My great grandfather Tiridat, his brother and his sister were revolutionaries. Their mother, my great great grandmother - we are talking 1870's - spent her matinees reading Marx and Engels and brought her sons up to be communists and socialist revolutionaries. Her daughter, Tiridat's sister, being avant-garde in everything wore trousers and smoked cigars. Tiridat's brother was first in the family to start anti imperialistic activities and eventually got shot by Russian tzar's secret services. My great grandfather Tiridat studied to become a lawyer and turned a prominent revolutionary. Soon after revolutionaries seized power in 1917, Bolsheviks went on establishing a totalitarian dictatorship and obsoleted freedom of thought and speech. Other-minded people would be arrested and executed by millions. My great grandfather was horrified with the results the revolution brought about, realizing that his brother and he shed blood only to help one tyrannic regime be replaced by another, equally undemocratic and inhumane. Tiridat didn't give up. He kept on fighting for freedom and human rights and against tyranny and terror - this time that of Stalin, helping the falsely accused by the regime defend their rights in the court of law. All this only to share their fate. Tiridat was captured by his communist party comrades, tortured and executed without trial for "treason against the sovjet state". The location of his grave is unknown.
My great grandmother Maria came from a rich aristocratic dynasty from Shushi (Nagorni Karabakh). After Maria announced that she intended to marry Tiridat - of not blue, but of communist red blood - she was asked to leave without a dowry only with the clothes she had on her back and with one suitcase with a pillow and a blanket in it. Later when Tiridat was executed by Stalin's regime, Maria was labeled as "the wife of the enemy of the state". She died quite young of a broken heart, leaving three daughters: Eugenie, Seda and Ritchie.
My grandmother was Seda, who grew up to be a highly qualified and respected doctor and reputed to be one of the most beautiful women of her time.
