SAHAKYAN
Educator • Pioneer Parliamentarian
Varvara Sahakyan
The third of Armenia's trio of 1919 women parliamentarians — an educator who served a republic of refugees when service meant survival.
The third of Armenia's trio of 1919 women parliamentarians — an educator who served a republic of refugees when service meant survival.
Varvara Sahakyan (1878–1934) completes the historic trio: with Katarine Zalyan-Manukyan and Perchuhi Partizpanyan-Barseghyan, she was one of the first three women elected to the parliament of the First Republic of Armenia in 1919 — seated in a national legislature before women in most of the world could vote.
An educator by calling, she taught in Armenian schools and dedicated herself to women's and children's welfare in a country overwhelmed by refugees and famine. Married to Avetik Sahakyan, a leading statesman of the republic, she was a political figure in her own right — elected on the Armenian Revolutionary Federation list and active in the parliament's social legislation.
After the fall of the republic, the Soviet years brought persecution to the political class of the First Republic; Sahakyan's later life was marked by hardship until her death in 1934. Her name, long overshadowed, has returned to honor as Armenia rediscovers its democratic firsts.
Three women took their seats in Yerevan in 1919. History remembers the republic; the republic was made of moments like that.
— On Armenia's first women MPsSahakyan's story is the quietest of the three pioneer parliamentarians — and perhaps the most representative: service without spotlight, in the hardest years a modern nation ever faced. Together, the trio remains Armenia's proof that its first democracy belonged to women too.
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