Khachik Dashtents (Khachik Tonoyi Tonoyan, May 25, 1910 – March 9, 1974) was an ethnic Armenian Soviet writer, poet and translator.

Biography

Khachik Dashtents was born in a shepherd's family on May 25, 1910 in Dashtadem, Sasun, Western Armenia (Turkey today). After the Armenian genocide, he moved to Yerevan and graduated from the Yerevan State University in 1932, and later studied at the Moscow State Linguistic University (graduating in 1940). In 1934 he became a member of the Union of Soviet Writers. Dashtents is an author of poetry collections ("Songbook", 1932; "Springa Songs", 1934; "Fire", 1936), "Tigran The Great," a historical drama (1947), translations from William Shakespeare, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and William Saroyan. The "Khodedan" (1950) and "Call of Plowmen" (published posthumously, in 1979) novels tell the tragic story of Western Armenians during World War I. He is the father of filmmaker Tavros Dashtents. He died in Yerevan, Armenia on March 9, 1974.