ARMENIA: The Survival of a Nation

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PART I

The Realm of the Tsars

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2 Northern Light

The Frontier is Established

By 1502, when the Safavid shah of Persia, Ismail, conquered much of Armenia from the ‘White Rams’ Turcomans, all of Armenia’s nobility and leading families had disappeared. Therefore when Armenia was again – as she had been so often in ancient and medieval times – a battlefield between opposing empires, she had no class who could uphold her own interests. Armenians were henceforth suppliants, a minority dependent on the goodwill of the ruling power, with almost no power to defend their own interests.

Throughout the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, the empires were those of the newly strong Persia and Ottoman Turkey. For almost 150 years these two fought numerous battles; and the frontier shifted accordingly. The Armenians themselves did not supply the motive for the bitter warfare upon their soil; the conflict derived from the fierce antipathy of ‘orthodox’ Sunni Muslim Turkey for Shi’a Muslim Persia.^*

Thus the frontier which emerged in modern times dividing Eastern from Western Armenia, and which became accepted as natural, developed from the Turko–Persian conflict. The wars, with their changing fortunes – at one time Diyarbekir was in the hands of the Persians, at another the Turks held Tabriz – brought further chronic disruption for Armenians. In the interludes of peace Armenians found themselves more favoured by the Persian Safavis than by the Turkish Ottomans, because of the broader cultural outlook of the Persians, and the Shi’a tolerance of minorities, which contrasted with the Sunni Ottoman obsession with authority.

Shah Abbas and the Armenians

The bright adornment of the Safavi dynasty was Shah Abbas the Great (1587–1629), a ruler who combined military and administrative skill with a vigorous pursuit of the arts of peace. His attitude towards Armenians appears

* The division within Islam between Sunni and Shi’a dates from the seventh century, when Muhammad’s son-in-law Ali failed in his bid to keep the caliphate in his own family in the face of opposition from the Umayyads of Damascus. With the subsequent tragic death of Ali’s son Husain at the hand of the Umayyads, Shi’a Islam became elevated into an ideology of tragedy and mystical redemption. The basic distinction of theology is that Shi’a Islam holds that certain individuals are actually emanations of God himself – an idea abhorrent to Sunni thinking. Shi’ism, moreover, gives full rein to the intuitive, magical yearnings of the people, and to their religious fervour (described by puritanical Westerners as ‘fanaticism’). Whereas Sunni Islam takes a more practical and less imaginative view of the conduct and organisation of human affairs.

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at first paradoxical: he is remembered for uprooting thousands of Armenians from Eastern Armenia and resettling them in 1605, after they had endured severe privations, in New Julfa, outside Isfahan;¹ yet once they were settled, he held them in great esteem. His harsh action had nothing to do with Armenians themselves; he merely intended to devastate Armenia for strategic reasons in his war with Ottoman Turkey.

To the Armenian community newly established outside his capital the shah granted a monopoly of the extremely valuable silk trade. Within a few years they had become, in the term used by the traveller Tavernier, ‘exquisite’ in the trade.² Shah Abbas moreover showed great interest in his Armenian subjects, on more than one occasion he was present at their Epiphany celebration, held in the open air on the banks of the Zaindeh Rud, and questioned them on matters of Christian theology. New Julfa prospered, becoming one of the main entrepôts for trade between Persian and Europe, and remains to this day as Armenian district. The Armenians gained a reputation for skill at their trade, and for honesty and diligence in pursuing it.

Armenians Look for External Help

Not all Armenians were rich merchants, and among the peasantry within Armenia itself relations between Persian masters and subject Armenians were strained, both before and after the reign of Shah Abbas. The subject people conceived the idea of seeking assistance from abroad in throwing off the Persian yoke. They felt the overriding pull of a Christian power, and despatched embassies initially to Europe and latterly to Russia. During the sixteenth century two missions were sent to Europe on orders from the Catholicos of Echmiadzin, requesting help; others followed during the next century. Best known, perhaps, of these suppliants was Israel Ori (who died in 1711). He was born in Karabagh, and was related to the leading Armenian families there. His name is almost certainly a pseudonym. In attempting to interest Europe in the liberation of Armenia, he offered the conversion of the country to Roman Catholicism, and the crown of the revived Armenia to Prince Johann-Wilhelm of the Palatinate. He also promised a native army of 200,000 infantry and 10,000 cavalry. But for various reasons – including the provision of the treaty of Carlowitz which prohibited European armies from crossing Ottoman territory – nothing came of his scheme. So he turned his attention to Muscovy, and in 1701 was received by Peter the Great in Moscow. Ori informed the tsar about the history and present condition of Armenia, and gave him a map of the country. To his request for an army to deliver it from the Persian overlords, Peter could give no more than indistinct assurances.³ While in Moscow, Ori gathered a retinue of fifty men, and on his return to Persia, in a grand coup de théâtre, he descended upon the shah and his court at Isfahan, reducing them to panic. Rumour was spread about that his name was

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an anagram of il sera roi. He was ordered out of Persia, and by the time of his death he had gained no more than paper promises.

The North

Nevertheless the time was ripe for a serious approach from Russia to the Caucasus. Russians were not complete strangers to the region: almost eight centuries earlier, in 945, the ferocious people of the Rus had come by boat down the Kura river and, after defeating a local army, had occupied Partar (Bardha’a). Misfortune befell them in the shape of (we are told) an epidemic caused by their over-indulgence in fresh fruit; they departed soon afterwards.⁴

Contacts had been more fruitful (perhaps one should say less so) in the other direction: Armenians, travelling through the Byzantine empire, came into contact with Russians as early as the ninth and tenth centuries. In the following centuries Armenians acted as merchants and doctors in the Kiev kingdom. In Muscovy, they were reported to be selling luxury goods in the fourteenth century; Ivan the Terrible’s expansion of his kingdom to Kazan (1552) and Astrakhan (1556) opened up great opportunities for Armenian enterprise.

Within a few years of Shah Abbas’s grant to Armenians of a monopoly in the Persian silk trade, they had proved their skill at managing it. In 1667 an Armenian delegation from a trading company set up eight years earlier to promote trade between Persia and Muscovy visited Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich, and, in the course of their talks, presented him with an Armenian-made golden throne, studded with diamonds and amethysts; in return he granted the Armenians a monopoly of the sale of Persian goods (which mainly meant silk) within his realm. Another Armenian established a plantation of mulberry trees – food for silk-worms – on the bands of the Terek, leading to silk manufacture within Russia. By the early eighteenth century Armenians had entirely cornered the Russian market in cloths and textiles.

