Материал: Payaslian S., The History of Armenia From the Origins to the Present
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Turkish-Azerbaijani militia units and to secure the transportation lines with Persia. By mid-July Armenian forces had accomplished their objective across Vedibasar and reached the city of Bash-Norashen, followed by a determined offensive toward Shahtaght, which they captured on July 25, and moved farther south across Nakhijevan. Three days later, however, the Armenian advance was suddenly halted, as Red Army troops arrived in Nakhijevan with military assistance for the local Muslim militia and gold for the Turkish Nationalists. Having defeated the White Army of General Denikin and in control of Azerbaijan, the Red Army rapidly advanced to Karabagh, Zangezur, and Nakhijevan. Nonetheless, the Armenian military successes in Vedibasar, Bash-Norashen, and Shahtaght inspired confidence in the Bureau Government even among the skeptics in the Khorhrdaran.64
Confidence earned at home did not translate into confidence in foreign policy priorities abroad. On June 1, 1920, the U.S. Senate defeated a resolution on the mandate question, followed by a similar decision by the House of Representatives two days later. Having failed in the mandate issue, Armenian organizations, such as the American Committee for the Independence of Armenia (ACIA), stressed direct economic and military aid as an alternative. Both the Wilson administration and Congress, however, were reluctant to extend such aid. In fact, while Wilson accepted the responsibility of preparing Armenia’s boundaries, he did not create a boundary commission until July, which commenced its work in August, after the Treaty of Sèvres was signed.65 The commission, led by Professor William Westermann, within a month completed its task and delivered its report to the State Department on September 28. According to the report, which reiterated the position of the Allied powers, Wilson “could transfer any or all of the territories of Van, Bitlis, Erzerum, and Trebizond, require the demilitarization of any adjacent Turkish territory, and provide for Armenia free access to the sea.”66 Kharpert would be excluded from the proposed boundaries of Armenia. Nevertheless, Armenians were satisfied that the boundaries as proposed incorporated the three provinces of Van, Bitlis, and Erzerum as well as Trebizond with guarantees for access to the Black Sea on the westernmost border located east of the port city of Kerasund (Girasun). Wilson did not send his boundary decision to the American Ambassador in Paris, Hugh C. Wallace, until November 24, 1920, who relayed it to the Supreme Council in early December. By then, however, the situation in the Republic of Armenia had changed so radically as to render the proposed boundaries irrelevant.67
GENERAL KARABEKIR TO KARS AND ALEXANDROPOL
On September 13, 1920, General Karabekir’s troops had begun advancing eastward from Olti to Peniak and Akundir, followed by the invasion of Sarikamish on September 28 in preparation for the capture of Kars. On
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October 4 the Armenian interparty assembly issued a declaration, signed by the Dashnaktsutiun, the Armenian Democratic party, Ramkavar, Hnchakian, Socialist Revolutionary, and Social Democratic parties, urging Armenians to unite for the defense of the fatherland against yet another Turkish offensive. Government appeals to the public to defend the republic went unheeded.68 The herculean military success at Sardarabad in 1918 could not be replicated in late 1920. The persistent economic depression and insecurity at home, years of destruction and genocidal bloodshed at the hands of the Turkish government, the wide discrepancies between the humanitarian proclamations disseminated from western capitals and their actual policies, the Kemalist military and diplomatic victories, and the collusion between the Red Army and the Kemalists all had enervated the Armenian public and their leaders and drained their will to fight. Despite recent successes on the battlefield, public morale could not be maintained for long as the chronic military clashes continued unabated.
