Sevunts, Garegin

(pen name of G. I. Gri-gorian). Born Jan. 21 (Feb. 3), 1911, in the village of Khndzo-resk, in what is now Goris Raion, Armenian SSR; died Jan. 13, 1969, in Yerevan. Soviet Armenian writer. Honored Cultural Worker of the Armenian SSR. Member of the CPSU from 1932. Sevunts graduated from the department of philology of the Baku Pedagogical Institute in 1941. He published his first work in 1928. He is the author of the short-story collection To the Earth (1935) and the novel In the Bay (1938; Russian translation, 1970), which deals with the life and struggle of the working class. He also wrote the novel Captives (1958; Russian translation, 1970) and “Iranian Notes” (1949), as well as novellas and short stories about the heroism of the Soviet people during the Great Patriotic War of 1941–45. The novella Freedom Avenue (1947), later reworked as the novel Tehran (books 1–2, 1951: Russian translation, 1952), deals with Iranian life and the national-liberation and social struggles of the Iranian people. The work touches upon many themes; it is characterized by dramatic subject matter and great psychological insight. Sevunts was awarded two orders and various medals.