The Azerbaijani Bolshevik Huseinov has accused the Musavat of becoming absorbed into the Turkic Federalistic Party, an organisation of feudal landlords. The unification of the two societies in mid-1917 to from the Turkic Federalistic Party of Musavat assertedly subjected progressive Baku to the will of reactionary Ganja (Elisavetpol), stronghold of the Tatar aristocracy. 16 The similarities between the original platform of the Federalistic Party and the program of the Musavat are, however, much more striking than the differences.
Even before the merger of the two parties, the basic views of both were expressed at Baku in April, 1917, by the Transcaucasian Conference of Moslems. Mehmet Emin Rasul-Zade, a founder of the Musavat, 17 proposed the formation of a Russian federative republic in which broad national-religious autonomy would be guaranteed. Accepting this thesis, the Conference also emphasised the indispensability of establishing an Islamic administrative centre with legislative prerogatives to protect the Moslems of Russia. Echoing the decision of many other Transcaucasian meetings, this gathering also adopted resolutions demanding peace without annexations or indemnities and pledging cooperation with all peoples of the Caucasus. 18
The impact of the Revolution momentarily jolted the Caucasian Armenian mind so forcefully that the primary objects of concern, Western Armenia and he maintenance of a strong military front, were subordinated to internal regional and Russian affairs. In every uezd of Yerevan and throughout many districts of the Tiflis, Elisavetpol, and Baku guberniias, assemblies of Armenian peasants discussed the future form of government and repeated the trite-sounding resolutions of loyalty and interracial harmony. Memory of the 1905 Revolution and the subsequent Armeno-Tatar clashes was fresh; all hoped that the unfolding democratic movement would foster better relations. While Moslems met in Baku, the Villagers' Congress of Yerevan Guberniia, expressing the expectations of the Armenian peasantry, proposed
- establishment of a democratic Russian republic;
- adoption of the federative principle, which alone was applicable in such a multinational country;
- governmental support for economic and cultural development;
- internal partition of Transcaucasia into cantons and preparation by the Provisional Government of sound suggestions for provincial reorganisation along geographic-ethnographic lines, to be submitted to the Constituent Assembly for consideration;
- immediate adoption of local languages by administrative-judicial organs and the appointment of officials competent in those tongues;
- implementation within three months of a curriculum on native languages in all elementary schools;
- institution of the zemstvo for all Transcaucasia as soon as new administrative boundaries had been determined. 19
The Congress called upon the Transcaucasian intelligentsia dispersed throughout Russia to return to assist in regional and national endeavours.
The program suggested by the Yerevan Villagers' Congress reflected the views of Dashnaktsoutiun, for that organisation enjoyed the same authority in the rural Armenian areas of Transcaucasia as did its allied Social Revolutionary party in the hamlets of Russia. Paradoxically, the political platform of the Armenian bourgeoisie was not radically dissimilar. Formerly belonging to the Russian Constitutional Democrat (Kadet) party or its Armenian affiliate, these middle-class representatives created in March, 1917, a separate organisation, Hai Zhoghovrtakan Kousaktsoutiun (Armenian Populist Party). With membership drawn primarily from the intellectual, professional, and industrialist classes of Tiflis, the Populists maintained close bonds with the Russian Kadets. In its initial manifesto, 20 date April, 1917, the Zhoghovrtakan party
- pledged support to the Provisional Government;
- adopted the Russian Kadet program of general reforms;
- recommended Armenian territorial-political autonomy within the Russian state;
- suggested that the boundaries of the autonomous areas of Transcaucasia be determined along ethnic lines and that cultural freedom of the minorities in each region be guaranteed; 21
- proposed that the independence of the Armenian Church be restored in full and that a national clerical synod be convened to effectuate necessary religious-administrative reforms. 22
The "Specifist" Armenian Social Democrats (not to be confused with Armenian members of the Russian Bolshevik organisation) and the Armenian Social Revolutionaries found themselves in a quandary. Both favoured the uncompromised unity of Russia and censured those programs suspected of fostering separatist tendencies. Yet neither organisation, each composed of a small circle of intellectuals, could emancipate itself from the enthusiasm elicited by suggestions for local rule and national-cultural development. Inconsistencies and internal disagreements often neutralised the little popular influence each party commanded. 23
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