Imperial Powers’ policy and nationalisms in the South Caucasus, 1917-1921

MAXIME GAUIN^*

Summary

Caucasus is traditionally an area disputed between Empires and presenting an exceptional density of ethnic and national groups. However, in its contemporary history, the period 1917-1921 presents a clear originality, especially for the South Caucasus. Since the first decades of the 19^th Century, the South Caucasus was under Russian control,^[1] and served as a basis for the Tsar’s ambitions to the free seas, against the Ottoman Empire and Iran, for instance during the war of 1877-1878, when Russia took Batum, Kars and Ardahan to the Ottoman Empire.^[2] These ambitions were decisive in the outbreak of the First World War, as Sean McMeekin conclusively demonstrated,^[3] but this war led to the collapse of the Tsarist regime,^[4] raising the national ambitions, particularly in the south Caucasus. This parenthesis was closed by the re-conquest of this region by Communist Russians in 1921. During this short but dense period, there is a particular articulation between the emerging nation-states, who cannot achieve their goals of national independence alone, and the imperial powers. Imperial policy is indeed far from disappearing during this time, even is some actors are eliminated in 1918 (Germany), if new ones appear (U.S.) and one changes of status (the Turks, who led an Empire until 1918, became a nation-state during the war of independence).

The question analyzed in this paper is: how and why the articulation between national ambitions and imperial designs (except the one of Russia) failed—why did the south Caucasus passed from White Russia to Red Russia?

The final Ottoman-Russian clash (1917-1918)

A)     Russian ambitions

At the beginning of 1917, Russian army was planning an offensive to Sivas and Ankara and another one to Istanbul. They also asked, as they did in 1915 and 1916, a landing from Cyprus to Iskenderun or Mersin. Since there was no available troops from France or Britain, London asked Japan,^[5] but the Japanese government declined, as he did for virtually all the similar demands in the past. Russians were encouraged by the capture of Bagdad by the British army in March 1917. The Liberal revolution the same month was the beginning of the end, but not everybody accepted this sudden change easily. Pavel Miliukov, a leader of the Kadets, stated in March 1917 that it would be “absurd and criminal to renounce to the biggest prize of the war […] in the name of some humanitarian and cosmopolitan idea of international socialism.” The new government himself continued the preparations to take Istanbul in Spring and Summer 1917—but postponed the projects of offensive to Anatolia, because of the mutinies and more generally the exhaustion of Russia. Even after the Bolshevik revolution (who, at the very beginning, controlled only St-Petersburg and Moscow), White Russians did not want to lose the Caucasus.^[6] As we will see, it diminished the capacity of the new independent Republics to resist the Communists.

Precisely, the Bolsheviks themselves, if they officially repudiated the “imperialistic claims,” if they took power largely because of their proclaimed aim to end the war quickly, and if they actually postponed to undetermined future to conquest of Istanbul, they were not quite excited by the perspective of giving back the parts of eastern Anatolia conquered by the Tzar’s army 1915-16—still less Batum, Kars and Ardahan—to the Turks or Georgia to the Mensheviks. And above all, the Russian Communists, not unlike White Russians, did not want to lose the oil fields of Baku. Oil only gained importance during the war, including in Russia, where the shortage of coal led many companies to pass to oil. That is why they played the Armenian card against both Turks in eastern Anatolia (especially by a decree guarantying the “right of self-determination” for the Turkish Armenians and allowing the formation of an Armenian militia) and Azeris in Baku, not unlike the Tsar. However, unlike the Tsar, the Bolsheviks were aware of the weakness of their regime and were ready to use territories in exchange of peace if they had no other choice. Indeed, the German advance in Russia itself and Ukraine, especially the German troops dangerously close to St-Petersburg, and also the eventual Ottoman advance in 1918, led the Communist Russians to certain prudence^[7]—even more after the Entente’s interventions, in Autumn 1918.^[8] For the short term, the survival of the “proletarian revolution” was their top priority.

