MODERN HISTORY

MODERN HISTORY - I

( Section 4: 1878 - 1916 )

*NB: This is only the last half of Section 4

On August 1, 1914 Germany declared war on Russia. Three months later, on October 29 of the same year, Turkey entered the World War by naval bombardment of Russian Black Sea ports. On November 2, Russia declared war on Turkey, and the Caucasus became a battleground. Each national community of the region reacted differently both to the threat of Turkish attack, and to the prospect of Russian victory. Hoping for a quick triumph, most Russians were enthusiastic about the war against Turkey. The possible victory would result in the establishing of Russian hegemony in the Black Sea area and the annexation of Constantinople, which had always been the strategic goal of the Imperial court as well as of Russian nationalists.

The Armenians of the Caucasus were mobilized by the fear of Moslem invasion, and also by the possibility of emancipation of West-Armenian population of the hated Ottoman Turks, and even of establishment of a "Greater Armenia". The Azerbaijanis, Ajarians, Kabardians and other Moslem communities, exempt from military service, remained passive, quietly hoping for the defeat of Russia and possible establishment of a "Greater Turan" from the Balkans to China. The reactions of the Georgians were mixed. Most Georgians, as Christians, officially backed the Allies and supported the Russian Empire. On the other hand, they believed to gain very little from victory by either side. Some extreme Georgian nationalists backed Germany, and both Georgian and Russian Marxists hoped for a Russian defeat to be followed by a revolution.

In November of 1914 the Turks, under Enver Pasha, penetrated Southern Transcaucasia but were soon hurled back, and in 1915 and 1916 Russian troops under Count Vorontsov-Dashkov (later, under Grand Duke Nicholas), pushed southwest into Eastern Turkey and Northern Iran, which had also been invaded by the Turks. As the war raged on, the Turkish government pursued a policy of genocide with respect to the Armenians and other Christian communities of the country. In April 1915, by special decree it ordered local authorities to carry out the massive extermination of Armenians and Aysors. In 1915-16 more than one million Armenians were annihilated by Turkish troops and Kurdish irregulars. Over 600,000 people were deported to the Mesopotamian desert, where most of them died. Hundreds of thousands of Armenians took refuge in various countries of the Middle East, Europe and America. At least 200,000 of them resettled to the Caucasus and other parts of the Russian Empire.

In the Turkish province of Van, the local Armenians and Aysors launched a desperate revolt. They managed to control most of the province and its capital until the arrival of Russian troops. In response to the massacre, multiple volunteer Armenian regiments were formed in the Caucasus. Together with West-Armenian partisan bands (fidajins), they enthusiastically fought the Ottoman Turks on the Russian side. However the Armenians were to be bitterly disappointed by Russian imperial policy. In early 1916, Russian government planned to settle the liberated Armenian lands with ethnic Russians and Cossacks, under the slogans "Armenia without Armenians" and "No more Bulgarias".

Between January and August 1916 Russian troops finally defeated the Turkish armies. They conquered vast territory in Eastern Turkey, including most of Turkish Armenia and Paryadria with the major cities Trabzon (Trebizond), Erzerum, Erzinjan, Bitlis and Van. However the revolution of February 1917 and the abdication of Czar Nicholas II drastically changed the situation at the fronts. The first half of 1917 was marked by stagnation of all military operations and rapid demoralization of Russian troops.

( Section 5: 1917 - 1918 )

On November 7, 1917, the Bolsheviks seized power in Russia. The following day they declared the withdrawal of their country from the war and announced total demobilization of the old army. Demoralized by these events, Russian troops left the Turkish front. Meanwhile, on the 12th of February, 1918, the Turks began recapturing all the territories they had previously lost, simultaneously massacring any remnants of the Armenian population in Eastern Turkey. In the vacuum that remained as a result of the Bolshevik coup, the leading political parties of Transcaucasia formed a provisional government (the Transcaucasian Seim) in a desperate attempt to prevent anarchy and protect the area from the menace of Turkey. The advancing Turkish troops (50,000) under Vehip Pasha, were opposed by only10,000 inexperienced Georgian volunteers under General Odishelidze and a 25,000-man Armenian army under General Nazarbekov and field-commanders Andronik and Dro. These forces were also repeatedly attacked from the rear by thousands of Moslem guerrillas supporting the advancing Turks.

