Proposals for the Provincial Reorganisation of Transcaucasia
Prior to adjournment, the National Congress had also considered the administrative re-division of Transcaucasia. Stepan Kamsarakan, a non-partisan, proposed that the most satisfactory solution would be the creation of large Transcaucasian Armenian province compromising fifteen counties, ten with absolute Armenian majorities. The province, with its administrative centre at Yerevan, would have 2,033,000 inhabitants, of whom 60 percent, or 1,220,000, would be Armenian. This territory would include, besides the existing Yerevan guberniia, the contiguous Lori-Akhalkalak districts of Tiflis, the mountainous part of Elisavetpol, and a portion of the Kars oblast. 109 It is significant that the area proposed by Kamsarakan corresponded almost identically to that segment of Transcaucasia claimed by the subsequent Armenian Republic. But even this ideal plan, annexing to the Yerevan guberniia only those districts that seemed advantageous, was a precarious venture, for a third of the inhabitants of the new province would be Moslems, while nearly a half-million Transcaucasian Armenians, as well as the centres of Armenian cultural, economic, and political life, Baku and Tiflis, were to be excluded.
Statistical experts Gevork Khatisian 110 and Avetik Shahkhatouni, though acknowledging the desirability of a single Armenian province, reasoned that the proposed solution would elicit immediate opposition and suspicion from the central government and the other peoples of Transcaucasia. Khatisian advocated instead a plan to form three Armenian districts, Gandzak, Shirak (Alexandropol), and Yerevan, together encompassing the same areas suggested by Kamsarakan. In advancing the three-province formula, which had been adopted by the regional meeting of Dashnaktsoutiun at the end of 1916 Shahkhatouni argued that this solution would benefit the other Transcaucasian peoples as well. Russian governmental statistics for 1916 revealed that fewer than 44 percent of the Tiflis guberniia inhabitants were Georgians. If, however, the province were relieved from its southern districts, Lori-Akhalkalak, the Georgian preponderance would rise to 68 percent. Moreover, since the inhabitants of the mountainous areas of Elisavetpol were nearly 70 percent Armenian while those of the plains were 90 percent Moslems, the separation of these two contrasting sectors was no unjust. If, as was logical and equitable, the plains of Elisavetpol were united to the Baku province, from which they originally had been shorn, the population of "Tataria" would be 76 percent Moslem. 111
SD and SR delegates to the Congress loudly protested this plan, for it would engender added Georgian and Moslem antagonism. A more realistic settlement was considered to be the division of the entire Caucasus into cantons, all subject to a single administrative centre, Tiflis. Erzinkian accused the authors of the single- and triple-province projects of chauvinism and separatist inclinations. 112 Thus the Armenian politicians, dissonant concerning the details, were unanimous on the need for some type of provincial reorganisation and redistribution. The complications inherent in the formation of national-territorial subdivisions stemmed from the massive intermixture of indigenous populations. This pertained particularly to the Moslems and Armenian, as shown by 1916 Russian statistics: 113
Province |
Total population |
Turco-Tatar |
Armenian |
Tiflis 114 |
1,473,000 |
106,000 |
7.0% |
411,000 |
28% |
Baku |
1,290,000 |
877,000 |
68% |
120,000 |
9.3% |
Elisavetpol |
1,276,000 |
783,000 |
61.4% |
419,000 |
32.8% |
Yerevan |
1,120,000 |
374,000 |
33.3% |
670,000 |
59.7% |
Kars |
404,000 |
130,000 115 |
33.2% |
125,000 |
31.0% |
|