Armenians in Armenia, the overwhelming majority of whom were mere involuntary victims, had somehow been tainted by Bolshevism. Since the battle had been lost in far away Armenia, the fight was continued in America. Since the real enemy could

49 Dadrian, The History of the Armenian Genocide (see n. 32), pp. 356-361. 50 Zakian, Torch (see n. 46), p. 28. 330 D. PAPAZIAN not be reached, the Armenians in America began to fight among themselves. Those who felt it necessary to accept the new reality and to find a way to live within it were accused, inspired by the blinding passion of the opposition, of being soft on Bolshevism. The other side accused the opposition of abandoning an Armenia in need. It was in this context, then, that Archbishop Levon Tourian came to be assassinated in Holy Cross Church in New York during Christmas Eve services in 1933. The Armenian Church in America, which began to be fragmented at the time of the Soviet occupation of Armenia, was now to be totally split in two. Parish turned against parish, congregation against congregation, family against family, brother against brother. The parishes which broke off from the Diocese accused the churches of the Diocese of being pro-Communist; and the Diocesan churches accused the others of being irresponsible nationalists.51 Each group took on a different patina over the years, the Diocesan churches more readily integrating into American society, and there was little interrelation among them. Armenian would not speak to Armenian, and the youth were forbidden to fraternize. Marriage between the two groups was almost nonexistent. Ill feeling ran high. The future of the community looked bleak indeed. The split of the Church in America was fruitless. As Murat Acemoglu wrote recently in the Armenian Reporter International: “This [split in the Church] was very unusual for us. Even under Turk- ish rule we always considered ourselves one nation with one Church, and when Armenia was a Soviet republic, we considered it ours. After all, throughout our turbulent history, we had many foreign intruders and rulers in Armenia, but occupation forces and foreign rulers all came and went, but we remained as one nation.” The non-Diocesan churches had no separate diocesan organization until 1957 when they were taken under the wing of the Catholicos of the Great House of Cilicia, Zareh I Payaslian, in Antelias, Lebanon. As a matter of fact, however, nothing done by the Armenians in America made much difference in the larger struggle in Armenia. The Communist regime in Armenia did not fall under outside pressure, but fell only in 1991 51 Other Churches caught behind the Iron Curtain also had their splits in America, some into three or four units. ARMENIANS IN AMERICA 331 when the Soviet Union imploded from internal contradictions and outside pressures. During the World War II years, the Primate of the Diocese was the venerable Archbishop Karekin Hovsepian. He accomplished many good works, including instituting the Lousavorichi Looma (the mite of the Enlightener), dues assessed to each parish for the support of the besieged Mother See in Etchmiadzin. After having served the Diocese for several years, Archbishop Karekin was elected the Catholicos of the Great House of Cilicia where he also served with the greatest distinction.52 The fact that so many current Armenian priests and bishops are named Karekin (including the recent Catholicos of Etchmiadzin, Karekin I, and the present Catholicos, Karekin II), in honour of this great churchman, testifies to the high esteem in which the great Archbishop and Catholicos was universally held by all factions. The brilliant Vartabed,53 Tiran Nersoyan of London, England, was chosen to replace the venerable Archbishop Karekin as Primate in America. Arch- bishop Tiran’s leadership brought about several important advances for the American Diocese. First, he creatively brought new priests from Jerusalem and Istanbul to meet the dire shortage of qualified clerics in America. He instituted the Armenian Church Youth Organization of America (ACYOA), which was to bring the young people closer to the Church and prepare a new generation of leadership.54 He published many books of religious education and encouraged church Sunday Schools. Furthermore, he began the Cathedral Project which resulted in the building of a new diocesan headquarters and St. Vartan’s Cathedral in New York City. And finally, he worked for the establishment of St. Nersess Armenian Seminary55 to train priests in America for service in America and abroad. His tenure marked a

