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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 Armenian Literary Movement and Subsequent Emergence of Political Societies

Although the formation of Eastern Armenia did not culminate in the anticipated autonomy under the aegis of a Christian power, Romanov rule in Transcaucasia afforded the Armenians sufficient economic, social, and physical security to enhance their normal, political, and cultural renaissance. From emerging industrial bourgeois centres such as Tiflis and Baku and from South Russia, scores of Armenian youths enrolled in the universities of the Empire and abroad, became engulfed by egalitarian and socialist currents sweeping over the Continent, participated in international organisations campaigning against arbitrary government, and then directed their attention to the problems of their native people. As adherents of the Russian revolutionary movement, the considered the bureaucracy and the Romanov tsars symbols of tyranny, but when they shifted their concern to the Armenians in Turkey, the evils of the Russian state faded before the harshness of the Ottoman ruling system. 41

Initially, Armenian self-perception was developed through the evolving literary movement. The Lazarian Academy in Moscow, the Nersessian in Tiflis, and later the Gevorgian in Etchmiadzin, helped to inculcate nationalism into the young authors, who, following the European pattern, passed through the stages of classicism, romanticism, and realism. In each phase they accentuated in a distinct style the woes of the fatherland and the exigency of reviving its political existence. The classicists rediscovered the epic heroes of Armenia and sang the praises of the eternal ideals of justice and freedom. With emotion and sentimentality the romanticists glorified patriots of bygone eras, bewailed the bitter fate of the homeland, and disparaged the intrusion inferior, barbarous peoples onto the sacred soil. By the last quarter of the nineteenth century, the school of "romantic-realists" was exhorting the nation to arms. The "new hero" of the popularised novel defied death to resist oppression. 42 Russian advances into the western portions of the Plateau, the yerkir ("homeland"), though crowned with disappointments, incited vigorous public enthusiasm, which indicated that the Armenians had awakened from their long political slumber.

The Armenians of the nineteenth century were not prepared, however, to propose independence. Physical security, unhindered cultural development, and regional autonomy were deemed the maximal and ideal conditions for which they should strive. For eastern Ottoman provinces, most Armenian leaders considered self-administration within the framework of the Turkish Empire as the most desirable improvement. Of the several political and revolutionary societies organised during the last quarter of the century, only the Hntchakist, a Marxist organisation initiated in 1887 at Geneva, advocated outright separation from the Ottoman Empire. The influence of this party, dedicated to the reestablishment of an Armenian state within the structure of the future socialist world society, was felt strongly in Constantinople and Cilicia, less in the eastern provinces, and least in Transcaucasia. Its views were assessed by most Armenian leaders in the Russian Empire as impracticable and utopian. 43

In Transcaucasia and the eastern Ottoman vilayets, the platform of Hai Heghapokhakan Dashnaktsoutiun ("Armenian Revolutionary Federation") gained greater acceptance. Founded in 1890 at Tiflis, the Federation became by the first years of the twentieth century the most powerful and comprehensive Armenian political organisation. 44 Its initial program, adopted in 1892, propounded the administrative and economic freedom of Western (Turkish) Armenia. More specifically the platform called for


  1. creation of a popular-democratic government based on free elections;
  2. security of life and the right to work;
  3. equality of all nationalities and religions before the law;
  4. freedom of speech, press, and assembly;
  5. distribution of land to the landless;
  6. taxation according the ability to pay;
  7. elimination of compulsory and uncompensated labour;
  8. abolition of the military exemption fee and replacement of it with equal conscription;
  9. establishment of compulsory education and promotion of national intellectual progress;
  10. reinforcement of communal principles as a means to greater production and distribution. 45


To effect this aims and to defend the peaceful population, Dashnaktsoutiun would, when necessary, organize fighting units, arm the populace, operate an espionage network, propagandize to raise the revolutionary spirit of Armenians, and, in particular, resort to the terrorisation of corrupt officials, traitors, and exploiters. The methods adopted by Dashnaktsoutiun were similar to those of the Russian Narodnaia Voila and its successor, the Social Revolutionary party, both of which maintained close contact and ideological bonds with the Armenian leaders. 46