Shushanik Kurghinian was born on August 18, 1876, in Alexandrapol, in the Yerevan province of Eastern Armenia, into a poor family of Popolji Harout. In her autobiography Shushanik writes of her childhood: “Sometimes father would bring his [shoe-repair] ‘workstation’ home, in order to save money, and I would work for him – demanding my wages, every single kopek (Coin). My mother, having been raised in a traditional household, would reprove my ‘ill behavior toward my parent,’and blamed those harmful books for corrupting me.”