Confident that the Allied Powers would not intervene, on October 27 Karabekir moved his troops to capture Kars, while combined TurkishKurdish forces conquered the region from Igdir to Surmalu. On October 30 Turkish troops captured Kars with little Armenian opposition,69 and immediately thereafter Karabekir advanced toward Alexandropol. On November 7 Ohandjanian sued for peace and agreed to accept the conditions set by Karabekir for a truce: the nullification of the Sèvres treaty by the Armenian government. His exchanges for proposals and counterproposals notwithstanding, Ohandjanian failed to stall the Turkish attack on Alexandropol, which resumed on November 11. By November 15 Armenian defenses around the city had evaporated, as had defenses in Surmalu and SharurNakhijevan, a situation exacerbated now by the Georgian advance as well to Jalal-oghli, Bzovdal, and Shahali. The Armenian government was ready to accept the terms of armistice as demanded by Karabekir, and an Armenian delegation led by Khatisian arrived at Alexandropol to sign the agreement.70
Writing from Alexandropol on the chaotic situation created by Karabekir’s invasion, Prelate Artak Smbatyants of the Armenian Apostolic Church reported to the catholicosate at Echmiadzin that the Turkish military had destroyed entire villages and churches in the region as well as the local economy. The crisis had exacerbated local social problems, and neither civil nor religious leaders paid much heed to civility and morality. No authority commanded sufficient power and legitimacy to stop the bloodshed and the rampant corruption. If left unchecked, Smbatyants warned, the clergy themselves would ransack the church treasuries and cause further hostilities within the communities. Unable to address the crises, he offered his resignation as prelate and urged Catholicos Gevorg V to appoint a bishop with a wider authority and more effective personal capabilities.71
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THE LAST GOVERNMENT
By late November the military situation for the Erevan government had deteriorated beyond repair. The Bureau of the Dashnaktsutiun appointed socialist Simon Vratsian as the new prime minister in the hope that under him Soviet Russia would more favorably regard relations with Armenia. On November 23 the Khorhrdaran confirmed Vratsian as the new head of government. The following day Khatisian led a delegation to Alexandropol to conclude the peace treaty with Karabekir. Although his military campaigns during the past several weeks had de facto nullified the Sèvres treaty, Karabekir nevertheless demanded a formal declaration by the Armenian government to that effect.72 On November 26 Khatisian delivered the Armenian declaration to Karabekir, acknowledging that the republic “is disavowing the Treaty of Sèvres.”73
During a private conversation with Khatisian, Karabekir expressed his amusement at the Armenian territorial aspirations of uniting the republic with historic Armenian lands, as expressed by the Aharonian-Nubar Pasha delegation in Paris and Khatisian himself. “If the Armenians claimed all these territories while they were sitting defeated in Alexandropol, there was no telling what would be left of Turkey if they had been sitting in Van.” Karabekir then lectured Khatisian on Armenian and Turkish history. The Armenians, he noted, arrived in Anatolia centuries after the development of the indigenous Turkish culture. “The brilliant Urartian civilization was Turanian, and the inscriptions at Van, Karabekir revealed, pertained not to the Armenian people but to the Turanian tribes of Urartu.” During invasions in the eleventh century, Sultan Alp Arslan had conquered Byzantine lands, but, Karabekir asserted, “he had come across no Armenians, whose social and political order, if ever having existed, had long since vanished.” “The Armenians were insignificant in that history,” Karabekir averred.74
Meanwhile, in Erevan, Vratsian and Boris V. Legran, Soviet Plenipotentiary to the Caucasus, negotiated the sovietization of the republic. Only the Red Army possessed sufficient capability to prevent Karabekir’s forces from capturing Erevan, and Vratsian, left with no alternative, accepted Russian rule in the republic, albeit with great trepidation and resentment. On November 29 the Armenian Military Revolutionary Committee (Revkom) declared the sovietization of Armenia.75 The Bureau of the Dashnaktsutiun appointed Minister of Military Affairs Dro to negotiate the transition to Soviet rule and to sign the treaty with Karabekir. On December 1 the Armenian Khorhrdaran voted in favor of sovietization, and on December 2 Armenia was formally declared a “socialist soviet republic,”76 with guarantees of immunity for the Dashnakist leaders. Despite the change in government, the Khatisian-Karabekir negotiations in Alexandropol continued, culminating in the Treaty of Alexandropol
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on December 3, which nullified the Sèvres treaty. Significantly, neither the Sèvres nor the Alexandropole treaty has been ratified.