52 Zakian, Torch (see n. 46), pp. 36-37. 53 A celibate priest of high rank, a doctor of theology. 54 I was a lad of sixteen when Bishop Tiran first came to Detroit to preach and organize the youth. I was impressed by his perfect Oxfordian English, his breadth of knowledge, his rational thought, and his enthusiasm for the Armenian Church. Apparently, the good feeling was somehow reciprocated since Bishop Tiran coopted me to be on the Central Council of the ACYOA in New York where I served for a dozen years. I have recently served on the Diocesan Council and presently serve as a Diocesan Trustee. 55 I served as Secretary of the Board of Directors of St. Nersess Seminary for 25 years. 332 D. PAPAZIAN positive turning point in the advancement of the Armenian Church in America.56 By 1946, however, the Cold War had begun and communication between Armenia and the Diaspora effectively broke down. Nevertheless, Archbishop Tiran had been commissioned by the Catholicos of All Armenians in Etch- miadzin, Kevork VI,57 to heal the rupture in the Armenian Church in America, and Archbishop Tiran approached that goal with vigour. The negotiations, which seemed to be leading to a favourable conclusion, finally failed, ostensibly because of the refusal of the Catholicos of All Armenians to reinstate two defrocked priests.58 The real reasons, of course, go much deeper. Despite his problems with the Dashnaks and Ramgavars, ironically groups on the far opposing sides of the political spectrum, Archbishop Tiran, who sought the middle way, made an unequalled contribution to the growth and prosperity of the Armenian Church in America, not only by building churches and bringing priests from Jerusalem and Istanbul, but through publications, organizing the youth, developing relations with sister Churches and by establishing the first Armenian seminary in America. After the election and consecration of Vazken I as Catholicos of All Arme- nians in 1955, events were taking place in Antelias, Lebanon, which would harden the split in the Armenian Church in America and have an affect on Armenian church dioceses in other parts of the world as well. After the death of His Holiness Karekin Hovsepian, the See of Cilicia fell vacant. The election of his successor did not take place for four years, not until 1956. There was a struggle, apparently, going on among the various Armenian political factions in Lebanon for influence within the Church. When the election finally took place, Bishop Zareh Payaslian of Aleppo, Syria, was desig- nated as the new Catholicos. Vazken I, who was present at the proceedings but left before the voting, issued a gontag (encyclical) in December of 1957 in which he called the election “biased and imperfect”. The net result was that three Armenian bishops could not be found to consecrate the Catholicos des- ignate. Finally, two Armenian bishops and one Syrian bishop performed the ceremony. In was in this atmosphere of contention that the Armenian parishes

56 Zakian, Torch (see n. 46), pp. 44-49. 57 Also spelled in English as Gevorg or Georg. 58 Zakian, Torch (see n. 46), pp. 51-52. ARMENIANS IN AMERICA 333 in the United States, today called the Prelacy churches, applied in late 1957 to Catholicos Zareh to be taken under his administration. In this way, the split in the Armenian Church in America was deepened with the Prelacy group declaring allegiance to Catholicosate of Cilicia.59 The old animosities were hardened, and only a few had hope of healing the breech. Over the years the Prelacy churches have tended to retain their use of the Armenian language, expended great effort in ‘Armenianizing’ their youth, were the recipients of many of the later immigrants from Lebanon and Armenia who were Armenian speaking, and maintained the idea of a united, free, and independent Armenia as a national goal. In a general way, they are allied with the Dashnak (ARF) political party. The Diocesan churches, on the other hand, began to consider religion more important than nationalism, most quickly lost the use of Armenian in public gatherings, and tended to concentrate on American education and upward economic mobility. It was only in 1988, as we shall see, that the two ‘sides’ began to come together. In this context we should mention two pivotal events. The great earthquake in Armenia in 1988 and the independence of Armenia in 1991. Before the earthquake of December 7, 1988, Armenians in America were relatively unknown and, when noticed, a curiosity at best. No one, it seemed, had ever heard of them, and each time a person confessed to being Armenian they would usually be faced with a blank stare. On December 8, 1988, for the first time in decades, the word Armenia was on the front page of the New York Times and other American newspapers. An earthquake had occurred in Soviet Armenia while Mikhael Gorbachev, the head of the Soviet Union, was at a summit meeting in New York. Were it not for the expectations and prodding of the American news media, Gorbachev would probably have ignored the event as was traditional for Soviet leaders. As it was, he soon announced he was returning to the U.S.S.R. to offer personal leadership to meet the crisis. He did not arrive in Armenia, however, until four days after the earthquake.60

59 Zakian, Torch (see n. 46), pp. 75-76. 60 ‘Quake in Armenia said to kill many’, New York Times, December 8, p. 1; ‘Toll put in tens of thousands’, New York Times, December 9, p. 1; ‘Soviet aides say deaths in quake may reach 50,000', New York Times, December 10, p. 1; ‘Gorbachev tours quake wreckage’, December 11, p. 1; etc. 334 D. PAPAZIAN