B)     Armenian ambitions

The Armenian nationalists claimed an “Integral Armenia,” from the Black Sea to the Mediterranean Sea, at least since 1915.^[9] Such dreams were against all the demographic realities: indeed, the large majority of the population in each vilayet was Muslim (Turkish, Kurdish);^[10] most of the territories claimed in the South Caucasus itself had an Azeri majority.[11] That is why, as early as the end of 1914, and even more during the years 1915 and 1916, the Armenian volunteers of the Russian army practiced ethnic cleansing against Turks and other Muslims. For example, Prince Vasilii Gadzhemukov, slammed the indiscriminate slaughter of Muslims at Van: ‘the Armenians themselves’ had given the ‘signal of the barbaric destruction of the Armenian nation in Turkey’. “And although that destruction left ‘the positive result that Turkey has left us Armenia without Armenians’, the legacy of Van had stiffened Muslim resistance to Russian arms ‘for fear of falling into Armenian hands’.”^[12] However, for pragmatic reasons more than for humanitarian concerns, some Russian officers punished a part of these Armenian war criminals, who were either fired from the army, especially in December 1915 (when Armenian volunteers units were officially disbanded),^[13] either sentenced by martial-courts, including a certain number of death sentences.^[14]

Such a repression became more difficult after the first Russian revolution and virtually impossible after the Bolshevik one, by simple lack of Russian soldiers and officers. As a result, in 1917-1918, the Armenian plans of ethnic cleansing were carried out in north-eastern Anatolia and then in the Caucasus with all its radicalism. Only the arrival of the Ottoman troops prevented a full implantation of this project. In his notes written in April 1918 (and based on the war diary of his regiment), lieutenant-colonel Tverdokhlebov, who commanded the second regiment of fortress artillery in Erzurum, explained the efforts and failure of the Russian command to prevent the slaughter of thousands Turks between Erzincan and Erzurum, then of thousands others in Erzurum itself.^[15] A Turkish investigation carried out in 1921 showed that thousands others were exterminated at the beginning of 1918, between Erzurum and Van. In the village of Söylemez, the victims were burned alive.^[16]

More generally, as observed the two American investigators sent in 1919 in this part of Anatolia, “During their occupation, the Russians made many improvements in the way of communications, building roads and railroads. On the Russian retirement, however, the Armenians destroyed many of the Russian improvements and most of the Musulman villages, they massacred the Musulman inhabitants and retired leaving the country in a complete state of desolation.”^[17] These crimes must be connected to the openly racist ideology developed in the 1910s-1920s by the Armenian Revolutionary Federation-Dashnaktsoutiun—the “Aryan race” opposed to the “Turko-Mongol race.”^[18]

As early as March 1918, the ARF, in power in Erevan, sided with the Bolsheviks in Baku and attacked the Azeri civilian population. According to Firuz Kazemzadeh, “the Soviet provoked the ‘civil war’ in the hope of breaking the power of its most formidable rival, the Musavat,” the main Azerbaijani political party, which advocated independence and anti-Communism. Anyway, thousands of Azeris were killed in Baku and thousands others in the western part of Azerbaijan, without distinction of age or sex.^[19] Lenin backed without ambiguity his comrade Shaumyan, the Bolshevik Armenian leader of Baku, considering that “We must invade Azerbaijan the land of black gold, in order to help communism to flourish.”^[20] Lenin’s choice is even more understandable in considering that in addition to oil—in itself sufficient to explain the Bolshevik design of reconquest—, the south Caucasus furnished, before 1917, three quarter of the manganese and one quarter of the copper consumed in Russia.^[21]

According to British Intelligence agent Leslie Urquhart, “over 8,000 Tatars were killed in Baku, over 18,000 unarmed Tatars ruthlessly murdered in Elizavethpol mainly by Armenian rebels […] Armenians have restarted their blood feud with Tatars instead of continuing to fight the Turks.”^[22]  Interestingly, a former Armenian soldier gave a similar estimation to an American relief worker: 25,000 “Tatars” massacred.^[23] Almost two years later, the acting chief of the French military mission in the Caucasus, Colonel Bertren, remembered having seen “the Armenians at work in Baku, when, allied to the Bolsheviks, they massacred the Muslims.”^[24] In short, it was actually “a general massacre” in eastern Anatolia and Azerbaijan.^[25]

However, during the spring and summer 1918, the Ottoman forces continued to advance though eastern Anatolia and Caucasus, forcing the Dashnak-dominated government to change its policy dramatically. On June 4, 1918, Erevan had to sign the treaty of Batum, confirming the Ottoman administration of Kars and Ardahan. The Armenian minister of Foreign Affairs even stated that the relations with the Ottomans were now “excellent” and that keeping them as such was “an essential point of program pursued by the Armenian cabinet.” On 28 June 1918, Hairenik blamed Russia for the bloodbath and considered the Turkish-Armenian issue as “solved.”^[26] Of course, such statements did not please the Entente.^[27] And it was not only statements: in June 1918, General Nazarbekov (Nazarbekian) sent a telegram to the Armenian commission of Gümrü, announcing that Antranik Ozanian had actually committed a lot of atrocities, and was recently fired from the Armenian army as a result of these war crimes.^[28]

C)      Ottoman and German ambitions

The Ottoman army, whose effectiveness has often been underestimated, pushed in summer 1918, took Baku on 15 September 1918 and continued to the North Caucasus in October.^[29] The Russian collapse and this advance revealed, once again, the weaknesses of the Ottoman-German alliance,^[30] but before studying these tensions, it is necessary to know the actual intentions of the CUP cabinets. These intentions have been obscured for decades by an enduring legend, present even in high-quality academic publications: the CUP, and especially Enver, was supposed to have developed a pan-Turanist policy, if not in 1914, at least in 1917-1918, to replace the lost Arab provinces by Turkic lands of the Caucasus and Central Asia. Such a theory is wrong.

