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

A war between Turkey and Armenia was just what the Bolsheviks needed. Their own organization in Armenia was minuscule — at the First Party Conference in Erevan only a dozen people turned up — so a Red invasion was not feasible. In May 1920, shortly after the Eleventh Army had occupied Baku, the Bolsheviks in Kars staged a coup in the hope of sparking a Red invasion to help the 'revolutionary masses', but this was easily suppressed and Lenin, who was more concerned with Poland at this stage, instructed Ordzhonikidze to hold off. But six months later, in November 1920, with the Armenians on the brink of a humiliating defeat at the hands of the Turks, Lenin ordered the Reds to march on Erevan. As they did so, the Soviet diplomatic mission in the Armenian capital presented the Dashnak government with an ultimatum to surrender power to a Revolutionary Committee, which was following the Red troops from Azerbaijan. The Dashnaks complied, seeing surrender to the Soviets as a lesser humiliation to defeat by the Turks. They could resist neither. On 29 November the Armenian Soviet Republic was declared. 'Thus one more Soviet Republic,' Ordzhonikidze cabled to Moscow. The Dashnaks entered a coalition with the Bolsheviks but were soon persecuted by their Russian 'allies' and forced into exile, along with many other Armenian nationalists and intellectuals. Meanwhile the Reds carried out a ruthless campaign of requisitioning, carrying off train-loads of food and booty to Russia. The zeal of the new regime was such that

* The Nagorno-Karabakh region, which is still the subject of disputes today, was a summer-pasture ground for the Azeri nomads. Armenia claimed the region in 1918. There were Armenian settlements there, from which many of the nation's leading intellectuals had come, and so, like Mount Ararat, the region became a symbol of Armenia. The Armenian government tried to stop the Azeris from coming into the region by setting up border guards. This resulted in bitter local fighting. Both the Soviets and the British favoured giving Karabakh to the Azeris.

even beehives and barbers' instruments were expropriated in the name of the Friendship of the Peoples.⁹⁵

The fall of Armenia left Georgia surrounded by the Reds. Of the three Caucasian nations, this was the most viable as an independent state. The Georgians had a clear sense of their own national history and culture, a large native intelligentsia, and in the Mensheviks a genuine national leadership. During its first six months of independence, from May to November 1918, Georgia had the protection of the Germans, and after that of the British. The Menshevik government, led by Noi Zhordaniia, modelled itself on the German Social Democrats, putting statesmanship before social revolution. This was a reverse of the Mensheviks' dogma which had prevented them from taking power in 1917. But with 75 per cent of the vote in the elections to the National Assembly there was simply no other national party.

Land reform was the basis of their power. By breaking up the larger farms and estates, owned increasingly by Armenians, they won the support of the Georgian peasants, who were allowed to buy most of the land at democratic prices. The land reform consecrated the smallholding peasant as the embodiment of the Georgian nation. It forged a synthesis of national and class solidarity — the Georgian peasants and impoverished nobles against the Armenian bourgeoisie — which enabled the Menshevik government to enjoy two years of relative stability.

Only the ethnic minorities, the Ossetians and Abkhazians, with their demands for self-government, caused serious difficulties. Their high-handed treatment by the government in Tiflis, which was not immune to petty chauvinism, gave the Bolsheviks a real base of support. It was here, among the poor tribes of the northern Caucasus, that they built up their military organization for the subversion of independent Georgia. The Ossetian rebels were trained by the Bolsheviks in Vladikavkaz, just across the border in Russia, and sent across the mountains into Georgia. Within Georgia itself, the Bolsheviks had almost no support. The tiny Georgian police force had no difficulty in suppressing the Bolshevik leadership. In May 1920, when the Tiflis Bolsheviks tried to stage a coup to persuade the Eleventh Red Army (then in Baku) to launch an invasion, it was easily put down. Lenin ordered the Reds to pull back from Georgia: troops were needed on the Polish Front and, at least as Lenin later claimed, Georgia was not yet ripe for Sovietization. On 7 May, the Soviet Government signed a treaty with Georgia recognizing its independence and pledging not to interfere in its internal affairs.⁹⁶