Peter the Great and the Caucasus

In 1715 Peter the Great appointed Artemius Volinsky envoy to the shah. Volinsky’s principal task was to gather information about Persia; he was also to try to persuade the Armenian merchants to divert their trade with Europe from the land route through the Ottoman empire (that is, along the vale of Alashkert to Erzerum, and thence to the port of Trebizond) to the waterways of Russia, which would take their goods all the way to St Petersburg.⁵ Peter was more interested in gaining the trade of Persia than seizing territory.

Despite reports from Volinsky that indicated that Persia was so weak that she would be unable to resist invasion, the tsar planned no campaign until the autumn of 1721, and then it was to crush tribal mountaineers who were

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disrupting trade between Persia and Russia. Within a few months his plans received fresh impetus from the news that Persia had collapsed under an invasion from the Afghans. The Afghans, like the Turks, were Sunni Muslims, and a potential Turko–Afghan union posed a grave threat to Russia.

With the intention of restoring the Persian throne to the shah in return for certain Caspian provinces (in which he would establish a grand trading city), Peter set out for Astrakhan in May 1722. He captured Derbend three months later without difficulty. Soon afterwards, however, he turned back, leaving the native Christian armies of the region – principally the Armenians – disappointed that he had not come to liberate their territories.⁶ Peter did indeed plan to bring Armenia and Georgia under his protection,^* but after his experience in the campaign of 1711 on the river Pruth, when he was let down by the native Christians, he was cautious in engaging local assistance.

Forces of both Armenians and Georgians had been armed and ready to give military assistance to the Russian tsar. The Armenians were commanded by a leading melik, or chief, of Karabagh, David Bek. David Bek represented the re-emergence of a warrior ruling class among Armenians after four or five centuries. As with other Christian warrior classes in the Islamic world it is noteworthy that it emerged in a mountainous region, virtually inaccessible both to emissaries of the central government and to the Muslim landlords of the plains.

Armenian overlordship of Karabagh, as represented by David Bek and his fellow meliks, lasted only until 1728, when David died and authority passed into the hands of ineffectual and quarrelsome successors. During his time he supported the claims of Shah Tahmasp (who had fled to the Armenian wilds around Mount Ararat) against those of the Afghan invaders. An alliance was drawn up, under which David recognised the suzerainty of Persia, but was himself supreme commander in the Caucasus, with the Muslim khans subject to his orders. The value of this treaty was proved during Turkish invasions of 1723–4 and 1727.

The Caucasus Reverts to Persia

After Peter the Great’s Persian expedition, Russia found she could not keep her Caucasian spoils. Although Baku was taken in 1723, in the years that followed all captured districts were returned to Persia. The climate was too sultry and

*In his last memorandum on eastern affairs (1724) Peter the Great wrote to his special envoy in Constantinople:

If the Turks say anything about this [the permission he had granted to Armenians to settle in the Caspian provinces] reply that we have not invited the Armenians, but that they, on account of the unity of belief, had begged us to take them under our protection. For the sake of Christianity it is impossible for us to refuse this to the Armenians, who are Christians. As the vizier himself has often said, it is impossible to refuse protection to those of the same faith who ask it (Eugene Schuyler, Peter the Great (London, 1884), vol. II, pp. 603–4).

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malarial for the Russians, and fresh melons had the same fatal effect that the Rus had discovered when they occupied Bardha’a many centuries before. Peter the Great died in 1725, and the dynamic from the north was lost. For almost half a century Russia took no further interest in the Caucasus. Persia, for her part, re-emerged as a great power under Nadir shah (1736–49). In an important sense Russian intentions were achieved by the rise of Nadir Shah, since ‘with Nadir on the throne, there was no danger of the Turks being allowed to approach the Caspian’ (J. F. Baddeley).⁷

Catherine the Great

From 1762 Catherine the Great was sole ruler of Russia, and, dominated by the forceful figure of Prince G. A. Potemkin, she turned her attention to the Caucasus.

Catherine sought to establish a sound and unshakeable base for the Russian empire. In the Caucasus this entailed not so much direct expansion as pacification of the Muslim tribes. With Catherine the Great’s reign the long period of the Russian struggle with ‘the tribes’ began, which was to last for almost a hundred years, until the capture of Shamil in 1859. The tribes were in revolt against Russia partly because of the deep-seated Muslim hostility to being subject to a Christian power – so profound that it is almost an article of faith – and partly because they were encouraged to revolt by generous subventions from Ottoman Turkish agents. Russia urgently sought to pacify them, fearing that Ottoman Turkey would gain a foothold in the Caucasus, and draw a chain across Russia’s important outlet to Persia.

Catherine’s activities against the tribes were judged hostile by Ottoman Turkey, and war broke out between the two in 1768. Six years later, with the victory of the Russian forces, the two sides signed a treaty on 10/21 July 1774^*, at Kutchuk Kainardji on the banks of the Danube. This treaty was of great importance in the history of the Near East; it set the tone of relations between Russia and Turkey until 1914; it established the principle of foreign interference in Ottoman Turkey (see below, p. 90); and, with the capture by Russia of some of the coastline of the Black Sea (for until then the Black Sea had been an Ottoman Turkish lake) it led to Russia’s concern with the problem of the Straits, which has lasted to the present day. A new era began after 1774. Driven by the necessities of imperial advance, Russia was compelled, step by step, to capture more and more of the Black Sea coastline – each further advance needed to ‘protect’ the last one. (Since, however, such gains were made at the expense of another empire which acquired these same territories in a rather more summary method a few centuries before, moralising about the wickedness of the process is pointless.)

* That is, 10 July according to the Julian calendar then in use in Russia; 21 July according to European reckoning.

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Nine years after signing the treaty of Kutchuk Kainardji, the Russian movement southwards continued. In 1783 Russia both annexed the Crimea (following years of political turmoil there) and made the most important of the petty Georgian kingdoms – that of Kartlo-Kakhetia – a Russian protectorate.⁸ Count Paul Potemkin, a cousin of Prince Grigory, led the latter expedition. In the following year the fortress of Vladikavkaz – modern Orjonikidze – was built, a forward post for the conquest of the Caucasus.

