Alexander Bekzadyan

Alexander Artemyevich Bekzadyan (Russian: Александр Артемьевич Бекзадян; Armenian: Ալեքսանդր Հարությունի Բեկզադյան, romanized: Alexander Harutyuni Bekzadyan; 15 September 1879 – 1 August 1938) was a Bolshevik revolutionary and Soviet statesman of Armenian descent. After serving as Soviet ambassador to Norway and Hungary he was murdered during the Great Purge.

Alexander Bekzadyan
Ալեքսանդր Բեկզադյան
Bekzadyan in 1909
Ambassador of the Soviet Union to Hungary
In office 17 November 1934 – 20 November 1937
Preceded by	Adolf Petrovsky
Succeeded by	Victor Plotnikov
Ambassador of the Soviet Union to Norway
In office 30 October 1930 – 17 November 1934
Preceded by	Alexandra Kollontay
Succeeded by	Ignaty Yakubovich
People's Commissar of Foreign Affairs of the Armenian SSR
In office 29 November 1920 – 1 May 1921
Preceded by	Position established
Succeeded by	Askanaz Mravyan
Personal details
Born	(1879-09-15)15 September 1879 Shushi, Elizavetpol Governorate, Russian Empire
Died	1 August 1938(1938-08-01) (aged 58) Kommunarka shooting ground, Moscow Oblast, Russian SFSR, USSR

Early years

Alexander Harutyunyi (Artemi) Bekzadian was born in 1879 in Shushi, Nagorno-Karabakh, Russian Empire. He graduated from Shusha Real School. In 1900-1902 he studied at the Kyiv Polytechnic Institute. In 1911, he graduated from the Faculty of Public Policy at the University of Zurich.

He was arrested in Russia as a member of the Baku and Transcaucasian Committees of the Bolshevik party but escaped in 1906. Bekzadyan participated in several conferences of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party in Europe and Russia and maintained close contact with the figures of the 2nd International from European parties. In 1914, he worked in Baku, then in the North Caucasus.

Soviet career

In 1920-21 he served as deputy chairman of the Revolutionary Committee of Armenia and as the first People's Commissar of Foreign Affairs of Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic. In December 1920 and January 1921, he sent notes to the Turkish government, demanding an end to atrocities against the Armenian population in the occupied Armenian territories, proposing to start negotiations for the return of Kars and Alexandropol to Soviet Armenia.

From 1926 to 1930 he was deputy chairman of the government of the Transcaucasian Soviet Federative Republic and People's Commissar of Trade. Bekzadyan served as the ambassador of the USSR in Norway (1930-1934) and then Hungary (1934–37).

Arrest, execution, and rehabilitation

On 21 November 1937, during the Great Purge, he was arrested and on charges of counter-revolutionary activities and was sentenced to death by the Military Collegium of the USSR Supreme Court. On 1 August 1938, the sentence was carried out at the Kommunarka shooting ground. Bekzadyan was posthumously rehabilitated in 1956.