Khandzhian, Agasi

Born Jan. 30 (Feb. 12), 1901; died July 9, 1936. Soviet party figure. Member of the Communist Party from March 1917.

Khandzhian, the son of a schoolteacher, was born in Van, Turkey. From 1917 to 1919 he helped organize a union of Marxist students in Armenia, known from May 1919 as the Organization of Young Communists, or Spartak. In 1919 and 1920 he was a member of the bureau of the Transcaucasian oblast organization of the Russian Komsomol and secretary of the underground Yerevan committee of the RCP(B). He was arrested twice by the Dashnak government of Armenia. In 1920 and 1921 he was secretary of the Yerevan committee and a member of the Central Committee of the CP(B) of Armenia.

Khandzhian studied at the Ia. M. Sverdlov Communist University in 1921 and 1922 and later engaged in party work in Leningrad; he was a member of an oblast committee of the ACP(B) and of an oblast executive committee. He became second secretary of the Central Committee of the CP(B) of Armenia in 1928 and first secretary in 1930. He was a member of the bureau of the Transcaucasian Krai committee of the ACP(B).

Khandzhian was a delegate to the Fifteenth through Seventeenth Congresses of the ACP(B). In 1934 he became a member of the Central Auditing Commission of the ACP(B). He was a member of the central executive committees of the Communist parties of the Armenian SSR, the Transcaucasian SFSR, and the USSR. Khandzhian was awarded the Order of Lenin.