Agha Mohammed

In 1795 an event occurred which was strongly to influence the future of the Caucasus. After a bitter struggle, the throne of Persia had been seized in 1794 by Agha Mohammed, of the Qajar tribe. He was the founder of the ruling dynasty which persisted into our own century. He was also a eunuch – surely one of the few examples in history of a eunuch founding a royal family. (The line continued through his nephew.) A man of undoubted military ability, he was – even by the standards of the time – ferociously cruel. Today we would call him a psychopath. Some have alleged that his cruelty was in some way a compensation for the loss of his masculinity. In a whirlwind campaign in 1795 he reduced Georgia, sacked Tiflis and massacred most of its inhabitants (including the notable Armenian court poet, Sayat Nova). The following year Russia intervened to save Georgia from obliteration.⁹ She withdrew her troops in 1797, as part of the general pull-back that followed the death of the Empress Catherine in November 1796, and the abandonment of her forward policies; but political chaos followed the death of the Georgian king Erekle (Heraclius) II in 1798, and a number of Georgians appealed to Russia to protect them from another devastating Qajar invasion. In 1801 the Russian tsar proclaimed the annexation of eastern Georgia, and the abolition of the Bagratid monarchy there.^*

The ‘Great’ Powers

At about this time it is possible to discern the political current which was arguably the single most debilitating and even destructive influence on the Armenians in the years that followed: the great-power rivalry between Britain

* Georgians have latterly bemoaned their loss of independence; but at the time memories of Agha Mohammed’s cruelties were very fresh, and the fears of repetition real; so that if Russia had not incorporated Georgia into her empire, there might be no Georgians left today to grumble about the manner in which they lost their independence. Moreover, one is compelled to reflect that if their own rulers had been less devoted to labyrinthine quarrelling, and more to ruling their subjects, their kingdom might not have been reduced to such political infirmity. Similar factors were to trouble the Transcaucasian republics over a hundred years later, and were to make the notion of independence a luxury that ultimately they could not afford.

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and Russia. The mildly schizophrenic Tsar Paul (1796–1801) conceived a vast plan for challenging British power in India, which was so megalomaniac that it could not be taken seriously;¹⁰ but however flamboyantly expressed, it struck like an icicle of fear into the hearts of the British policy-makers. Often the rivalry was concealed (as when both powers were ranged against Napoleon, or when they fought the Turks at Navarino) but it was always there. It led Britain to ally herself first with Persia, and when that power was knocked out of the Caucasian political equation, with Turkey: in each case Britain was directly opposing the interests of the Armenians, most of whom realised that, given their geographical position, their only real hope for the future lay under the shadow of the northern power.

At the time Britain’s alignment was most clearly demonstrated by the series of British military missions to Persia of the period 1800–10, designed to strengthen Persia and to assure the paramountcy of British influence.¹¹ One British officer, Captain Lindsay, even became commander-in-chief of the Persian army. The most significant outcome of the missions was the Definitive Treaty of 1814, a bilateral agreement under which Persia was compelled to nullify treaties concluded with European powers hostile to Britain, and to forbid the entrance of armies of such powers into Persian territory. In return Britain granted Persia an annual subsidy of £150,000. The emerging pattern of diplomacy was that, out of fear of Russia, Britain was supporting those powers from which the Armenians were beginning to try to shake themselves free.

Prince Tsitsianov

For the five years following the annexation of Georgia, Caucasian affairs were dominated by the policies of one man: Prince Tsitsianov, Russian commander-in-chief in the Caucasus. A Russified Georgian who had already established for himself a fine military record, he soon showed a spirit in the Caucasus which was both aggressive and conciliatory. He was aggressive in his drive to expand Russian domination in Transcaucasia,^* but respectful of the existing social structures when he had obtained the rulers’ submission. There was no large-scale settlement of Cossacks in the Caucasus, as there had been after Russian imperial expansion elsewhere.

If it is possible to call the imposition of imperial dominion on a population ‘heroic’, then the age of Tsitsianov was indeed heroic. His viceroyalty effectively marks the beginning of the period in which the Caucasus captured the imagination of Russian writers. Tsitsianov himself was a man of immense dash and bravado. On one occasion he wrote thus to Tsar Alexander I:¹²

* Having crossed the Caucasian mountains, the lands beyond constituted, from Russia’s point of view, Transcaucasia. The term ‘the Caucasus’ is, however, used almost interchangeably, if slightly inaccurately.

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Map 2. The Caucasus in the Early Nineteenth Century

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Fear and greed are the two mainsprings of everything that takes place here. These people’s only policy is force, and their rulers’ mainstay valour, together with the money requisite to hire Daghestanis. For this reason I adopt a system of rule contrary to that hitherto prevailing, and instead of paying, as it were, tribute in the shape of subsidies and gifts intended to mitigate mountain manners, I myself demand tribute of them.

Tsitsianov’s main achievement was the unification of Georgia (divided for 400 years) under the Russian crown. First he persuaded the westernmost part (Mingelia, adjoining the Black Sea) to accept Russian protection; the remaining Georgian kingdom, Imeretia (with its capital Kutais) was thereby surrounded by Russian power, and it too submitted in 1804.

Tsitsianov next moved against the semi-independent Persian khanates. On the thinnest of pretexts he captured the Muslim town of Gandja, the seat of Islamic learning in the Caucasus, and renamed it Yelizavetpol, in honour of the tsarina. (Its present-day name is Kirovabad.) This was followed in the same year by an attack on another khanate, Yerevan, or Erivan; although Tsitsianov defeated the Persian troops, led by crown prince Abbas Mirza, at Echmiadzin, Yerevan itself – ‘the strongest fortress in the country’¹³ – held out against the Russians. His advance continued in 1805, with the submission of the khans of Karabagh and Shekeen (east of Gandja). Then, as part of his plan to secure Russian dominion from the Black to Caspian Sea, he turned his attention to Baku. In February 1806, as, stricken with fever, he was riding out to negotiate with the khan of Baku, he was treacherously shot. His head and hands were carried off in triumph to Tehran. With his death the Caucasus was deprived of a man of undoubted ability, a servant of the Russian crown who tempered imperialism with deference to local traditions in marked contrast to Russian conquerors both before and after him.

