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Index

Armenia

The Urartu Civilisation

Victory for Independence

Artashisian Dynasty on the Armenian Throne

Armenia caught between Rome and the Arsacids

The Acceptance of Christianity

Defending Christianity

Armenia Under the Bagratouni Dynasty

Cilicia - the New Armenia

Armenia Under Turanian Rule

The Renaissance or the Resurrection of Armenia

The Eastern Question

Russia in the Caucasus

The Armenian Question

Battle on Two Fronts

Tsarist Russia Against the Armenians

The Revolution of the Young Turks and the Armenian People on the Eve of World War I

The First World War

The Resurrection of Armenia

Armenia on the Road to Independence, 1918

- Armenia on the Road to Independence, 1918

Eastern Armenia

Western Armenia

"The Fateful Years" (1914-1917)

"Hopes and Emotions" (March-October, 1917)

The Bolshevik Revolution and Armenia

Transcaucasia Adrift (November, 1917

Dilemmas (March-April, 1918)

War and Independence (April-May, 1918)

The Republics of Georgia, Azerbaijan, and Armenia

The Suppliants (June-October, 1918)

In conclusion

Soviet Armenia

The Second Independent Republic of Armenia

Epilogue

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The Erzinjan Truce

Even before the delegates to the Constituent Assembly had left Tiflis, the Transcaucasian Commissariat grappled with the perplexing military problem. It was undoubtedly with great relief that Caucasus Front Commander Przhevalsky received Vehib Pasha's November 30 communiqué proposing a truce. The Russian general lost no time in accepting the offer and ordering a temporary cease-fire. 18 Four days later, after considering Chief of Staff Lebedinsky's report on the military situation, the Commissariat sanctioned negotiation of a truce on condition that Turkish troops not be diverted to Mesopotamia against the British, and authorised an appropriate explanation to the public. Then, while Przhevalsky called upon Vehib to respect the existing military lines pending a formal armistice, the Commissariat proclaimed to all that the truce would assuredly be superseded by a "righteous, just, and democratic peace" which the Constituent Assembly would conclude for all Russia. 19

On December 10, several days after the Sovnarkom delegation had arrived in Brest-Litovsk to confer with the German Command, the Transcaucasian Commissariat instructed General Vyshinsky of the Caucasus Army to proceed to Erzinjan to parley with the Ottoman military authorities. 20 There, along the western perimeter of the Russian-occupied territory, the truce was signed on December 18, after three days of negotiations. In accordance with the agreement:


  1. all military operations were to cease at midnight;
  2. special commissions would trace the exact demarcation lines beyond which the opposing armies were not to advance;
  3. aviation within seven miles of the demarcation lines was forbidden;
  4. military build-up on either side was prohibited, although training would be allowed well behind the advanced positions and information on training schedules was to be exchanged;
  5. transferral of Ottoman troops to the Mesopotamian front would be "casus belli";
  6. in the neutral zone between the demarcation lines, the Turks would guarantee Kurdish compliance with the truce terms; in the Russian occupied areas, Kurds involved in hostile activities would be dealt with as ordinary bandits;
  7. fourteen-day notification was mandatory for modification or abrogation of the truce. 21


The demarcation lines detailed in annexes to the document corresponded closely to the positions held by the Russian and Turkish armies since the winter of 1916-1917.

The Second Regional Congress of the Caucasus Army

The Erzinjan Truce did not stem the tide of desertion. The approximately half-million Russian soldiers in the Caucasus at the time of the November Revolution had dwindled to only a few thousand by the approach of spring. Left behind were massive stores of supplies and a barren front stretching from the Black Sea to Lake Van. The soaring prestige of Bolshevism was evidenced in numerous soldiers' meetings, pledging allegiance to the Sovnarkom and branding as counterrevolutionary the creation of the Transcaucasian Commissariat. 22 The same disposition prevailed at the Second Regional Congress of the Caucasus Army, which met in Tiflis on December 23, 1917. Though most delegates were not Bolsheviks, they were soon enchanted by the eloquent orations of Shahoumian, G. N. Korganov, and other disciples of Lenin. Resolutions recognising the Sovnarkom as the sole legal government of all Russia and denouncing even a "defensive war" were adopted by substantial margins. In an appeal to the men at the front, the Congress promised rapid demobilisation but warned that, because of transportation problems, "revolutionary self-discipline" should be imposed until the responsible committees could arrange for orderly withdrawal. 23 In elections for a new Regional Soviet, the Bolshevik-Left SR coalition won fifty-two of the one hundred positions, a significant victory for the Sovnarkom. The advantage, however, was not consolidated. The anti-Sovnarkom minority withdrew from the meeting, held its own conference, elected a new executive, and then confiscated the buildings and property of the Regional Soldiers' Soviet. The Legally elected body was compelled to seek refuge in Baku. 24 Soviet authors chastise the Transcaucasian Commissariat leadership of those days for allowing this usurpation and for pursuing an "opportunistic" policy by refusing to sanction civil war. Several non-Bolshevik writers contend that the Sovnarkom partisans were never actually a majority in the Congress, that it was they who had withdrawn, and that the present Soviet interpretation is falsification of history. In either event, while the soldier in the trenches was full of defeatism and Bolshevik sympathies, the Army Command and administration remained, legally or illegally, in the hands of the Right SR-Menshevik military oligarchy.

Even before the Congress convened, the Georgian Mensheviks had taken steps to crush their Marxist stepbrothers. When rowdy Russian troops of the Kars Division charged through the streets of Tiflis shouting Bolshevik slogans and threatening the Commissariat, the Executive Council of the Tiflis Workers' Soviet created a counterforce, the Red Guard, composed almost exclusively of Menshevik followers. On December 12, this militia surrounded the Bolshevik-held Tiflis arsenal and almost without a skirmish confiscated its twenty thousand weapons and large stores of ammunition. Fortified by this victory, the Red Guard drove the Kars Division and other retreating Russian units out of the Tiflis guberniia. 25 Then the Mensheviks, registering one triumph after another, blocked Bolshevik attempts to win control of the Regional Workers' Soviet and the Trade Unions' Conference. 26 Even the most ardent devotees of Lenin were forced to admit that, outside the ranks of the Russian Army and part of the Baku proletariat, Transcaucasia was decidedly non-Bolshevik.