Shushanik Kurghinian

After founding the first Hunchakian women's political group in Alexandropol, Kurghinian fled to Rostov on Don in order to escape arrests of the tsarist regime.

Throughout her lifetime, Kurghinian cultivated significant relationships with famous members of the Armenian artistic and literary worlds of her time, including Vrtanes Papazian, Avetik Isahakian, Hovhannes Toumanian, Hrand Nazariantz and others.

In 1895, she studied at a Russian gymnasium, which was one of the many schools instituted by Tsar Alexander III to russify the Caucasus and expand the borders of Imperial Russia.

In 1903, she escape arrests of the tsarist regime by moving to Rostov on Don with her two children, while Arshak stayed in Alexandropol.

Experiencing utmost hardship and poverty, Kurghinian immersed herself in the Russian revolutionary milieu and some of her most powerfully charged poetry was written between 1907 and 1909, during the years of her affiliation with Rostov's proletarian underground.

From the late 1910s to the October Revolution, she continued to write and participate in social projects, but her activities were curtailed by fragile health.