Early Life
Ivan Bagramyan was born to Armenian parents in the village of Chardakhlu, near Yelizavetpol, (modern Ganja) then a part of the Russian Empire. Hamazasp Babadjanyan, a fellow Armenian who was to become the chief marshal of the Soviet Armor corps, was born in the same village. While Bagramyan's father, Khachatur, went to work all day at the railway station in Yelizavetpol, his mother, Mariam, stayed at home to take care of her seven children. Because his parents could not afford to send him to the local gymnasium, they decided to enroll him at a recently opened two-year school in Yelizavetpol.
Graduating in 1912, Bagramyan, whom everyone affectionately called Vanya, followed his father and his brothers in a path in rail work, attending the three-year railway technical institute located in Tiflis. He graduated with honors and was slated to become a railway engineer within a few years when events in the First World War changed his life.
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