Razmik Zohrabyan (* 1950)

Razmik Zohrabyan (1950)

I am not an innocent victim. We were struggling for our freedom, for the independence of our country and we were in the fight all the time.

Razmik Zohrabyan was born on 1 April 1950 in Yerevan. He graduated school №32 and started working on an electronic plant meanwhile learning the work of a machine adjuster.

Razmik’s first notions of freedom and independence started to be shaped in 1965, when the first numerous demonstrations demanding the independence and return of the territories of Western Armenia, located in Turkey, took place in April in Yerevan. Later those demonstrations were violently suppressed by the authorities.

All this made a deep impression on the young man. At that time he was Ashot Navasardyan’s friend, who later became one of the founders of the Republican Party and who was then working as an aero engineer at one of the Yerevan airports.

There was an overturn in Razmik’s consciousness and he began to sympathize with the national - liberation movement. In 1966 the underground National United Party (NUP) was formed. In 1969 Ashot Navasardyan, who had earlier entered NUP, got arrested by the KGB. Razmik, who sympathized with that movement, and who the KGB was already very much interested in, was taken to the Soviet Army and he served in Hungary for two years.

Razmik Zohrabyan got his first task in 1971 when he finally entered NUP and worked as an adjuster at a company of radio components.

He got the task of founding a printing house together with his friend Razmik Markosyan in order to print anti-Soviet leaflets; they performed the task successfully. They turned to the Armenian nation with a call of waking up and going towards independence.

Razmik Zohrabyan was arrested at the beginning of 1974 for burning a large 16 meters’ long picture of Lenin in the Central Square of Lenin located in the heart of Yerevan with a friend of his, whose name he rejects to reveal till now. It was a very resonance protest as at that time Anatoly Gromiko, one of the leaders of the Communist Party of USSR, was in Armenia with the aim of handing the Order of Peoples’ Friendship to Armenia. Razmik and his friend poured 5 liter cans of petrol on the gigantic portrait and threw a burning torch on it. His friend was able to flee away but Razmik got arrested. He spent about 9 months in the KGB detention center being exposed to a strong psychological pressure, but he would not reveal his friend’s name.

In October 1974 he was sentenced to 10 years imprisonment.

At the beginning of 1975 Razmik Zohrabyan was sent by convoy to a Special Camp №17 in Barashevo, Mordovia. “My first impression there was like finding oneself in a Nazi concentration camp I have seen in movies” recalls Zohrabyan. After spending 7 months in Mordovia, he was transferred to the Permian colony №389/35 where he spent two years. In 1977 Zohrabyan was transferred to Vladimir Central for the violation of the regime where he spent another two years. In 1979 he was transferred to a special prison regime in Tchistopol, Tatarstan. First at Vladimir Central and later in this prison he started writing an essay about the Motherland, independence and the struggle for it. He also dedicated lines to the national fighter for independence Garegin Nzhdeh who died in 1955 at the same place, Vladimir Central. Some of these records could be set free and his friends who had not been arrested could use them in their struggle.

In 1981, in accordance with the decision of the Supreme Court Zohrabyan was sent to village Alzamay of Irkutsk Region for a free settlement, where he was involved in woodworking, was self-employed and subscribed at the local police station every day.

The violation of the regime was subject to three more years of punishment.

During the whole period of being arrested Zohrabyan was visited by the KGB staff from Armenia whose aim was to persuade him to cooperate and to discredit in the eyes of the rest of the prisoners. They did not succeed in both.

In 1984 Razmik Zohrabyan returned from prison to Yerevan. He went on carefully meeting friends and like-minded people, took part in demonstrations. In 1985 he married Seda Vardanyan and in 1986 his daughter Armineh was born who has already presented him with a grandchild.

In 1988 when the National Liberation Movement started, Razmik Zohrabyan had his active participation in it and in 1990 he became one of the founders of the Republican Party. During 1991-1994 war, he took an active part in the formation of the Self-Defense Forces troops, and later, of the army.

By 2007 Zohrabyan was engaged in party building and organizational matters.

In 2007 Razmik Zohrabyan was elected to the National Assembly of Armenia by proportional electoral system from the Republican Party and in 2012 he was reelected as a Member of Parliament.

Razmik Zohrabyan is the Deputy Chairman of the Republican Party where he is engaged in organizational activities.