Alexander Atabekyan - Selected Works on Anarchism

Atabekyan’s political engagement began with the Social Democrat Hnchakian Party, contributing to Hnchak, a journal focused on the plight of Armenians under Ottoman rule. His move to Geneva in the late 1880s to study medicine marked a pivotal moment in his ideological development.

There, immersed in the anarchist milieu surrounding Le Révolté - edited by Peter Kropotkin - Atabekyan emerged as a key transmitter of anarcho-communist thought. He went on to translate Kropotkin’s works and founded the Anarchist Library of Geneva in the early 1890s.

The collection of articles presented here reflect Atabekian’s theoretical musings on anarchist ideas and their practical and political implications. His positionality as someone from the “peripheries” of empire, in this case the Russian empire, and his experiences in the Ottoman, Russian and Iranian spheres make for a unique blend within a single individual, who has received little attention in comparison to some of his anarchist comrades. This lack of attention also corresponds to the murky circumstances in which Atabekian passed away, on which there is no clarity. The main hypothesis is that Atabekian was arrested in the 1930s and died in a gulag, according to the Alexander Atabekian papers archived at the International Institute of Social History. In any case, the purpose here is to revive his works and to breathe new life into his ideas.