Education
He graduated the Ryazan State Medical University in 1963.
He graduated the Ryazan State Medical University in 1963.
He was awarded the "Renowned master of the Arts" an Armenian official title. Born in Stepanakert, Nagorno-Karabakh Association for the Study of Internal Fixation, Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic. From 1971 to 1973 he traversed the Kamchatka and Chokotskaya tundras on dog-sleds, traveling as far as the North Sea. In his essay Hearth, published during the pre-perestroika era, he tried to demonstrate the Armenian identity of Nagorno-Karabakh and identified Nakhichevan as historically belonging to Armenia.
Azerbaijani historian Isa Gambar criticized Balayan"s book in an article entitled Old Songs and New Legends.
British journalist and author Thomas de Waal called Zori Balayan "chauvunistic intellectual warrior," whose book "Hearth" "might never have been allowed to spread". In 1988 he and Armenian poet Silva Kaputikyan were received by Mikhail Gorbachev and discussed the absence of Armenian-language television programs and textbooks in Nagorno-Karabakh schools as well as other concerns of Karabakh"s majority-Armenian population.
In October 1993, he signed the Letter of Forty-Two. Balayan is a journalist for the weekly Russian-language publication Literaturnaya Gazeta.
There exists an allegation mainly from mainstream Azerbaijani and Turkish media that Zori Balayan confessed to the killing of a Turkish child.
The allegations are purported to be from a paragraph in a book entitled "Revival of Our Souls" or "Revival of Our Spirits", supposedly written by Zori Balayan. Zori Balayan as well as the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Armenia have come out denying having ever written such a book The authorities in Azerbaijan allege that Balayan was involved in a terrorist bombing of the metro in Baku in 1994.
General secretary of, in a letter to Balayan, stated that the agency considered the complaint politically motivated and that it had removed Balayan from its wanted list as a result.
Balayan"s views and alleged lobbist activities were criticized also by Armenian authors, including Igor Muradyan and Levon Ter-Petrosian. Balayan"s letter to Vladimir Putin met harsh criticism in Armenia and Karabakh in 2013.
Quotations: "it should be quite obvious, from the language used in depicting the torture, that the quotation was wholly made up.".
Congress of People"s Deputies of the Soviet Union]
Ayse Gunaysu, member of the Committee Against Racism and Discrimination of the Human Rights Association of Turkey (Istanbul branch) has said "it should be quite obvious, from the language used in depicting the torture, that the quotation was wholly made up." Onur Caymaz, a progressive, democratic-minded Turkish writer who originally backed the allegation, has stated that he was wrong and that Balayan hadn"t written such a book