The Russian movement southward continued after the death of Tsitsianov, albeit with less panache. Among the conquests of 1805 was the small village of Gumri, near the Turkish border, which was turned into a military settlement and renamed Alexandropol. The final capture by Russia of Derbend and Baku followed. War with Turkey herself resumed in 1806, and continued – inconclusively in the Caucasus – until 1812, when Russia, in grave peril from Napoleonic forces, signed a conciliatory treaty with Turkey at Bucharest (May 1812). Russia’s treaty with Persia of the following year – the treaty of Gulistan – was altogether different, highlighting the political debility of Persia and the vanity of the crown prince: Russia held on to Karabagh, and almost all of the region which makes up the present day Azerbaijani SSR; and Persia abandoned her claims on the Georgian provinces and Daghestan. (In return Russia agreed to support the claim of Abbas Mirza to the succession of the Persian throne.)

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Yermolov

For ten years from 1816 the Caucasus was dominated by another Russian viceroy, more ferocious than Tsitsianov and without his civilised qualities: General A. P. Yermolov. Yermolov, who claimed descent from Chingiz Khan, said of himself:

I desire that the terror of my name should guard our frontiers more potently than chains of fortresses, that my word should be for the natives a law more inevitable than death … Out of pure humanity I am inexorably severe.¹⁴

With ruthless efficiency Yermolov crushed native unrest. He abolished the semi-independence of the khanates, incorporating them wholesale into the Russian empire. Daghestan, hitherto inaccessible, was subjugated village by village. The peace that reigned in the Caucasus was most often the peace of the deserted village, destroyed as a reprisal for native insubordination.

During his viceroyalty Persia invaded Turkey (1821). The event was of no long-term consequence, but it pointed up some significant factors: the continuing instability of Persia, the overblown self-esteem of Abbas Mirza; and the plotting and counterplotting of the two rival powers, Russia and Britain. For Britain had conceived the plan of consolidating the two Muslim powers of Turkey and Persia – realising that every advance of Russia in the Caucasus had been due to conflict between Sunni and Shi’a. A Russian agent had, however, outwitted the British and negated their policy, by appealing to Abbas’s pride, and encouraging him to invade. In the campaign that followed Persia briefly occupied Kars and Bayazid; but under pressure from Britain she withdrew.

Prince Paskievich

In December 1825 Tsar Alexander died; the Decembrist rising followed, opposing the succession of Nicolas. Yermolov himself proclaimed to his troops Constantine, not Nicolas, as emperor; he was not, however, implicated in the rising. But the uncertainty in the Caucasus was too much for the over-ambitious Abbas Mirza, and in July 1826 he invaded Karabagh, which quickly fell to him.¹⁵ Gandja (Yelizavetpol) opened its gates to him. Lenkoran was overrun. It looked as though the Russian conquests of the past 25 years might crumble to nothing. What of Yermolov, the lion of the Caucasus? He remained in Tiflis, giving orders to his commanders to hold out at all costs, but seemingly incapable of undertaking any action. Tsar Nicolas, deeply dissatisfied with Yermolov's conduct, appointed Prince I. F. Paskievich as commander-in-chief in the Caucasus, under direct instructions from himself. Within a fortnight of

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his arrival, Paskievich had routed the main Persian army – officered by Englishmen – at Akstafa, 30 kilometres west of Yelizavetpol.¹⁶ Russian confidence was restored.

In the spring of the following year Paskievich took the offensive: Echmiadzin, the Armenian holy city, was occupied without resistance in April 1827. The siege of Yerevan was begun, under General Krasovsky. Paskievich himself rode south, and occupied Nakhichevan without opposition in June. But the summer was exceptionally hot and dry, and after two months Krasovsky was compelled to abandon the siege of Yerevan. Within six weeks Abbas Mirza, who never missed an opportunity, was beside Echmiadzin with a very large force. Echmiadzin itself was only defended by a small detachment of Armenian volunteer cavalry. The haphazard nature of the Russian campaign was again apparent, as it appeared that Russian forces were caught unprepared. But as a result of one of those stirring acts of bravery which adorn the pages of Caucasian warfare, the Russians saved the day. Krasovsky came to the rescue, in torrid heat and across harsh mountainous terrain, and defeated the Persians at Ashtarak in mid-July. This defeat was a severe blow to Persian morale, As a result Paskievich resolved to consolidate his gains, and to renew the siege of Yerevan. First he occupied the fortified village of Sardarabad, whose defence was commanded by the brother of the khan of Yerevan; then after a brief siege Yerevan finally fell to the Russians on 2/14 October 1827.¹⁷

The Treaty of Turkmen-chai

By the subsequent treaty of Turkmen-chai¹⁸ (10/22 February 1828) Russia obtained possession of the khanates of Yerevan and Nakhichevan. (She also obtained the khanate of Talish, on the Caspian Sea.) In the south Russia's frontier with Persia was the river Araxes; upstream the frontier moved sharply west to include the district of Surmalu, whose chief town was the dusty village of Igdir, but whose main geographical feature was the towering Mount Ararat – of great historic and national significance for Armenians, who called it Masis.

However, the most important result of the treaty of Turkmen-chai was that it cut Persia out of the political affairs of the Caucasus. It was the severing of the link between Armenia and Persia which stretched back to the Achaemenids – an association which, despite religious difference, had been in the main a fruitful one. The artistic interplay between the two peoples (whether in carpet-making, painting or metalwork) is clearly apparent; and in the years of dark fanaticism, Persia had almost always treated Armenians with tolerance. Henceforward, in the cross-populated, disputed regions of Transcaucasia, the Armenians would look more and more towards Russia, especially as the condition of their fellow Armenians across the border in Ottoman Turkey deteriorated; while, with the growth of modern ideologies, the

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Turkic-speaking Tatars, or Azeris (to give them their modern name) would be drawn more into alliance with Turkey – despite the fact that most of them were Shi'a Muslims, something which in the past had led them into profound conflict with the Sunni Muslim Turks.

The khanates of Yerevan and Nakhichevan soon became a 'quasi-Armenia' within the Russian empire. Together they even received the name Armyanskaya oblast, or Armenian province. Initially this quasi-Armenia was administered by an executive of three men: General Krasovsky, Lieutenant-Colonel Borodin and – riding on the first crest of Armenian nationalist achievement – Archbishop Nerses Ashtaraketsi, Armenian archbishop of Tiflis.

