On the international front, Soviet Russia sacrificed the Armenian Question to cement the Turkish alliance. Having rejected all attempts at mediation, Mustafa Kemal even made a ploy to occupy Batum and the border district of Akhaltsikh and Akhalkalak in Georgia. The manoeuvre, apparently intended to win additional concessions regarding Armenia, bore results. By the Treaty of Moscow (March 1921), which established normal relations and friendship between Soviet Russia and the Ankara government, Turkey dropped its claims to Batum and the other districts in return for Russian abandonment of efforts to redeem for Soviet Armenia the Surmalu district in Yerevan. In that sector, the new Turkish boundary was extended to the Araxes River, thus incorporating the fertile Igdir plain and Mount Ararat. What was more, the treaty provided that Sharur-Nakhichevan would not be attached to Soviet Armenia but would instead be constituted as an autonomous region under Soviet Azerbaijan, even though it was separated from eastern Transcaucasia by intervening Armenian territory. Whatever qualms Chicherin and Karakhan might still have had were sublimated to the decisive support the Turkish delegation received from Stalin. As stipulated by Treaty of Moscow, almost identical terms were included in the Treaty of Kars (October 1921) between Turkey and the three Transcaucasian Soviet republics. Described by Soviet historian later purged by Stalin as one of the most oppressive and ignominious treaties in the annals of history, that document clamped the lid on the Armenian Question and locked Soviet Armenia within its limited, landlocked territory. 95 the European Powers put their own seal on the Armenian Question two years later by renegotiating the Treaty of Sèvres. The Turkish victory in the resultant Lausanne treaties was to Thorough that neither the word "Armenia" nor "Armenian" was allowed to appear anywhere in the texts. It was bitterly ironic for the Armenians that, of the several defeated Central Powers in the World War, Turkey alone expanded beyond its prewar boundaries and this, only on the Armenian front.
The interlude of Armenian independence had ended. Born of desperation and hopelessness, the Armenian republic lacked the resources to solve its awesome domestic and international problems. Yet within a few months it had become the fulcrum of national aspirations for revival, unification, and perpetuity. Limitations and shortcomings aside, the rudiments of government were created and organic development did occur. The failure to achieve permanent independence left a worldwide Armenian dispersion with unrequited grief, frustration, and resentment. Nonetheless, the legacy of the Armenian republic was not lost. Armenian government and statehood had been recovered for the first time in centuries. The staggering Armenian sacrifices had not been entirely in vain, for the core of the Republic of Armenia continued as the Armenian Soviet Socialistic Republic, where a part of the nation would strive to etch a place in the sun.
|
|
|