The provisional Revolutionary Committee (Heghkom), comprised of five Communists and two Dashnakists and headed by Sarkis Kasian, began to impose sovietization policies with brutal force. On December 28, 1920, the government ordered the nationalization of all arable land in Armenia and the next year devised a specific plan to redistribute it to the peasants. Far more violent were the egregiously ruthless tactics to eliminate the Dashnaktsutiun. Despite the immunity guaranteed to the Dashnakists associated with the Republic of Armenia, in January 1921 the new government arrested and forced into exile about 560 of the Armenian military leaders, among them Generals Tovmas Nazarbekian and Movses Silikian, followed in early February by the imprisonment of former Prime Minister Hovhannes Kachaznuni.77
Armenia was not sovietized without resistance. Officials in the new Soviet regime were too impatient to consolidate power, and some oldhand Armenian Bolsheviks, such as Avis Nurijanian, who had participated in the May uprising, sought quick revenge. Armenians soon realized that the new Soviet order imposed on them through the Revkom and the secret police, or Cheka, could be as brutal as any Russian tsarist rule in recent memory. For Western Armenians, the Dashnakist republic had at least provided a haven from the Turkish yoke, but Soviet repressive rule now appeared to be a mere continuation of the persecution and plunder they had experienced in the Ottoman empire. Mass discontent, mobilized by the Dashnaktsutiun, led to armed rebellion against the Soviet regime on February 18, 1921, forcing the Revkom’s withdrawal from Erevan.78 Vratsian led the Salvation Committee of the Fatherland in the liberated regions. Upon entering Erevan, the Salvation Committee liberated the imprisoned from the Cheka jails.79 As historian Ronald Suny has noted, “When the Cheka prisons were opened, a scene of horror greeted the liberators. Seventy-five bodies were discovered, hacked by axes. Among the dead were the Dashnakist heroes, Hamazasp (Srvandztian) and Colonel Dmitrii Korganov, shot [on] February 1, 1921.”80 The Dashnakists reacted by imprisoning and executing some Bolsheviks.
In April, after imposing Soviet rule in Georgia, the Red Army recaptured Erevan, while the Salvation Committee created “Mountainous Armenia” in Zangezur. Negotiations between the Soviet government in Erevan and Zangezur led to the surrender of the region to the Red Army but with guarantees that it remain part of Armenia. In July 1921 Vratsian and the other leaders of Mountainous Armenia moved to Persia, and on September 30 Soviet Russia and Armenia signed a treaty proclaiming unity.81
8
The Leninist-Stalinist
Legacy: Seventy Years
of Soviet Rule
The rebellion led by the Dashnaktsutiun in February 1921 against Soviet rule failed. After the Bolsheviks recaptured Erevan and the reins of power in April, the new government, led by Aleksandr Miasnikyan, imposed virtual dictatorial rule. By mid-1921 most of the anti-Bolshevik leaders had been liquidated: imprisoned, exiled, or killed. As the new Communist government in Erevan consolidated power, it also ensured Armenia’s subordination to Moscow’s rule. The Soviet government for its part was confronted with the onerous task of reconstructing the governmental machinery and the economic system.1 It was under these conditions that the post-independence government in Armenia formally entered into the ostensibly “federal” structure with the Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic in September 1921. The seventy-year history of Soviet imperial rule in Armenia was divided into five phases, each reflecting the policy priorities of the leadership in the Kremlin until economic stagnation and political paralysis led to its demise.
LENIN AND THE NEP EXPERIMENT
As the Communist Party of Armenia was engaged in the establishment of the new socialist structures, Lenin had reversed his initial policy of total nationalization of the economy and opted for New Economic Policy (NEP,
S. Payaslian, The History of Armenia
© Simon Payaslian 2007