It seemed in May of 1918 as if it were the final days of the existence of the Armenian nation in their historical homeland. Gathered in the shade of Mount Ararat, Eastern Armenians and a segment of Western Armenians – genocide survivors –were left alone, facing several Ottoman units who had crossed the Akhurian and the Araxes rivers, and were attacking in the directions of Gharakilisa (Vanadzor), Bash-Aparan (Aparan), and Sardarapat.
The Muslims of the province of Yerevan– the Turks, the Tatars, and the Kurds– had also risen in the second half of 1918, and the fertile Ararat plain was surrounded by enemies.
The fall of Kars and Alexandrapol (Gyumri) and the assault of the Turks towards the Ararat plain had generated indescribable chaos and fear in Yerevan. To many people, resistance seemed impossible and pointless. But where to run? Roads to Tiflis (Tbilisi)and Baku were closed, the railroad to Iran was not working, and Nakhijevan was in the hands of the Muslims. Only the roads from the west and the north were open, from where the Turkish troops were entering and occupying the Armenian towns and massacring its residents. The only option was to resist and die honourably.
“We are alone and we must rely on our powers, both to defend the front and to establish order in the country,” said Aram Manukyan (Sargis Hovannisyan), one of the founders of the First Republic of Armenia.
In the early spring of 1918, the people and the military of Yerevan declared Aram Manukyan dictator and handed him absolute authority. Under his command, Aram managed to link all of the active elements in the region and put everyone to work. Through collaboration with Drastamat Kanayan (Dro), General Movses Silikyan, and Daniel Bek-Pirumyan, State Commissar Sahak Torosyan, political parties, and governmental and non governmental bodies, he managed to generate extraordinary energy and, at the most decisive moment, skilfully directed the fate of the Armenian people in the Ararat plain.
After the fall of Alexandrapol, one section of the Armenian forces had retreated, fighting, towards Yerevan, having reached Sardarapat on May 19.
The Catholicos of All Armenians Gevorg V Surenyants addressed the nation: “The Turk, the bloodthirsty enemy of our reasonable flock, is moving towards the heart of our country, our faith, our life’s story– towards Etchmiadzin. Our generals are suggesting to the Catholicos of All Armenians to leave to the enemy’s maws the Holy See of Etchmiadzin, our holy places, the Armenian people, and to take refuge in Byurakan. No and no, a thousand times no. I will not abandon the Holy See entrusted to me by our forebears. I will not leave the hearth of the Armenian Apostolic faith. If the Armenian soldiers themselves, if the Armenian nation is unable to stop the enemy’s progress, if they are powerless to save our relics, then let me be martyred right here, at the threshold of the Holy Mother See of which I have the privilege of being the Catholicos, by the just intercession of our sacred forebears and God’s mercy.”
General Silikyan, commander of the Yerevan forces, exhorted every single Armenian with a special call to gather their utmost strength and strike the enemy for the sake of the salvation of the fatherland, in defence of the honour of all their wives and daughters: “ARMENIANS! It is not time to slow down. Every man up to the age of fifty is obliged to take arms and I DEMAND that they report with their firearms and ammunition for the defence of the homeland. For the sake of the physical existence of this eternally-tortured people, in the name of violated justice. Rise! To work! To Holy War!”
After occupying Alexandrapol in mid-May and Gharakilisa from May 24-28, with fatalities on both sides during heavy battles, the Turks moved towards Tiflis. The Western Armenians who had found shelter in the city were particularly terrified by the Turkish invasion. Thousands of people – young and old, villager and city dweller, worker and intellectual – rushed towards the Georgian Military Highway with whatever they could. One end had already reached Vladikavkaz (North Ossetia-Alania) and Armavir (Russia), while the other was only just leaving Tiflis. The migration was disorganised, spontaneous, and attacks on the migrants were commonplace.
The setback in Gharakilisa did not determine the fate of the Armenian people because the Armenian forces – responding to an appeal from the Mother See of Holy Etchmiadzin and with the help of the people – were able to stop the Turks at Bash -Aparan and Sardarapat, and then even to push them back.
Over the course of the fierce, decisive battles at the front during the last days of May, the Ottoman forces were thrown back towards Alexandrapol. The Armenians, inspired by victory, were moving forward, convinced that they would clear Russian Armenia of Turks. General Silikyan wanted to chase the fleeing Turkish army. Silikyan and Commander Vekilov believed that the Armenian forces could liberate the city in two days.