The other unusual circumstance was that Gorbachev allowed both the worldwide news media and relief agencies to fly directly to Armenia without the usual formalities of obtaining visas61 and totally unencumbered. This freedom to fly directly without papers to a Soviet Republic was totally unprece- dented and attracted great attention. Rescue missions came directly from France, Israel, the United States, and many other countries. The news media followed and reported their activities for weeks, keeping the name Armenia prominently on the television news broadcast and in the newspapers. With this outpouring of world wide sympathy and aid, the Armenians of America responded with great enthusiasm, collecting money and relief sup- plies to send to Armenia. An effort of this magnitude, which consumed all the energies of the community, brought Armenians from all sides and factions together in a common cause. Furthermore, assimilated and semi- assimilated Armenians made contact with the community, for the first time in years, to support the effort. Many in the community were surprised to discover so many ‘Armenians’ in high and influential places in American society. The second great event which broke down community barriers was the fall of the Soviet Union and the declaration of Armenian independence in 1991. Armenia was now a free and independent republic, and once more Armeni- ans of all factions in America (as well as many ‘assimilated’ Armenians, organized to give support and aid to the fledgling republic. This support was all the more manifest when Raffi Hovannisian (of Prelacy background), an American and the son of the prominent historian Richard Hovannisian, was appointed Foreign Minister. Many young Armenian Americans, mostly from the Prelacy faction, rushed to Armenia to help build the new state. Now that Armenia was no longer ‘Communist’, there were no ideological barriers, or so it at first seemed, among the factions in America. In 1994, the Catholicos of All Armenians, Vazken I, passed away. The very next year a great National62 Ecclesiastical Assembly convened in Armenia, at which His Holiness Karekin II (Sarkisian), Catholicos of the Great House of Cilicia, was elected as Karekin I, Catholicos of All Armenians.63 The election

61 ‘The usual rules waived’, New York Times, December 11, 1988. 62 “Of the nation”, the Armenian nation. 63 I was privileged to participate in this impressive gathering of Armenian leaders from all over the world as an elector. ARMENIANS IN AMERICA 335 of the devout and brilliant Karekin Sarkisian, the most outstanding Arme- nian churchman in the world, gave new impetus to the growth of the Church in Armenia and the quest for Church unity in America. Catholicos Karekin I made inspiring trips to America, the largest and most wealthy diaspora of the Armenians, where he sought to vitalize the youth, expand ecumenism, and to heal the split in the Church. He also made visits to Rome where he signed a statement of understanding with the Pope over formerly divisive theological expressions (particularly Christological). Unfortunately for the Armenian Church, and Church unity in America, His Holiness Karekin I died prematurely in 1999. Despite the split in the Church in America, both the Diocese and the Prelacy seem to be prospering but with unclear prospects for the future. The Diocese currently has 42 active parishes and 23 mission parishes, and 61 clergy.64 The Diocese of Canada has 13 parishes and mission parishes, with 7 priests.65 The Western Diocese has 26 parishes and mission parishes, with 31 priests.66 The Prelacy (including the East and Canada) has 29 parishes and 10 mission parishes.67 The Western Prelacy also has 8 churches on the West Coast.68 There are also 25 Armenian Protestant, or Evangelical as they prefer to be called, churches and several Armenian Catholic churches, making the total number of parishes for all Armenian denominations over 200. Besides the parishes, the churches sponsor Sunday Schools, evening and Saturday language classes, cultural events, and auxiliary organizations of all types, mostly charitable and cultural. There are over one hundred weekly Armenian language schools and also over half a dozen Armenian full-time day schools in the United States. There is a current joke that if two Armenians live in one town they will build two churches, one Diocesan and one Prelacy, so as to have a church not to attend, and organize three political parties. It is a pity that while the reasons for the split in the Church, such as they were, have disappeared with

64 Diocese of the Armenian Church of America, Parish Directory, 2000-2001 (New York, 2000). 65 Eastern Diocese of the Armenian Church of America, Parish Directory for Cana- dian Diocese and Western Diocese, 1999-2000 (New York, 1999). 66 Ibid. 67 Prelacy of the Armenian Apostolic Church of America, Diary, 1999 (New York, Armenian Prelacy, 1999). 68 Ibid. 336 D. PAPAZIAN the fall of Communism and the legal recognition of the Armenian Revolu- tionary Federation as a political party in the Armenian Republic, there is still no healing of the Church rupture in America. Contrary to the canons of the universal Church, the Armenian Church continues to have two dioceses in one physical territory.69

