Russian Armenia

[dubious – discuss] In 1722, the Tsar of Russia, Peter the Great, declared war against the Safavid Iranians, who were at that time in heavy decline.

The Russian campaigns found enthusiastic support amongst the Armenians, led by the Bishop of Tbilisi, Nerses Ashtaraketsi, who took part in the fighting in person.

Russian nobles derived their income from their estates worked by serfs and, with their aristocratic distaste for engaging in business, they had little understanding or sympathy for the way of life of mercantile Armenians.

Armenian entrepreneurs were quick to exploit the oil boom which began in Transcaucasia in the 1870s, having large investments in the oil-fields in Baku in Azerbaijan and the refineries of Batumi on the Black Sea coast.

All this meant that the tensions between Armenians, Georgians and Azeris in Russian Transcaucasia were not simply ethnic or religious in nature but were due to social and economic factors too.

Until 1840, Russian Armenia was a separate administrative unit, the Armenian Oblast, but it was then merged into other Transcaucasian provinces with no regard to its national identity.

Being part of the Russian Empire also turned Armenia away from the Middle East and towards Europe and modern intellectual currents such as the Enlightenment and Romanticism.

Armenians still living in western Armenia under the Ottoman Empire had grown increasingly discontented and looked towards Russia to free them from Turkish rule.

[19][20] After the assassination of the reform-minded Tsar Alexander II in 1881, the attitude of the Russian authorities towards the national minorities of the empire changed dramatically.

[citation needed] Russification began in earnest in 1885, when the Viceroy of the Caucasus, Dondukov-Korsakov, ordered the closure of all Armenian parish schools and their replacement by Russian ones.

Now it was Russia who supported the status quo in western Armenia, with the British urging improvement in conditions for Christians in the region.

Until that point, the ideas of Grigor Artsruni, the editor of the Tbilisi-based newspaper Mshak ("The Cultivator"), enjoyed great popularity among the Armenian intelligentsia.

Its aims were carrying out reprisals against Kurds believed to be guilty of persecuting Armenians in the Ottoman Empire, as well as smuggling arms and encouraging guerrilla action.

In 1890, Mikaelian and his colleague Simon Zavarian replaced Young Armenia with a new party: the Armenian Revolutionary Federation, usually known as the "Dashnaks".

Anti-Armenian feeling among the Georgians and Azeris of Transcaucasia was also on the rise, inflamed by the editor of the official newspaper Kavkaz ("Caucasus"), V.L.

In 1897, Tsar Nicholas appointed the Armenophobic Grigory Sergeyevich Golitsin as governor of Transcaucasia, and Armenian schools, cultural associations, newspapers and libraries were closed.

[27][28] The tsar's Russification programme reached its peak with the decree of June 12, 1903 ordering the confiscation of the properties of the Armenian Church.

In 1904, the Dashnak congress specifically extended their programme to look after the rights of Armenians within the Russian Empire as well as Ottoman Turkey.

Unrest in Transcaucasia, which also included major strikes, reached a climax with the widespread uprisings throughout the Russian Empire known as the 1905 Revolution.

The Ottoman Empire did not join the world war until several months had passed and, as the possibility of a Caucasus Campaign come closer, in the summer of 1914, Count Illarion Ivanovich Vorontsov-Dashkov consulted with the Mayor of Tbilisi Alexandre Khatsian, the primate of Tbilisi, Bishop Mesrop, and the prominent civic leader Dr. Hakob Zavriev about the creation of Armenian volunteer detachments.

The Ottoman authorities embarked on the genocide of their Armenian subjects as early as April 1915 following the rapid Russian advance in the Caucasus Campaign and the Siege of Van.

While it scored military successes against the Turks, the Russian war machine began to disintegrate on its front against Germany and in February 1917 the tsarist regime was overthrown by a revolution in Saint Petersburg.

The issue of the continuation of the war was a highly contentious one amongst the political parties of the new Russia, with most favouring a "democratic peace"; but since the provinces of Ottoman Armenia were under Russian military occupation at the time of the revolution, the Armenians believed that the government would agree to defend them.

To help out, the Provisional Government began replacing Russian troops, whose commitment to continued fighting was in doubt, with Armenian ones on the Caucasian front.

The council passed a law to organise the defense of the Caucasus against the Ottoman Empire using the vast quantity of supplies and ammunition left over from the departure of the Russian army.

The major problem confronting the new state was the advancing Ottoman army, which by now had recaptured much of western Armenia, but the interests of the three peoples were very different.

Reluctantly, the Dashnak leaders, who were the most powerful Armenian politicians in the region, declared the formation of a new independent state, the First Republic of Armenia on May 28, 1918.

Andranik Ozanian rejected these new borders and proclaimed the new state, where his activities were concentrated at the link between the Ottoman Empire to the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic at Karabakh, Zanghezur and Nakhichevan.

In January 1919, with Armenian troops advancing, the British forces (Lionel Dunsterville) ordered Andranik back to Zangezur, and gave him assurances that this conflict could be solved with the Paris Peace Conference of 1919.

However, Baku fell on September 15, 1918 and an Azeri-Ottoman army entered the capital, causing British forces and much of the Armenian population to flee.