Aksel Bakunts Ակսել Բակունց

 

Aksel Bakunts (1899–1937) was a writer, screenwriter, translator and activist. Born in Goris, Armenia, he spent time in prison as a teenager for writing a satire mocking the mayor of the town. Following the Bolshevik revolution, Russian troops were withdrawn from the Caucasus, leaving the region open to invasion by the Ottoman Empire. Bakunts joined the newly formed Armenian army and fought in the battles of Erzurum, Kars and Sardarabad.

He settled in Yerevan in 1926 where he made a name for himself as a writer of short stories.

During the Stalinist purges he was arrested, accused of being a “bourgeois nationalist” and a “Trotskyist”. After 11 months in prison he was sentenced to death following a 25 minute trial.