Living Conditions

The condition of the Armenian people living throughout historic Armenia was, with rare exceptions, backward and downtrodden. The vast majority of them lived in the villages of the plains such as Erzerum, Pasin and Moush. (Many of the Armenians of the plain of Ararat had been deported by Shah Abbas two centuries earlier.) Here they constituted an agricultural peasantry, most of whom seldom aspired to anything higher than mere survival. In the face of the harsh climate and instability of life, to exist was accomplishment enough. The descriptions of Armenian conditions that we have – whether in Turkish or formerly Persian Armenia – suggest a way of life that, despite the intermittent splendours of the medieval period, had remained fundamental and unchanging since Xenophon passed through with his Ten Thousand in 401 BC. Most strikingly similar are the houses of the Armenian villagers, of which Robert Curzon gives an account in his Armenia (1854). These were constructed like large underground burrows, centring round a stable, from which the rooms for members of the family led off. Rich and poor used to live thus, for, as Curzon tells us, 'The space of ground taken up by a rich man's house is prodigious, the turfed roof forming a small field.'¹⁹ Light entered the rooms through a piece of oiled paper – or very rarely through glass – and was directed towards the centre of the room, opposite the fireplace, 'where a fire of tezek, or dried cow-dung and chopped straw, is constantly smouldering'. The chimneys resembled large toadstools, 'rising a little above the snow or the grass which grows upon the roof', and were covered with large flat stones. (Smoke escaped from apertures at the side.) According to Curzon,

There are stories, perhaps founded on fact, of hungry thieves lifting the flat stone off the top of the chimney and fishing up the kettle in which the supper was stewing over the fire below, with a hooked stick – a feat which would not be at all difficult if the cook was thinking of something else, as sometimes will happen even in the best regulated families.²⁰

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By contrast, this is how Dr Humphry Sandwith, in his splendid Narrative of the Siege of Kars (1856) described an Armenian town house:

The house-architecture of Asia Minor is peculiar, and, as I am writing at this moment in a large Armenian house in Erzerum, I cannot do better than describe it. The house externally has a most gloomy aspect, built as it is of dark-coloured stone, and having very small windows. You enter by a low door and find yourself in a stone passage. On your right is a door which opens into a stable; on your left are sundry odd-looking rooms, such as kitchens, pantries, &c, all excessively cold and damp. A stair on your left leads you into the upper rooms. Now all these apartments are built side by side, like so many small independent houses, and each has a roof of its own, so that when you step outside you find a separate roof for each room, the lower ones leading to the upper by stone steps. In the spring of the year the whole population of the city, chiefly women and children, bring out their cushions and matresses and sun themselves on these roofs; and a most gay and beautiful sight it is, from the brilliant costumes and bright colours in which the women delight. You can walk along the terraces from house to house over nearly the whole town, and if you are stopped by a street it would not require a very long leap to clear the chasm. The interior of the rooms is often very gaily decorated with painted roofs, which though curious, are utterly wanting in artistic taste; they resemble very bad Persian painting. A native room possesses but little furniture – a carpet and a sofa are, strictly speaking, the whole of it; but the wealthier Christians and some of the Turks have latterly adopted much of European luxury, and it is not infrequent now to find chairs and tables.²¹

Towards Emancipation: the Mëkhitarists and the Indian Armenians

By the time of Paskievich's conquest of Yerevan, and even more so by the time of Curzon and Sandwith, a beginning had been made in the struggle to emancipate the Armenians, to return to them self-knowledge and self-consciousness, and to bring them out of the ignorance and servitude which was the lot of the overwhelming majority of them. In the Armenian colonies far from the land itself books were already being printed in the Armenian language disseminating new ideas. Armenian printing had begun as long ago as 1512, with publication in Venice of the first Armenian book. Subsequently the community in Amsterdam established a press which printed the Armenian Bible for the first time in 1666. At the same time, within Armenia itself, the Roman Catholic Church had developed its missionary endeavour. Although the direct influence of the missionaries was small, they were seen as rivals by the Armenian clergy and hence were instrumental in stimulating new ways of thought. The movement developed in the eighteenth century, with the founda-

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tion in 1701 of a Benedictine order by Mëkhitar (or Mkhitar) of Sebaste, or Sivas (1676–1749), in Constantinople. This order moved two years later to the Morea; and in 1715 it moved again, at the invitation of the Venetian Republic, to the island of San Lazzaro, Venice, where it remains to this day. (It was there that Byron submitted himself to the labour of learning classical Armenian in 1816 – perhaps as a contrast to the pleasures that he sought and found elsewhere in the city.) After Mëkhitar's death a branch of the order was set up in Trieste (1773),which moved to Vienna in 1811, where it too can be found today. The order was dedicated to scholarship and education, and its impact on widening the horizons of Armenians in Armenia was immense. Mëkhitar acted as a bridge between Europe and Armenia, using his printing press to convey the methods and approach of the west to the problems of a remote, scattered eastern people. Through the work of his order the Armenians began to move towards self-knowledge and emancipation.²²

Equally significant in the Armenian emancipatory struggle was the contribution of the Armenians of India, specifically those of Madras. Armenians had been established in India since the time of the emperor Akbar (1542–1602).²³ By the eighteenth century there were a number of wealthy merchants in the community. One such was Grigor agha Chakikiants, who financed the first printing press in Armenia, at Echmiadzin (1771). Two Madras Armenians by the names of Shahrimanian and Gharamian provided the backing for the printing of various works, including Mikayel Chamchiants's History of Armenia (1784–6).

In 1772 a Madras Armenian, Shahamir Shahamirian, printed the first work of Armenian political philosophy. The author was Movses Baghramian, who had settled in Madras from Karabagh, and the work was called Nor Tetrak, Vor Kochi Hordorak ('A New Tract, Entitled Admonishment'). The aim of this book was 'to awaken the youth of the Armenians from their sleep and indolence which derived from a weakened condition resulting from their timidity and idleness'. From the standpoint of the present 'hopeless condition' of the Armenians, Baghramian surveys his people's history, and enquires how they lost their independence – and how they might regain it. He puts the blame on their passivity, their unwillingness to respond to non-Armenian and specifically European ideas, and their exile from their motherland. He notes that even if flight from Armenian soil gave his people physical freedom, it also made any future liberation of the country more difficult. Looking to the future, he envisaged Armenia as a constitutional republic; monarchy he saw as leading to absence of law, since what law there was depended solely on the whim of the monarch. Three constituents were essential for a future Armenia: political awareness, political freedom and the motherland. To regain the land, Baghramian suggested armed resistance – not to take away the rights of others, but to restore the lost Armenia. The leaders of the Armenian liberation he saw as Simeon, Catholicos (in Echmiadzin), King Heraclius of Georgia, and the meliks of Karabagh.²⁴

