Stepan Zorian (Rostom) §

Stepan Zorian, known by the revolutionary name Rostom, was a co-founder of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation and one of its most important organisers. Where Mikaelian often appears as strategist and martyr, Rostom represents the durable infrastructure of the ARF: schools, presses, courier networks, local committees, arms procurement and coordination between Caucasus, Ottoman and Persian arenas. He was active in the revolutionary politics of Tiflis, Baku and the Ottoman frontier and helped make the ARF both a national party and a transimperial organisation. His career shows why Dashnaktsutyun cannot be reduced to armed fedayee mythology. It was also a disciplined institutional machine that connected intellectuals, workers, village militants and diaspora donors. Rostom died in 1919, just as the First Republic was trying to convert revolutionary organisation into state responsibility.