Материал: Payaslian S., The History of Armenia From the Origins to the Present

accomplished in 1796, after massacres and much destruction (including the death of the famed Armenian troubadour Sayat Nova, 1762–1796).31

The triangular Russo-Persian-Ottoman competition over the Caucasus increasingly involved the European powers, most notably Britain and France, each with its own imperial ambitions but with the common geostrategic objective of preventing any of the three powers from becoming too powerful in the region. In December 1800, Tsar Paul (r. 1796–1801) declared Georgia’s annexation to the Russian empire, and in September 1801 Tsar Alexander I proclaimed direct incorporation of Georgia and territories in northern Armenia (e.g., Lori) into the Russian domain with plans to annex Erevan and Ganja. The Persian army, now firmly under Qajar rule, and with British and French military and economic support, retaliated, escalating the conflict into the Russo-Persian War (1804–1813). The local Armenians sided with the Russians as their liberators from Persian rule, and in May-July 1804 the Russian army under General Pavel Tsitsianov, commander of the Caucasus, captured Gumri and Erevan. Unable to defend the area, the Persian troops under Ibrahim Khan of Karabagh surrendered in the spring of 1805. The Russians were in control of Karabagh and Ganja when war with the Ottoman empire, on the one hand, and Napoleon’s campaign across Europe, on the other, again weakened their resolve in the Caucasus. Responding to the Russian threat, France and Persia signed the Finkenstein treaty on May 4, 1807, whereby France promised military support to Persia against Russia, and Persia guaranteed free passage for French troops through its land to India in case of a war with England.32

The Russians had not gained total control over the conquered lands in the Caucasus, and there followed a series of treaties solidifying the boundaries among the three empires, with profound implications for the future of their Armenian inhabitants. The Treaty of Bucharest in 1812 concluded the Russo-Turkish war that had begun in 1806, establishing the Akhurian River as their border. The Persians, mired in their own military conflicts with Russia and faced with the possibility of further territorial losses, signed the Treaty of Gulistan in October 1813, which forced it to surrender, with the exception of Erevan and Nakhijevan, the area north of the Arax and Kura rivers, including Georgia, Karabagh, and Zangezur.33 Unwilling to accept the defeat sustained under the treaty, immediately after the death of Tsar Alexander I and the Decembrist rebellion in 1825, the Persian crown Prince Abbas Mirza attacked Karabagh in 1826, instigating another Russo-Persian War (1826–1828), which let to yet another Persian defeat. Russia seized Sardarabad, Nakhijevan, Erevan, and Tabriz by October 1827, forcing Persia to negotiate a peace treaty. The Treaty of Turkmenchai (a village between Tabriz and Tehran), signed in February 1828, granted the khanates of Erevan and Nakhichevan to Russia, thereby establishing Russian control over all of Eastern Armenia with the new boundary set at the Arax River.34

Russian military successes in the Caucasus strengthened the empire’s position in relations with the Ottoman empire. Ottoman territorial losses were symptomatic of its domestic economic decline, which had serious ramifications for its military capabilities. Western powers began to view the empire as the “Sick Man of Europe,” and predictions of its immediate demise gave rise to the Eastern Question. Considering its territorial losses and inability to contain Russian imperial expansion across the Caucasus and the Balkans and potentially to the Mediterranean Sea and the Middle East, what regional configuration of power would replace the decrepit Muslim empire? And in that context, what could be expected of the role and aspirations of the various nationalities within the Ottoman empire? As discussed below, the increasingly volatile geopolitical situation in the empire heightened the urgency and unpredictability concerning such “questions” as the Armenian Question.35 By the late nineteenth century, the Armenian Question emerged as an international issue, as a subcomponent of the Eastern Question.

