Early life and activism

Alexander Movsesi Atabekian was born in 1868, into an Armenian family in Shushi, a city in the region of Nagorno-Karabakh. After graduating from secondary school in his hometown, in 1888,^[1] he left the Caucasus and went abroad to study medicine at the University of Geneva.^[2] During his undergraduate education, Atabekian worked as a typesetter for Avetis Nazarbekian's newspaper Hunchak – the official organ of the Social Democrat Hunchakian Party (SDHP) – which publicised reports about rising anti-Armenian sentiment in the Russian and Ottoman Empires.^[1]

He left the SDHP and became an anarchist communist in 1890, after reading Words of a Rebel, a collection of writings by Peter Kropotkin dating back to 1879 and published in 1885 by Élisée Reclus. Atabekian then began working at a Ukrainian publishing house, which he used to print translations of anarchist works in the Armenian and Russian languages. He also published a number of open letters, on behalf of the international anarchist movement, to Armenian peasants and revolutionaries.^[1]

Before long, Atabekian had met numerous prominent members of the anarchist movement, becoming close friends with Kropotkin, Reclus and Jean Grave.^[3] He also met Max Nettlau, Paraskev Stoyanov,^[2] Luigi Galleani and Jacques Gross;^[1] with whom he printed a poster in memory of the Haymarket martyrs, which they plastered throughout Geneva.^[1]

Anarchist publishing work

After the outbreak of the Russian famine of 1891–1892, Atabekian initiated an effort to begin smuggling anarchist propaganda into the Russian Empire,^[4] intending to print texts in both the Russian and Armenian languages.^[5] Atabekian and Stoyanov travelled to London,^[1] where they visited Kropotkin.^[6] They informed him of their intentions to start delivering pamphlets to Ukraine and the Caucasus,^[1] where they had established connections with some individual anarchists.^[7] Atabekian then returned to Geneva and established a printing press in his own bedroom;^[1] he called it the Anarchist Library (Russian: Анархическая библиотека, romanized: Anarkhicheskaya Biblioteka),^[8] and it would become the first Russian anarchist propaganda circle since Zamfir Arbore's own in the 1870s.^[9]

Atabekian initially lacked the resources to publish a periodical, so decided to start out publishing individual pamphlets.^[7] His first publication was a Russian language edition of Mikhail Bakunin's The Paris Commune and the Idea of the State,^[10] which was followed in 1892 by Kropotkin's The Destruction of the State. In 1893, he published Kropotkin's Political Rights, Anarchism and Spirit of Revolt, as well as Reclus' To My Brother the Peasant,^[11] and Errico Malatesta's Between Peasants, the latter of which Atabekian wrote a preface directing it towards Armenians.^[1] In 1894, he published Kropotkin's Revolutionary Minorities and Grave's Why We Are Revolutionaries. The first pages of the pamphlets included the words "Authorised by the Ministry of Education", printed in the Turkish language.^[11] They were circulated widely among Armenian immigrant circles and later in Armenia itself, following Stoyanov's own distribution efforts.^[1] Despite their efforts, Atabekian was largely unsuccessful in smuggling the pamphlets into the Russian Empire, but their work was taken up only a few years later by another Russian anarchist group in Geneva.^[12] During this period, he also formed links with the nascent Armenian Revolutionary Federation (ARF) and helped to publish its newspaper Droshak, together with Stepan Zorian.^[13]

