The autobiography of Maro Nazarbekian: Trajectory and self-perception in communist autobiography

Résumé 0

In the Caucasus, similar to other regions of the Soviet Empire, the Communist institutional autobiography became the initiatory rite for admission in the ranks of the party after the Bolshevik victory in 1921. The autobiography that Maro Nazarbekian (1864-1941) submitted to the South Caucasus Committee of the Communist party in January 1925 and the two drafts of the same text found in the archives of Maro Nazarbekian in the National Archives of Armenia offer an exceptionally interesting view of this institutional procedure. A cofounder of the Social Democrat Hinchak party (1887), Maro Nazarbekian applied for membership in the Bolshevik party when the existence of her party was declared illegal on Soviet territory. Through a close reading of her autobiography, this article tries to capture the strategies of identity construction that this revolutionary veteran undertakes in her institutional self-narration. To rebuild her revolutionary career and the historical context where her autobiographical narration was produced, the analysis draws on documents found in the archives of Maro Nazarbekian, the periodic press of the Hinchak party and other archives related to Maro Nazarbekian and the Hinchaks.