In fact, pan-Turanism, whose proponents were repressed by the CUP in 1913,^[31] did not seduce the main Unionist leaders in 1917-1918. Even Enver, as long as he was the Ottoman minister of War, did not promote a pan-Turanist policy. During most of the year 1917, Enver did not even give the priority to the Caucasus. After the Bolshevik revolution and, even more, after having concluded that the Communists were reluctant to give back any territory (those annexed in 1878 or even those occupied since 1915), Talat and Enver promoted a more aggressive tactic but rejected the proposals of some Azeris to annex Azerbaijan and never prepared anything to invade Central Asia from Baku. Their only territorial claims were on Batum, Kars and Ardahan, above all for security reasons: the Ottomans were more in safety with these districts than without. Correspondingly, Azerbaijan, not unlike the Muslims of North Caucasus or Ukraine, was seen as a buffer state against Russia, in the CUP plans. Especially, Enver urged the Caucasian Republics to be represented at the negotiations of Brest-Litovsk and so secure a formal independence from Russia, promising assistance “in every way” if the Caucasians desired it.^[32]

That having been said, it is obvious that the oil fields of Baku did not leave Enver, or any other CUP leader, indifferent. If they did not desire to annex Azerbaijan, they preferred a Turko-Azerbaijani control on the oil to a Russian (or German) one. The Germans had, not surprisingly, exactly the opposite ideas. They wanted to secure their own political and economic preponderance in the Caucasus, especially as far as oil was concerned. To counter the Ottoman plans, the Germans used Georgia. The Georgian leaders did not develop any anti-Turkish racism,^[33] unlike the Dashnaks, but opposed the attribution of Batum to the Ottomans and Germany war much farer than the Turks, so a German alliance seemed more in conformity with their national interests. In particular, Germany encouraged the dislocation of the Federative Republic of Transcaucasia, to deal with Georgian leaders directly—even if it was not without some tensions, because the German conservatives had limited affinities with the Georgian social-democrats. More seriously, there were clashes between Ottoman and German troops as early as June 1918 and Berlin secretly dealt with the Bolshevik to slow down the Ottoman advance to Baku. The CUP cabinet was furious.^[34]

Regardless, these attempts were largely in vain since, as explained before, Baku was captured by the Ottoman forces on 15 September 1918. There was a British military mission, arrived in August, and who even convinced the Baku Commune to accept the help from London against the Turks, but this unit evacuated the day before the capture, apparently because the local Armenians did not show any willingness to fight.^[35]

According to another myth regarding the Ottoman policy at the end of the war, the commander Nuri Paşa was responsible for the reprisals against Armenians (in retaliation for the massacres of March-April 1918).^[36] In an interview with a British representative, Nuri explained that he prevented the Azeri volunteers to enter the city, leaving only Turkish regulars, well disciplined and whose families were not subjected to the crimes of Armenian nationalists. After having noticed that the civilian population herself was ready to take revenge by killing Armenians, Nuri ordered to shot any plunderer or murderer caught in act. There were around sixty summary executions and fifty after a trial.^[37] Not only the British did not find anything against the version of Nuri, but the General had previously affirmed, in a letter to his brother Enver, that he ordered the hanging of around one hundred Muslims in Baku because they could not refrain from retaliating.^[38] The Intelligence Service of the French Navy made an investigation on Nuri at the beginning of 1919, and did not find any evidence involving him in any massacre.^[39]

National dreams (1918-1919)

A)     “Armenian Megalomaniacs”

In the words of Hovannes Katchaznouni, Armenian Prime minister from 1918 to 1919, “there was no Parliament; it was an empty form without content. […] There was no government either.” All the important decisions were discussed and taken solely by the bureau of the ARF.^[40] This dictatorship never refrained from murdering opponents. For example, in 1918, the ARF assassinated Hampartzoum Arakelian in his bed, a 70-years old journalist from Tbilisi, because of his numerous articles criticizing the Dashnaks. Even Kartchikian (Garjigian), a member of the Dashnak-dominated government of Erevan, was also murdered, for reasons which remain unclear, but may be due to internal dissensions within the ARF.^[41]

