campaigns against the Muslims, lasted until 1375, when the Egyptian Mamluks overrun the region. From then until 1918, historic Armenia was first divided between the Persians and Ottomans, and then between the Ottomans and Russians. Although Armenian diasporas were established in western Europe, South Asia, and Africa, the largest and most influential communities rose in the major cities of the Ottoman, Persian, and Russian empires.
ARMENIANS IN TURKEY AND RUSSIA
Following the Russian conquest of Transcaucasia, the Armenians in Russia adopted Western ideas and began their national and political revival. Soon after, the Armenians in Turkey also began a cultural renaissance. Armenians in Baku and Tiflis (Tbilisi) wielded economic power, and Armenians in Moscow and St. Petersburg associated with government officials. Armenian political parties emerged in the last two decades of the nineteenth century. Beginning as reformist groups in Van (Turkey), the Armenians soon began to copy the programs of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party and the Russian Populists (Narodniks), the Hnchakian Social Democratic
Party, and the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (Dashnaktsutiun).
Armenian political activities angered both the Russians and the Turks. The Russians issued a decree in 1903 which confiscated the property of the Armenian Church. They arrested and executed some leaders and began a general Russification program. The Armenian armed response and the 1905 revolution abrogated the decree. Meanwhile, the Turkish sultan Abdul-Hamid II ordered Armenian massacres from 1895 to 1896. Armenian hopes were raised when, in 1908, the Young Turks overthrew the sultan and promised a state where all citizens would be equal. Unfortunately, the Young Turks became increasingly nationalistic. Pan-Islamism and Pan-Turkism, combined with chauvinism and social Darwinism, eroded the Armeno-Turkish cooperation. The defeat of the Turkish army in the winter campaign of 1914 and 1915 gave them the excuse to rid Turkish Armenia of its Armenian population. Some 1.5 million Armenians perished in the first genocide of the twentieth century. The small number of survivors, mostly women and children, managed to reach Syria or Russia.
The Russian revolution and civil war initially established a Transcaucasian Federated Republic in 1918. On May 26 of that year, however, Georgia, under German protection, pulled out of the federation. Azerbaijan, under Turkish protection, followed the next day. On May 28, Armenia was forced to declare its independence. The small, backward, and mountainous territory of Yerevan Gu-bernya housed the new nation. Yerevan, with a population of thirty thousand, was one-tenth the size of Tiflis or Baku. It had no administrative, economic, or political structure. The affluent Armenians all lived outside the borders of the new republic. A government composed of Dashnak party members controlled the new state.
Armenia was immediately attacked by Turkey, but resisted long enough for World War I to end. The republic also had border disputes over historic Armenian enclaves that had ended up as parts of Georgian and Azerbaijani republics. Despite a blockade, terrible economic and public health problems, and starvation, the Armenians hoped that the Allied promises for the restoration of historic Armenia would be carried out. The Allies, however, had their own agenda, embodied in the Sykes-Picot Agreement. Armenia was forgotten in the peace conferences that divided parts of the Ottoman Empire between the French and the British. Although the United States, led by President Woodrow Wilson, tried its best to help Armenia, the American mandate did not materialize. Armenia was invaded by both republican Turkey, under the leadership of Mustafa Kemal (Ataturk), and by the Bolsheviks. In December 1920, it became a Soviet state.
ARMENIA UNDER THE SOVIETS
Bolshevik rule began harshly for Armenia. Armenian political leaders were either arrested or fled to Iran. Not only did Karabagh and Ganja remain part of Azerbaijan, but Nakhichevan, which had always been part of Persian and Russian Armenia, together with the adjoining district of Sharur, was handed over to Azerbaijan as well. The Armenian regions of Akhalkalaki remained part of Georgia. Armenian regions of Kars and Ardahan, captured by Russia in 1878, were returned to Turkey. As a final slap, Mt. Ararat, which had never been part of Turkish Armenia, was given to Turkey. Armenia thus became the junior member of the Soviet Transcaucasian Federation.
