# Twelfth Annual Vardanants Day Armenian Lecture

Edward Alexander, retired Foreign Service officer and author, delivered the Twelfth Annual Vardanants Day Armenian Lecture, "Diplomacy and the Armenian Factor." Alexander's diplomatic career began soon after the end of World War II and lasted into the late 1980s. He anecdotally narrated his dealings with Soviet, Turkish and other diplomatic staff he met on his journeys. By using his Armenian language heritage as a point of departure for his talk, Alexander underlined the role it played in his diplomatic career in the Foreign Service, which took him to both West and East Germany, Hungary and Greece. Levon Avdoyan, the Library's Armenian and Georgian specialist, briefly reported on the growth of the Library's Armenian collections and the state of its programs. The lecture series is sponsored by the Near East Section of the African and Middle Eastern Division. It is named after the Armenian holiday that commemorates the battle of Avarayr (A.D. 451), which was waged by Armenian Gen. Vardan Mamikonian and his compatriots against Persian troops who invaded to reimpose Zoroastrianism on the Christian state.

- Kind: Talk
- Year: 2005
- By: Library Of Congress. African And Middle Eastern Division
- Genres: War, Education
- Archive: [Library of Congress](https://www.loc.gov/item/2021687682/)
- Licence or status: Rights statement at the Library of Congress (as the archive states it)
- Credit: Library of Congress
- Who can watch: Teens profiles and older (the archive gives no rating; placed by Invisible Network from its collection and subjects)

[Watch now](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/watch/archive/loc/2021687682?play=1)