Educated in Constantinople and Paris, widowed by April 24, 1915 — she answered catastrophe by taking a seat in the first Armenian parliament in six centuries.
Perchuhi Partizpanyan-Barseghyan (1886–1940) was a writer, teacher, and revolutionary — and one of the first three women elected to the parliament of the First Republic of Armenia in 1919, among the earliest women legislators anywhere in the world.
Born in Adrianople (Edirne), she was educated in Constantinople and Paris, taught in Armenian schools, and joined the Armenian Revolutionary Federation in the fire of the constitutional era. The catastrophe of 1915 took her husband, the ARF activist Sargis Barseghyan, among the intellectuals seized on April 24; she survived to serve the republic his generation dreamed of.
In its two-year life, the First Republic seated her in parliament alongside Katarine Zalyan-Manukyan and Varvara Sahakyan. After Armenia's sovietization she took the road of exile to Paris, where she wrote, taught, and remained a voice of the scattered nation until her death in 1940.
A widow of April 24 who answered the catastrophe by helping govern the first Armenian republic in six centuries.
— On Perchuhi Partizpanyan-BarseghyanHer life connects the darkest date in Armenian history to its brightest democratic first. With her fellow women MPs, she proved the republic's promise of equality was real — a legacy modern Armenia still invokes.
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