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*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.
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