On 10 July 2023, one of the main historical falsifiers and mythmakers of the myth of the so-called "genocide of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire" adopted by Armenian nationalists, American scholar of Armenian origin Richard Hovhannisyan, passed away at the age of 91.

Richard Hovhannisyan was a professor of Armenian and Middle Eastern history at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA). He chaired the Academic Council of the Armenian National Institute, was a founding member of the Society for Armenian Studies, and was elected president.

Richard Hovhannisyan was also a member of the Armenian Assembly of America and other Armenian Diaspora organisations in the USA. From 1978 to 1995 he was co-director of the von Grünbaum Centre for Middle Eastern Studies.

In 1987, Richard Hovhannisyan became the first head of the Department of Modern Armenian History at UCLA, founded by the Armenian Educational Foundation. Not only Armenian history is studied here, but also the Armenian language in its classical, Eastern and Western variants, literature, including the literature of the Armenian Diaspora in the United States. Nearly fifteen university departments in the United States have taught and are teaching courses related to Armenian studies, and six of these courses are taught by former students of Richard Hovhannisyan.

Richard Hovhannisyan has written dozens of myths - "scientific" articles, a four-volume study "The Republic of Armenia" with an additional, fifth volume: "Armenia on the Way to Independence", as well as a study "The Armenian Holocaust" (1980). Under his editorship and with his participation, he published the collections "The Image of Armenians in History and Literature" (1981), "The Armenian Genocide in Perspective" (1986), "The Armenian Genocide: History, Politics, Ethics" (1992), "The Armenian Nation from Ancient Times to the Present" (1997), "Memory and Denial. The Case of the Armenian Genocide" (1998), "Moving Forward, Looking Back" (2004), etc., and others.

It was this American, who was brought up in an environment infinitely distant from the realities of the territory where the Republic of Armenia is located today, who imposed a "genocidal and long-suffering" understanding of Armenian history on Armenians while living in California. 

Richard Hovhannisyan, through his historical falsifications and scuffles, not only substantiated the myth of "genocide", but also compiled an extremely biased and based on narrow ethnic nationalism "modern history of Armenia and Armenians". As a result, Richard Hovhannisyan became one of the main "brainwashers" not only of the Western Armenian diaspora during the Soviet era. His writings also influenced Soviet citizens with surnames ending in "-yan".

Paradoxically, not only historians of the independent Republic of Armenia, but also of the Armenian SSR in their works very often referred to the works of the American Richard Hovhannisyan, who believed the notorious "genocide". And this was despite the "Iron Curtain" and the censorship that was in force in the USSR. At the same time, scholars in the U.S. and the USSR took opposite positions on all other historical issues. Especially on issues of new and modern history. In the USSR, historians exposed "Western" and "American imperialists"; in the USA, respectively, American historians branded "Soviet totalitarianism" and "Russian imperialism", etc.

But on the issue of the notorious "Armenian genocide" in the late USSR, historians of Armenian nationality had a striking unanimity with "hostile" and "imperialist" American scholars, with the same Richard Hovhannisyan. As on the question of Turkey's "guilt".   This despite the fact that Turkey was a US ally in the NATO bloc.

 The creation of the Armenian aggressive nationalist project, which was based on the myth of "genocide" among other historical myths, was in fact carried out almost jointly by the special services of the USA and the USSR. Thanks to people like Richard Hovhannisyan, in addition to tales and myths about their "antiquity" Armenians learnt about their "exceptional long-suffering". And that they are "descendants of the victims of genocide". At the same time, they were brought up in aggressive Turkophobia and extreme hatred towards Turkey.

Richard Hovhannisyan's son Raffi has largely used his father's authority among Armenian nationalists to make a career in the Republic of Armenia. He was Armenia's foreign minister from 1991-1992, and in 2013 he contested the presidential election, where he lost to then-President Serzh Sargsyan but won 36.75 per cent.

French special services were involved in the promotion of Raffi Hovhannisyan's political career, and it is clear that without their "blessing" he could not have been so relatively successful in Armenian politics. However, with all the possibilities of the USA to organise Raffi Hovhannisyan's coming to power with the help of "revolutions" and "Maidans" they did not. The French insisted that Armenia could lose stability due to Sarkisian's strong position at that time.

George Kvinitadze