On May 29, he made his second appeal to the Armenians: “We must take Alexandrapol back from the Turks. They are demanding the towns of Akhalkalak, Alexandrapol, and Etchmiadzin, and the majority of the province of Yerevan and Nakhijevan. Can we allow such an insult? Never! We must seize Alexandrapol from them.”
By May 28, the Armenians of Yerevan guberniya (the administrative division of the Russian Empire) were certain that Alexandrapol would be retaken. Some even had visions of advancing as far as Kars. But Silikyan received a startling order from Corps Commander Nazarbekyan (Nazarbekov). Hostilities were to cease, for news had just arrived that a truce had been concluded in Batum (Batumi), and the Armenian delegation was negotiating for peace. It would have been difficult to find an Armenian who would not have welcomed the tidings a week earlier. But now the circumstances had changed and the voices of disapproval and anger echoed throughout the land.
The military leaders and Aram Manukyan received scores of appeals to ignore the order and to continue the advance to Alexandrapol. Many urged Silikyan to declare himself commander-in-chief and to save the nation by force of arms, the only language the enemy understood. Now that the Turks were retreating, how was it possible to cease fire and permit the invaders to maintain possession of Armenian lands? General Silikyan, however, refused to yield to such counsel and instructed his troops to halt. Though widely and caustically chastised for agreeing to a truce, the Corps Command and the National Council had been compelled to take account of the fact that the stores of ammunition were either empty or nearly exhausted, and that sizeable Turkish reinforcement were close by. If peace was not concluded and if then the tide of victory turned in favour of the Ottomans, the consequences would be disastrous.
In mid-1918 the remnants of the Armenian people were left a mangled bit of land, for lack of a better term, that they called a republic. But as pitiful a state as was the Republic of Armenia in May 1918, its very existence was, nevertheless, an amazing accomplishment.
It was not a republic, but aninfertile and isolated piece of land, filled with cliffs and mountains, orphans and refugees, and suffering and adversity.
The country was in an exceptionally grave state. Tiny Armenia was filled with an army of migrants, while existing resources were not enough to satisfy the essential needs of the locals. Without exaggeration it can be said that hunger ruled the newly-formed state. People were dying from hunger in the streets, markets, and parks of Yerevan; moans and groans and whimpers could be heard the entire day. Skeletal children were searching for something to eat in the garbage, digging in the rubbish with their hands. According to an eye-witness account, “On walking along the street on your way to work, you could see a woman and child in rags, curled up under a wall on the pavement, shivering from the cold and whining. They were not holding out their hands, they did not want anything. Little by little they were dying from hunger in front of your eyes”.
The inglorious birth of the republic followed four years of devastating warfare, the decimation of the Turkish Armenian (Western Armenian) population, the illusory hopes prompted by the first Russian revolution of February1917, the disastrous policy of the Sovnarkom at Brest-Litovsk, the relentless Turkish invasion of 1918, the disintegration of Transcaucasia, and, finally, the frantic efforts of the Armenian leaders to save the nation from total annihilation.
At three o’clock in the afternoon on May 26, 1918, the Democratic Federative Republic of Transcaucasia was no more. President Nikolay Chkheidze wired the obituary to the capitals of eighteen nations. That same evening, the Georgian National Council declared Georgia’s independence and appointed Noi Zhordania as the head of the government. The Muslim National Council convened in Tiflis on May 27 and endorsed a proposal to declare “Eastern and Southern Transcaucasia” an independent, sovereign, democratic state. The official act establishing the republic of Azerbaijan was proclaimed on the following day. In the middle of June, 1918, the MuslimNational Council relocated from Tiflis to Ganja (Gandzak, Elizavetpol), the temporary capital of Azerbaijan, and with the permission of Ottoman military commander Nuri Bey formed a cabinet headed by Fathali Khan Khoyskii. Nuri Bey was already in Ganja and actively organising hundreds of irregulars into the Army of Islam to conquer Baku.
While Georgians and Azerbaijanis took concrete steps to strengthen the foundations of their newly-proclaimed republics, the Armenian leaders were thrown into turmoil. The Armenian Social Democrats and the Populists called for independence, insisting that no alternative existed. The ARF (Armenian Revolutionary Federation-Dashnaktsutyun Party) was badly split. Council Chairman Avetis Aharonyan, together with Ruben Ter-Minasyan and Artashes Babalyan opposed independence, while Simon Vratsyan and Khachatur Karjikyan favoured taking the momentous step. Hovhannes Kajaznuni and Alexander Khatisyan stressed that the only possibility for survival required declaring independence and securing peace with Turkey, no matter the cost. “The Armenian National Council was forced to announce Armenia’s independence,” wrote Vratsyan. “I emphasise, was forced, because at that time everyone considered independence an awful prospect and a risk, placing the Armenian nation under the Turkish yoke.”