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Baghramian's interesting work was followed by a book by Hakob Shahamirian, with the curious title Vorogait Parats ('Trap of Glory'). It was published (also in Madras) with the date 1773, although some claim that its real date was nearer 1787. The author declared that his work was to be 'an obstacle to evil deeds arising from human self-glorification'. It is a manual for the constitution of a future Armenia, essentially democratic in spirit. Like Baghramian, Shahamirian concentrates on the concept of law, and comes to the conclusion that law should emerge from the will of the people, not from the whim of a monarch or the customs of past centuries. His book contained 521articles, detailing in a somewhat haphazard manner how his idea of law should be implemented in practice in a future Armenia. The nucleus of the state was to be the members of the Armenian Apostolic Church; they alone would have full civil rights. They would elect the national assembly, who would grant power to the executive. Quite small matters of civil finance are proposed – such as that members of the assembly should be paid out of the local rates, and not from the central treasury;²⁵ but of awareness of the complexities of creating this country out of two mutually hostile Islamic empires, and of avoiding their ferocious retaliations, there is none. Nor was any real answer given to the problem of the large number of non-Armenian people now living in historic Armenia. Nevertheless, the words of Baghramian and Shahamirian were a serious attempt to grapple with the problems of Armenia using the terminology of the age of enlightenment. The authors sent copies of their books to the leaders of the people in Armenia; Catholicos Simeon, partly responding to the unreal, artificial quality, so greatly in contrast to his own, down-to-earth knowledge of his people and their circumstances, and partly because he saw a threat to the traditional position of the Church in the community, condemned Baghramian's work as divashounch – 'the breath of the devil'.²⁶

In Madras the appearance of these two books was followed by the publication of a journal, Azdarar ('Monitor') in 1794. It was published by Harutiun Shmavonian, a man who originally hailed from Shiraz. Despite assistance (notably from Hovsep archbishop Arghoutian in Tiflis) it was forced to fold two years later, after eighteen issues, through lack of subscribers. (It had 28 subscribers in India, 10 in Turkish Armenia, and a handful in the Caucasus.) Shmavonian's press continued until 1809, and published in all twelve books.

Within the Russian empire three academic establishments had a great impact on the educational level of Armenians. ²⁷ In 1815 the Lazarev (or Lazarian) Academy in Moscow was opened, founded by members of the wealthy family of that name. It served as an institute of higher education for Armenians. In 1827 its function was expanded and it became the Lazarev Armenian Institute of Oriental Languages; besides its educational role, it prepared orientalists for entrance into the Russian imperial service (rather like some English graduate establishments today). In Tiflis, the Nersisian academy was founded by Archbishop Nerses Ashtaraketsi, in 1816, an academy which educated many of Armenia's writers and thinkers of succeeding decades.

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Somewhat later, in 1874, the Gevorgian seminary was founded at Echmiadzin which acted partly as a seminary and partly as a teacher-training college Among its students it was to number Anastas Mikoyan.

Strategic Considerations

Thus by 1827 Armenians were gaining the knowledge and self-awareness that are prerequisites of the members of modern nations. The groundwork had been laid for the emergence of a native educated elite. But, however able the educators of the Armenian people, their efforts were bound to be fiercely circumscribed unless the military and political circumstances of Armenia permitted peaceful development; and it is the misfortune of Armenia that from Paskievich’s capture of Yerevan until the first world war two factors meant that she was denied peace: an imperial border traversed the middle of her territory, as alien to her as that of the Sunni and Shi’a empires of earlier centuries; and northern Armenia consisted of a series of forts of great strategic significance: Erzindjan, Erzerum, Kars and Alexandropol. Erzerum is so securely defended by its mountains that it requires a major strategist to take it. If it was the key to Anatolia for an army invading from the east, the possession of Kars enabled Turkey to threaten the whole of Transcaucasia. As Allen and Muratoff have written:²⁸

The importance of Kars lay in the fact that it covered the twin Turkish fortress at Akhaltzikhe and made possible a rapid Turkish advance both down the Kura gorges to Gori and along the affluents flowing to the middle valley of that river. Such line of advance at once turned the line of the Suram and threatened Tiflis. Tiflis covered all the middle and lower Kura and was the key to eastern Transcaucasia as far as the Caspian. Kars was the key to Tiflis and hence has been described as the ‘key to Transcaucasia’.

The Russo–Turkish War of 1828–9

Within five months of signing the treaty of Turkmen-chai with Persia, General Paskievich had captured Kars from the Turks. The origins of the 1828–9 Russo–Turkish war are essentially European; in the Caucasus the prosecution of the war by the Russians had, according to instructions from the tsar to Paskievich, a double aim: to divert the Turks from the European theatre of the war, and to create a more defensible frontier in the Caucasus, by capturing forts which threatened recent Russian gains. First to be conquered by the Russians was Kars itself, which they captured with ease. However, Russian strategy was by no means infallible, as on one occasion during the war when a premature attack by an impetuous young lieutenant threatened to lead to

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disaster. At the moment when things looked grimmest for the Russians – to quote Baddeley:

an incident, not without parallel in Russian warfare, before and since, changed the whole aspect of affairs. The pope or chaplain of the Armenian regiment, holding high the Cross, threw himself in front of the fleeing riflemen, shouting ‘Stop children! Is it possible that you will abandon here both me and the Cross of our Saviour? If, indeed, you are neither Russians nor Christians – run. I shall know how to die alone!’ The flight was arrested, order restored, the Turks driven back, and Miklashevsky [the colonel of the relieving force] saved.²⁹

Next, Paskievich moved against Akhalkalak, which succumbed after an assault late in July.³⁰ Thence, after a frightening, but rapidly staunched, outbreak of plague in his army, he besieged Akhaltsikhe, which he eventually stormed on 16 August 1828. To the south, General Chavchavadze was utilising the recently captured fortress of Yerevan as a base for attacks across the Ararat mountain chain, towards Bayazid, with the aim of cutting communications between Erzerum and Tabriz. Within a month he was in control of the pashalik (province) of Bayazid.³¹ It looked as though the regions further south – perhaps as far as Lake Van – were ready to fall into the conqueror’s hands; but with the approach of winter Paskievich decided to suspend operations.

