Axel Bakunts
Encyclopedia
Aksel Bakunts ' onMouseout='HidePop("81941")' href="/topics/Goris">Goris
, Russian Empire
- July 8, 1937, Soviet Armenia) was an Armenian
prose writer
, film-writer, translator and public activist.
, Armenia
, where he grew up was opened in 1957 as a museum dedicated to his life and work.
), "Lar-Markar", "Namak rusats tagavorin" ("A letter to the Russian czar"), "Kyores" (1935) etc. Bakunts also was a film-writer ("Zangezur", etc.).
A 1927 collection of his short stories, "Mtnadzor", was published in English as "The Dark Valley" in 2009.
Goris
Goris is a city in the Syunik Marz of Armenia. Located in the valley of river Goris , it is about 240 km away from the Armenian capital Yerevan and 70 km from the Syunik Marz center Kapan. Goris forms an urban community...
, Russian Empire
Russian Empire
The Russian Empire was a state that existed from 1721 until the Russian Revolution of 1917. It was the successor to the Tsardom of Russia and the predecessor of the Soviet Union...
- July 8, 1937, Soviet Armenia) was an Armenian
Armenians
Armenian people or Armenians are a nation and ethnic group native to the Armenian Highland.The largest concentration is in Armenia having a nearly-homogeneous population with 97.9% or 3,145,354 being ethnic Armenian....
prose writer
Writer
A writer is a person who produces literature, such as novels, short stories, plays, screenplays, poetry, or other literary art. Skilled writers are able to use language to portray ideas and images....
, film-writer, translator and public activist.
Biography
Aksel Bakunts was born in 1899 in Goris (Armenia) and educated at the Gevorkian Seminary in Echmiadzin. Always outspoken, his first publication, a satirical account of the mayor of Goris, earned him a stint in jail in 1915. He subsequently served as an Armenian volunteer in the battles of Erzurum, Kars and Sardarabad. Between 1918 and 1919 he was a teacher, proof-reader and reporter in Yerevan. In 1920 he was accepted to the Kharkov Institute in the Ukraine to study agriculture. After graduation in 1923, he worked as an agronomist in Zangezur, a region of Armenia that features prominently in his short stories. From 1926 he settled in Yerevan where he quickly established his reputation as a gifted writer with his first collection of short stories entitled Mtnadzor [The Dark Valley]. His oeuvre includes short story collections, various individual pieces in the press, fragments of novels sadly destroyed following his arrest in 1936, and three screenplays for films produced by Hyefilm in the 1930s. A colleague and friend of Yeghishe Charents (1897-1937), Bakunts was a member of the former's Armenian Association of Proletariat Writers. Bakunts fell victim to the Stalinist terror and was accused of various crimes including alienation from socialist society. He was arrested in 1936 and is believed to have been shot after a twenty-five minute trial in 1937. The house in GorisGoris
Goris is a city in the Syunik Marz of Armenia. Located in the valley of river Goris , it is about 240 km away from the Armenian capital Yerevan and 70 km from the Syunik Marz center Kapan. Goris forms an urban community...
, Armenia
Armenia
Armenia , officially the Republic of Armenia , is a landlocked mountainous country in the Caucasus region of Eurasia...
, where he grew up was opened in 1957 as a museum dedicated to his life and work.
Works
His most famous works are "Alpiakan manushak" (dedicated to Arpenik Charents, the first wife of Yeghishe CharentsYeghishe Charents
Yeghishe Charents was an Armenian poet, writer and public activist. Charents was an outstanding poet of the twentieth century, touching upon a multitude of topics that ranged from his experiences in the First World War, socialism, and, more prominently, on Armenia and Armenians.An early champion...
), "Lar-Markar", "Namak rusats tagavorin" ("A letter to the Russian czar"), "Kyores" (1935) etc. Bakunts also was a film-writer ("Zangezur", etc.).
A 1927 collection of his short stories, "Mtnadzor", was published in English as "The Dark Valley" in 2009.