The history of Soviet Armenia paralleled that of the Soviet Union. Armenians experienced the harshness of war communism, and breathed a sigh of relief during the years of New Economic Policy (NEP). Mountainous Karabakh, with its predominantly Armenian population, was accorded autonomy within Azerbaijan. Nakhichevan, separated from Azerbaijan by Zangezur, remained part of the constituent republic of Azerbaijan, but as an autonomous republic.
The task of the Armenian communists was to build a new Armenia that would attract immigrants from Tiflis, Baku, and Russia and thus compete with the large Armenian diaspora. Modernization meant urbanization. The small, dusty town of Yerevan was transformed into a large city that, by 1990, had more than one million inhabitants. Armenia, which had had primarily an agricultural economy, was transformed into an industrial region. Antireligious propaganda was strong, and women were encouraged to break the male domination of society. Ancient traditions were ignored and the new order praised. The idea of ko-renizatsiia (indigenization) enabled Armenian communists to defend Armenian national aspirations within the communist mold. Like their counterparts in other national republics, Armenian leaders were purged by Josef Stalin and Lavrenti Pavlovich Beria between 1936 and 1938. Beria installed his protege, Grigor Arutiunov, who ruled Armenia until 1953.
ARMENIA AND ARMENIANS
The so-called Thaw begun under Nikita Khrushchev (1953-1964) benefited Armenia. Anastas Mikoyan came to Armenia to rehabilitate a number of Armenian authors and to signal the end of the Stalin era. After 1956, therefore, Armenians built new cadre of national leaders and were empowered to run their local ministries. For the next thirty-five years, Armenia was ruled by only four heads of state. Armenian industrial output surpassed that of Georgia and Azerbaijan. Seventy percent of Armenians lived in urban centers, and more than 80 percent had a secondary education or higher, making them one of the best educated groups in the USSR, along with the Jews and ethnic Russians.
Armenians vastly outnumbered all other ethnic groups living in their republic, comprising 98 percent of the population. Ironically, however, Armenians also had the largest numbers living outside their republic. More than 1.5 million lived in the other Soviet republics, and more than 2.5 million had participated in the diaspora. After the Jews, Armenians were the most dispersed people in the USSR. A million lived in Georgia and Azerbaijan alone.
The two decades of the Leonid Brezhnev era were years of benign neglect that enabled the Armenian elite to become more independent and nationalistic in character. Removed from the governing elite, Armenian dissident factions emerged to demand major changes. They even managed to remove the Armenian Communist chief, Anton Kochinian, on charges of corruption, and replaced him with a new leader, Karen Demirjian. Ironically, much of the dissent was not directed against the Russians, but against the Turks and the Azeris. Russia was viewed as a traditional friend, the one power that could redress the wrongs of the past and reinstate Armenia’s lost lands. Since Armenian nationalism did not threaten the USSR, the Armenians were permitted, within reason, to flourish. The fiftieth anniversary of the Armenian genocide (1965) was commemorated in Armenia and a monument to the victims was erected. The status of Karabakh was openly discussed. Armenian protests shelved the idea, proposed during the 1978 revision of the Constitution of the USSR, of making Russian the official language of all republics.
Mikhail Gorbachev’s glasnost and perestroika had a major impact on Armenia. Russia anticipated problems in the Ukraine and the Baltic states, but no one predicted the great eruption of Armenian nationalism, primarily over Karabakh. On February 28, 1988, the Karabakh Soviet passed a resolution for the transference of Karabakh to Armenia. Gigantic peaceful demonstrations followed in Yerevan. The Azeris reacted by carrying out pogroms against the Armenians in Azerbaijan. Gorbachev’s inaction soured Russo-Armenian relations, and dissident leaders, known as the Karabakh Committee, gained credibility with the public.
In May 1988, Demirjian was replaced by Suren Harutiunian, who promised to take the Karabakh issue to the Supreme Soviet. Moscow rejected the transfer, and a crackdown began in Karabakh and Yerevan. The terrible earthquake of December 7, 1988, Moscow’s inept handling of the crisis, and Azeri attacks upon Karabakh resulted in something extraordinary. Armenians, the most pro-Russian of all ethnic groups, demanded independence. Haru- tiunian resigned, and after declaring its intent to separate from the USSR, the Armenian National Movement, under the leadership of Levon Ter-Petrossian, a member of the Karabakh Committee, assumed power in Armenia. On