Post World War II Immigration After World War II there was a new immigration of Armenians from Europe and the Soviet Union, while some Armenians in the diaspora (including a few from America) ‘returned’ to the homeland. While there were no longer many Armenians left in Turkey, there were large numbers in countries overrun by the war, and many of these had lost their homes and families. The United States government adopted a special provision to the immigration law which allowed ‘displaced persons’ to enter the country and become legal residents, eligible for citizenship. In this fashion, a large number of Armenians were brought to America. These new immigrants came from Southern and Eastern Europe, where many had been displaced by battling armies as they surged back and forth; from Egypt, where new nationalistic policies and nationaliza- tion of property made it less hospitable for Armenians; from Turkey, where economic and social oppression had been renewed against Christians and Jews; from Greece, where widespread poverty and a civil war made it difficult for Armenians to live; and a few from the Soviet Union and Soviet Armenia itself, chiefly former soldiers who had been captured by the Germans or refugees who fled from the Soviet Union with the retreating German army. The ‘DPs’, as they were called derisively, were only grudgingly accepted by the now relatively well established and Americanized wave of the old immigration. They did serve, however, to revitalize in part the Armenianness of the Armenian community in America, particularly revitalizing the mother tongue in community venues, especially in Prelacy circles where they frequently felt more at home.70

69 As noted above, there is a Diocese and Prelacy in the Eastern United States, a Dio- cese and Prelacy in the Western United States, and a Diocese in Canada, the adherents of the Prelacy in Canada being still connected with the Eastern Prelacy in the U.S. Internationally, there is the question of two dioceses, Greece and Iran, which were moved from the jurisdiction of the Catholicos of All Armenians to the jurisdiction of the Catholicos of Cilicia. 70 R. Peroomian, ‘The Transformation of Armenianess in the Formation of Arme- nian-American Identity’, Journal of the Society for Armenian Studies 6, 1992, 1993 (1995), p. 125. ARMENIANS IN AMERICA 337

The next wave of immigration was from the well-established, highly cul- tured, and wealthy Armenian community in Lebanon during the Lebanese civil war of the 1970s. These immigrants arrived with funds, an excellent education, business experience, and competency in two or three languages, generally French, English, and Armenian. They adapted readily to life in America while at the same time retaining their Armenian culture which they had preserved in the Middle East. These immigrants looked down on the earlier Armenian immigrants who were uneducated and whose children, while perhaps highly educated and successful, had lost knowledge of the mother tongue and Armenian culture. The Lebanese Armenians excoriated the American Armenians for not having maintained Armenian cultural life in America as they had in Lebanon. This immigration, too, revitalized the community and also raised its cultural standards. The 1979 Islamic revolution in Iran precipitated the exodus of thousands of Armenians from Iran, former supporters of the Shah and in general fab- ulously wealthy. Most of them, seeing the handwriting on the wall, had removed their liquid assets to safe places to be available in case of emer- gency. This forethought allowed those who chose to come to America to mostly settle in the greater Los Angeles area, where they purchased large homes and established businesses. The characteristic which they contributed chiefly to the Armenian American community was a sense of self assurance and empowerment. The Iranian Armenians, who had lived in Iran in large numbers since the 1600s, had never experienced massacres nor had they faced significant governmental and social discrimination in decades. These immigrants tended to move in their own circles and organizations, in which they spoke the Eastern Armenian dialect (as used in Armenia), and did not often mix with those of the old immigration.71 The subsequent wave of immigration, and indeed that which became a flood, consisted of those who were fleeing the Soviet Union and, after the fall of the U.S.S.R. in 1991, from the Russian Federation and the Republic of Armenia, itself. During the cold war, America’s policy was to admit all those

