City of Orphans by Nora Nercessian: Book Review

“Character building” was one of the important goals of NER. As Nercessian puts it, “the horrors of months and years of survival under perilous conditions, dislocation from their ancestral homes, and the loss of all that they held dear, had not only traumatized the children but had developed in them undesirable character traits. Those undesirable traits needed to be erased and the children would have to be re-educated with a code of ethics that would transform them into worthy citizens” (p. 234). Moral restraint was being taught, but this led to disputes with the Soviet authorities. The government of the first Republic of Armenia worried that the orphans would not have a uniquely Armenian identity or traditions, while the Soviets focused on political doctrine.

The NER wanted apostles of Western values, but the Soviets looked for future soviet citizens working to build a socialist and progressive society. Nercessian devotes an entire chapter to glimpses of what orphans later remembered about attempts to mold their character. The tools used were order and discipline, religious and ethical instruction, and special punishments, which Nercessian characterizes as often becoming physical and emotional abuse.

Nercessian devoted a chapter to the extensive publicity, through photo shoots and films, prepared by NER for US consumption, much of it at Alexandropol. Unfortunately, most of the films have not survived to the present, though it can be hoped that one day some fragments at least may resurface. Nercessian reproduces many photographs of the orphanage. For some reason, a number of these images are fuzzy. It is not clear whether this is due to the limitations of the originals or the quality of the reproductive process, but perhaps they can be enhanced through technology in a future edition.

The penultimate three chapters of Nercessian’s book describe the downsizing and closure of the Alexandropol orphanages. Families whose situation improved were able to reclaim their children from the orphanages and some orphans escaped, while orphans reaching the age of 16 or 17 generally were discharged. In the early 1920s, NER placed children with families in villages. The Armenian government was concerned about the increasing pace of NER downsizing, and feared that without sufficient employment or social support, the released orphans would lead to homelessness, crime, prostitution, and exploitation. A joint Liquidation Committee with government and NER representatives was formed in May 1925 to supervise the process. Whereas by the winter of 1923, according to NER statistics, there were still some 17,000 in the orphanages, by February 1925, that number had dropped to 11,000, and by January 1, 1926, only 8,234 orphans remained, according to the Commissariat of Enlightenment. Approximately 1,600 were left by the summer of 1928.

The conflict between the goals of the government and NER continued over the role of the outplaced orphans. The NER wrote that the orphan would disseminate the ideals learnt at the orphanage, so that “western ideals” would get “under the skin of the Near East,” while the government in a report characterized the children as “an extremely useful category” for the greater glory of socialism. The government thought the orphans should be turned into village Communists, as they were already used to collective life and could see to many of their own needs. They also represented free labor for the state.

Many children were sent outside of Armenia, to Georgia, Azerbaijan, the Northern Caucasus and the Black Sea Region, in the period up to 1929. During a two-year period, 1,844 children were sent north. If the children could not do the work expected of them, they would be sent back to the NER. Often the orphans were sent to refugees from Turkish Armenia.

Some were sent to the cooper mines in Ghapan, and others even to join an army orchestra in Karakilisa. In 1929 the government decided to ask the NER to stop relocating children to Abkhazia because of the high incidence of malaria there.

Simultaneous with the discharge of orphans, the NER reduced its payroll by hiring older orphans to replace local teachers. In 1926 it turned over various posts to the government, and, due to an urgent request by the military, returned the Severski barracks to the use of the latter by October 15, 1926. The NER was planning to turn over more posts to the government in 1926, and all operations in Alexandropol were to be concentrated at the Polygon post by July 1927. The focus of NER activities was changing to education rather than relief and orphan aid.

All relief activities ended on June 30, 1930. Negotiations between the government and NER for establishing some sort of permanent educational NER facility in Armenia failed. The victory of the Stalnist faction in Moscow led NER to decline to pursue a consultancy role in the Caucasus. The last three Americans left in 1931. Many local NER Armenian employees were arrested and imprisoned or exiled to Siberia.

The last chapter of the book, “Apocrypha,” discusses how the memory of the NER intervention could not be discussed freely in Armenia in the Stalinist era but had to be held by individuals until the collapse of the Soviet Union. Afterwards, memoirs and articles by the adult orphans emerged.

This is a difficult book to read because of the pathos as well as the large amount of detailed information provided. There are many moving anecdotes scattered in the pages of the text. For example, Nercessian explains that it was found necessary to institute a program to teach the orphans how to play, as they would otherwise simply “sit about with a look of despair upon their faces, with no interest in their companions.”

Near East Relief official Barclay Acheson is quoted telling the story of a 12-year-old boy who carried his heavy camera on Acheson’s tour. When Acheson tried to thank him by offering to give him any of his personal “treasures” as a gift — a jackknife, gold pencil, steel tape etc., he replied that he wanted none of them. Instead, with trembling lips and tear-filled eyes, “He says that all he wants is to be loved” (p233).

Nercessian usefully synthesizes information from a variety of sources. However, her cautious approach in a few instances leads her to provide conflicting accounts without giving her assessment as to which one appears correct.

For example, according to various New East Relief reports, the NER started the first school for blind children in Armenia in the summer of 1922, and Pauline Jordan fashioned the first textbooks in braille ever to be made in Armenian. Yet a blind orphan, Zvart Murdyan, reports that the blind Armenian composer and ethnomusicologist Nikoghayos Tigranyan had in 1922 adapted the braille technique to the Armenian alphabet, and had opened a school for the blind in Alexandropol in 1921. He had asked the NER to allow him to organize a school for the blind at the NER orphanage. Nercessian does not comment on the validity of her varied sources but only notes that Muradyan’s testimony “adds a perspective that differs somewhat from NER accounts” (p. 173).

Nercessian writes about Col. William N. Haskell, appointed as Interallied High Commissioner for Armenia and Director General of ACRNE’s Caucasus Branch, and his stay in Yerevan. It may be pertinent to note that according to Rev. H. W. Harcourt, representative of the Lord Mayor’s Fund, a British charity, he systematically sold to the Azerbaijani government food supplies donated in the West for Armenia.

There are occasional minor typographic errors in the volume (e.g. “wandered” instead of “wondered,” p. 249) which can be easily corrected in a future edition. Furthermore, if finances permitted, an expanded volume (or if not, a digital one), an index would be quite useful.

Overall, Nercessian has created a very useful study on a topic which has been neglected. It is an excellent resource for understanding the pitfalls and positive elements of international philanthropy, as well as the way the Armenian Genocide left its imprint on young survivors.