Artashes Chilingarian was born in 1883 in the town of Akhalkalaki, today in Georgia's southern region of Samtskhe–Javakheti, then a part of the Russian Empire.

He actively participated in the P’ot’orik (Storm) operation, whereby the ARF forcibly extracted financial contributions from wealthy Armenians.

[2] In mid-1918, he was sent to Moscow by the Baku Armenian National Council to request Soviet assistance against the Ottoman invasion of the South Caucasus.

While detained in Moscow, he translated textbooks for the Commissariat for Nationalities and Armenian prose and poetry for Maxim Gorky's universal literature project.

After the suppression of the rebellion, he moved to Tehran and later to the United States, where he resided in Boston and served as the editor of the ARF newspaper Hairenik.

He garnered controversy for his "tendency to paint all non-Dashnaks [non-ARF members] as stooges or even willing collaborators of the Soviet Union.