ARF Day, My Take

Vahe H. Apelian

 

Lately it has become common place to come across on the Armenian social media, announcements of the ARF Day celebrations with most of them, if not all of them, noting ARF’s anniversary year.  ARF Day was celebrated in Glendale on February 19 and will also be celebrated tomorrow, on March 4, 2023, The poster notes 132 next to the ARF flag. While the poster did not overtly note that it is the 132nd anniversary of the ARF, having been founded in 1890, but it clearly implied that. However, the others mostly noted the anniversary celebration. On January 25, 2023, Sossi Essajanian reported in the Armenian Weekly that the Detroit Armenian community celebrated 132 years of the ARF. The poster for ARF Day in Lebanon noted the 132nd anniversary.

I became reflective of the ARF Day, the New Jersey Armenian community celebrated well over thirty years ago. The event has remained etched in my memory because the world order we knew, was dismantling in front of our very own eyes. James Baker III, the secretary of the state had said that the Soviet Union we knew does not exist anymore. It had downed on me that Soviet Socialist Republic of Armenia will likely emerge as a free and independent country. But strangely, instead of being jubilant, the probability of the immergence of a free and independent Armenia weighed heavy on me, and I reflected on it in my remarks, as I was a speaker at that year’s ARF Day celebration. But I know that it never occurred to me to mention the anniversary year. It seemed to have no relevance.

ARF Day came about during the 10th ARF world congress that was held in Paris. Ani Armenian Research Center has listed the dates the ARF world congresses were held. Accordingly, the 10^th world congress started on November 17, 1924, and lasted until January 17, 1925, in Paris France. A few months after concluding the congress, on July 25, 1925, Simon Vratsian reflected upon it in the ARF organ “Troshag” and noted the following;

“An extremely difficult burden was destined for the world council, to review and justify our activities of the last five years and, considering the new circumstances that have arisen in life, to formulate an action plan for the future……. Delegates came from the Homeland, Iran, Syria, Egypt, Greece, the Balkans, America, etc. The agenda was multifaceted. A lot of material was collected. Extensive reports and detailed coverage of political, accounting, judicial, organizational, and programmatic issues were prepared. This General Assembly was not just an ordinary convention of a political party, but a kind of parliament.”

It is that historical ARF world congress that ruled once a year, preferably in the month of November, ARF presented itself to the public and addressed the issues the Armenian nation faced and naturally elaborated on the contribution the ARF made.

In Lebanon

The first ARF Day likely took place the following year, in 1926. The eminent editor of the “Haratch Daily”in Paris, Shavarsh Missakian, in a 1926 editorial noted the following: “"The ARF Day is not an anniversary in the literal sense of the word, nor a commemoration of this or that great event, but the condensation of the history of an entire period, with its victories and upheavals……… the ARF, established for itself a special day in a year, not only to look at its past 35 years with just pride, as the most powerful impetus to the Armenian liberation struggle, but also to renew itself, to strengthen itself.”

The ARF Day is not celebrated as a single yearly event. It is rather a communal celebration for good reason, because each community has its own needs and challenges ARF responds or is expected to respond for its greater vision of a free, united, and independent Armenia. It is not meant to be a celebration in the conventional sense of the verb to celebrate, nor it is meant to be, quoting Shavarsh Missakian, “an anniversary celebration in the literal sense of the word.” The Social Democrat Hunchakian Party, active to this day, with which ARF collaborates at times, was founded in 1887, hence it is three years older than the ARF. This year is its 135^th anniversary. But, the number of years of their founding is incidental.

The ARF day is simply an annual public report to the stakeholder, who naturally is the Armenian people. More than anything else, I liken it to State of the  Armenians address. Was, during the past year, the local Armenian community, and hence the Armenian nation better off than it was because of the contribution the ARF rendered?

ARF Day is the year’s reckoning, done every year. In the words of Shavarsh Missakian, it is a day for reflection, " to renew itself, to strengthen itself.”