On Vartan İhmalyan’s political autobiography, Bir Yaşam Öyküsü (A Life Story) (4)

From Vartan İhmalyan’s pen: Aram Pehlivanyan (1)

We previously noted that Vartan İhmalyan wrote his political autobiography, Bir Yaşam Öyküsü (A Life Story), as a reckoning with the triumvirate -Zeki Baştımar, İsmail Bilen and Aram Pehlivanyan- who in effect expelled him and many of his comrades from the Communist Party of Turkey (TKP). In his account, he seeks to condemn this trio through a distinctly impressionistic lens, portraying them not only as unpleasant individuals but also as poor communists.

As any reader of the book will readily observe, İhmalyan reserves his deepest hatred for İsmail Bilen among the three. Aram Pehlivanyan comes second, while his hostility towards Zeki Baştımar seems noticeably weaker than that directed at Bilen and Pehlivanyan.

In this post, we shall begin to set out what Vartan İhmalyan wrote about Aram Pehlivanyan in his autobiography, A Life Story.

Aram Pehlivanyan as a young man, together with his family

Pehlivanyan’s indiscipline in financial matters

Speaking of the party cell he joined after entering the TKP in 1933, İhmalyan writes:

Our cell consisted of myself as secretary, and as members Nihat Çavuşoğlu, Aram Pehlivanyan (now TKP Politburo member A. Saydan), and a certain Recep. (p. 70)

A few lines later, İhmalyan remarks that, although everyone else paid their party dues regularly, the sole exception was Aram Pehlivanyan:

Aram Pehlivanyan (A. Saydan) would hand over the 5-kuruş [*] dues only once every three to five months.

When told, “Aram, you haven’t paid the party money this month either,” he would shrug it off with, “What can I do, I’ve no money to give.”

And I never once reported Aram’s failure to pay his dues on time to the Party. (p. 70)

However, by the middle of the book, İhmalyan claims that Pehlivanyan’s indiscipline extended not only to party dues but also to the repayment of personal debts. For example, in 1956 in Paris, while informing him on behalf of the Party that he was to work for the Turkish service of Budapest Radio, Pehlivanyan is quoted as saying:

Ah, I nearly forgot. When I was leaving Beirut, I borrowed travel money from your father. He told me to hand it over to you when I saw you, but I’ve no money just now. I’ll settle it another time.

İhmalyan continues:

He told me this back in 1956. Now, as I write these lines in July 1978, he still has not repaid the money he took from my father. I daresay he has chalked it up alongside the 5 lira that Nihat sent from Karabük for the Party, which he appropriated without leave, saying, “I needed it, I used it; it’s not as though I ate it. Of course, I’ll repay it” -and which, to this very day, he never has!... (p. 145)

The fact that Pehlivanyan helped himself to the money Nihat had sent for the Party without permission, and never repaid this unauthorised “loan”, shows that his indiscipline in financial matters went beyond mere negligence and shaded into outright misappropriation.

Pehlivanyan’s admiration for Hitler

İhmalyan recalls a conversation in his own home immediately after Nazi Germany’s attack on the Soviet Union:

 I suddenly caught it -a spark of envy in Aram’s eyes:

“That Hitler’s a genius, isn’t he?!”

I saw red. Inwardly I thought, Long live your communism, then! I couldn’t hold back:

“How can you bring yourself to call that cur a ‘genius’? Don’t you read in the papers every day how he’s capturing hundreds of thousands of Soviet soldiers? Most of them communists -just like you. How can you even say such a thing?”

He was badly shaken, his face drained of colour, and making a complete about-turn, he could only mutter:

“Geniuses are abnormal.” (pp. 70–71)

In the second half of 1956, while touring the capital of Poland, Warsaw -much of which still lay in ruins- İhmalyan recalled the unpleasant exchange with Pehlivanyan from fifteen years earlier:

It reminded me of the time when fascist Germany had just attacked the Soviet Union and, within 10-12 days, had advanced near Minsk, taking hundreds of thousands of Soviet soldiers and officers prisoner -the time Aram Pehlivanyan said to me in our home in Üsküdar, "Hitler is a genius!". (p. 160)

[*] Kuruş: A subdivision of the Turkish lira (100 kuruş=1 lira), comparable in everyday use to the penny in the pound sterling.

To be continued

See also:

Who was Vartan İhmalyan?

The period in which İhmalyan wrote his political autobiography

Vartan İhmalyan’s superficial impressionism

From Vartan İhmalyan’s pen: Aram Pehlivanyan (2)

From Vartan İhmalyan’s pen: Aram Pehlivanyan (3)

From Vartan İhmalyan’s pen: İsmail Bilen (1)