Born in Yerevan to a family from Nor Bayazit, Yousoufian (Vahanian) graduated from the Nersisian College of Tiflis. While a teacher in Telav (Telavi), in eastern Georgia, he was actively involved in revolutionary groups.

Yousoufian became one of the most active and effective organizers during the first decade of the ARF. Under orders from the ARF Bureau, he traveled to Trebizond, Constantinople, Geneva, and the United States, where he established ARF units.

He was a teacher in Trebizond from 1890 to 1892. As the plenipotentiary representative of the ARF in Constantinople from 1893 to 1895, Yousoufian set up a powerful ARF clandestine organization in the capital of the Ottoman Empire.

He was then sent to the United States, where he established the foundation of the US ARF organization (1896–1898).

The ARF’s Second World Congress (1898) elected him a member of the Eastern Bureau, but his failing health prevented him from being as active as he once had been.

He was elected Mayor of Nor Bayazit in 1905. He remained in the Caucasus until 1910.

Fleeing Tsarist persecution, he settled in Switzerland, spending the rest of his days, ill and often penniless, in Lausanne,. He died there at the age of 70.

Ardashes was a native Bolsetsi and a noted spy and snitch for the police. The spy Ardashes’s main arena of operations was the class of the poor, the artisans, the peasants…. And the naive expatriates from [Western] Armenia, taken by the disgusting spy’s sweet and syrupy language, opened up to him, told him secrets, made revelations—and the next day or a few days later they were led off to jail, to repent for their sins in dark, dank cells, without knowing that the one who had betrayed them and had them arrested was their friend Ardashes. And even if they had a slight doubt, that too would be dissipated when that brood of hell visited the jail, provided consolation, expressed false condolences.

The spy Ardashes sometimes turned into a raging revolutionary in front of his prey. With false inspiration, and a swaggering unique to Bolsetsis, he spouted hellfire against Turkish oppression, eloquently denounced its evils, often representing himself as a victim of the exploitation. He shed crocodile tears for his wretched brethren, and saying there would no assistance from heaven, he would point to revolution as the means that would grant freedom to all…. He would then give a copy of a revolutionary publication to his interlocutor, begging that he pass it on to others so that the sacred task could progress more quickly. And, a few days later, the jails would again be filled with numerous victims whose only crime was gullibility….

The base activities of the spy were presented in detail to the ARF Central Committee of Constantinople, which in one of its March [1895] meetings… condemned the spy Ardashes to death and gave the responsibility of carrying out that verdict to one of the groups, the terrorists… working under its jurisdiction.

The terrorists carried out the death sentence with utter success on Monday, April 3, at 7 PM, in a street in Galata [modern Karaköy, in Beyoğlu (Pera) Istanbul]. As the spy Ardashes, mortally wounded, rolled around on the ground in the throes of death, the police ran to his aid and transported him to a hospital, where a few hours later he gave up his black spirit to Sultan Hamid…. Despite many arrests, not one bit of evidence was found. The terrorists who carried out the death sentence freely move about the city, thanks to the munificence of His Highness the Sultan.

From Droshak, July 1895