On March 3, 1918, the Bolsheviks signed the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk with the Central Powers, according to which the Ottoman Turkey regained not only all the territories it had lost by January 1916, but also the Kars territory and the district of Batum which had been parts of Russia before the war started. The Transcaucasian Seim rejected the Treaty of Brest-Litowsk, and on April 22, proclaimed an independent Democratic Federal Republic of Transcaucasia. By that time the Turks had already won back all the territories they claimed according to the treaty and threatened Tiflis and Erivan (Yerevan).

The new-born Transcaucasian Federation however, was doomed due to the different orientations of its three main ethnic communities. The Georgian leaders turned towards Germany to prevent the Turkish aggression; the move also resulted from Georgians' traditional perception of Germany as the center of European culture. The Azerbaijanis collaborated with the Turks, whom they regarded as their triumphant Moslem brethren. Only the Armenians, united by the danger posed by the territorial ambitions of the Ottoman Turks and the Azerbaijanis, kept fighting for the Allied Powers.

On May 26, 1918, Georgia declared its independence under the protection of Germany. The same day an independent Armenian Republic was proclaimed in Yerevan. During the next week the Turkish troops were defeated by Georgian volunteers on the river of Cholock to the North of Batum and by the Armenian army and militia at Sardapat. The same week Georgia was occupied by German troops (5,000) under General Kress von-Kressenstein. On June 4, 1918, a peace-treaty was signed in Batum, according to which most of Georgia remained under German protectorate and the Armenian Republic was cut down to a tiny enclave around the cities of Yerevan and Echmiadzin. Turkey was also given carte blanche to act in Azerbaijan. Regardless of the Batum treaty some Armenian troops under Andronik continued to conduct guerrilla operations against the Turks from the mountain areas of Karabakh-Zanghezur, where another Armenian republic had been proclaimed.

Earlier, on the 25th of March 1918, a Marxist republic was declared in Eastern Azerbaijan by groups of Baku Bolsheviks who were mainly Russian and Armenian. In their turn Moslem nationalists separately declared the establishment of the Azerbaijani People's Democratic Republic in Ganca (Elisavetpoli) in May of the same year. With the help of the Turkish army, the "Army of Islam" was formed to defeat the Bolsheviks in Baku. In September 1918, meeting some resistance from the scanty Bolshevik forces and local Armenian militia, the Army of Islam and the Turks marched into Baku . After the massacre of at least 25,000 Armenians still residing in the city, the new Azerbaijani government moved into the capital. In October 1918 the Turks, backed by the Moslem-dominated Confederation of Caucasian Mountaneers attempted an expedition to Dagestan but were thrust back by Russian Antibolshevik forces. Most of Azerbaijan remained occupied by Ottoman Turkish troops until the end of World War I in November 1918. Only in the district of Mughan, did Russian settlers declare the Mughan Republic and continue fighting for the Allies until the withdrawal of the Turks from the area.

The mountains and steppes of North Caucasia became the battlefields of the brutal civil war almost immediately after the Bolshevik coup of November 1917. By the beginning of 1918 thousands of Antibolshevik elements (also called the Whites) concentrated in the Don area, where the leading Russian generals Kornilov, Denikin and Alekseev formed The Volunteer Army and started their struggle against Bolshevism. The leadership of The Volunteer Army also declared its loyalty to the Allied Powers and claimed their financial and military support. Together with the Cossacks of Don, Kuban and Terek who joined them by February 1918, the Whites consecutively captured the major cities of Yekaterinodar, Stavropoli and Novorossijsk. The Terek area and the Caspian coast of Dagestan were cleansed of the Bolsheviks by the irregular forces of Colonel Bicherakhov. Most of the Dagestani highlands and some other mountain areas of North Caucasia were dominated by the Moslem "Confederation of Mountaneers" which was maneuvering between the Whites, Turks, Bolsheviks and even the Georgians. Some points on the North-Caucasian Black Sea coast were occupied by the Germans from May to November 1918. The Germans however, tried to avoid involvement into Russian civil war on either side. Finally, by November 1918 more than a half of North Caucasia fell into the hands of Antibolshevik forces becoming the base for their planned spurt towards Moscow.