According to Firuz Kazemzadeh,

“The victory which had come to Armenians [in Fall 1918] after so much sufferings turned the heads of her leaders. They visualized a Greater Armenia, a country stretching from Mediterranean Sea to the Black Sea, and from the Black Sea to the Caspian. They claimed not only the six vilayets of Anatolia, but also Cilicia as well. They even claimed a part of the Persian Azerbaijan, though Persia had not been belligerent.”^[42]

Armenia also attacked Georgia in December 1918, losing any possibilities, if any remained, to present a joint front with the Georgians at the forthcoming Paris peace conference.^[43] Not only the Armenian representatives introduced unrealistic territorial claims, but also asked:

“That the aiding Power be charged with the following mandate:

(a)   To bring about the evacuation of the Turks, Tartars and others [sic] of all the Armenian territories

[…]

(d) To expel from the country all the disturbing elements and the lawless nomadic tribes;

(e) To return to their homes all the Mouhajirs, (Moslem colonies) who have been brought into the country during the Hamidian regime and by the Young Turks.”^[44]

Correspondingly, they expressed bitter critiques against the conditions of the armistice of Moudros, because eastern Anatolia and the Caucasus were not supposed to be occupied by armies of the Entente.^[45] In fact, most of the Armenian nationalist hopes were placed in the U.S. government, because President W. Wilson generally supported their claims and also because of the virulent American Committee for Independence of Armenia. America was supposed to accept a mandate on the “Integral Armenia.”^[46]

However, these hopes were quickly disappointed. President Wilson assigned an investigative commission to eastern Anatolia, led by Major General James G. Harbord. If Harbord was a friend of the Armenian people all his life, he was not deprived of some lucidity and sense of the American national interest. He concluded that there were at least as much arguments against the American mandate as arguments in favor. Worse for the Dashnak government of Erevan, Harbord wrote that the Armenian war crimes of 1916 and 1917-1918 “unquestionably rivaled the Turks in their inhumanity,” and he did not hide his distrust for the ARF: “It is probable, that the Dashnagtzoutune still employs terroristic methods, and undeniable that it is now a source of danger, owing to its liability to precipitate conflicts.” In short, argued Harbord, “A single mandatory for the Turkish Empire and Transcaucasus would be the most economical solution.”^[47]

In addition to Harbord’s reluctance, the American High Commissioner in Istanbul, Admiral Mark L. Bristol, radically opposed an American mandate for Armenian specifically, preferring a mandate on the whole Ottoman Empire or no intervention.^[48]

“The Armenian government has contributed to a great extent to the aggravation between the races in Armenia by forcing the Tatars to leave their villages which were sacked and burned and there are a great many Tatar refugees in a deplorable state of starvation which made it necessary to force the Armenian government to permit supplies and medical assistance for these refugees. The Armenians are also very much to blame for making the work of our relief workers more difficult especially with the present impossible conditions. The various foreign missions in the Caucasus are working without any coordination whatsoever and often with antagonistic aims.”

Another argument of Bristol was the preference of the Armenian government in Erevan for a Russian protectorate to an American mandate^[49]—an accusation based on a real support of the Dashnaks for Denikin in 1919.^[50]

The Armenians nationalists began to think to France as an alternative, at the end of 1919, but this move took place after one year of tensions with Paris, especially regarding the occupation of Cilicia and the violence of the Armenian Legion,^[51] that is why the reaction of Georges Clemenceau was: “We are tired of the Armenians! (Nous en avons assez des Arméniens !).”^[52] Even before Clemenceau’s ire, in October 1919, the “Integral Armenia” was referred to as the fantasy of “Armenian megalomaniacs” by the relatively pro-Armenian Colonel Chardigny, a member of the French military mission in the Caucasus.^[53] The dreams of an “Integral Armenia” were buried by the San Remo conference and the Sèvres treaty.^[54]

B)     Building a secular Muslim democracy

When the Azerbaijani leaders proclaimed independence in 1918, they inherited a country presenting a dichotomy between the capital city, Baku (retaken in September), one of the main centers of oil production in the world (for the year 1898, the production even surpassed the one of the U.S.), and the rest of Azerbaijan, predominantly rural, with a few towns not quite concerned yet by the industrial revolution.^[55] For the first time, Azerbaijan was not only a word of physical and administrative geography, but an independent state, and “Azerbaijani” replaced, at least officially, the words “Tatars,” “Caucasian Muslims” and “Caucasian Turks.” This ethnic appellation led the new government to ease the suspicions of Tehran about a possible Ottoman plan to create an Integral Azerbaijan, including the province of Tabriz, under the protectorate of Istanbul—these suspicions were substantiated by the occupation of this province by the Ottoman troops at the end of the summer of 1918.^[56]

