The first Armenian revolutionary committee was founded in Geneva, on the initiative of an Armenian student by the name of Maro. This committee gave birth to the Hntchak part (the Bell), the first members of which were persons such as Avetis Nazarbeg, Khan Azat, Meghavorian and Shémovian. This early party, together with other courageous revolutionaries such as Hambartzoum Boyadjian, Jirayr, Damadian, can be credited with starting the Armenian revolutionary movement.
In year 1890 a new Armenian revolutionary party was founded in the city of Tbilisi and was named the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (Dashnaktsoutyoun). This party, which is known by its shorter name, Dashnak, was founded by Christaphor -Mikaelian, Dr. Jean Loris Melikof, Simon Zavarian and Constantin -Khatisian. 24
Christaphor -Mikaelian was a man with a great power of mind and a strong personality who was regarded as the symbol of union and will, qualities which alone are the characteristics of noble personalities who have left some kind of a trace after themselves in the history. It was thanks to him that the Dashnak party gathered some of the most prominent Armenian figures around the party. The headquarter of the party was placed in Tbilisi and the organ paper, Droshak (Banner), was also published in Tbilisi, before it was moved to Geneva. It was persons such as Christaphor Melikian, Simon Zavarian and Rostom Zorian who patiently planned the mind of the awakening Armenia and achieved it with a burning faith in freedom and a brighter future.
These revolutionary committees were the fruit of patriotism and the faith in the rights of the Armenian people of a group of real revolutionaries, but also the result of a corrupt and tyrannical regime which had been forced upon this people. 25 About this we can repeat the famous words: "Then the consciousness bout the patriotism was born in tears, blood and hopelessness, but also in prayers and faith in freedom."
The activities of these two Armenian revolutionary parties, i.e. Hntchak and Dashnak, were actually only in the defence of the Armenian nation against the Ottoman Empire and they based their ideology on western democracy and their demands were very moderate in the beginning. 26
The direct actions of these two parties, up to the Hamidian massacres, were relatively limited, so that the only action carried out by the Hntchak party until these massacres was their action during the events in Mersivan, in 1893, which we mentioned earlier. The first noticeable action of the Dashnak party, and maybe their most significant action, was the occupation of Bank Ottoman which was carried out in August, 1896, and was followed by the actions in Khanasor, in 1897.
Up to 1895, the number of the members of these two parties were quite limited. It was the ongoing massacres in which speeded up the Armenian revolutionary movement so that the idea of a serious and armed resistance started to take shape among the Armenian masses. This idea gathered the major part of the Armenian individuals around the Dashnak party and created the revolutionary movement.
The Dashnak party (Socialistic Nationalists) became in a short time a great influence in Armenia itself, but also among the Armenian refugees in other places, apart from Cilicia where the Hntchak party (Social Democrats) had the majority of followers and in industrial centre of Baku, where the Armenians, thanks to the labours of two local workers, Josef Stalin and Stepan -Shahoumian, had joined the communist party (Bolshevik). Apart from these two parties, there was a third liberal-conservative Armenian party, Ramgavar, whose members were from the Armenian affluent upper-class. 29
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