71 See M. Bozorgmehr, G. Sabagh, and C. Der-Martirosian, Religio-Ethnic Diversity among Iranians in Los Angeles (Los Angeles, CA, G.E. von Grunebaum Center for Near Eastern Studies, University of California, Los Angeles, n.d.); Claudia Der- Martirosian, ‘Ethnicity and Ethnic Economy: Armenian Iranians in Los Angeles’ [M.A. thesis, University of California, Los Angeles, 1989]; and Irangeles: Iranians in Los Angeles, ed. R. Kelley, J. Friedlander and A. Colby (Berkeley and Los Ange- les, 1993). 338 D. PAPAZIAN who were fleeing Communism, particularly people from the Soviet Union. The Jewish bloc in America convinced the American government to support the exodus of Jews, a persecuted minority in the U.S.S.R., from the Soviet Union to Israel. More than half of these Jews, who were brought first to the U.S. for prior processing, decided to remain in America and not to travel on to Israel. For some reason, Armenians were placed in the same category as Soviet Jews, although discrimination against Armenians in the Soviet Union was not at all as significant as that against the Jews. Thus we see that the Armenian emigration became a constant proportion of the Jewish emigration, which waxed and waned according to Soviet-American politics, and amounted to tens of thousands over the years. Most of these Armenians who came to America went to live in the greater Los Angeles area. These Armenians had been acculturated in the Soviet Union where everyone depended on the state for livelihood, and pilfering from the state was considered a necessary part of everyday life. Few of these Soviet Armenian immigrants knew any English or any language other than Russian and Eastern Armenian. Their cultural differ- ences made adjusting to American life quite difficult, and they sometimes came into conflict with the authorities. They did not mix well with any of the older immigrations, but rather established their own neighbourhoods in such places as rundown North Hollywood or the then declining Glendale, where they kept mostly to themselves. By now, they have revitalized those areas and made them vibrant, thriving communities with Armenian shops and signs. The old established community, which had by now built a stellar reputation in American circles, opened job training and social service agencies to help these newcomers with their acculturation to the New World. Problems continue to exist, however, but on a much smaller scale. Most of these immigrants by the year 2000 have managed to acculturate themselves, open businesses, and have prospered as did their Armenian predecessors. The next wave of Armenian immigration, again more like a flood, were the Armenians fleeing the Former Soviet Union and Armenia after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. The United States still welcomed anti-Com- munist and, as an editorial in the New York Times put it: “The earlier generations of immigrants who passed through Ellis Island were largely from Europe. The fastest-growing groups these days are from … the nations born of the breakup of the Soviet Union.”72

72 New York Times, September 4, 2000, p. 18-A. ARMENIANS IN AMERICA 339

These present immigrants from the Republic of Armenia have brought the total number of Armenians in the Los Angeles area to around half a million. The total number of Armenian Americans is probably over a million. The new immigrants are rapidly adjusting to the New World, and they are taking an active interest in the Republic of Armenia, seeking to help it economically. Many are involved in fund raising, engineering and financial planning, and seek to support scientific projects. In fact, the war in Karabagh and the economic plight of Armenia are the issues, along with the Genocide, which are now the common denominators which bring all Armenian factions and all groups of Armenian immigrants together. Other challenges and successes Meanwhile, of course, the community struggled to maintain itself. The prejudice of the majority population against foreigners in general and Armenians in particular was slow to dissipate. Yet, the more the Armenian immigrants were despised by the ‘Americans’, the more they wanted to prove themselves and improve their community. Indeed, it was the public schools which were the melting pots used to turn all the immigrants from all the countries of the world into ‘Americans’73 and made the immigrant children ashamed of their background and their very names. Still, the more the Armenians were shamed by the majority population, the more they sought to excel and to prove themselves, which they did admirably. As the sociologist Stephan Thernstrom pointed out in his recent book America in Black and White: One Nation, Indivisible: “Comparing America’s ethnic groups clearly reveals their widely differing socio-economic profiles. Consider the ‘Cajuns’,74 who reside mainly in rural Louisiana. They are indistinguishable from African Americans in their low rate of college graduation, and have incomes that are 19 percent below the national average.” On the other end of the spectrum are Armenians, whose college completion rates are 88 percent above the national average, and who have incomes 45

