Meltha Magazine Online

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1996, Volume 2, No.1(5) pages 3-5

THE ARSALAN FAMILY

Professor Mirza Pira Arslan-Khan

Among many Assyrian families who came to settle down in Russia in the 19th century there were always people with a strong desire to be well educated. Unfortunately they simply were deprived of the right to get a good education in their homeland.

The first mentioning of anyone from the .Arsalan family is found in the His Majesty Emperor's Saint-Petersburg University bio- graphical dictionary of the faculty professors (Saint- Petersburg, 1898, v .2,p.1 09). Mirza Pira Arslan;.khan was born in Urmia in 1843. There he finished the American mission college. A" polyglot, who knew dozens of languages, he worked for many years in a mission in Hammadan and Kermanshakh (Persia). In 1888 he was offered a teaching job in the Persian language at St. Petersburg University. Soon his family moved to St. Petersburg as well. .

His son, Shmuel Pira Arslan (Samuel Vladimirovich Arsalan), entered His Majesty Emperor's Military Academy of Medicine. In 1898 he finished this school with the gold medal. All through the years he tried to maintain close links with his compatriots. In this vein, for instance, he was an interpreter for Mar Ionan, the Bishop of Supurgan and Urmia alike, who headed the delegation of Urmian Nestorians to St. Petersburg to negotiate the unification of Nestorians and the Russian Orthodox Church. Later, in March 1900 the name of the young doctor Arslan was mentioned in the official epidemic letters from Iranian Kurdistan. Baron Pallen, the head of the Committee, set up by His Majesty decree sent a cable from Persia to counter-admiral Bergh to send out doctor Arslan to Persia for he knew both local languages and the situation alike. In a while the young military doctor established in Persia a medical center to fight the epidemic bubonic plaque. He spent 2; years there, working very hard till the epidemic was over .

In the following years Dr. Arslan worked in various brigades of frontier guards in Russia. His father died in 1904, but very soon Dr .Arslan was destined to lose his young wife who died untimely being in her prime and left him three little children. Still in his pursuit of a medical career in the' town of Skadovsk, Southern Russia, he met Vera Ivanitsky , a graduate from the higher institute for women. In 1909 they got married, and , then they had two sons, Konstantin and Sergei, and one daughter, Olga.

In the autumn of 1914 after the First World War broke out Dr. Shmuel Pira Arsla? began to organize and then to run a mobile hospital in Kaluga. So he went around with it along the front. In the Civil War years he ran a hospital in Lugansk. In 1919 the Red Army 4th partisan division came to capture the town, but Dr. Arslan was not interned but could resume his post in the same hospital. Anyway he. finished his term in the Emperor's Army in the~ rank .of colonel and counselor alike.

In the time of a very cruel war, chaos 'and typhus he was destined again to lose his daughter, from his first marriage and his second wife Vera who both died of the epidemic.

Furthermore, Dr. Arslan just was lucky to escape from purges that followed as it happened to many others. Anyway, with the past record he had he could not resume his professional job just the way it was before. That was a typical situation at the time. As he was termed a socially alien element to the new society he was constantly demoted regardless of his vast experience or zeal to work, Dr. Arslan spent his last years working in Central Asia. Being terminally sick with stomach cancer himself he readily went out in all weather to see sick people however far they might be. Dr .Shmuel Pira Arslan died in the remote Namangan in 1944.

Colonel Shmuel Pira Arslan

Over those years his children managed to get higher education despite all hardships and deprivations. Konstantin, the oldest son, finished the Krasnodar medical institute, and he was all at work on the front during the Second World War .Like his father he became a colonel of medicine in the Soviet Army.

Sergei Samuilovich Arsalan also walked a hard path of a military man. As a matter of fact, he started work as a load-worker in a cement plant. Then as he was very literate and diligent, he was sent to study in Moscow at the Military Engineering Academy named after Kuybyshev in 1933. After graduating it in 1939 he was offered to a lecturer position as well as to the military leader of a study group. Shortly after the war broke out Sergei Arsalan went to the front to participate in many combat operations as a skilful engineer .

Among others was the famous crossing of the Dhiper river. He ended his military career in the rank of a colonel and of the faculty head of the Military Engineering Academy

It is noteworthy that one of the Academy lecturers Sergei Arsalan had in his study years was Mikhail Foedorovich Shemjakin, a disciple to great Serov. Still a child Sergei took up drawing with great love and devotion. His parents had subscribed by the time to a variety of color picture magazines and art albums filled with many great artistic works. So he largely enriched himself with these sources on his way to a well-round education. But he was ultimately influenced by his teacl,1er, M. Shemjakin, who in a big way determined his future. After 30 years of immaculate service in the army Sergei Arsalan moved to Estonia to devote himself entirely to the art. His beautiful water colors gained a good critical acclaim at his personal displays held in many countries. Besides, Sergei Arsalan is an original master of prose. His stories are filled with bright characters posed in the life he knew very well.

Colonel Sergei S. Arsalan

But here is one more feature of the times he lived. The fear for the life under the Soviet political regime was never groundless. Resigning from his post one of the security officials in the Academy confessed in a private conversation with colonel Arsalan that, "You know, I've been handling your case over the years. Actually we have tried to find some faults with you. And we even sent our people to the border with Iran that is your father's homeland, in search of someone whom you could have engaged in some subversive action before." This is what the honest man was to hear after a long loyal service to his Motherland.

The life of his beloved sister, Olga, was also full of things like that. Graduating from the institute of foreign languages she focused in her professional work on bringing different nations together, trying to make holes in the "Iron Curtain " in the times when any contact with foreigners could well be viewed as "betrayal of the nation " .Working on the Soviet Peace Committee she tried to help Soviets and visitors to the USSR overcome mutual hostility and suspicion drawn from the Cold War period.

Irene Sutokskaya, her daughter, tries to continue this effort by participating in the program of a new "deep" peace conception masterminded by Danaan Perry and Gerrilin Brusseau (USA). Irene implements this program in Russia in the framework of "Earth Keepers " International movement. Veronica, this time Olga's granddaughter, is a great helping hand now as she is an excellent teaching philologist who is well known in Russia and in England as well.

A couple of years ago Irene Sutokskaya offered her help in publishing an art book with Jurgen Bertelsmann's works, a German artist who perished under Leningrad in 1942. In the section "Seminars" we offer to your attention the preface she made t9 this book.

The fate of Mirza Pira Arslan-khan and his posterity is cited here as an example of a small nation people that lost their land and self-styled culture but preserved in the genes the everlasting features of greatest civilization, as they seek high professionalism, culture and spirituality. But, alas, assimilation is the reverse side of this tendency.