Armenian Nationalist a Hero on Return Home : Soviet Union: Expelled in 1988, he moved to Glendale. He plans to pick up where he left off.

MOSCOW —  An Armenian nationalist expelled from his homeland by Soviet authorities more than two years ago after charges of fomenting ethnic unrest received a hero’s welcome Monday as he returned to Yerevan, the Armenian capital.

“As soon as I got off the airplane, I saw that my people need me and that they have anxiously awaited my return,” said Paruir Airikyan, 41, a political dissident for most of his life, who has been living in exile in Glendale, Calif. “They put their hope in me, that is obvious.”

Thousands of supporters greeted Airikyan with flowers, national songs and shouts of “Long live free, independent Armenia!” at the airport in Yerevan, one supporter said. A group of men carried him on their shoulders through the cheering crowd.

“It’s a very joyful day,” Airikyan said. “Coming home has long been my one dream.”

Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev restored Airikyan’s citizenship last month. Airikyan, who was elected to the Armenian Parliament in absentia, spent much of his time abroad trying to get back to his homeland.

Soviet authorities revoked Airikyan’s citizenship for “actions discrediting the high status of a citizen of the Soviet Union and for damaging the prestige of the Soviet Union.” He was forced to board a plane to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, on July 21, 1988. The United States accepted him as a political refugee.

Airikyan, who had spent 17 years in prison and internal exile for “anti-Soviet activities,” was stripped of his citizenship and banished without trial for “disseminating falsehoods that dishonor the name of the Soviet Union,” Pavel Laptev, an assistant to the Soviet procurator general, told a news conference at the time.

The Soviet press sharply criticized Airikyan for his attempts to tear Armenia from the Soviet Union as leader of an ultranationalist group called the National Self-Determination Assn.

Now, more than two years later, Airikyan has returned to a changed Armenia. The devastating Dec. 7, 1988, earthquake and ethnic strife with neighboring Azerbaijan have both caused a great deal of suffering while he has been away.

But for the first time in Soviet history, Armenia has a nationalist-dominated Parliament, which elected another dissident, Levon Ter-Petrosyan, as its president. Many of the ideas for which Airikyan was jailed and exiled have become official policy.

“Now the majority of Armenians speak in favor of independence,” Airikyan said. “I was always hopeful that Armenia would be independent, but now I see so many more possibilities.”

But Airikyan said he is not satisfied with Armenia’s progress toward independence, and he hopes to use his position in Parliament to press for a new constitution and a popularly elected president with powers like those of the American President. He hopes both measures will hasten Armenia’s independence.

Airikyan spent his first day back home on the run. He met with his voters in a suburb of Yerevan, paid his respects at the grave of Movses Gueorguisyan, who died during clashes between Armenians and Azerbaijanis, visited his fellow members of Parliament, was greeted by Vazgen I, the Catholikos of Armenia, in neighboring Echmiadzin, and spoke at a large evening meeting in a main square of Yerevan.

“Everywhere he went he was met with great emotion,” said Vardan Astatryan, a member of the National Self-Determination Assn. who accompanied Airikyan. “The people have waited for him for 2 1/2 years.”