Yerevan State University (YSU) has selected the winning design for a statue honoring Armenian writer, intellectual, and humanitarian advocate Zabel Yesayan, to be installed in the courtyard of its main building.
Born in Constantinople in 1878, Yesayan was among the most prominent Armenian women writers of her generation. She documented the 1909 Adana massacres in Among the Ruins and escaped the Ottoman authorities’ campaign against Armenian intellectuals during the 1915 Armenian Genocide.
Her work extended beyond literature into diplomacy and humanitarian advocacy. As part of the Armenian National Delegation’s efforts surrounding the 1919 Paris Peace Conference, she documented atrocities committed against Armenian women and children, presenting evidence to support Armenian demands for justice and international recognition.
In 1933, Yesayan settled in Soviet Armenia and taught French and European literature at YSU. She was arrested during Stalin’s purges in 1937 and is believed to have died in Soviet imprisonment in 1943.
The statue initiative also has a historical connection to Yesayan’s own vision for the university.
In a July 26, 1930 letter to Armenian writer Arshak Chobanian, she proposed establishing an association of friends of YSU. Decades later, the university independently established the Friends of YSU Foundation in the United States, discovering her proposal only afterward.
The foundation subsequently initiated the statue project.
YSU’s design competition awarded first place to Mher Avagyan, followed by Aleksan Babayan and Nune Tumanyan. Yesayan’s grandson, Aleksandr Yesayan, also participated in the selection process.
The statue is expected to be financed by foundation member Vardan Nazeryan, president of Nazeryan Company.
The monument will commemorate Yesayan’s literary, humanitarian, and intellectual legacy at the university where she once taught.