Atabekian subsequently moved to France in order to continue his medical studies in Paris.^[1] There he also began publication of Hamaink (Armenian: Համայնք; English: Community),^[3] the first anarchist periodical in the Armenian language.^[1] It ran for five issues, each made up of eight pages, which contained articles about anarchism and the Armenian national movement.^[2] Atabekian thought that Armenia was ripe for revolution, due to the conditions created by the Ottoman Empire's despotism and the exploitation of Armenian labour in Europe and America. He called for the collectivisation of land and the establishment of self-governance in Armenia.^[14] Although he was staunchly opposed to Ottoman rule in Armenia, he also cautioned against an intervention in the region by the Entente powers.^[15] Atabekian also published articles by the ARF,^[1] but supplemented them with his own criticisms of the authoritarianism and centralisation he'd experienced within the structures of Armenian political parties.^[16] While it focused largely on Armenia, the journal also gave attention to the revolutionary anarchist movements in France, Italy, Poland, Russia and Spain.^[17] Atabekian himself didn't sign any of the articles he wrote, in order to protect himself from prosecution for his anarchist activities. Hamaink quickly gained popularity among the Armenian diaspora throughout Europe, with Stoyanov helping to distribute it in the Balkans, Caucasus and Turkey.^[1]

Move east

Atabekian ceased all of his publication activities after receiving news of the Hamidian massacres, which emotionally devastated him. He established connections with anarchist and libertarian socialist activists within the ARF, which was starting to carry out militant attacks against the Ottoman Empire in protest against the anti-Armenian massacres.^[1] The anarchists of the ARF blended socialist anarchism with a form of Armenian nationalism,^[18] influenced in part by the Russian nihilist movement.^[19] Together with other Armenian libertarians, Atabekian wrote a declaration to the London Congress of the Second International; he argued that European powers were complicit in the Hamidian massacres and declared the beginning of a social revolution in West Asia.^[5]

In 1896, Atabekian graduated as a Doctor of Medicine. Prohibited from returning to the Russian Empire due to a sentence of exile for his anarchist activities, he moved first to Bulgaria and then to Iran.^[1] His correspondence from this time indicates that he travelled through Istanbul and İzmir, where he attempted to promote anarchism among the local Armenian communities.^[20] He settled in Rasht, in the Gilan province, where he worked as a physician and published an Iranian edition of Hamaink,^[2] which received a Persian language translation.^[21] There he also trained the young Ardeshir Ovanessian as a pharmacist, after which Ovanessian went on to become a leader of the Iranian Communist Party.^[1]

Revolution writings in Russia

In the wake of the February Revolution of 1917, Atabekian moved to Moscow. After the subsequent October Revolution, he wrote a series of 30 articles for Anarkhiia, calling for anarchists to lead a third revolution and criticising the Bolsheviks' seizure of power.^[1] During this time, Atabekian began referring to himself as a "political atheist", as he believed any form of power was inevitably opposed to the will of the people.^[22] In his account of the events, Bloody Week in Moscow, Atabekian depicted the October Revolution as a utopian "revolution from above", one which was carried out against the will of the people, who were largely indifferent to the revolution, and which would inevitably fail as a result. He compared the Bolsheviks' actions with the Marxist conception of historical materialism, the latter of which argued that revolution could only occur when the material conditions were correct, and concluded that such conditions were missing from the October Revolution, as it was imposed from above rather than coming from the people themselves. He then called for anarchists to begin agitating for the construction of a new society through workers' self-management.^[23]

Atabekian placed his hopes in Moscow's "house committees",^[24] which had been established in order to protect the common interests of tenants and regulate landlords to ensure regular repairs and central heating.^[25] Atabekian believed that these committees could be the means by which to fulfill people's needs and build a new social order, without political parties.^[26] By the outbreak of the Russian Civil War, Atabekian began advocating for the creation of an independent anarchist army, established along decentralised and anti-authoritarian lines, which could defend people against the rising White movement. This call was notably taken up by Nestor Makhno, who formed a number of partisan detachments in villages throughout Ukraine.^[27]

