In its most recent online meeting, presided by His Holiness Catholicos Aram I and chaired by Yervant Pamboukian, the Khatchig Babikian Literary Fund Committee of the Catholicosate of the Great House of Cilicia reviewed the latest titles published under its sponsorship, including Ashot Melkonyan’s “The Hundredth Anniversary of the First Republic of Armenia.” The fund also decided to review and publish new volumes devoted to Artsakh.
The meeting, which took place on March 13, was also attended by Prof. Melkonyan, Shahan Kandaharian, Giro Manoyan, and Khatchig Dedeyan.
The Armenian volume edited by Prof. Melkonyan are the proceedings of the conference on the centennial of the first Republic held at the Catholicosate in March 2018. The publication was reviewed and approved by the scientific council of the history institute of the National Academy of Sciences of Armenia. His Holiness praised the volume for its content and scientific quality.
Meeting participants also discussed the recent publication of Rafael de Nogales’s “Four Years Beneath the Crescent” in Arabic. Dr. Houri Azezian translated the memoirs of Nogales, a Venezuelan mercenary who served the Ottoman army during World War I and participated in the Turkish assault against the Armenians of Van during the Genocide.
Two other books are forthcoming: “The Armenian Cultural Genocide,” by Oscar López Goldaracena (in English) and Khachatur Stepanyan’s “The Question of the Establishment of the Soviet Regime in Armenia in the Political Thought of the Armenian Diaspora in the 1920s-1930s” (in Armenian).
Participants in the meeting also called for the publication of volumes devoted to the question of Artsakh, heeding Catholicos Aram’s proclamation of 2021 as the Year of Artsakh. They specifically invited submissions on this topic to the committee in English, French, Spanish, and Arabic for potential publication.