In the winter of 1828–9 Paskievich proposed a bold new campaign to the tsar: the conquest of Erzerum, together with a seaborne attack on Trebizond, which would be followed by an assault on Sivas, considered by Paskievich to be the Ottoman centre of communications throughout its Asiatic provinces. Then he would proceed through Tokat to Samsun on the coast, and perhaps even threaten Scutari, across the straits from Constantinople.

However, before winter had lifted its mantle from the Caucasus, the Turks took the offensive, temporarily recapturing Akhaltsikhe and murdering the Armenian section of its population (5 March). As if a fly had settled on the bear’s nose, the Russian army rapidly regained the initiative: Paskievich drove the Turks westwards, and was in possession of Erzerum by 25 June.^* In the words of Allen and Muratoff, ‘the seraskier’s army thawed like snow in the spring’.³² Monteith noted:

Prince Paskievich was now in possession of the stronghold of Turkish power in Asia; the Ottoman forces were defeated and dispersed, and their commanders taken prisoners; the Russian communications were free, and a

*Among those who accompanied the victorious Russian army to Erzerum was, at Paskievich’s express wish, Alexander Pushkin. He recorded his experiences in his Putieshestvie v Arzrum (‘Journey to Erzerum’).

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sufficient quantity of provisions had been captured to supply the wants of the army. Nothing apparently could arrest their advance.³³

Once in control of Erzerum, Paskievich instituted an administration which was in contrast both to those in Caucasian lands formerly occupied by the Russians and to the prevailing Ottoman system. Its basic qualities were its tolerance and impartiality. A Muslim of Circassian origin, Prince Bekovich, was appointed to liaise with the existing authorities, almost all of whom were maintained. Oppressive taxes were abolished; equality of Muslims and Christians proclaimed. Monteith (an eyewitness) comments that ‘the population in general, but especially the Kurds and the Christians, would have been perfectly content to remain under the Russian government.’³⁴ (Throughout the campaign Paskievich had shown great skill in winning over the Kurds, and playing on their disaffection towards the Ottoman government.)

After Erzerum, Paskievich marshalled his forces for the planned attack on Sivas. Part of his army reached as far as Baiburt and Gumush-khana; but the weather indicated that the season was at an end, and so after a very successful campaign, Paskievich called a halt.

The war was terminated by the treaty of Adrianople, 14 September 1829.³⁵ Russian arms had been almost equally successful in the Balkan theatre of war (where Marshal Diebitch’s leadership had matched that of Paskievich); but Russia forbore to make treaty gains comparable to her victories; she believed that the Ottoman empire was doomed to collapse, and for the moment was a useful protection for her own southern frontier.³⁶ Thus although she made some important gains in Asia – notably the harbours of Anapa and Poti on the Black Sea, and the final end of all Ottoman claims to suzerainty of Daghestan – the actual area of territory ceded was modest: the fortresses of Atskhur, Akhaltsikhe and Akhalkalak, together with a small strip of territory to the west (‘at a distance which must be not less than two hours’) of the latter two. The Ottoman empire retained the pashaliks of Bayazid, Kars and Erzerum; also the harbour of Batum. With the exception of the latter, and the district around the village of Igdir, the frontier of 1829 was almost identical to the Soviet–Turkish border of today.

The treaty was a great disappointment to Armenians. Nevertheless, even if the land of Armenia remained in Ottoman Turkish hands, the Armenian people themselves could be rescued from misrule and oppression. A number of Armenians, estimated variously between 60,000 and 90,000, fled with the withdrawing Russian army, under the auspices of an emigration committee. In doing so, they could be said to be going against the principles of Baghramian, who had claimed that Armenian emigration was one of the reasons for the weakness of the nation. Such emigration may have done long-term damage to the Armenian struggle to emancipate themselves in their own land; but it served one very clear advantage.

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A Russian–Armenian Nucleus

One of the clauses of the treaty of Turkmen-chai of the previous year had laid down that inhabitants of Persian Azerbaijan – and the clear implication was that this referred to Armenians – would be accorded a period of a year ‘in order to transport themselves freely with their families from Persian states into Russian states’.³⁷ Leading Armenian figures had requested the inclusion of this clause. The intention was to create a nucleus of Armenians in the newly conquered Russian Armenia, which at the time had a Tatar majority (due mainly to Shah Abbas’s transfer of much of the Armenian population from the Ararat plain and surrounding region in 1605). This nucleus was created by emigration from Persia, and strengthened by a further influx from Ottoman Turkey; its value should be balanced against the loss of Armenians from their native lands. At the time it seemed a sound policy; the notion of political liberation of land was alien to a people who felt themselves to be a non-territorial religious community. It was also entirely secondary to the business of freeing the people, and creating for them an environment in which they could live and work without oppressive discrimination.

Armenians who went to Russia from Turkey or Persia travelled in time from static, medieval despotism to a country where progress was possible – which, indeed, since 1812 had become part of Europe and open to its technical and intellectual advancements. But despite the potential for advancement thus offered, the actual condition of Armenians in the new Russian province improved little. When Tsar Nicholas I visited the Ararat plain in 1838, the peasantry made visible their disappointment with Russian rule. Nevertheless, the groundwork was created for the development of the Armenian people as a modern nation; and this was symbolised by the struggle over the Armenian language that took place in Yerevan shortly after the Russian conquest.

Language Reform

A patriotic Armenian educator or thinker dedicated to the welfare of his people was confronted by a serious problem at this time: that there were two Armenian languages. One was the written language. It was the preserve of a small educated elite, and of the Church; no one was brought up to speak it, or to use it in his day-to-day dealings. It had to be learnt, and since it was very difficult to learn, progress in general literacy was bound to be extremely slow. The other language was the vernacular, which, although its roots can be found in ancient Armenian, was considered by the learned to be a mere language of the streets. Several schemes for elevating the spoken language into a written one, and for simplifying the ancient language, were devised at this time, both in Transcaucasia and Constantinople, but the one which became generally accepted was that pioneered by Khachatur Abovian. Abovian, born just

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outside Yerevan, received his early education from the church, and, like any man with an aptitude for learning at the time, seemed destined to enter the Church. But in 1829 he acted as a guide to the German scientist Dr Friedrich Parrot on his ascent of Ararat. His foreign guest invited him to study at the university, Dorpat, the modern Tartu, Estonia, where the bracing atmosphere of European thought led Abovian to view the condition of his people in a critical and objective manner. He saw that literacy was the key to advancement, and resolved to fight for the acceptance of the vernacular as the single Armenian language. He encountered stiff opposition to his proposals from the clergy and traditionalist circles, and the struggle may have cost him his life; but within a decade or so of his death, his views were generally accepted, and everyone both spoke and wrote the vernacular tongue.³⁸ The groundwork for a modern, widely spread, educated elite had been made. The ancient language remained, and remains, the preserve of Church ceremonial only.

