Armenia

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ARMENIA

eastern (russian) armenians
western (turkish) armenians
the armenian question
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The Armenians transformed during the nineteenth century from being members of widely dispersed ethno-religious communities speaking mutually unintelligible dialects to rediscovery of themselves as a people (zhoghovurd) with a shared history and culture and, for progressive intellectuals and political activists, as a nation (azg). Since the loss of their last kingdom in 1375, the Armenians had survived as subjects of multinational empires—primarily Turkic and Persian and, since the early nineteenth century, Russian. The historic homeland, bounded roughly by the Euphrates River and Anti-Taurus Mountains in the west, the Pontic Mountains in the north, the Taurus Mountains in the south, and the plain of Ararat and Karabagh highlands in the east, was divided unequally. In 1878, after several Russo-Persian and Russo-Turkish wars, about three-fourths of this plateau made up the eastern vilayets (provinces) of the Ottoman Empire (Van, Bitlis, Diarbekir, Kharpert, Sivas, Erzerum), known unofficially as Turkish or Western Armenia, while one-fourth (Erevan guberniya, or province, and adjacent districts in the provinces of Tiflis, Elizavetpol, and Kars) was incorporated into the Russian Caucasus region and called Russian or Eastern Armenia.

Although large numbers of Armenians continued to live on these traditional lands, they no longer constituted a majority in many areas because of the centuries of immigration and settlement of Turkish, Kurdish, and other Muslim elements. Beyond the plateau, on the other hand, major Armenian communities flourished everywhere from the Balkans and Constantinople (Istanbul) to Tiflis (Tbilisi) and Baku on the Caspian Sea and from Isfahan/New Julfa and Tabriz in Persia (Iran) to Armavir, Astrakhan, Nor Nakhichevan/Rostov, Feodosia, Moscow, and St. Petersburg in Russia. Of the approximately five million Armenians worldwide, half lived in the Ottoman Empire in mid-century, while in the Russian Empire their numbers grew steadily to more than two million by 1914 as the result of natural growth, inmigration, and Russian annexations of several Ottoman border districts. In the Russian Caucasus alone, the Armenian element climbed from 565,000 in mid-century to about 1,250,000 at its end and to nearly 1,800,000 by the time of the Russian revolutions in 1917. In addition, more than 200,000 Armenians lived in Persia, and there were sizable communities in the Balkan states and eastern Europe, as well as those evolving in western Europe and the United States. Older mercantile communities still prospered in places such as India, Burma, Singapore, and Java. In fact it was in Madras, India, that the first Armenian journal was published and where merchant-sponsored Armenian thinkers, influenced by English political philosophy and the example of the American Revolution, produced political tracts and even a draft constitution for an imagined future free Armenia.

With such broad geographic, linguistic, and socioeconomic variance, it was the Armenian Apostolic Church that served as the primary common denominator. In due course, however, a sense of collective history and national identity emerged among intellectuals, shaped first by the prolific scholarship and classicism of the Armenian Catholic Mekhitarist order in Venice and Vienna, then the romanticism inspired by the European revolutionary movements, and ultimately the romantic-realism of the late nineteenth century. The need for utilitarian, mission-oriented literature brought to the fore a bitter struggle between proponents of a new vernacular literary language (Ashkharhabar) and those who regarded such innovations as the vulgar defiling of the classical language (Grabar) used for centuries by the Church and educated elite. With the spread of newspapers and journals since mid-century in cities such as Constantinople, Smyrna (Izmir), Tiflis, and St. Petersburg and the rapid expansion of popular education, the literary vernacular eventually triumphed among both Western Armenian and Eastern Armenian intellectuals.

eastern (russian) armenians

The establishment of Russian dominion in the Caucasus between 1801 and 1828 was welcomed by most Armenians and placed more than a third of their worldwide population into a common state. The merchant and emerging capitalist classes took advantage of the new opportunities to expand their role in regional and long-distance trade, textile production (represented foremost by the Lazarian family of St. Petersburg), tobacco processing, and subsequently in the booming oil industry around Baku, where M.I. Mirzoev (Mirzoyan) drilled the first well in 1871 and Armenians came to own a third of the petroleum companies. Armenian magnate Alexander Mantashev (1849–1911) merged his interests with several non-Armenian firms to form the industrial giant known as the Russian General Oil Corporation. In Tiflis, the historic capital of Georgia, Armenians constituted a majority or plurality throughout the century and dominated the municipal duma, which elected a succession of Armenian mayors, the last being Alexander Khatisian (1876–1945) who served from 1907 to 1917 and went on to become a prime minister of the postwar Armenian republic.

