«Նախնիների գերեզմանները»

The article, devoted to the theme of "The Graves of the Ancestors," traces the fate of the Tbilisi Armenian necropolis of Khojivank and, on this material, builds a broader reflection on the significance of ancestral and national burial sites for the self-awareness of the Armenian people.

Introduction and Methodology
The author begins with a historical reconstruction: Khojivank was once called "the main shrine of the Armenians in Georgia"; the cathedral was accompanied by a cemetery where outstanding figures of Armenian culture, science, and public life were buried — Raffi, Tumanyan, Sundukyan, Nar-Dos, Loris-Melikov, Mantashev, and many others, as well as representatives of well-known families (the Bebutovs, the Tumanovs, the Amiragovs, and others).

Chronicle of Destruction
The article successively describes three waves of destruction:

the late 1930s — the demolition of the cathedral and cemetery, the establishment of a park of culture in its place, and the use of gravestones in construction (parapets, sidewalks, the hall of the Institute of Party History, the toilets of the Beria House);
the partial rescue of individual tombstones to the Tbilisi Pantheon in 1962;
October 1995 — a second desecration during the laying of the foundation of the Sameba Cathedral on the site of the demolished church, with the removal of remains along with construction debris to a landfill;
the early 2000s — a new excavation pit for the construction of a seminary on the same site.

Key Argument
From this particular case, the author moves to a theoretical generalization: the theme of ancestral graves is examined as central to understanding nationalism and patriotism. The following positions are presented and analyzed:

Ernest Renan's view of the cult of ancestors as "the most legitimate of all" and the foundation of the national idea;
Benedict Anderson's notion of the sacred status of the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier and the "infallibility of nations," ensured by past and future generations;
Nikolai Berdyaev's concept of the nation as a "mystical organism" that does not permit "the devouring of the past by the present";
Garegin Nzhdeh's idea of the fatherland as "an evolving eternity," bound to the ashes of the forefathers.

Armenian Tradition and the Concept of Azg
Special attention is given to the connection of this theme with the epic "Sasna Tsrer" and the author's own concept of ascent — from the local grave of an ancestor to the awareness of the clan (azg), and then to the nation (Azg) as a unity of the living and the dead. References are made to Raffi, Saroyan, and Vardkes Petrosyan as three attempts to define the essence of Armenia through the image of ancestral graves.

Comparative Context
In closing, the article briefly points to analogous tragedies — the systematic destruction of Armenian cemeteries in Turkey after the Genocide, and the elimination of the Baku Armenian necropolis in Azerbaijan — which grants the Tbilisi case the status of a particular manifestation of a general pattern.

Conclusion
The article's key conclusion is that the fate of ancestral graves is not merely a private matter of individual families' piety, but a fundamental category of national existence: the destruction of cemeteries is tantamount to an attempt to deprive a people of its historical memory and the spiritual bond between generations, while the preservation and veneration of ancestral burial sites serves as a necessary condition for the nation's existence as a "unity of the living and the dead."