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Armeno-Georgian
War of 1918 and Armeno-Georgian Territorial
Issue in the 20th Century By Andrew Andersen and Georg Egge |
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Diplomatic Overtures of the Parties in
November 1918 Bilateral talks between Armenia and Georgia
started in November 1918, when Georgian MP Simon Mdivani,
arrived to Erivan from Tiflis as a special envoy whose mission “was to
establish friendly relations with the Government of Armenia”[1]. Simultaneously,
the Georgian government has proposed to the governments of other states of
the South and the North Caucasus that recently proclaimed their independence,
to organize a conference in Tiflis that would be aimed at "resolution of
common ... vital problems, including the issue of delimitation"[2]. To promote the
idea of the above mentioned conference to Official Erevan was one
of the major tasks imposed on Mdivani’s mission. In accordance with the proposals of the government
of Georgia, the agenda of the planned Conference was to include the following
issues:
Although the idea of the above Conference was
generally well received by the government and Khorhurd
(legislature) of Armenia, nevertheless, the following two concerns were raised
in connection with that proposal of Georgia: 1.
The major concern of Armenia was that the government of
Georgia set up the time and place for the proposed Conference unilaterally and
without prior consultation with Erevan, not to mention that the deadline was
quite short and did not leave enough time for the Armenians to form their
delegation and arrange its travel to Tiflis. 2.
Armenian leaders were not prepared to discuss border issues
at any conference, whichever could take place in Georgia’s capital at that
particular moment. Mdivani reported from Erevan
that the format itself of Georgian proposal regarding the planned Conference caused
protest not only on behalf of Armenian politicians in Erevan but also among
the heads of Armenian diasporas all over the world who viewed it as the
Georgian claim for political leadership in the whole of the Caucasus. The Armenian
concern was shared by Georgian diplomatic representative in London Prince Zourab Avalishvili who wrote that
“the tone of the ‘invitation’ signed by N. Ramishvili
(Foreign Minister pro tem...) reminded
one somewhat of a circular of the Ministry of Home Affairs”[5]. The above concern
was neutralized by means of talks between Mdivani and
the top Armenian officials during which he explained the urgency of
convening the Conference by rapidly changing political realities. However,
unequivocal Armenian
demand to withdraw the issues of delimitation from the Conference agenda remained
fundamentally unchanged. Meanwhile, the planned conference was
opened in Tiflis on November 10, 1918. The hosts of the conference (the
government of the Georgian Democratic Republic) were represented by the head
of MFA of Georgia Eugene Gegechkori and Interior Minister
Noah Ramishvili. The only two delegations to arrive
to Tiflis were those of the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic (Mohammed Yusuf Jafarov and Mustafa Bek Vekilov) and the Cis-Caucasian Mountaneer People’s Republic (Pshemakho Kotsev и Vassan-Ghirai Jabaghi)[6]. The Armenian delegation did not come to the
Conference, which was announced by the representative of Armenia in Georgia Arshak Jamalyan. The explanation
provided by the Armenian Foreign Ministry referred to the poor rail service
between Erivan and Tiflis, because of which the representatives of Armenia
have not been able to arrive to the Georgian capital at the desired time. In
response, the delegates to the Conference decided to postpone its work until
November 13, and immediately notified Erevan of that change. However, the Official
Erevan declined that initiative as well, this time, citing their unpreparedness
as well as lack of clarity on several issues - namely, the status of the
delegation of the Mountaneer Republic (also
referred to as “the United Mountaineers”) and Azerbaijan's attitude to the idea
of the Conference[7]. As a result, the opening of the Conference
was postponed, first to the 20th, and then - to the 30th of November, but the
Armenian delegation kept postponing its arrival under various pretexts
(requiring excluding of border issues from the agenda, the lack of a train
available for Erevan-Tiflis trip, etc.). Finally, the Conference was
disrupted. Five days later, on December 5, 1918, Mdivani
mission departed from Erevan for Tiflis. Immediately after that, the
government of Georgia informed Erevan of its readiness to exclude the issue
of the boundaries of the Conference program. But even this time an agreement did
not take place: the governmental telegram came to Erevan with a delay due to
sabotage on the telegraph lines. The text of the telegram was duplicated on
the radio, but that happened on December 14 only, when the war already broke
out.[8] In parallel with the above diplomatic
turmoil, there were other frictions between the two countries. One of them
was about the denial by Georgian authorities of the admission of Armenian
refugees from Turkey and their resettlement in Georgian-controlled part of
the Lori sector of the county of Borchalo. Because official
Erevan considered Borchalo to be part of Armenia, it
viewed the above denial as an unfriendly act, and on October 23, 1918 an official
note of protest was issued to the Georgian government[9]. The majority of the researchers who studied
that period of Armenian history tend to agree that the intransigence of Erevan
on the territorial issue was related primarily to the fact that the leaders
of both the First Republic and the Armenian diasporas believed that the
triumph of the Entente in the war would finally reward the Armenians for
their contribution to the Allied victory and for all their sufferings
incurred in this connection[10]. Thirty two years after
the events described, Firuz Kazemzadeh
defined the state of mind that dominated the Armenian society at the time of
the surrender of the Central Powers as follows: «The
capitulation of the Ottoman Empire in November, 1918, seemed to herald a new
era in Armenian history. Her hereditary foe was on his knees. Syria, Iraq,
Palestine, and the entire Arabian peninsula had been liberated,
The victory which had come to Armenia after so much suffering turned the
heads of her leaders. They visualized a Greater Armenia, a country stretching
from the Mediterranean to the Black Sea, and from
the Black Sea to the Caspian. (...) Their fantasies were encouraged in Paris,
London, and especially Washington. (...) But the Armenians were being misled
by their hopes and these promises.»[11] There are many reasons to believe that, the
leadership of the revived Armenian state hoped that the victorious allies would
offer them much more territorial gains than it was possible to achieve through
bilateral negotiations with each of the neighbouring countries. Moreover, it
seems quite possible to agree with Kazemzadeh, stating
that the leaders of Armenia would never dare to use military force in Borchalo at the end of 1918, unless they were completely
sure of full and unconditional support from of Britain and France of their
idea to "punish" Georgia for her recent, albeit brief, stay in the German
sphere of influence[12]. Further
developments in the Caucasus and around it, clearly showed the fallacy of those
calculations, but this lies beyond the scope of our study. It is also important to mention here that
during the talks that occurred in Erevan between Simon Mdivani
and the leadership of the Democratic Republic of Armenia, the Armenian side
expressed readiness to make concessions in Akhalkalaki
and Borchalo, if Georgia agreed to help Armenia reclaim
Mountainous Karabakh or part of the Turkish Armenia.
However, the Government of Georgia did not seem to possess neither the
capacity nor the desire to get involved in new conflicts with her neighbours,
thus making it difficult to achieve consensus between the two governments. Against the background of almost fruitless
negotiations and the failure of diplomatic efforts, the situation in the
disputed counties of Akhalkalaki and Borchalo was quite troubled. It was exacerbated
by the fact that Georgian military units were deployed in the villages, instead
of building temporary military camps. That situation led to mutual
dissatisfaction and accusations: ethnic Armenian peasants accused Georgian troops
of the lack of discipline and bad attitude, while the Georgians, in turn, blamed
local Armenians for provocative behaviour[13]. |
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