Although these educated, prosperous urban elites had little in common with the tradition-bound semi-servile peasantry in agrarian Erevan province and the rest of the great plateau, Armenian teachers, scholars, and activists labored tirelessly to foster a shared sense of nationality encompassing all the disparate social and economic classes and extending over Eastern Armenians, Western Armenians, and diasporan Armenians alike. Persistent calls for action and change resounded, as in the first Armenian vernacular novel, Wounds of Armenia, by Khachatur Abovian (1805–1848, published posthumously in 1858); the radical populist journalism of Mikayel Nalbandian (1829–1866); the sentimental patriotic poetry of Raphael Patkanian (1830–1892); the evocative novels of Raffi (1835–1888), who vividly depicted the oppression and groaning lifestyle of the Turkish Armenian peasantry; the short stories of Perj Proshian (1837–1907), who exposed the brutality of traditional social and gender relations among the Eastern Armenian populace; and the realist theater of Gabriel Sundukian (1825–1912), who focused on the ills of unbridled capitalism, the corruption of the Armenian middle classes and tsarist officials, and the harmful superstitions of the peasantry.

By and large, the Armenian experience under Russian rule was positive, as the Armenian element increased rapidly in numbers and economic activity. Many Armenians climbed the social ladder through military service. It was no coincidence that the most noted generals on the Caucasus front during the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–1878 were Armenian—A. A. Ter-Gukasov (1819–1881), I. D. Lazarev (1820–1879), and especially Count Mikhail Loris-Melikov (1825–1888), who went on to become the special adviser of Tsar Alexander II (r. 1855–1881) and the chief architect of a far reaching political reform program. That project was shelved, however, with the assassination of Alexander II in 1881 and the accession of the reactionary Alexander III (r. 1881–1894), whose anti-minority policies included first the closure of Armenian schools and then, after they were allowed to reopen, the attempted Russification of their curricula.

The tsar's actions undermined previously favorable Armenian dispositions, propelling some youthful intellectuals into populist and revolutionary movements. This ferment was also fueled by the plight of the Turkish Armenians across the border and their failure to attain the basic security of life and possessions through various reforms promulgated by successive Ottoman sultans. The formation of Armenian clandestine political societies was largely the work of alienated Russian Armenian intellectuals who had lost faith in achieving change through legal means. The Marxist Hunchakian party, organized by exiles in Geneva in 1887, advocated the liberation of Turkish Armenia and the establishment of a socialist state within a world socialist order, whereas the Armenian Revolutionary Federation or Hai Heghapokhakan Dash-naktsutiun, formed in Tiflis in 1890, adhered to the populist tradition by emphasizing emancipation and uplifting of the peasantry and autonomous development in the Turkish Armenian homeland—the erkir. These immediate objectives, it was reasoned, necessitated postponement of active engagement against the tsarist autocracy.

Despite these high ideals and the silent sympathy of a significant segment of the agrarian population, most Armenians of all classes shied away from or feared involvement with the revolutionary societies. The urban elites preferred the enlightened liberalism and Westernization advocated by Grigor Artsruni (1845–1892), editor of the Tiflis newspaper Mshak (Tiller), which held out evolutionary change, not revolutionary violence, as the correct path for the Armenian people.

Such a measured approach was not rewarded by the tsarist bureaucrats and policymakers, however. At the turn of the century, the governor of the Caucasus, Prince Grigory Golitsyn, persuaded Tsar Nicholas II (r. 1894–1917) that the Armenian Church, as a hotbed of Armenian nationalism, had to be neutralized. In violation of the statutes regulating the Armenian Church in the empire, the tsar in June 1903 decreed the confiscation of all Church-owned properties and placed the Church under direct state control, at the same time imposing strict censorship on the Armenian press. The popular Catholicos (Supreme Patriarch) Mkrtich Khrimian (1820–1906) refused to submit and aroused a pan-Armenian storm of protest, in which even the anticlerical political parties came to the Church's defense and, for the first time, engaged in acts of sabotage and violence against tsarist officials. The standoff continued until January 1905 when Nicholas rescinded his decree at a time when failure in the Russo-Japanese War had revitalized the Russian revolutionary movement and massive strikes were crippling the state.

The reactionary bureaucracy then tried to isolate the Caucasus from the ferment in central Russia by stoking already-existing ethnic, social, and religious antipathies in Baku, Karabagh, and other areas of mixed Armenian-Azerbaijani (then called "Tatar") habitation, including even Erevan itself. The "Armeno-Tatar War" was not halted until 1907, by which time Nicholas had weathered the first Russian revolution with promises of political reforms. Such pledges were soon reneged on and superseded by the "Stolypin reaction," when, along with thousands of others empire-wide, hundreds of suspected Armenian subversives and intellectuals were arrested and either imprisoned or exiled.