THE EMERGENCE OF THE ARMENIAN QUESTION

The Treaty of Andrianople (1829) concluded the Russo-Turkish War of 1828–1829, granting Poti, Akhalkalak, and Akhaltsik to Russia, as well as the right to free passage through the Straits of Dardanelles and free access for Russian merchants to Ottoman markets. Article 13 of the treaty provided for the free exchange of population. Mass migration to Russian Armenia, involving 7,668 families, began in October 1829; nearly 14,047 families (between 90,000 and 100,000 individuals) moved to Russian Armenia. Under the treaty, Turkey also recognized the independence of Greece and the autonomous status of a member of regions, including Montenegro, Moldavia, and Serbia. British and French diplomatic pressure, however, forced Russia to return to Turkey the Western Armenian territories gained during the war (Kars, Ardahan, Bayazid, Erzerum, and their surrounding regions).36 The geopolitical dynamics unfolding soon thereafter indicated that the Armenian Question had already become politicized at the international level.

In consolidating power over Armenia, Russia granted the status of the Armianskaia Oblast’ (Haykakan Marz) to Erevan and Nakhijevan as an “autonomous” Armenian province between 1828 and 1840. As the Russian government pursued broader geopolitical objectives, it tightened its control over the ostensibly “autonomous” Armenian province. In March 1836, Tsar Nicholas I instituted the Polozhenie (statute), which restricted the activities of the Armenian Church in political matters and required that the catholicosate at Echmiadzin conduct its relations with the outside world through the Russian ministry of foreign affairs. With respect to the election of the catholicos, the government required that Armenians submit the

names of two candidates to the tsar for his ultimate vote. In return, it granted certain privileges to the church, including inter alia freedom of worship, tax exemption, and local autonomy under the primacy of Echmiadzin. Russian authorities greatly appreciated the role of the church in Armenian community life and sought to utilize its influence to promote and protect Russian interests in the region.37 Armenians in and outside Russian Armenia protested Russian control over the church as violating Armenian traditions; for instance, in 1840 Armenians in India petitioned Tsar Nicholas I to repeal the restrictions imposed on the church.38

Despite the political difficulties, Armenia experienced rapid development. Armenian economic growth and prosperity enhanced the loyalty of the business classes to the Russian empire. The emerging Armenian intelligentsia, influenced by various intellectual movements in Europe and Russia, became active in various aspects of Armenian community life. Those who were more radical challenged the Armenian traditional institutions (especially the church), customary practices, and power structures, and advocated transformation of Armenian culture along the lines of the European Enlightenment. Conservatives stressed the importance of traditional institutions in strengthening the communities and in revitalizing centuries-old traditions and culture. Both intellectual currents, however, sought the same ultimate objective: to revive Armenian national identity as an expression of their communities across the dispersion from the Caucasus to Constantinople and to Europe. Hence the proliferation of Armenian publications—for example, Kovkas (Caucasus), Hiusisapail (Northern Lights), Meghu Hayastani (Bee of Armenia), and Masiats Aghavni (Dove of Ararat)—debating the advantages and disadvantages of grabar (classical Armenian) and ashkharabar (vernacular), of religion and secularization, of tradition and modernization. Unlike the European experiences of the Enlightenment and modernization that required construction of new ideological edifices on more stable cultural foundations, the re-formation39 of Armenian national identity necessitated the far more laborious task of construction or reconstruction of community identity, language, and culture destroyed by centuries of foreign invasions. The intellectual struggle to redefine and reformulate that national identity by the 1870s and 1880s shaped the modern Armenian worldview, the new Armenian Weltanschauung, with its derivative philosophical ideals and political ideologies. These advances in the Armenian experience, however, lacked the strong institutional and cultural bases necessary for sustainable national development commonly found among the attributes of the modern nation-state. The absence of an Armenian nation-state rendered the Armenian identity vulnerable to foreign subversion and even to extinction—a process already set in motion in Western Armenia.

THE MALIGNED REFORMS

Since the emergence of the Ottoman empire, over the years many Armenians had adopted the Turkish language, culture, and Islam to escape their second-class status within the ethno-religious administrative system, the Ermeni millet (or Armenian religious community).40 Those who chose to maintain their national identity were required to pay heavy taxes, comply with orders regarding the devshirme (the forced collection of Christian children to serve in the Ottoman janissary corps),41 and submit to numerous restrictions under imperial and religious laws. Added to the burdens of foreign imperial rule were the recurring attacks on Armenian towns and villages by Kurdish and Circassian bands. By the nineteenth century, widespread discontent with the “backwardness” of Ottoman society, rampant corruption, and chronic maladministration disrupted and paralyzed the economy and polity. Matters were made worse by pressures of European colonialism, as each empire arrogated to itself the right to “civilize” the Ottoman empire and the rest of the world, and as each pursued its geoeconomic objectives irrespective of their consequences for the local populations. The European powers viewed reforms toward political and economic liberalization as an integral component of political stability in the Ottoman empire. The Ottoman government at all levels frequently resorted to repressive measures to halt and reverse the process of imperial decline.

