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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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In conclusion

The road to independence, like much of the history of the Armenian people, was filled with tragedy. The Republic was a goal neither anticipated nor coveted. Yet both domestic and external factors drove the Armenians relentlessly toward sovereignty. Living for centuries under foreign domination, they had learned to adjust to many inequalities, but when the wind of nationalism swept the Armenian Plateau, they turned to protest, foreign intercession, and revolution. The rise of nationalism, coupled with the Russian conquest of Transcaucasia, constituted the beginning of a new epoch in Armenian history. Within the Romanov Empire, the Armenians surmounted the bureaucratic obstacles and rediscovered their heritage, gradually repopulated their native provinces, and extended the hand of assistance and the voice of exhortation to their brothers across the border. It was on the very territory of the Armianskaia oblast, established in 1828, that the Republic was to emerge in 1918.

In their national development, the Armenians faced many obstacles. Both in Transcaucasia and in the Ottoman eastern vilayets they were widely dispersed and were a numerical minority in all but a few districts. They were separated by international boundaries and deep-seated particularism. They suffered from the mentality of a subject people. By the latter half of the nineteenth century, however, this people was drawn together in a renaissance, expressed through a drive toward mass education, revived national pride, and the demand for reform and even self-government. With disillusionment in European-sponsored Ottoman reforms and with resentment against the tsarist policies toward minorities, the Armenians turned increasingly to the opposition movements in both empires. On the eve of the Great World War, after many bitter experiences, it seemed as if their primary aspiration, unhindered autonomous development, was on the verge of fruition. Tsar Nicholas had effected a rapprochement, with his Armenian subjects, and the European Powers had at last settled upon a functional arrangement for improved administration in "Western Armenia."

The fires of war both crushed and exacerbated Armenian hopes. On the one hand, Western Armenia was depopulated and devastated, eliminating the possibility of implementing the reform plan. On the other hand, the Allied pledges and the Russian advance to the western limits of the Plateau elicited visions of a promising future. This goal seemed one step nearer to realisation when the Romanov dynasty, branded with the stamp of oppressor, was overthrown by "democratic Russia." Western and Eastern Armenia, united into an autonomous state within the Great Russian federation, was now the plausible recompense for the sacrifice of half the nation. The November Revolution, however, dealt a crippling blow to such expectations. The Bolshevik application of "self-determination" stood in sharp contraposition to Armenian interests. The front was denuded by the Russian Army, and Transcaucasia was betrayed by the Sovnarkom's action at Brest-Litovsk. By that treaty, Turkey retrieved the eastern vilayets and gained the Kars and Batum oblasts, Eastern Armenia was exposed to annihilation, and Transcaucasia was propelled toward separation from Russia.

The Russian Armenians, represented primarily by Dashnaktsoutiun, strove to join with Georgians and Moslems in formulating a common policy to defend Transcaucasia and to uphold the principles of the "democratic" Russian Revolution. The failure to achieve these goals has been the subject of much of the present study. The basic motivations and aspirations of the three peoples contrasted too greatly to allow for earnest collaboration. In the midst of Turkish invasion, the Transcaucasian provinces were aflame with civil strife and interracial warfare. From the village level to the Commissariat and the Seim, the incompatibility was glaringly revealed. While Armenians clung desperately to Russia as the only means of salvation, the Moslems looked expectantly toward Turkey as the source of deliverance and welcomed Transcaucasia's separation from Russia. When, on Georgian initiative, the Transcaucasian Federation crumbled, only the Armenians expressed bitter indignation and vacillated before the unwelcome prospect of independence – a synonym for defeat.

Once the National Council had taken the decisive step, the Armenians strove to salvage what they could. The belated military successes in the heart of the Yerevan guberniia inspired a glow of faith and Germany's anger with its Ottoman ally kindled a flicker of hope. For five months, the Armenian suppliants had only faith and hope to sustain them. And while the petitioners humbled themselves before the Sublime Porte, the crude wheels of government began to grind in Yerevan. Which each rotation, the ideal of independence drove deeper into the Armenian mentality. By the end of the war it had an electrifying effect ion Armenians and their sympathisers the world over. It was now possible for the Republic to expand, to reclaim the entire Armenian Plateau, and to exist as a veritable independent nation. Possibility could become reality if the Allied victors would deliver a rapid deathblow to the Ottoman Empire and if a modus vivendi could be arranged with Russia, whether royalist, republican, or communist. The struggle to transform possibility into reality, the subject of a subsequent study, constitutes the second phase in the history of the Republic of Armenia.