It was not until 1912, with the outbreak of the first Balkan War and the growing prospect of a much larger European conflagration, that the imperial government reversed its anti-Armenian policies by courting Catholicos Gevorg (George) V (1847–1930), releasing most political prisoners, and even showing itself to be the champion of the downtrodden Ottoman Armenian population by proposing a new program of reforms specifically for the Turkish Armenian provinces. The rapprochement with the tsar was sealed in the autumn of 1914 when Russian Armenian leaders agreed to organize volunteer battalions to assist the imperial armies in case of war with the Ottoman Empire.

western (turkish) armenians

The Armenian experience under Ottoman rule was also greatly varied. Most of the peasantry had lost their landholdings through usurpation, becoming sharecroppers of Muslim notables known as begs or aghas. The peasants lived in perennial debt and constant fear of kidnappings, raids, and forced conversion and were subject to heavy, often extra-legal, taxation and discrimination because of their Christian infidel (giavur), second-class status. The harshness of daily life was attenuated by the colorful celebrations of religious holidays and the ritualized observances of the cycle of life—forty-day birth rites, baptisms, betrothals and seven-day wedding festivities, and tradition-laden funerals and requiems.

The nineteenth century brought major changes as American and European missionaries established schools, churches, and hospitals. This spurred the Armenian Apostolic Church to meet the challenge, so that by the end of the century nearly every Armenian town and village had schools for boys and many had opened schools for girls as well. The gradual enlightenment of the Armenian agrarian population and relative prosperity of its merchants and craftsmen further aggravated the sharpening inter-ethnic and inter-religious antagonisms in the countryside.

In contrast with the harsh rural scene, urban Armenians living along the seacoasts and especially in Constantinople, the Ottoman capital, and Smyrna enjoyed relative security. Some used their knowledge of foreign languages and contacts with Armenians abroad to engage in international trade or to fill important civil posts. As it happened, the more than 200,000 Armenians living in Constantinople in the latter part of the nineteenth century formed the largest settlement of Armenians anywhere in the world. Their elite amira class included powerful bankers and money lenders. Some held quasi-hereditary positions in the sultan's administration, such as chief architect (Balian), director of the imperial mint (Duzian), and superintendent of gunpowder mills (Dadian). It was also this oligarchy that dominated the affairs of the Ottoman Armenian community (millet) through the Armenian Patriarchate of Constantinople.

During the Ottoman reform period known as the Tanzimat (1839–1876), the power of the amiras was curtailed by challenges from the esnafs, middle-class guildsmen who broadened but did not fully democratize the governing base of the patriarchate and millet through adoption and confirmation of the Armenian National Constitution (Statutes) between 1860 and 1863. Meanwhile, the position of the Armenian Church was under-mined somewhat by the sultan's recognition of European- and American-supported Catholic and Evangelical millets, made up largely of Armenian converts.

While the Eastern Armenian intellectuals drew much of their inspiration from Russian and German sources, the Western Armenians were heavily influenced by French, Italian, and English literary and political currents. The indisputable success of the Western Armenian vernacular literary language based on the Constantinople dialect was evidenced, for example, in the contributions of young realist writers in the journal Arevelk (Orient), founded in 1884 by Arpiar Arpiarian (1852–1908). Of the scores of prominent Western Armenian authors, Bedros Turian (1852–1872) captured an indelible place during his brief lifespan with his romantic poetic themes of love, solitude, nature, and imminent death. Hagop Baronian (1841–1892) excelled as a master of social satire, especially of the classes represented by hypocritical church trustees and society dames who peppered their speech with ridiculous-sounding French expressions. Among the small circle of women writers, novelist Srpouhi Dussap (1842–1901) stirred up strong controversy with forthright advocacy of feminist rights and emancipation. Finally, Western Armenian poetry reached its apex at the turn of the twentieth century with the unparalleled use of imagery and the sensual language of pagan renewal by Daniel Varoujan (1884–1915) and the powerful epical verses of revolt and heroism by Siamanto (1878–1915), both destined to become victims of the Armenian Genocide.