Sultan Abdul Mejid (r. 1839–1861), responding to domestic and European pressures for structural reforms, introduced the Tanzimat reforms in the Ottoman empire, which consisted of the Hatt-i Sherif of Gulhane (Noble Rescript of the Rose Chamber) declared on November 3, 1839, followed by the Hatt-i Humayun (Imperial Rescript) on February 18, 1856, in the aftermath of the Crimean War. Under these reforms, the sultan promised equality for all his subjects (Muslims and non-Muslims regardless of sect and creed) before the law, security of property and of life, elimination of arbitrary taxation, and modernization of the legal and administrative institutions. His Muslim subjects, however, viewed the principle of equality before the law for non-Muslims as a violation of “Islamic law and tradition.”42 Muslims continued to view the Ermeni millet with great suspicion, and their hostility toward the Armenians increased exponentially as society became polarized.43 Further, these reforms required long-term commitment on the part of the sultan and the Ottoman state bureaucracies in general for effective institutionalization and implementation. Yet neither the political nor the economic conditions proved conducive for such a development. The sultan himself represented the epitome of arbitrary rule characteristic of “oriental despotic” sovereigns.44

As part of the promised reforms, the Sublime Porte (Bab Ali, the seat of the Ottoman government) in 1847 ratified the establishment of the Armenian

Spiritual Council (religious) and the Supreme Council (laymen), both under the directorship of the patriarchate at Constantinople. In 1863 the government also issued an imperial iradé (decree) ratifying the Armenian National Constitution.45 The Constitution introduced democratically oriented principles in the functions and powers of Armenian institutions (e.g., the church) and social relations (e.g., amira-esnaf relations). The constitution provided for the creation of the General Assembly, consisting of ecclesiastical and lay members. The amira class, comprised of the wealthiest and most influential Armenian families in the Ottoman capital and Smyrna, had opposed the constitution and considered the esnafs or trade guilds and demands for fundamental reforms as a direct threat to the privileged position they had come to enjoy. Issues such as amira-esnaf relations, however, and the steps taken to resolve their conflicts through structural liberalization—which within a more democratic environment would have been viewed as an exercise in “good governance”—remained peripheral to the more ominous tensions and bloodshed between Muslims and Armenians, as demonstrated in the Zeitun rebellion of 1862 and the subsequent massacres.46 Similarly, the Ottoman Constitution of 1876, promulgated by Sultan Abdul-Hamid II (r. 1876–1908/09), provided for a democratic system predicated on wider public participation in the political process and guaranteed various civil and political freedoms. The Ottoman sultanate, however, with its despotic institutional traditions and abusive bureaucracies, could not accommodate or tolerate demands for civil and administrative reforms even if it aimed for modernization.47

His Armenian subjects, totaling about 2 million, were dispersed throughout the provinces, but were mostly concentrated in their historic land (in the provinces of Bitlis, Diarbekir, Erzerum, Kharpert, Sivas, and Van), and Cilicia. Political reforms, if implemented, would require the restructuring of the system throughout the provinces and, the sultan feared, would eventually jeopardize the unity of his empire. The Sublime Porte appeared determined, especially after the Crimean war (1854–1856), to reverse the course of imperial decline. The war, however, placed heavy burdens on the Ottoman treasury and accelerated British and French involvement in the empire’s financial affairs through the Ottoman Bank and the Public Debt Administration. Rather than implement the promised reforms, the government reacted by imposing more repressive measures and intensified persecution of groups and movements it deemed a threat to its rule. By the 1880s the increasingly oppressive political environment, coupled with economic stagnation, stimulated antigovernment activities by various groups, particularly by young intellectuals, including Armenians, trained in European universities. Some Armenians also organized self-defense societies for protection against atrocities.48