Sokrat Khanyan, Armenian Poet And Literary Scholar, Dies At 96

Thatericalper.com

Sokrat Khanyan, an Armenian poet, translator, and literary scholar whose career spanned more than seven decades, has died at 96. He passed away on July 30.

Khanyan was born on January 22, 1930, in the village of Aknakbyur, in the Hadrut region of Nagorno Karabakh. He completed his early schooling in his native village in 1944, then worked from 1947 to 1948 as secretary of the local communist organization and head of the village’s house of culture, before pursuing higher education at the Baku V. I. Lenin State Pedagogical Institute, where he studied Armenian language and literature between 1949 and 1953.

His first published poem appeared in 1950, dedicated to the memory of his elder brother, poet Suren Khanyan, who had died in the Second World War. Khanyan spent the following decade working as a journalist at the “Communist” Armenian Republican newspaper in Baku, and became a member of the USSR Writers’ Union in 1958. His debut poetry collection, “Karkach,” followed in 1959.

Khanyan returned to postgraduate study in Baku from 1962 to 1965, defending a thesis on the dramaturgy of Nairi Zaryan and earning the degree of Candidate of Philological Sciences. He moved to Stepanakert in 1969, following the closure of the Lenin Institute’s Armenian department, where he continued teaching at what became Artsakh State University. Over the following decades, he held a series of leadership positions there, including chairman of the Student Scientific Council from 1974 to 1988, dean of the Linguistic Faculty from 1978 to 1981, and head of the university’s Armenian language, literature, and journalism department from 1984 to 2007.

He also chaired the NKR Regional Committee for the Defense of Peace from 1985 to 1990. In 2002, Khanyan defended a doctoral thesis on the fate of the homeland in Armenian poetry between 1950 and 1990, earning the degree of Doctor of Philological Sciences, and received his professorship in literature in 2004.

Khanyan’s honors included the NKR’s Mesrop Mashtots medal, awarded by President of the Artsakh Republic Bako Sahakyan on Khanyan’s 80th birthday in 2010, along with the Vachagan the Pious medal, the Maternal Gratitude medal, and prizes named for the poets Muratsan and Yeghishe. In January 2020, he marked both his 90th birthday and 70 years of published poetry.

Khanyan is survived by his family, including his grandson, Armenian pianist and composer Hayk Melikyan.