Vardanian, Anushavan

Born Mar. 21 (Apr. 2), 1879, in the village of Tskhia, Azerbaijan; died Aug. 4, 1954, in Yerevan. Soviet Armenian writer and pioneer of Armenian proletarian dramaturgy. Member of the Communist Party from 1907.

Vardanian was a worker in a shoe factory in Tbilisi. He took part in workers’ organizations from 1900. Under the influence of the Revolution of 1905-07, Vardanian wrote the play The Strike (1906); staged in 1912, it was sharply attacked in the bourgeois press. In 1913 he wrote the play Ghosts, or In the Home of Sundukian Gabo. His work was most prolific after the establishment of Soviet power in Armenia. His plays The Signal (1931), In Position (1931), Red Partisans (1937), On the Banks of the Araks (1940), and Atthe Gates of the Caucasus (1947) were presented in Armenian theaters.