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The Transcaucasian Seim
Formation of the Transcaucasian Seim had been contemplated as early as November, 1917, during the organisational meeting of the Commissariat. Both Zhordania and Gegechkori had spoken of the transitory character of the latter body and had sponsored a resolution entrusting the delegates elected to the Constituent Assembly with the task of establishing a more authoritative regional government. After dispersal of the Constituent Assembly on January 18, the Soviet Regional Centre in Tiflis declared that the Bolsheviks had broken the final thread of Russian unity and that the Transcaucasian delegates to the Petrograd meeting, together with military representatives, should create a regional administration with sufficient power to impose revolutionary order and inaugurate needed reforms. 97 During the first week of February, 1918, these Constituent Assembly members conferred in Tiflis. A Menshevik-Musavatist resolution was introduced by Zhordania: "Delegates to the Constituent Assembly, having examined the existing situation, found it necessary, pending the reconvening of the All-Russian Constituent Assembly, to call for the formation of the Transcaucasian Seim to exercise legislative prerogatives in tall local questions." 98 Dashnaktsoutiun, dissenting from the majority opinion, proposed recognition of the Russian Democratic Federative Republic (whatever that meant in 1918) and the reorganisation of Transcaucasia along federative lines. Even in the midst of the chaos, the Armenian nationalist party continued to press for territorial repartition. Finally the conference agreed that the Seim would convene on February 23 and that the number of its members would be determined by decreasing the election norms from sixty thousand, used for the Constituent Assembly, to twenty thousand votes per delegate. 99 In that manner the minor parties, which had been deprived from voice in the Constituent Assembly, would be represented in the legislature.
Even before that decision had been made, the Bolshevik Regional Committee militated against the Seim, announcing on January 29 that the proposed body had neither the jurisdiction nor the mandate to act on behalf of the Transcaucasian peoples. Being elected to the Constituent Assembly did not make a delegate an automatic member of the Seim, as the counterrevolutionaries seemed to assume. Furthermore, that body would simply be a continuation of the Commissariat, which, in violation of the popular will, had attempted to sever Transcaucasia from the rest of Russia. The Regional Committee pledged to sabotage the Seim in every conceivable manner. 100 Concurrently, Shahoumian extended his agitational activities to Tiflis. His articles and leaflets exposed the pack of scoundrels on the Commissariat and the lackeys who could fill the halls of the Seim. The Sovnarkom alone represented the legal government of all Russia. As Shahoumian worked feverishly in Tiflis, his erstwhile Social Democrat Menshevik comrades searched for means to silence their rival. When they warned him to leave the bounds of Caucasia within twenty-four hours, he responded by publishing, almost under their very eyes, the single issue of a journal representing the Sovnarkom, Kavkazsky Vestnik Soveta Narodnykh Komissarov. 101 Enraged, the Mensheviks then struck to crush the legal Bolshevik papers, Kavkazky rabochy, Banvori krive, and the Georgian-language Brzola, but almost immediately the journals reappeared with altered titles, Kavkazskaia Pravda, Banvor, and son on. 102
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98) D. Ananun, "Rousahayeri hasarakakan zargatsoume, III, 1901-1918" [The Social Development of the Russian Armenians: 1901-1918] (Venice, 1926), p. 673.
99) D. Ananun, "Rousahayeri hasarakakan zargatsoume, III, 1901-1918" [The Social Development of the Russian Armenians: 1901-1918] (Venice, 1926), pp. 673-674.
100) Bol'sheviki v bor'be za pobedu sotsialisticheskoi revoliutsii v Azerbaidzhane: Dokumenty I materialy 1917-1918 g.g.", ed. By Z. I. Ibragimov and M. S. Iskenderov (Baku, 1957), p. 258; "Velikaia Oktiabr'skaia sotsialisticheskaia revoliutsiia I pobeda sovetskoi vlasti v Armenii: Sbornik dokumentov", ed. By A. N. Mnatskanian, A. M. Akopian, and G. M. Dallakian (Yerevan, 1957), pp. 173-174.
101) L. A. Khurshudian, "Stepan Shahoumian: Petakan yev partiakan gortzenoutyoune 1917-1918 tvakannerin" [Stepan Shahoumian: Governmental and Party Activity, 1917-1918] (Yerevan, 1959), 153-155, 158-160; S. Vartanian, "Pobeda sovetskoi vlasti v Armenii" (Yerevan, 1951), p. 113.
102) Kh. A. Barsegian, "Istoriia armianskoi bol'shevistskoi periodicheskoi pechati" (Yerevan, 1958), pp. 221-223; A. N. Mnatskanian, "Revoliutsion Andrkovkasoum yev Rousastani patviraknere, 1917-1921" [The Revolution in Transcaucasia and the Envoys of Russia, 1917-1921] (Yerevan, 1961), p. 45.
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