After a long debate, Armenia was declared independent, but the May 30 declaration made no mention of “independence “or “republic”. Only after news of Armenian military successes near Yerevan had been confirmed and peace had been concluded at Batum did the National Council dare publicly to use the title “the Republic of Armenia”.
Thus, during the last days of May, 1918, three independent republics were born amidst the chaos and ruin of the Transcaucasus. The failure to gain peace through the Batum negotiations, the Turkish drive deep into the Tiflis and Yerevan guberniyas, and the absence of cohesion among Georgians, Armenians, and Tatars shattered the wobbling foundations of the Transcaucasian Federation. In contrast to their neighbours, the Armenians shuddered before the prospect of independence. Having been abandoned and thrown upon the mercy of the same Turkish rulers who had annihilated the Armenians of the Ottoman Empire, they searched desperately for a glimmer of hope.
In Vratsyan’s words: “In March 1918, the Turks were capable of occupying both Yerevan and the whole of Armenia, but they did not do so. On the contrary, on June 4, they signed a peace treaty with the representatives of the government of the newly-formed Armenia, and thus, de facto, recognised the independence of Armenia. And so, with the bitter irony of history, the first international recognition of the independence of Armenia was by the Turks.”
On May 28, the Armenian National Council had selected Khatisyan, Kajaznuni, and Papajanyan to return to Batum with unlimited powers for negotiating a peace with the Turks on behalf of the Armenian people. “We stayed in Batum for eight days, until June 5, and during the entire time we were busy with the drafting of a peace treaty,” wrote Khatisyan. “It was the first international act that Armenia had to implement. During the first session, Vehib Pasha personally drew Armenia’s borders on that historical map which had been with me in Trebizond and would be later in Constantinople, Alexandrapol, and Europe. When we took a look at the map, we were overwhelmed with two sharp feelings. The first was pride – after dreaming for centuries, we would finally have a little corner of our own on the map of the world. The second was bitterness– this corner was barely 9,000 sq km, absolutely inadequate for accommodating our people.”
During the negotiations, the Turks agreed to give Armenia another one thousand square kilometers territory “in the spirit of good relations ”. Armenia was limited to the province of Nor Bayazet, and the eastern portions of the provinces of Alexandrapol, Etchmiadzin, Yerevan, and Sharur-Daralagyaz.
On June 6, the Armenian delegation returned to Tiflis and presented the Treaty of Batum to the National Council. The assessment of the losses showed that the Transcaucasus had been sheared of over 20%of its territory on which nearly 20%of its total population had lived in 1914. Nearly three-quarters of the ceded territory had been wrenched from the Kars oblast and Yerevan guberniia. The population in the remaining districts of the Yerevan guberniya, that is, in the Republic of Armenia, was composed of approximately 300,000 of the two million Russian Armenians and at least an equal number of refugees from Turkish Armenia and regions surrendered at Brest-Litovsk and Batum. Even in this pitifully tiny area, there were nearly 100,000 Muslims.
On August 1, 1918, on the official opening day of Armenia’s Council (parliament), its president Avetik Sahakyan, reminded those present that, “After the collapse of the Transcaucasus our country was left at the mercy of fate, thus the Armenian National Council rushed to take on itself all of the functions of the government. It was at that time (end of May- beginning of June), that the infamous ultimatum of the Ottoman Empire was received, demanding an answer in 48 hours. A delegation was sent to Batum, headed by Kajaznuni, Papajanyan and Khatisyan. Our delegation was forced to accept the ultimatum and sign a peace agreement with Vehib Pasha and Khalil Bey. The Armenian National Council clenched its teeth, and with cold diligence decided to accept the ultimatum and recognise Armenia’s independence, handing itself over to the unbiased judgment of history. Yes, our republic is small, with constricted boundaries. Our country’s borders cannot remain fixed forever. I believe that our county’s borders will expand with the iron power of life and with our new good-will treaty with Turkey and its allies, the representatives of which are present here.”
