Sero Khanzadyan

Sero Khanzadyan was born in 1915 to the family of a ploughman in the town of Goris which is located in the rough mountains of Zangezur, where every bit of fertile ground is taken in a battle against solid rocks and burning sun.

Little Sero’s parents used to tell him "You will learn the value of the land once you grow up". Many times he had noticed how people, returning from work in the field, would keep the pieces of ground stuck to their clothes and shake it off on a naked rock in front of their houses. "The land is the dearest thing that we have. Without the land there is no nation" – would be the words said by the characters of his novels.

Upon his graduation from the pedagogical college the young man worked as a schoolteacher. At the age of 18 Khanzadyan voluntarily joined the Red Army and participated in the World War Two rising to the rank of the Commander of a mortar company. His personal combat experience and ability to derive general conclusions helped him to create “The Battle Diary” (“Three Years: 291 Days”). The novel, written in 1972, was one of the most prominent works in the Soviet military fiction literature at the time. In 1950 he published his first novel, dedicated to the defencion of Leningrad.

“Unrealized death is death, but the realized death is the eternity!” This ancient Armenian saying, runs as the primary theme in Khanzadyan’s work, as his heroes, Armenians, fight shoulder to shoulder to Russians, Ukrainians and other nationalities to protect their motherland. "The Land" (vol. 1-2, 1954-55, published in Russian in 1956-57) novel tells the story of villagers in post-war period.

Khanzadyan often recalls the long history of strong Armenian and Russian relations that have evolved over the centuries.Later on he would use this idea in his “Mkhitar Sparapet” (1961) and other works. Khanzadyan in one of his interviews mentioned that the work on a story about Mkhitar Sparapet and David Bek, the great defenders of the Armenian nation of the early 18th century, had begun while he was still at the war. In “Mkhitar Sparapet,” as elsewhere, the idea of the strong friendship between the Armenian and Russian people is in the center of the story. The work "Horovel" is a hymn to the strong will of a peasant, stubbornly following the plough despite the pain and thirst[1].

Besides the war, Sero Khanzadyan writes about, as has already been mentioned, Armenian history and specifically one of its darkest pages, the Armenian Genocide of 1915. One of his best novels “Six nights” is about that.

Sero Khanzadyan has created a great legacy of literature work inspired with ideas of internationalism, strong ties with the folk culture and tradition. In his works he defends the ideals of humanism and love to one’s motherland. His ideas of kindness and peace are fully realized and therefore are in eternity. In his latest years of his life, during an interview with the Public TV of Armenia, he strongly criticized the Bolsheviks for their negative steps towards the annexation of the Armenian regions of Nagorno Karabagh and Nakhijevan to the Soviet Azerbaijan.