Regulation of Church Affairs

In 1836 the Russian imperial authorities regulated the administration of the Armenian Church by a decree commonly known as polozhenye (‘statutes’). Since the Church was the institution which controlled many aspects of the lives of ordinary people, the significance of polozhenye was more than ecclesiastical. It was a liberal, a somewhat two-faced, document: on the one hand it gave the Church a large measure of internal autonomy – certainly no attempt was made to force it to become part of the Russian Orthodox church – and laid down a precise – and democratic – procedure for the election of the Catholicos. (The ultimate choice for that office lay with the tsar, since two names had to be put forward, from which he chose one.) But on the other hand polozhenye gave extensive new powers to the synod, which had hitherto just advised the Catholicos. This body, consisting of eight priests, was now placed under the control of the tsar; its decrees were headed ‘By order of the emperor of Russia’. It was almost impossible for the Catholicos to act independently of its decisions, and hence of those of the tsarist secret police. Nevertheless, in the context of the Russian autocracy, it was a liberal document; and moreover it worked in practice to the benefit of the Armenian people. Here again was some of their cherished autonomy.³⁹

Mikayel Nalbandian

Almost all Armenian thinkers of this date saw that the imposition of tsarist rule was the first step towards emancipation; but for Mikayel Nalbandian (1829–66) the oppression of the Romanov yoke was too heavy a burden; he foresaw little change for the condition of Armenians until great changes took

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place within Russia herself. Nalbandian was born in the Armenian settlement of Nor (New) Nakhichevan, which had been established in 1778, during the reign of Catherine the Great, on the river Don. After teaching at the Lazarian institute in Moscow, he worked on an Armenian journal called Hiusisapayl (‘Aurora borealis’). He became acquainted with Russian revolutionary thinkers, and the notion of liberty grew to be central to his political thought – whether of the people oppressed by an empire, or of the peasant ground down by his lord. He also enriched and deepened the eastern Armenian language, and clearly saw the significance of literature and literary criticism in the service of freeing the people. He was the author of the patriotic hymn Mer Hairenik (‘Our Fatherland’), which became the national anthem of Armenia in 1918, and which is still sung at some Armenian meetings, as well as of a brave and fearless ‘Song of Liberty’ (Yerg Azatutian). Sent abroad by the Armenian community of Moscow in 1860, he met Herzen and Bakunin in exile; he also appears to have played some part in planning the rebellion in Zeitun of 1862 (see below, pp. 100–2) during a visit to Constantinople. On his return to Russia he was arrested by the secret police and thrown into jail, where he died in 1866. Despite his short life, his example and his writings remained a vivid inspiration to his people.⁴⁰

Armenians in Transcaucasia

The years following the Russian conquest of Yerevan were filled with intellectual and political advancement for the Armenians; even though the tsar abolished the status of the Armyanskaya oblast in 1840, and reorganised the local boundaries in a manner unfavourable to Armenians,⁴¹ the development and strengthening of the community that resulted from Russian tutelage boded well for Armenia’s future. Yet even here there was a catch: for very few of Armenia’s thinkers – and fewer of her wealthy capitalists – actually lived on the soil of Armenia. They preferred the sophistication of Tiflis, or the opportunities offered by the growing oil industry of Baku. Armenians have always been very profuse journalists; yet no really important Caucasian Armenian literary or political journals were published from either Yerevan or Alexandropol during the nineteenth century. Almost without exception they came from Tiflis.

Russian Armenia remained overwhelmingly an agricultural land, and within that context the benefits of Russian rule soon became apparent: thus, between 1830 and 1860 rice production increased two and a half times, wheat production three times and cotton production four times. In the same period the number of craftsmen doubled.⁴² But despite this increase, and the prosperity it brought, the actual condition of the peasantry improved hardly at all as a result of the change from Persian to Russian rule. By a law of December 1846 the authorities recognised the traditional owners of the land as actual owners.⁴³

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This in turn led to risings against oppressive landowners, notably that at Bjni in March 1850 against the exactions of landowner Arsen Geghamov.

The Crimean War

During the Crimean war, the opposing armies fought in the Armenian highlands, as well as in the Romanian Principalities and in the Crimea itself. The battles around Kars, and the famous siege of the city itself, showed how hard it would be for Armenians to shake off the interests of foreign powers. Since the war of 1828–9 the citadel of Kars had been extensively fortified, and was now a fortress of international significance. It had been modernised by a British colonel, Fenwick Williams, RE, who along with other European officers had been training the Turkish army. The presence of Colonel Williams at Kars posed an acute question for Armenian nationalists, which was never really answered: Armenia could (it was held) only gain her freedom and enable her people and institutions to develop in an orderly, civilised manner, thus joining the community of nations, by adopting European institutions, which initially entailed exchanging Turkish for Russian rule, and to that end supporting Russia against Turkey; yet here, at Kars itself, Turkey was being supported and strengthened by those very European powers that had built their states on the institutions so admired by Armenians, and in comparison with which Russia was only a half-civilised autocracy. The relationship of the great powers to their own imperial interests seemed to be directly contradicting and negating the aspirations of the Armenians to emulate them.

Within Russia the Armenians supported their country’s war effort as a matter of course, and one of the Russian generals, V. I. Bebutov, or Behbutian, was himself an Armenian.⁴⁴ Within Ottoman Turkey the situation was more complex, and the picture of the whole Armenian population working against their empire is an over-simplification. (Sandwith’s diary informs us that during the siege of Kars an equal number of Muslim and Christian spies were executed.) Those Turkish Armenians who were less than dedicated to their country's war effort^* adopted this stance from the immediate, day-to-day restrictions on their life, which put them actually outside the protection of the law (see below, pp. 87–9). Sandwith records the following; Colonel Williams was addressing the notables of Kars in March 1855:

With r