73 See D. Waldstreicher, The Armenian Americans (New York, 1989), p. 80; and M. Housepian Dobkin, ‘The Melting-Pot Myth – Myth versus Reality: Defining the “Ideal” American’, in Armenians in America: Celebrating the First Century (Washington, D.C., 1987), pp. 26-29. 74 A people on the lower Mississippi River, particularly of Louisiana, of mixed Indian and French blood. The French were said to be exiles from Acadia, hence ‘Cajun’. 340 D. PAPAZIAN percent above the average. Armenians, with Greeks and Latvians, are exam- ples of allegedly unassimilable ‘new immigrant’ groups who arrived on these shores less than a century ago and have already moved ahead of earlier arrivals like the English, Germans, Irish and Swedes.75 The Armenians have certainly responded to adversity, and the melting pot did not completely melt. Ethnic feelings went underground and have recently emerged anew in the third generation and among the American population at large. Apropos of the joke about the Armenian building two Armenian churches, we could add that they would publish four newspapers. Armenians love to write for, and to read, newspapers. While only one major Armenian language daily newspaper has survived up to today, Asbarez (pro- Dashnak), there are currently several English-language weekly newspapers such as the Armenian Reporter International (independent), the Armenian Weekly (Dashnak), the Armenian Mirror Spectator (Ramgavar), Nor Or (New Day) partially in Armenian and partially in English (Ramgavar), the Armenian Observer (pro- Ramgavar), the Armenian Courier (pro-Dashnak), Eritasard Hayastan (Young Armenia, in Armenian, Hnchak), and Masis (in Armenian, Hnchak), as well as dozens of others which have come and gone over the years. All in all, the Armenians are well established in America and show signs of success in almost every field of endeavour – finance, education, construction, manufacturing, industry, law, art, music, composing, literature, opera, film making, acting, design, advertisement and politics.76 The prospects seem good. As long as the Karabagh war, the poverty in Armenia, and the Genocide issue remain, the community will be drawn together by common goals. If these issues are solved, the community will probably be so far along the road of cooperation that it may succeed in holding together and working toward a common future.77 The Armenians have always been a diaspora people, and each of these diasporas has moved or disappeared over time. It

75 (New York, 1997), p. 541. 76 Avakian, Armenians (see n. 18), pp. 48-77. 77 Ronald Stockton, a professor at the University of Michigan-Dearborn, applied social science theory to the Armenian community and predicted that over the years the Armenians conscious of their heritage would live in the major urban centres and be well educated and wealthy. The poor and uneducated as well as those living in small communities, he predicts, will loose their national consciousness. ‘Who Defines the Armenians?’, Armenian Review, 36 (Winter 1983), 4-144, pp. 6-13. ARMENIANS IN AMERICA 341 remains to be seen if modern communication and modes of travel will allow for cross fertilization between the diaspora and Armenia to the benefit of both. If so, the American diaspora may last longer than expected.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

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Mirak, Robert, Torn Between Two Lands: Armenians in America, 1890 to World War I (Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1983). O’Grady, Ingrid Poschmann, ‘Ararat, Etchmiadzin, and Haig (Nation, Church, and Kin): A Study of the Symbol System of American Armenians’ [Ph.D. diss, The Catholic University of America, 1979]. Phelan, Paul, ‘Where Is Home to an Armenian? Anywhere from Turkey to Iran’, New York World Telegram and Sun, 3 April 1959. Phillips, Jenny, Symbol, Myth, and Rhetoric: The Politics of Culture in an Armenian- American Population (New York, AMS Press, 1989). This is actually a look at the Armenian-America community of the 1970s. Takooshian, Harold, ‘Armenian Immigration to the United States from the Middle East’, Journal of Armenian Studies, 3 (1986-1987), 1-2, pp. 133-156. Tashjian, James H., The Armenians of the United States and Canada (Boston, MA, Hairenik Press, 1947; reprint San Francisco, CA, R and E Research Associates, 1970). Vassilian, Hamo B., ed., 1998 Armenian Yellow Pages and Almanac (Glendale, CA, Armenian Reference Books, 1998). Vassilian, Hamo B., ed., Armenian American Almanac (Glendale, CA, Armenian Reference Books, 1995). Waldstreicher, David, The Armenian Americans (New York, Chelsea House Pub- lishers, 1989). Wertsman, Vladimir, The Armenians in America, 1618-1976: A Chronology and Fact Book (Dobbs Ferry, NY, Oceana Publications, 1978). Yeretzian, Aram S., A History of Armenian Immigration to America with Special Ref- erence to Los Angeles (Saratoga, CA, R and E Research Associates, 1974).

