A People's Tragedy: The Russian Revolution, 1891-1924

Azerbaijan, the first to fall to Soviet Russia, was a typical example of a post-colonial nation ill-prepared for the trials of independent existence amidst all the conflicts of the time. During its brief period of independence, from May 1918 to April 1920, it had no less than five governments. Land reform and ethnic conflict were the main sources of instability. The failure of the Mussavat socialists to push through their land reform against the resistance of the Armenian bourgeoisie enabled the Bolsheviks to pose as the champions of the Muslim rural poor. The economic crisis in Baku, caused by the collapse of its main oil export market in Russia, also gave the Bolsheviks a base of support among the Muslim and Russian unemployed. By February 1920, the Bolshevik Party had 4,000 members in Baku and Tiflis, who were openly agitating in the streets and urging Moscow to send in the troops. The Azeri army was much too weak to put up any serious resistance against the 70,000 troops of the Eleventh Red Army then moving south towards Azerbaijan through the Terek and Dagestan regions. Most of its senior staff, made up of Turks and Georgians, had been infiltrated by the Bolsheviks. But it was Turkey's acquiescence which sealed the conquest of Azerbaijan. By March 1920, when British forces occupied Constantinople, Kemal Ataturk's nationalists were ready to agree to the Soviet take-over of the Caucasus in order to secure Moscow's aid for the Turkish independence movement against Britain. The Caucasus would thus become a channel for the shipment of Soviet weaponry into Turkey. Kemal agreed to start military operations against Armenia to help bring this about. The alliance with Turkey enabled the Reds to win a sizeable fifth column of Turkic-Muslim support in Azerbaijan during their invasion. The Turkish officers of the Azeri army welcomed the northern conquerors, naively believing that they had no intention of ending the independence of Azerbaijan and that their aim was to help the pan-Turk movement. On 28 April the Red Army entered Baku without armed resistance. No one was prepared to defend the Azerbaijan nation. Ord-zhonikidze and Kirov, the leaders of the Caucasian Bureau established by the Central Committee in Moscow to Sovietize the Caucasus, arrived the next day and began a reign of terror. Several leaders of the national government were executed and uprisings in the Azerbaijani countryside were brutally put down.⁹³

Turkey's involvement was equally vital in the Soviet conquest of Armenia. The whole identity of this tiny and embattled nation was defined by its fear and hatred of the Turk. The Dashnak leaders relied upon this to keep the country united in the face of overwhelming difficulties which it confronted after the declaration of Armenian independence in May 1918. The country was overcrowded with refugees from Anatolia who had fled from the Turkish massacres and this placed a huge strain on the economy. Then there were the bitter

territorial disputes with Georgia in the north and Azerbaijan over Nakhichevan, Zangezur and the mountainous region of Nagorno-Karabakh.* Unlike its two neighbours, Armenia had no foreign allies. Britain, in particular, supported Azerbaijan against it. It had always preferred to deal with 'gentlemen Turks' than with 'swarthy Christians', as Arnold Toynbee put it in a biting critique of Whitehall's policies.⁹⁴ Britain, after all, was the greatest colonial power in the Muslim world. Isolated internationally and surrounded by hostile powers, it was perhaps natural for the Dashnaks to appeal to Armenian nationalism. They promised to build a new Armenian Empire stretching from the Black Sea to the Caspian. As the first step towards this Armenian forces occupied eastern Anatolia and carried out a series of revenge massacres against the Turkish population. It was a foolish provocation — Kemal's nationalists were bound to fight back — and one can only conclude that the Dashnaks either greatly underestimated Turkish strength or, through their own xenophobia, were temporarily deprived of their senses. Perhaps both.