In the words of one of the ARF leaders, Ruben Ter-Minasyan: “Even though the Republic of Yerevan was independent in 1918 and even though the ideology of a United and Independent Armenia was proposed in1919, those were in fact only incomprehensibl and empty words for the majority of the RussianArmenians. Even for state establishments and many of their representatives, the independence acquired was a temporary phenomenon. Armenia was considered a part of Russian territory and even the Armenian army a part of the Russian army.”
The first government (cabinet) of Armenia formed in Tiflis (Tbilisi), and the Armenian National Council only reluctantly moved to Yerevan. In Vratsyan’s words the members of the Council “did not want to part from Tiflis”. There were heated arguments during consecutive sessions. “Moving to Yerevan was unacceptable to many.” The issue of moving to Yerevan was firmly raised during the joint session of the National Council and the government. The ARF demanded that the National Council and the government immediately move to Yerevan with their entire structure. The Armenian Popular Party proposed sending a delegation to Yerevan and forming a local government and keeping the Armenian National Council, as a national body, in Tiflis. The Socialist Revolutionaries were proposing sending the National Council and government to Yerevan to form Armenia’s local authorities, after which the National Council would return to Tiflis and this wealthy country in the Caucasus,to remain as a “general national authority”. In the beginning, the Social Democrats were for moving to Yerevan, but after a short while they started “hesitating”. Kajaznuni announced that should the National Council remain in Tiflis or should two National Councils be formed, he would resign from his position as Prime Minister. With seven for and five against votes it was decided to move the National Council and government to Yerevan.
On July 17, the National Council and the government moved to Yerevan from Tiflis. From Sanahin station onwards, the railway was in the hands of the Turks and passing through Alexandrapol was dangerous. It was decided to move from Tiflis to Aghstafa and reach Yerevan, the dusty and poor capital city of the newly-formed republic, via Dilijan. Kajaznuni, Khachatur Karjikyan (Minister of Finance), General Hovhannes Hakhverdyan (Minister of War), and the members of the National Council were amongst those departing. Two German and one Turkish officer were leaving for Yerevan with them.
Artashes Babalyan writes, “The Georgian government displayed a rough and uncivilised attitude. They did not provide wagons on time and they did not allow us to take the National Council’s few old and worn-out vehicles. Only after long negations did they allow us to put a few necessary items and vehicles on the train. None of the representatives of the Georgian authorities had come to bid us farewell. The Armenian general public was totally indifferent. We received a warm welcome from Azerbaijan’s authorities, in Ghazakh”.
From Ghazakh the delegation reached Karvansara (Ijevan) and Dilijan in the evening. It had been proposed in Tiflis that Kajaznuni and Khatisyan be candidates for the post of Prime Minister and that there should not be a single-party government. However, the Populists demanded the post of the Prime Minister, putting forward the candidacy of Papajanyan. They said that the Turks did not trust the ARF and that they would create difficulties. Kajaznuni proposed the candidacy of Populists Papajanyan and Samson Harutyunyan for the post of Foreign Affairs Minister, but they both refused. Kajaznuni had no other choice but to form a single-party government. The delegation reached Yerevan on July 19.
Arshavir Shahkhatuni, the commandant of Yerevan, writes, “At three o’clock the battalions were standing at the head of Abovian Street, at St. Sargis Church. Aram arrived by car and announced that the government was coming. Several minutes later the governmental group with their vehicles appeared at the corner of the main avenue. I ordered, ‘Ceremonial parade, ready,, salute!’. And, drawing my sword out of its sheath, I approached the members of the government, together with fifty cavalrymen. I lowered my sword in front of Armenia’s Prime Minister, while my horse was rearing up on two legs. I said, ‘Your Excellency, as the Military Commander of the capital city of Armenia, I welcome your arrival. I am immensely happy that after many centuries I am the first officer lowering his sword in front of his government. At this moment I am proudly putting my sword back in its sheath and will take it out when you give the command to defend our unmatched homeland’. Kajaznuni replied very emotionally, just holding back his tears. This is how the entrance of Armenia’s first government into Yerevan took place”.
Kajaznuni’s government had four ministers: Manukyan (Internal Affairs), Khatisyan (Foreign Affairs), Hakhverdyan, and Karjikyan. All, apart from Hakhverdyan, were members of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation – Dashnaktsutyun Party. Prior to departing for Yerevan, Kajaznuni and the National Council had appointed Armenia’s diplomatic representatives in several locations: Arshak Jamalyan in Georgia, Hovhannes Saghatelyan at the Russian volunteer army, Grigor Dzamoyan at the Alexander Kolchak army, and Simon Vratsyan to the governments of Kuban and Don.
