A young man from Artsakh, Sargis Mehrabian, also known as Khanasori Vardan (Vardan of Khanasor) or simply Vardan, devoted himself to the Armenian Liberation Movement as early as 1890. Having received the baptism of fire in the campaign headed by Sargis Kukunian, he joined the Armenian Haiduk Movement. From 1894 to 1896, he took part in the self-defense of Van-Vaspurakan and carried out work on organizing resistance groups in Armenian settlements. The Khanasor expedition of 1897 can be considered the apogee of Vardan’s Haiduk activity against the Kurdish Mazrykan tribe. Having returned to the Caucasus ‒ Baku, he started writing his memoirs, which cover the events through 1894 to 1896.

KeywordsSargis Mehrabian Shushi Van Sevkaretsi Sako Khanasor Simon Zavarian Cilicia Rostom Armenian-Tatar clashes First World War volunteer movement genocide Aram Manukian Baku Yerevan.

Osip Mandelstam (1891–1938) – a prominent Russian poet (Jewish by origin), art theorist, translator – takes a special place in the history of the Soviet literature. In the 1920–1930s, Mandelstam, being non-party man and not constantly being member of any literary association, tasted all the misfortunes that befell the intellectual class of his generation and great many ordinary Soviet citizens; he faced repressions, he was arrested twice, was sent into exile where he died.

KeywordsO. Mandelstam N. Mandelstam N. Bukharin I. Erenburg S. Ter-Gabrielyan M. Shahinyan Yerevan Shushi Tiflis Ye. Charents Armenian theme “Journey to Armenia”.

On March 23, 1920, Turkish-Azerbaijani troops with the Moslem dwellers profited of the preemptive strike, undertook by the small detachment under plenipotentiary of the ARFD Bureau Arsen Mikayelian, and fulfilled a massacre of the Shushi Armenians with a burning the city down. This events are testified in the memoirs of the witnesses together with great amount of archival material. The total destruction of Shushi is elucidated by historians of the Republic of Armenia, as well as by Diaspora and foreign specialists.

Keywords Shushi March 23–26 1920 Mountainous Karabakh Artsakh 8th Congress of Karabakh Armenians self-defense insurrection preemptive strike historiography.