From 1918 to 1920, Azerbaijan was almost constantly at war with Armenia and was also threatened, until 1919, by the White Russian army of Denikin. In spite of all these difficulties, its leaders established the first democratic Republic of the Muslim world (if one excludes the short-lived attempt in Western Thrace, during the Balkan wars) and the first secular state with a Muslim majority. The declaration of independence and the Constitution stressed the democratic nature of the new regime and the equality of all the citizens.^[57] The modernist ideas were partially inspired by Ahmet Ağaoğlu, one of the three representatives of Azerbaijan to the peace conference and a prolific writer.^[58]

In this regard, one of the most remarkable achievements was the right to vote obtained by the women in 1919. The same year, on September 1^st, the University of Baku was inaugurated. The arrival of British troops only reinforced the democratic nature of the regime, but since the main political party of Azerbaijan, the Musavat, never got an absolute majority at the National Assembly, the country was ruled by a series of instable coalition governments: five cabinets from May 1918 to April 1920. These cabinets, in the name of realism, gave the priority to national security and preferred to stress national identity instead of political pan-Turkism (by spreading education in Azerbaijani instead of Russian). However, the domestic policy was much less easier to define in economic and social terms. Indeed, the Musavat itself was divided between the left- and right-wings on the agrarian issue, and more exactly on the redistribution of land to the peasants. The economic difficulties (loss of the Russian market for the oil, diminution of the agricultural production, inflation, and unemployment) made the problem only more acute, and the lack of experienced Azeri civil servants—which was direct result of the Tzarist rule—did not ease the difficulties.^[59]

In military terms, they benefited first of the presence of the Ottoman army, and, after the armistice of Moudros, of the arrival 30,000 British soldiers, including 2,000 in Baku. The chief of this mission accepted the Azerbaijani government as “the only legitimate authority” and even called the Azerbaijani Prime Minister “one of the ablest men in Baku” However, this presence ended after for some months only. Indeed, back in November 1918, the British left during the year 1919, as a result of a decision of Prime Minister David Lloyd George, who did not want the British army being involved anymore in the Russian civil war. In fact, this is not until the beginning of 1920, after the final failure of Denikin, that the Lloyd George government seriously considered the Republic of Azerbaijan as a buffer state against the contamination of Communism to India and eastern Mediterranean countries. In this regard, there was a shift between Lloyd George and the military mission in Azerbaijan, who was favorable since 1919 to an alliance with Baku against Communism, eased the pressure of the Whites and even supported the Azerbaijani point of view on the Karabakh issue.^[60] This shift is even more remarkable since the financial issue can hardly explain the decision of London: indeed, the Azerbaijani government, like his Georgian counterpart, asked, in mid-1919, to maintain the British military presence and offered to pay the costs of these troops.^[61] A possible explanation is the primary interest of the British cabinet for the Middle East, especially the oil fields of Iran and Iraq.^[62]

Azerbaijan presented some absurd claims at the beginning of the Paris Peace conference (even demanding Batum), but after a few month, Baku moved to a much more realistic policy, securing an alliance with Georgia and the mountaineers against the White Russians and the Bolsheviks: on 16 June 1919, an Georgian-Azerbaijani alliance was signed, including a military assistance and a joint diplomatic action.^[63] Correspondingly, the national army attained 30,000 men in mid-1919.

C)      The Georgian resistance

Georgia, too, had to fight on multiple fronts. The country was a stronghold for the Mensheviks, who took 109 out of 130 seats at the National Assembly after the democratic elections of January 1919. Their absence of interest for ethnic-based nationalism was indeed congruent with the ethnic diversity of the country and their diplomacy was pragmatic: after the defeat of Germany, Tbilissi secured an alliance with Great Britain, which saw Georgia as a transit country to Azerbaijan and its oil. Regardless, Georgia was subjected to attempts of destabilization by Bolsheviks, as early as 1919, and to a blockade by the White Army of Anton Denikin in November of the same year. As a result, half of the national budget was devoted to defense in 1919.^[64]

The army attained 50,000 men this year, and it was not without reasons. In addition the ambitions of Denikin and the fear of a military invasion by Red Russia, the Communists established a new committee in Tbilissi and cells in other cities of Georgia, as early as 1919. As early as January of this year, the Communist leadership of Russia openly advocated the overthrow of the Menshevik regime.^[65]

