Mikayelian, Kristapor
(1859-1905)
Born in Akoulis in the region of Koghtn, Kristapor graduated from the Normal School of Tbilisi. For a few years, he attended the Moscow Institute of Agronomy, but interrupted his studies, came back to Tbilisi in 1887 and started a feverish revolutionary campaign. At the same time, he taught workers and immigrants from Turkish Armenia to read, write and handle guns.
Thanks to his strong, magnetic personality, Kristapor became the prime architect in the unification of Armenian revolutionary groups into the Armenian Revolutionary Federation in 1890. He would remain the Party's central figure.
In the spring of 1891, he was arrested and exiled to Bess Arabia where, aided by Simon Zavarian—also in exile—he published the first issues of Droshak. In 1892, he attended the First World Congress of the Federation and stayed in Transcaucasia until the Second World Congress (1898). In Geneva, from 1898 onward, Kristapor worked on the new Droshak (the central organ of the ARF) and handled propaganda for the Armenian cause. The fruits of his labour appeared in Paris in 1900, as the bi-monthly Pro Armenia, published with the cooperation of the French intellectual and political elite (it was shutdown in 1914). After the Meeting of the Body Representing the Will of the Dashnaktsutiun, in April 1901, Kristapor ran Operation Potorig, essentially to extort—by threats if necessary—large sums of money from richer Armenians for revolutionary action.
After the Third World Congress (1904), Kristapor became the central figure of the Demonstrative Responsible body, whose main objective was to assassinate Sultan Abdul-Hamid. Unfortunately, this great pioneer of the Armenian revolutionary struggle would soon die of an explosion, while testing hand grenades near Sofia.