2024-02-21 15:30:07
Resistance fighter, member of the FTP-MOI [francs-tireurs et partisans-main d’œuvre immigrée] Fighting against Nazi Germany, Missak Manouchian was executed on February 21, 1944 with other partisans. His figure crystallizes historical and memorial issues which never seem to be exhausted. Indeed, it represents an Armenian-French model of circulation of struggle present within the French protest space of the 1960s-1970s, then in full recomposition.
It is thus recycled by French far-left groups. The National Union of Students of France (UNEF) chose the date of February 21, 1968 to show its support for the Vietnamese people. On the night of May 13 to 14, 1971, the New Popular Resistance (NRP), the clandestine armed branch of the Maoists of the Proletarian Left, took action against the far-right newspaper Minute of the name “Manouchian group”.
In February 1972, the newspaper of the Proletarian Left (GP), The People’s Cause, refers to Manouchian, whose portrait was brandished during the February 25 demonstration in Charonne, after the death of activist Pierre Overney, killed by a security guard. The GP activists pose as new supporters, heirs of the anti-fascist fight, and then defend the cause of immigrants and the Palestinian cause, a new front of anti-imperialist struggle.
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A few years later, in the context of the Armenian armed struggle against the representatives of the Turkish state throughout the world, on the night of May 14 to 15, 1977, the New Armenian Resistance (NRA) signed its act against the office national of Turkish tourism in Paris named “commando Missak Manouchian”.
A dynamic of combined resistance
A figure then known to the Armenian community, his use by the French far left is wide. Its reappropriation by the Armenians of the NRA is twofold. They mobilize that of the resistance, fighting against Nazi Germany, in France.
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Reconfigured almost three decades later, this struggle legitimizes resistance against Turkey. They thus reintegrate the figure of Manouchian into “their” history, that of the Armenians fighting against the authoritarian and repressive power of the Ottoman Empire, through the actions of fedaïs, armed fighters at the end of the 19th century. In doing so, they contribute to restoring historical depth to the survivor of the Armenian genocide. They are thus part of a dynamic of combined resistance, Armenian and French.
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The figure of Manouchian thus circulates in time and between worlds in struggle. Convoked by the combative stratum of the French extreme left, in the form of a shadow cast and highlighted by the Armenian armed struggle of the 1970s-1980s, it carries several stories: that of the resistance, French and Armenian, and that of of the survivor of the Armenian genocide. His pantheonization on February 21, 2024 allows us to reconnect these multiple stories.
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