Caucasian failures, Turkish recovery, Russian re-conquest (1920-1921)

A)     The Conquest of Azerbaijan and its consequences

For Lenin at the beginning of 1920, “the taking of Baku is absolutely, absolutely essential.”^[66] At the end of March 1920, the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict increased. The Soviets took profit of the situation: most of the Azerbaijani army being in the western part of the country, she could not protect Baku from the north. Red Russians also misled the Azeris, announcing that they were not invading the country, but simply passing to support the Kemalists in eastern Anatolia. At the eve of 27 April, the Communists took the control of all the vital points of Baku, to create a fait accompli. Georgia was surprised and the Kemalists had no desire to prevent the invasion, even if they if they regretted it, both for sentimental and very pragmatic reasons: they were themselves in a difficult situation, fighting the Greeks and the “Caliphate Army” on the west, the French on the south and concerned by Armenia irredentism on the north-east. They also depended on Soviet help to pursue the war of liberation. Red Russia was not the only power to provide weapons and goods to Kemalist Turkey (Italy did so as early as 1919), but this contribution was indispensable.^[67]

The Tcheka immediately opened branches in Azerbaijan and the classical Soviet repression took place. The Sovietization paradoxically took place without Soviets, except in Baku, because the voters, even the poorest ones, were considered as unreliable. All the local leaders, outside the capital city, were chosen by the conquerors. As a result, there was a mutiny in May 1920, drowned in blood by the Communists: 79 persons were shot to death preventively the next day and hundreds others were executed during the following weeks. Similarly, the insurrection of Shusha, led by General Nuri Paşa, was crushed in ten days, but the guerilla in the west of the country, beginning in September 1920, was not suppressed by the Bolsheviks until 1921. The last insurgents were eliminated in 1924 only. To prevent the extension of the insurrectional movements, the population was disarmed, those who kept weapons secretly facing immediate execution. In addition to the merciless nature of the Soviet regime, the main weakness of the rebels was their lack of coordination.^[68] Indeed, Communism was particularly unpopular among the Azeris: as late as 1925, in spite of the Soviet efforts, more than 50% of the members of the Azerbaijan Communist Party were ethnic Russians of Armenians.^[69] In addition to Ağaoğlu, arrested by the British in 1919 and released in 1921, several Azeris leaders fled to Turkey, where they developed modernist and anti-Communist ideas.^[70]

The collapse of Azerbaijan led to the withdrawal of the British troops from Georgia as early as July 1920, this country having lost its main advantage in the eyes of London (transit to Baku oil fields).^[71] The Communist conquest also opened the way to Armenia.

B)     The failure of Armenia

In summer 1920, the Armenian government asked weapons and military support to occupy eastern Anatolia. Requested to suggest an answer, the French High Commissioner in Tbilissi Damien de Martel did not say yes or no by his letter dated July 20, 1920, but presented a very critical appreciation of the Dashnak cabinet, especially regarding the ethnic cleansing against the Azeris. Damien de Martel explicitly referred to the physical elimination of 40,000 “Tatars” in the south of Erevan in June 1920, including 4,000 killed (without exemption for women and children) and 36,000 expelled “by canon shots” to Turkey.^[72] No weapons were sent and no troops were landed in Trabzon, and both British and American representatives—as well as Azerbaijani ones—expressed similar grievances in 1920,^[73] but the ethnic cleansing continued during  the summer of this year. Minister of Interior Rupen Ter Minassian, the main person in charge of this program, called it a “ferocious plan.”^[74]>

Added to the massacres and expulsions in Kars since 1919^[75] and the territorial claims against Turkey (these claims extended until Adana and there were attempts to eliminate the Muslim majority of the city, especially in mid-1920),^[76] these actions shaped an aggressive and expansionist policy that could be only perceived as extremely provocative by the Kemalists. Without explicitly mentioning the practice of ethnic cleansing, H. Katchaznouni yet notices:

“Despite these hypotheses there remains an irrefutable fact. That we had not done all that was necessary for us to have done to evade war. We ought to have used peaceful language with the Turks whether we succeeded or not, and we did not do it. […] With the carelessness of inexperienced and ignorant men we did not know what forces Turkey had mustered on our frontiers. When the skirmishes had started the Turks proposed that we meet and confer. We did not do so and defied them.”^[77]

The Russian re-conquest of Azerbaijan, the Bolshevik insurrection in Armenia itself in May 1920 and the increase of Kemalist power in Anatolia should have left no illusion to Erevan, but the expansionist ideology and the traditional Russophilia (direct result of the Turkophobia) prevailed. On August 10, 1920, the Dashnak dictatorship signed an agreement with Soviet Russia. Without surprise, Damien de Martel, considered this agreement a “defection”^[78] and warned Erevan that “we would not tolerate that the Armenian question would be settled by the Bolsheviks only.”^[79] The British representative in Tbilisi was equally “furious.”^[80] As a result, if any hope of Western support remained, this rapprochement with Soviet Russia eliminated it, and, far from inciting the Soviet to accommodation with the Dashnaks, they considered this diplomatic opening as a proof of weakness and isolation.

