Union of Armenian Social Democrats

the first Armenian Social Democratic organization of a Leninist Iskra orientation.

The Union of Armenian Social Democrats was founded in Tbilisi in the summer of 1902 by S. G. Shaumian, B. M. Knuni-ants, and A. G. Zurabian. It proclaimed itself an inalienable part of the RSDLP. In October 1902, in the first issue of its illegal Armenian-language newspaper Proletariat, it published the “Manifesto of the Union of Armenian Social Democrats,” written by Shaumian. The manifesto analyzed the political and economic situation in Transcaucasia, especially among the working class and peasantry. It also defined the union’s immediate task, namely, to educate the Armenian proletariat politically and to bring it into the entire Russian proletariat’s struggle to overthrow the tsarist autocracy.

The union and its manifesto were praised by V. I. Lenin, who in February 1903, in Iskra no. 33, noted that the union had correctly outlined the two basic principles that should guide all Russia’s Social Democrats in the nationality question—demands for political and civil liberty and for equal rights and self-determination for all nationalities. At the same time, Lenin called attention to a certain inconsistency in the manifesto’s wording of the principles.

In late 1902 the Union of Armenian Social Democrats merged with the Tbilisi committee of the RSDLP.