the armenian question

The unending stream of complaints from the interior provinces regarding extortion, double taxation, kidnappings, devastating raids, and land usurpation emboldened the Armenian patriarchate at the conclusion of the Russo-Turkish War in 1878 to petition supreme commander Grand Duke Nicholas (1856–1929) to include provisions for the safety and security of the Turkish Armenian population in the negotiations for peace. The preliminary Treaty

of San Stefano in February 1878, aside from granting independence or autonomy to several Balkan states, ceded to Russia five districts bordering the Caucasus and stipulated through Article 16 that Russian withdrawal from Erzerum and other parts of the Armenian plateau to be handed back to Sultan Abdul-Hamid II (r. 1876–1909) was contingent on the implementation of reforms to safeguard the Armenians from Kurdish and Circassian depredation. But the subsequent European-imposed Treaty of Berlin in July 1878 left only three districts (Kars, Ardahan, Batum) under Russian rule and, in an ironic reversal of numerals, by Article 61 required the immediate withdrawal of Loris-Melikov's army from Erzerum. The article also internationalized the Armenian Question by placing on the European Powers collectively the responsibility to oblige the sultan to effect the necessary reforms. But as it happened, "what is everybody's business is nobody's business." Although punitive raids against the Armenian villages did not cease, the Europeans soon lost interest as they became embroiled in the scramble for empire in Africa.

Failure to achieve legal reforms led some Armenian youth to form self-defense groups in Erzerum, Van, and other towns on the Armenian plateau. These ephemeral groups were succeeded between 1885 and 1890 by the Armenakan (at Van), Hunchakian, and Dashnaktsutiun political parties. The revolutionaries had limited resources in the face of the awesome power of the state, yet they attracted followers among ideologically-driven intellectuals and rural youth who cared little about ideology other than protecting their villages and striving as freedom fighters (fedayis) for Armenian emancipation.

In 1894, encouraged by Hunchakian field workers, the rugged mountaineers of the Sasun district refused to pay double taxation, leading to their siege and ultimate massacre by both the sultan's Kurdish (Hamidiye) detachments and regular army. The brutal killings of an estimated four thousand people who had laid down their arms in exchange for a promise of amnesty raised an international outcry that forced the European powers back to the Armenian Question. A resulting new package of reforms was negotiated with Abdul-Hamid II in 1895, but once again the Europeans turned away, while the sultan, playing on Muslim fears about loss of dominance, unleashed a series of massacres that began along the Black Sea at Trebizond in October and then spread to every vilayet on the Armenian plateau. The mass acre of some 200,000 Armenians in 1895 and 1896 demonstrated that Armenian defense groups and revolutionaries were incapable of protecting their people. A desperate attempt to force European intervention by seizing the European-administered Ottoman Bank in the autumn of 1896 led to the further indiscriminate killing of several thousand Armenians in Constantinople itself, and a plot to assassinate Abdul-Hamid in 1905 came to naught.

There was still hope, however, as disaffection from the sultan had become widespread among other ethnic groups as well, including Turkish dissidents who believed that only drastic reforms and reorganization could save the Ottoman Empire from final collapse and dissolution. The Armenian parties, especially the Dashnaktsutiun, interacted with the so-called Young Turk intellectuals in Europe for several years before a near bloodless revolution in July 1908 forced Abdul-Hamid II to become a figurehead constitutional monarch. The Young Turk revolution was greeted with enthusiasm by nearly all Armenians, and improvements immediately followed. Armenian political parties and cultural associations were legalized, Armenian deputies were elected to parliament, and exiled intellectuals returned to participate in what was to become the final phase in a brilliant Western Armenian literary movement.

The revolution soon soured, however, in the face of setbacks in the Balkans and resentment domestically among conservative traditionalist forces. In an attempted countercoup by Abdul-Hamid's supporters in April 1909, Armenian blood flowed once again, this time in the region of Cilicia, where some thirty thousand Armenians perished and scores of city quarters, towns, and villages were pillaged and burned. Then in January 1913, in the wake of the first Balkan War, the extreme nationalist wing of the Young Turk party (Ittihad ve Terakki), led by Ismail Enver (1881–1922), Mehmed Talaat (1874–1921), and Ahmed Jemal (1872–1922), seized power and guided the Ottoman Empire down the road to World War I as an ally of imperial Germany. Ironically, Russia was then posing as a champion of the Turkish Armenians and with the support of the now-allied governments of France and Great Britain negotiated the final Armenian reform program by which Turkish Armenia was merged into two semi-autonomous super provinces with European inspectors general. But the reform project, signed in February 1914, would soon be repudiated and give the chauvinist Young Turk dictators one more excuse to implement the "final solution" of the Armenian Question in 1915, when under the convenient cover of a raging world war the Turkish Armenian provinces were combined.