More General Adamic, Louis, From Many Lands (New York, Harper & Brothers, 1940). Dinnerstein, Leonard, Ethnic Americans: A History of Immigration and Assimilation (New York, Dodd, Mead and Co., 1975)

Regional Studies Andrews, James M., Dusan Sinadinoski and Robert Schulz, Ethnic Organizations in Michigan ([Detroit, MI] Ethnos Press, 1983). Aznakian, Charles Y., A Brief History of the Armenian Community in Washington D.C. and A Brief History of the Armenian Community in Richmond, Va (Washing- ton, D.C., Armenian Presbyterian Church, 1945). Calsi, Julie, ‘Armenians in South Florida Struggle to Preserve Heritage’, Miami Her- ald, 25 April 1983. Deranian, H. Martin, ‘Worcester is America’, Journal of Armenian Studies, 3 (1986- 1987), 1-2, pp. 15-34. Federal Writers’ Project, The Armenians in Massachusetts (Boston, MA, The Armen- ian Historical Society, 1937; reprint New York, AMS Press, 1975). ARMENIANS IN AMERICA 343

Fishman, Joshua A., The Rise and Fall of the Ethnic Revival: Perspectives on Language and Ethnicity (Berlin, Mouton, 1985). Fosburgh, Lacey, ‘Armenians Here Rediscovering Rich Heritage’, New York Times, 16 July 1969. Kulhanjian, Gary A., ‘From Ararat to America: The Armenian Settlements of New Jersey’, Journal of Armenian Studies, 3 (1986-1987), 1-2, pp. 35-46. LaPiere, Richard Tracy, ‘The Armenian Colony in Fresno County, California: A Study in Social Psychology’ [Ph.D. diss., Stanford University, 1930]. Mahakian, Charles, History of Armenians in California (San Francisco, CA, R and E Research Associates, 1974). Mesropian, Arpena, ‘Like One Family’: The Armenians of Syracuse (Reading, Eng- land, Taderon Press, 2000). Mezoian, Anthony P., The Armenian People of Portland, Maine (Durham, NH, National Materials Development Center, Department of Media Services, Univer- sity of New Hampshire, 1985). Morgenroth, Lynda, ‘Armenia in New England’, Yankee (March 1988), pp. 34-41. Pace, Eric, ‘New York’s Armenian Neighborhoods Feel a Surge of Ethnic Pride as New Immigrant Wave Arrives’, New York Times, 11 July 1977. Papazian, Dennis and Sirian, Carolyn, ‘Armenians’, in Ethnic Groups in Michigan, ed. James M. Anderson and Iva A. Smith ([Detroit, MI] Ethnos Press, 1983). Piotrowski, Thaddeus M., The Armenian Diaspora in Manchester, N.H. (Manchester, NH, T.M. Piotrowski, 1977). Smith, Faye Elizabeth, ‘Bits of the Old World in Detroit, 6, Armenians: These Members of a Race Long Oppressed by Turks Are Today’s Pilgrims and Freedom of Faith, not Gold, Lured Them Here’, Detroit Saturday Night, 18 March 1922. Tashjian, James H., A Bicentennial History of the Armenian Community of Massa- chusetts (Boston, MA, Armenian Bicentennial Committee of Massachusetts, 1976). Tashjian, James H., ‘The Armenians and the American Bicentennial: A Bicenten- nial History of the Armenian Community of Massachusetts’, Armenian Review, 28 (Autumn 1975), 3-111, pp. 227- 264. Wallis, Wilson D., Fresno Armenians to 1919 (Lawrence, KS, Coronado Press, 1965). Yeretzian, Aram S., A History of Armenian Immigration to America with Special Ref- erence to Los Angeles (Saratoga, CA, R and E Research Associates, 1974).

Church and religion Crisis in the Armenian Church: Text of a Memorandum to the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America on the Dissident Armenian Church in America (Boston, MA, The Central Diocesan Board, Armenian National Apostolic Church of America, 1958). (A rather virulent ARF publication). 344 D. PAPAZIAN

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Ashjian, Arten, A Century of Contacts between the Armenian and Episcopalian Churches in the U.S.A. (New York, St. Vartan Press, 1991). Ashjian, Mesrob, The Armenian Church in America (New York, Prelacy of the Armenian Apostolic Church, 1995). Mirak, Robert, ‘On New Soil: The Armenian Orthodox and Armenian Protestant Churches in the New World to 1915’, in Immigrants and Religion in Urban America, ed. Randall Miller and Thomas Marzik (Philadelphia, PA, Temple University Press, 1977). Zakian, Christopher Hagop, ed., The Torch Was Passed: The Centennial History of the Armenian Church of America (New York, St. Vartan Press, 1998).

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