Latest / The Story of Armenia: Survival Through Empires and Genocide — Fexingo History / Zabel Yessayan: The Writer Who Witnessed the Genocide
Transcript
- Lucas: So, Luna, we've talked a lot about the Armenian Genocide on this show — the politics, the battles, the diplomacy. But one thing we haven't really touched on is the people who documented it in real time. Not just diplomats and missionaries, but Armenians themselves. Luna: Like survivors writing memoirs? Lucas: Yes, but also journalists who went into the killing zones while it was happening. And one of the most remarkable is a woman named Zabel Yessayan. She was a novelist, a feminist, and an eyewitness to the 1915 deportations. Her book 'In the Ruins' — in Armenian, 'Averiunneru Mej' — is a gut-wrenching account of what she saw. Lucas: But let me back up. Yessayan was born in 1878 in Constantinople, into a middle-class Armenian family. She studied literature in Paris, at the Sorbonne, and became part of the Armenian literary renaissance. She was one of the first Armenian women to write professionally, publishing novels and short stories that often focused on women's lives. Luna: So she was already a public figure before the genocide. Lucas: Exactly. She was also an activist. In 1909, when the Adana massacres happened — that was a wave of anti-Armenian violence under the Young Turk regime — she went to the region to help orphans and report on the atrocities. That experience shaped her. She wrote a book about it called 'Among the Ruins'. Lucas: So when the genocide began in 1915, she was already known as someone who would bear witness. And she did. She traveled to the interior, to places like the city of Vart Keser, and saw the deportation columns firsthand. She interviewed survivors, collected testimonies, and wrote it all down. Luna: That must have been incredibly dangerous. Lucas: Incredibly. She was an Armenian intellectual, a woman traveling alone in wartime. She could have been killed at any moment. But she kept going. And her book 'In the Ruins' was published in 1917, while the genocide was still ongoing. It's a raw, unsparing account of the suffering she witnessed. Lucas: And here's the thing — and this is a little off-topic but I want to mention it — this kind of work, documenting history as it happens, is exactly why we keep making this show. A handful of listeners support us through buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo, and that's what lets us dig into stories like Zabel Yessayan's. Because these stories deserve to be told, and we're committed to keeping the show ad-free and independent. Luna: Yeah, it's the kind of history that needs to be remembered. Lucas: Absolutely. So back to Yessayan: after the war, she moved to Paris, where she became part of the Armenian diaspora intellectual scene. She wrote more novels, like 'The Curse of the Jewel' and 'The Last Cup', and continued her activism. She was also a feminist, writing for the Ottoman feminist journal 'Hanımlara Mahsus Gazete'. Luna: Wait, she was writing in Turkish too? Lucas: She was fluent in Ottoman Turkish, Armenian, French, and probably some others. She was truly cosmopolitan. But her life took a tragic turn later. In the 1930s, she returned to Soviet Armenia, part of a wave of diaspora intellectuals who believed they could help build a new Armenian homeland. But Stalin's purges were underway. Many of her friends — writers like Eghishe Charents and Avetik Isahakyan — were arrested or killed. Yessayan herself was blacklisted and died in poverty in 1943. Luna: So she survived the genocide only to be silenced by Stalin. Lucas: Pretty much. Her work was suppressed in the Soviet Union for decades. It wasn't until the 1960s that 'In the Ruins' was republished in Armenia, and even then, it was heavily censored. The full text only appeared after the fall of the Soviet Union. Luna: What does she write about that's so powerful? Lucas: She describes the deportation columns in visceral detail: the corpses lining the roads, the cries of women being raped, the children dying of thirst. But she also writes about the resilience of the survivors. There's a passage where she describes an old woman who refuses to abandon her Bible, even as she's being marched to her death. It's heartbreaking but also inspiring. Lucas: She also documented the role of the Turkish authorities — naming officials, describing the systematic nature of the killings. That's part of why her book is so important: it's an eyewitness account that directly contradicts modern denial. Luna: Was she the only woman documenting the genocide? Lucas: No, but she's one of the few whose work has survived. There were also missionaries like Maria Jacobsen, who wrote a diary, and others. But Yessayan is unique because she was an Armenian intellectual, writing from the inside, and she was already a published author. Her literary skills made her account more vivid and more widely read. Lucas: There's also a fascinating personal story: she was married to a fellow Armenian writer, Tigran Yessayan, but they separated. She had a daughter, and she struggled to balance her activism with motherhood. In her letters, she writes about the guilt of leaving her child to go to the killing fields. Luna: That's so human. She wasn't just a witness, she was a mother making impossible choices. Lucas: Exactly. And that's what makes her story so powerful. She's not a distant historical figure; she's a person who lived through horror and chose to do something about it. Her legacy is finally being recognized. In recent years, there have been translations of her work into English, and scholars are starting to study her as both a literary figure and a genocide witness. Luna: Is there a memorial to her somewhere? Lucas: There's a street named after her in Yerevan, and her grave is in the Komitas Pantheon alongside other Armenian cultural figures. But her real monument is her writing. 'In the Ruins' is still in print, and it's still being read by new generations. It's a reminder that history is made up of individual voices, not just statistics. Lucas: I think her story also raises a bigger question: what does it mean to bear witness? She risked her life to document what she saw, knowing that the world might not care. And today, when we talk about the Armenian Genocide, we rely on people like her. Without her testimony, the deniers would have an easier time. Luna: It makes you wonder what other stories are still out there, waiting to be rediscovered. Lucas: That's the thing about history. There's always more to uncover. And that's why we keep making these episodes. Thanks for listening, and we'll see you next time.