Prior to Armenia’s government moving to Yerevan, Aram was governing the republic. He had carried out vast organisational works aimed at creating state structures and establishing law and order. It was necessary to create a state apparatus, a legal system, to bring the country out of anarchy, provide the migrants with food, resolve border conflicts with neighbours and settle the internal revolts of the Muslims which were aimed at the Armenian majority and their newly-appointed government. The largest and most effective power in Armenia and, generally speaking, in the Armenian worldwas the ARF, which carried the entire political responsibility of the newly-independent republic on its shoulders.
Although peace had been signed in Batum, the Armenians and Turks interpreted the subject matter of the treaty differently. In order to resolve issues connected with the treaty, the National Council of Yerevan sent a special delegation to Alexandrapol headed by Mkrtich Musinyan, who was assigned to negotiate with Turkish commander Kâzim Karabekir around several issues arising from the Batum treaty: the return of the refugees to their homes, the exchange of hostages, the conditions for the Turkish army to pass through Armenia, the issue of handing over the railway, and relinquishing Gharakilisa to the Armenians. The Turks did not accept the demands of the Armenians. On July 7, without interrupting the Alexandrapol negotiations, the Turks once again moved forward towards Sardarapat. Silikyan ordered the army to leave the railway and take position in the region of Etchmiadzin. The trench battles continued until July 9 when the Turks occupied positions seven kilometres away from Yerevan, directing their artillery towards the capital city of Armenia.
Those were difficult and troubling days. Without the knowledge of Yerevan’s National Council, the Georgian National Council had declared independence in Tiflis, and a small Armenia around Mount Ararat, under the forceful and alert control of Aram, was living gloomy days of uncertain destiny, writes Vahan Navasardyan, one of the ARF figures of that time. It was an exceptional situation surrounded on all four sides by a round chain, deprived of almost all means of communication with the outside world. It was a country in which the Foreign Affairs Minister held the title only because it is hard to imagine a government without such apposition. Encircled and chained by Turkish armies and a Muslim Tatar population, Armenia was living by itself, with its thoughts and sufferings, condemned to the horror of a doomed future.
In Vratsyan’s words, during those days Armenia was a “mound of formless chaos and ruins”.
“The birth of the republic was not welcomed with sounds of joy and applause. On the contrary, for many it was viewed as an untimely birth. Some could not believe in it; they put the words ‘independence’ and ‘republic’ in brackets. And the bases to do so were very strong. The conditions were truly horrifying and independence seemed ironic in those conditions. A tiny piece of land, twelve thousand square kilometres, was left in the hands of the Armenians. A poor and semi-destroyed country squeezed between arid mountains, in a forsaken corner of the world, overloaded with migrants and orphans, surrounded by teeth-grinding enemies, without bread, without medication, and without help; hunger and epidemic, looting and ravage, tears and misery, massacre and terror. On the other hand, there was the triumphant army of Enver, inspired by pan-Turkist dreams which aimed towards Absheron and Turkestan through Armenia. Such was the situation in Armenia, while there was total chaos in Tiflis. After May 26, Armenian-Georgian relations had become tense. The Georgians, high on their independence and German support, were treating the Armenians, clutching at the hem of Russia’s robes, with enmity. The Armenians, in their turn, considered the Georgians conspirators and traitors.”
The humble birth of Armenia was preceded by the collapse of the Tsarist regime in Russia. And so, in May 1918, the Republic of Armenia was declared on a small piece of Armenian land attached to Russia – about nine centuries and more than five hundred years after the fall of the Bagratid Armenian kingdom and the Armenian state of Cilicia respectively. Although in the following months Armenia was going to gradually expand, turning from formless chaos into a true republic, the Armenian regions under the military-political control of the Ottoman Empire and the Kemalists never did become a part of Armenia’s republic.
More than ninety years later, and today the Armenian dream to have a “Free, Independent, and United Armenia” continues to crumble on the slopes of Ararat.
From Tatul Hakobyan’s book – ARMENAINS and TURKS
Photo- Soviet Georgia’s, Soviet Armenia’s and Soviet Azerbaijan’s leaders Eduard Shevardnadze, Karen Demirchyan, and Haydar Aliyev
