Amiryan Street renamed

ArmInfo. At its meeting on June 23, the Yerevan Council of Elders voted by a majority vote to rename Arsen Amiryan Street King Pap Street.

Yerevan Mayor Tigran Avinyan noted that this issue was included in  the list of items not subject to discussion at the meeting, as it had  already been agreed upon. However, representatives of opposition  factions opposed this approach, proposing that it be reclassified as  a matter for discussion.

In particular, Vahagn Avagyan, a member of the Council of Elders from  the Public Voice faction, stated that his political party opposes  this project. He was supported by Manuk Sukiasyan, a member of the  Council of Elders from the Mother Armenia faction, who noted that  there is a lack of consensus on this issue both within the Council of  Elders and in society. In this regard, he recalled that the question  of renaming the street has been up for vote since April of this year  on the Active Citizen platform. According to him, the post has only  garnered 226 views: 30 people voted for the renaming, and 7 voted  against.

Sukiasyan emphasized that he does not object to the establishment of  a street named after King Pap in Yerevan, but in this case, he  believes, it seems the main goal is to abandon the name "Amiryan."

In response, Mayor Tigran Avinyan stated that, with all due respect  to the descendants of Arsen Amiryan, he does not believe that this  man embodies the values in whose honor one of Yerevan's central  streets adjacent to Republic Square should be named.

The list of non-negotiable issues also included decisions to rename  several other streets in the capital, which will be named after  Gurgen Edilyan, Avet Terteryan, Anania Shirakatsi, Konstantin  Yerznkatsi, Grigor Yeghiazaryan, and Eduard Baghdasaryan.

A total of 31 members of the Council of Elders voted in favor of the  non-negotiable issues, 15 voted against, and five abstained.

As a reminder, Arsen Amiryan was a Bolshevik revolutionary,  journalist, and one of the 26 Baku Commissars.

He was born in Baku in 1881 to an Armenian family. He studied law at  Kyiv University, participated in the revolutionary movement, worked  as a journalist, and was the editor of the Bolshevik newspaper  "Bakinsky Rabochiy." During the events of 1918, he was a member of  the leadership of the Baku Commune. After the fall of the commune, he  was arrested and executed in September 1918 along with other Baku  commissars in Transcaspia.