In 1918, Atabekian and Herman Sandomirskyi established a printing cooperative, from which they published their new periodical Pochin. Edited by Atabekian, who also carried out the typesetting himself, Pochin ran for 11 issues, publishing letters from Peter Kropotkin and Atabekian's own accounts from West Asia.^[1] In the journal, Atabekian developed on Kropotkin's theories of mutual aid and co-operative economics. Atabekian considered cooperation to be a "law of life", stemming from the evolution of eusociality and human society, and saw it as essential to establishing socialist anarchism. From an analysis of history, he concluded that the co-operative movement distinguished itself from capitalism and other economic forms like state socialism, not only because it was unmotivated by profit and sought to abolish wage labour, but also because it upheld a morality based in "freedom, equality and justice". He also defined the co-operative movement in opposition to the state, and believed that the abolition of the state would give way to a co-operative society based on mutual aid and voluntary labour. He thus declared co-operative movement to be in opposition to state socialism, which he decried as imperialistic and limited by its own borders, whereas co-operative movement was internationalist in its methods.^[28]

Treatment and death of Kropotkin

By 1920, Kropotkin had retired to Dmitrov, a small town outside the Russian capital, where Atabekian visited him regularly.^[29] During this period, Atabekian had returned to his practice as a physician, while Kropotkin kept him updated on what would be his final work, Ethics: Origin and Development.^[30] After a meeting with the Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin, Kropotkin informed Atabekian that he had requested an amnesty for one of his friends that had been taken hostage by the Cheka.^[31] Kropotkin expressed regret over making his visit,^[32] but when he asked Atabekian if he disapproved, his friend responded that he would "approve of pleading even to the Tsar to save those who were condemned to death."^[33] Kropotkin went on to say that he had asked Lenin to put a stop to the Red Terror, fearing a repeat of the Reign of Terror during the French Revolution,^[34] which he thought had frightened Lenin enough to reign in the executions.^[35] Kropotkin also told Atabekian that he worried the Bolsheviks might "bury the revolution".^[36]

Peter Kropotkin's funeral in Moscow

In January 1921, Kropotkin fell ill with pneumonia and Atabekian travelled to Dmitrov to provide him with medical care.^[37] Atabekian was joined by five other physicians, including Dmitry Pletnyov, who had been dispatched to treat Kropotkin by Lenin himself.^[38] Despite the severe case, his doctors concluded that he could still recover from his ailments; Kropotkin himself expressed that he didn't want to die, as he still had work to do.^[39] As his condition got worse, and Kropotkin began to accept that he was dying, he expressed regret that he had "give[n] trouble to so many good people." He continued to talk with his friends until his last moments, once remarking to them, "what a hard business—dying".^[40]

Kropotkin died on 8 February 1921,^[41] with Atabekian,^[42] as well as his wife, daughter and son in law by his side. Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman arrived the following day, to belatedly pay their respects.^[40] The Bolshevik government offered to give Kropotkin a state funeral, but his family decline, instead forming a committee to arrange his funeral.^[43] Atabekian was among the co-organisers of the funeral.^[44]

Later work and disappearance

Kropotkin's family and friends were given permission to use his ancestral home in Moscow, which they turned into a museum for his life and work. Atabekian served on the museum's committee, together with Nikolai Lebedev and Aleksei Solonovich.^[45] Atabekian was permitted by the Soviet authorities to continue his work with the Kropotkin Museum Committee throughout most of the period of the New Economic Policy (NEP).^[46] He also published a letter from Kropotkin, dated to late 1918, in the final volume of Pochin.^[47] In 1927, Atabekian and other anarchists organised a demonstration against the execution of Sacco and Vanzetti, with the permission of the Moscow Soviet.^[46] But by this time, the Kropotkin Museum Committee had collapsed into factional infighting, which was beginning to affect the entire Russian anarchist movement.^[48]

Following Joseph Stalin's rise to power and the beginning of totalitarianism in the Soviet Union, the anarchist movement was severely repressed. By the early 1930s, Atabekian had been arrested and imprisoned in the Gulag, where he disappeared from the historical record.^[49] Sources differ as to the exact details of his death, with some claiming he died in Moscow or disappeared into exile, while the International Institute of Social History says that he died in a concentration camp in 1940.^[1] By this time, all the last members of the Kropotkin Museum Committee had been arrested, deported or killed; and the museum itself was closed by the Soviet authorities.^[50]