After the heavy defeat of the Armenian army against the Turkish one and the occupation of Erevan by the Communist forces, at the end of 1920, two myths emerged and are still frequently believed: first, a “plot” between Ankara and Moscow to destroy the independent Armenia; and secondly a “massacre” of the Armenians in Kars and Ardahan.^[81] In fact, even Armenian historian Serge Afanasyan conclusively demonstrated, with primary sources, that the relations between Ankara and Moscow deteriorated during the months preceding the Turkish offensive against Armenia and that this offensive, far from having been coordinated with Moscow, was a way to force both the Dashnaks and the Soviets to accept the Turkish-Armenian boundary wished by the Turkish national movement. The Bolsheviks were less than happy by the Kemalist offensive and did not choose immediately to reply by an invasion of Armenia, preferring, as a first step, to be mediators.^[82]

The myth of the “massacre” in Kars was crushed more than thirty years ago by Heath Lowry, relying on the testimonies of the American Relief workers who were in this city. On October 31, 1920, Edward Fox, district commander of the Near East Relief in Kars, sent a telegram to Admiral Bristol, saying: “The Turkish soldiers are well disciplined and there have been no massacres.” Fox repeatedly told Bristol there was no massacre—except in two villages where a part of the inhabitants had attacked the Turkish soldiers (about fifty Armenians were killed). The testimony of Fox is totally confirmed by the one of his associate George White, who spoke with Admiral Bristol on May 3, 1921.^[83]

Having checked the sources of Prof. Lowry, I have only one critique to present: he did not mention that White spoke Turkish^[84]—but of course, this precision, far from undermining Heath Lowry’s conclusions, reinforces them. Verification in the French archives also confirms these findings in the U.S. ones. Indeed, Edward Fox (previously cited) told a French representative on “the perfect order, the organization and the conduct of the Turks” in Kars and Alexandropol (Gümrü in Turkish, Gyumri in Armenian). Even more strikingly, past Prime Minister Alexander Khatissian expressed his satisfaction about the “disciplined” Turkish army^[85] and “the Armenian runaways themselves admit the Turkish troops did not commit atrocities this time.”^[86]

Such myths are useful to hide the reality: Dashnak Armenia was collapsing and did not actually resist the Turkish offensive. The country offered “scenes of pandemonium.”^[87] A completely exhausted country, deeply divided between those who preferred the Turks to the Reds and those who preferred the reverse, signed peace with the Turks on December 3, 1920, becoming the first country to recognize de jure the government of Ankara.^[88]

C)      The last desperate attempts of Georgia and the Sovietization

Understanding well the Soviet danger, the Georgian government tried to attract European support by establishing a kind of lobby of Socialists (French, Belgian, British and even German) in 1920. For the social-democrats, Georgia was the first democratic Socialist country in the world, a counter-model against the totalitarian Communism imposed by Lenin. Indeed, at that time, the Scandinavian experiences did not begin yet, and if the kibbutzim already existed, the state of Israel was still merely a project. However, since no social-democrat party was leading any government of a major power in 1920-1921, the effect of this lobby, in spite all of the efforts of its members remained limited.^[89]

Pragmatically, the Republic of Georgia also established diplomatic relations with the Ankara government in spring 1920,^[90] but, as it was seen in the case of Azerbaijan, it was not a strong guarantee against the Soviet Russia. There were some projects of a joint Turkish-Georgian action against the Bolsheviks, and even a Georgian proposal for a confederation with Turkey, but the situation of the Kemalists was not yet sufficiently stable to break the ties with the Soviets, still less to fight them. Indeed, the reconciliation with the French was formally signed only in October 1921 and the Italians did not leave Anatolia until this year.^[91]

