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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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Other Transcaucasian administrative innovations were made by Vorontsov's successors. The Shemakh and Derbend provinces were redrawn and renamed Baku and Daghestan, and in 1868 the geographically and ethnographically artificial Elisavetpol guberniia was formed by combining the easternmost mountains of the Armenian Plateau with the Steppe of Karabakh below. 25 The Tiflis, Yerevan and Baku guberniias relinquished land for the creation of the province of Elisavetpol, possession of which was to be bitterly contested by the twentieth-century Georgian, Armenian, and Azerbaijani republics. Another dispute was to centre on the district of Lori, which in 1862 was detached from the Alexandropol uezd of the Yerevan guberniia and consolidated with the Tiflis guberniia. 26 Considered an integral part of the Plateau by Armenians, who made up more than three-fourths of its population, Lori extended from the vicinity of Gharakilisa northward to the Khram River. In 1880 this district and a tract of land north of the Khram were joined to from the Borchalu uezd of the Tiflis guberniia. In the Yerevan guberniia, the final internal partition occurred in 1875 when two additional uezds were formed from territories of the original five. The boundaries of the Etchmiadzin, Alexandropol, Yerevan, Novo Bayazid, Sharur-Daralagiaz, Nakhichevan, and Surmalu uezds then remained unchanged until the disintegration of the Romanov Empire. 27

Russian Annexation of Kars, Ardahan, and Batum

As a result of the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-1878, adjacent regions of the Armenian Plateau were added to Transcaucasia. During the campaigns, generals M. T. Loris-Melikian (Melikof), A. A. Ter-Ghoukasian (Ghoukasov), and I. I. Lazarian (Lazarof), Armenian in tsarist service, successfully stormed the fortress of Kars and advanced into Erzurum, while other Russian armies pushed down through the Balkans to the village of San Stefano, just outside Constantinople. By the Treaty of San Stefano in March, 1878, the Ottoman Empire ceded its eastern provinces of Kars, Ardahan, Batum, and Bayazid and the Plain of Alashkert. The Armenians, having found a champion in Count N. P. Ignatiev, former Russian ambassador to Constantinople (1864-1877), felt rewarded by the provision that stipulated that tsarist armies would occupy the remainder of the Plateau until the Sultan had executed reforms to guarantee the security of the native Christian population. 28 The aftermath of the Treaty of San Stefano is familiar to the student of European history. Tsar Alexander II yielded to the pressure of Western Europe, particularly Great Britain, and in July accepted a revised settlement negotiated at the Congress of Berlin. On Turkey's eastern border, Bayazid and the Plain of Alashkert were restored to Sultan Abdul Hamid II, and no longer was evacuation of Russian troops made contingent on the implementation of effective reforms. Embittered Armenians watched Russian troop withdraw from the Plain of Erzurum fro the second time in half a century. In a new exodus, approximately twenty-five thousand Ottoman Armenians accompanied the army of Loris-Melikian beyond the revised borders of Transcaucasia. 30

25) A. Shahkhatouni, "Administrativnyi peredel Zakavkazskago kraia (Tbilisi, 1918), p. 94.

26) T. Kh. Hakobian, "Yerevani patmoutyoune (1801-1879) tt." [The History of Yerevan (1801-1879)] (Yerevan, 1959), p. 384; A. Shahkhatouni, "Administrativnyi peredel Zakavkazskago kraia (Tbilisi, 1918), 94, 98.

27) A. Shahkhatouni, "Administrativnyi peredel Zakavkazskago kraia (Tbilisi, 1918), p. 99. T. Kh. Hakobian, "Yerevani patmoutyoune (1801-1879) tt." [The History of Yerevan (1801-1879)] (Yerevan, 1959), p. 384, using as his source "Materialy dlia voennago obozerniia Erivanskoi guberniia", Vol. I, pt. 1, pp. 15-16, gives 1874 as the date for the administrative reorganisation of the province.

28) Edward Herstlet, "The Map of Europe by Treaty", II (London, 1857), IV (1891), 2672-2692; Great Britain, Parliament, House of Commons, "Preliminary Treaty of Peace between Russia and Turkey, Signed at San Stefano 19th February/3rd March, 1878", in Sessional Papers, 1878, LXXXIII (Accounts and Papers) c. 1973, Turkey No. 22 (1878).

30) H. Pasdermadjian, "Histoire de l'Armenie depuis les origins jusqu'au traité de Lausanne" (Paris, 1949), p. 344. Numerous reports of panic among the Christian population are included in Great Britain, Parliament, House of Commons, "Further Correspondence respecting the Affairs of Turkey", Sess. 1878, LXXXI (Accounts and Papers) c. 1905, Turkey No. 1 (1878).