The 12 December 1953 annual General Assembly elected Alex Manoogian president of the AGBU. The Union’s new president faced a checkered situation in an evolving national and international context. The Cold War, then at its height, had direct repercussions on the Armenian world. There could obviously be no further question of pursuing the AGBU’s humanitarian strategy in Soviet Armenia. The Khrushchev “thaw” had certain limited effects on domestic Soviet policies, but virtually none on the conflict between the USSR and the West. The sources available to us today do not provide a clear picture of the methods Alex Manoogian and the AGBU’s officers used to negotiate this critical situation. Indications are, however, that the anticommunist campaign conducted by Senator Joseph McCarthy had no direct impact on the work of the AGBU, which had no relations at all with Soviet Armenia in the 1950s. It appears that it was, rather, in the Middle East, especially in Lebanon and Syria, ... Read all
The Presidency of Alex Manoogian in the Cold War Context
Alex Manoogian, fifth president of the AGBU (Arch. B. Nubar/Paris).
Alex Manoogian’s Presidency of AGBU in the Cold War Context - An Armenian Destiny (video)
Catholicos Sahag Khabayan, Bishop Bedros Saradjian, and a representative of the French High Commission in Lebanon shortly before the French withdrawal (Arch. B. Nubar/Paris).