Tbilisi signed a treaty in May 1920 with Red Russia, guarantying Georgian integrity and neutrality but Georgians know what a treaty means for Russia. Until the invasion of February 1921, the Georgian military intelligence service supported insurgents of Dagestan and Tchetchenya, including Saïd Chamil, the grandson of Imam Chamil. In January, a joint committee of Azerbaijani and North-Caucasians was established in Tbilissi.^[92] Regardless, these guerillas, albeit problematic for the Bolsheviks, did not represent threat able to block a military offensive. After the Red Army took the control of Armenia, in December 1920, the League of Nations rejected the demand of Georgia to be a member state. It was the final failure of the Western powers that paved the way to the invasion of Georgia in February 1921.^[93] According to the French Navy’s Intelligence service, the Georgian army was not effective and its collapse had been announced at the beginning of December 1920.^[94] Regardless, the only help for Georgia at the beginning of 1921 went from France: its ships bombarded the Bolshevik positions from the Black sea; weapons and ammunitions from the stocks of Wrangel in Istanbul were also provided.^[95]

When the Russian army invaded the country, the Turkish army, led by Kazım Karabekir, took Ardahan as a fait accompli and even tried to take Batumi, to force the Bolsheviks to accept the pre-1878 boundary. Actually, the Georgian government himself asked the Turks to do so, to avoid a complete occupation by Communists.^[96] There were indeed increasing tensions, at the beginning of 1921, between the Kemalists and the Bolsheviks, regarding precisely the boundary with Georgia and Armenia (and the mysterious death of the Turkish Communist leader Mustafa Suphi), but Moscow eventually preferred conciliation and signed a treaty of Friendship and Help with Ankara in March. In spite of new problems (such as the occupation of Gümrü by the Turkish army until April 23, 1921), Moscow and Ankara reached a final peace treaty in Kars in October, after the victories of the Kemalists against the Greeks in August—not unlike the French, who signed a draft of agreement in London in March 1921 and the real agreement in Ankara in October; interestingly, in March, the Turks signed peace outside, but in October, inside. The relations, however, deteriorated again as early as 1922.^[97]

At the same time, the brutality of the Russian occupation exasperated a part of the population (as even the Soviet historian B. A. Borian admitted), leading to the Dashnak insurrection in Erevan in February 1921, but this insurrection was crushed for good by the Communists as early as April 2, 1921. Simon Vratsian, the leader of the insurrection, who prepared the treaty of Gümrü with the Kemalists, used it as an argument to ask for Kemalist help, but this demand was left unanswered.^[98] The Dashnaks continued to control the Zanguezour for a few months, but they hardly retook credibility in the eyes of the Western powers. Especially, as late as July 5, 1921, they pretended to control “one third” of Armenia and even claimed the application of the dead-born Sèvres treaty,^[99] but in fact, eleven days later it was their final defeat. Their leaders and fighters fled in Iran.^[100] The final failure was the abandonment of the project of “Armenian National home” in Turkey during the conference of Lausanne (1922-1923).

The Sovietization in Georgia was less violent than in Armenia or Azerbaijan because there was no strong opposition in the countryside. According to the French Navy’s Intelligence service, it was due to the kind of Soviets already established by the Mensheviks, who accustomed the peasants to obedience. Regarding the urban population, the example of the crimes committed by the Bolsheviks in other parts of the Caucasus, in Russia and elsewhere was particularly dissuasive. As a result, the Georgian communists avoided violence and did not provoke insurrections. Lenin himself suggested moderation in a telegram sent on March 20, 1921.^[101]

When the Bolsheviks terminated their conquest of the Caucasus (1921), Lenin was also finishing the move of Soviet Russia to a rigid dictatorship, banning the faction in the Communist Party itself, after having eliminated both rightist and leftist opponents outside of the party.^[102] Theoretically independent in 1921, the Republics of southern Caucasus were united in a federation in 1922 and integrated in 1923 in the newly created USSR.^[103]

Conclusion

Western powers, especially Britain, did not know what they wanted. The Lloyd George cabinet was anti-Communist, but abandoned Georgia in 1920. On Azerbaijan, the shift between London and the mission in contact with the local realities led to the victory of the Bolsheviks. Italy interested mostly in trade and did not possess the financial ways of a strong military policy. The French presence was too weak by lack of ways, because of the occupation of Germany and Cilicia as well as because the virtual exhaustion of the population after more than four years of a devastating war. The White Russians, heirs of the Tzars, failed to understand that things had changed after the Bolshevik coup d’État and did not respect the national aspirations, especially in Azerbaijan.

On the other hand, Communists knew exactly what they wished, securing the neutrality of Kemalist Turkey and attacking the Caucasian states one by one. Kemal Atatürk, too, conducted a coherent policy, accepting simultaneously Italian and Bolshevik help, signing peace at the same time with Red Russians and their sworn enemy (the French government), sending Karabekir to retake Kars and Ardahan but avoiding a pan-Turanist policy, especially regarding Azerbaijan—in continuity, in fact, with what Enver himself had tried in 1917-1918.