Armenian News Network / Armenian News

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A History of Armenian Critical Thought – Part VII

The Early Armenian Bolsheviks

The Critical Corner

June 29, 2026

By Eddie Arnavoudian

LONDON, UK

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Foreword by Dr. Pietro A Shakarian to Eddie Arnavoudian’s article:

Eddie Arnavoudian is a true Armenian original whose extraordinary life and incredible career mirror the fate of the Armenian Diaspora itself. Born in Nairobi, Kenya to Armenian parents from Egypt, he studied for two years at the Mekhitarist Monastery at San Lazzaro in Venice before leaving the priesthood and pursuing a path of democratic socialist politics, with an Armenian accent. Much like his heroes from the Armenian national liberation movement of the 19th and early 20th centuries, the young Arnavoudian was captivated by the Armenian revolutionary classics… and was even caught reading them while at Mass!

Following his move to Britain in 1969, Arnavoudian took up university studies at Manchester. He soon became catapulted into the world of activism, participating in the major struggles for democracy and social justice of the era, from opposition to the Vietnam war to the struggle against apartheid in South Africa to solidarity for the Irish amid The Troubles. Through it all, Arnavoudian never forgot his Armenian roots, consistently connecting universal struggles for justice and democracy with those of his own people.

A specialist in Armenian language and literature, Arnavoudian began to write actively for ANN/Armenian News’s Critical Corner in 2000, covering a wide variety of topics related to Armenian literature and history. Of particular value are Arnavoudian’s perceptive writings exploring the connections between the Armenian national movement and the possibilities for democratic socialism in the Armenian context.  Below is one such work, an exceptional overview of two major Armenian Bolshevik figures of the pre-Stalin era – Stepan Shahumyan and Aleksandr Miasnikyan. 

In contrast to the Russian and Georgian revolutionary movements, Marxism did not gain currency with Armenian revolutionaries until the early 20th century, when Shahumyan and his comrades established the Armenian Union of Social Democrats in the summer of 1902 in Tiflis. In this framework, Arnavoudian argues persuasively for the position of both Shahumyan and Miasnikyan as “links” between the rising Armenian Bolshevik movement and the Armenian national movement of the 19th and early 20th centuries. He also highlights these figures as embodiments of potential alternatives both (a) to the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (ARF) that dominated the Armenian national movement, and (b) to the repressive Stalinist system that came to dominate the USSR beginning in 1928. Overall, this insightful work reflects Arnavoudian’s deep knowledge of his subjects, his mastery of the pen, and his consistent commitment to the interests of the common Armenian people. His critical commentary on the fate and ideas of these two unsung Armenian revolutionaries merits serious study and evaluation among students and scholars alike.

Dr. Pietro A. Shakarian

Yerevan, Armenia

28 May 2026

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The following is a first exploratory attempt to look at the relationships of the early, pre-Stalin, Armenian Bolsheviks to the Armenian national movement and its struggles for emancipation from imperial oppression and domestic exploitation during the first decades of the 20th century. The focus therefore is not on general Armenian Bolshevik ideology or on the role of Armenian Bolshevik Party members in the wider socialist movement. The presentation is in the form of a talk addressed to those less familiar with the detail of the history of Armenian Bolsheviks on the Armenian national question during the 1905-1925 years. The issues unfold in the form of oppositions between the Armenian Bolsheviks and the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (ARF), then the dominant force in the national movement. 

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Stepan Shahumyan (1878-1918) and Alexander Miasnikyan (1886-1925) were the two most prominent and outstanding pre-Stalin-era Armenian Marxists who were also members of the Bolshevik Party. Controversial as they may be, they occupy an important place in any history of Armenian critical thought. Their worldview, their strategic vision and their political action played an important part in Armenian social and political life during the 1905-1925 years and their legacy contributed significantly to shaping 20th century Armenian society – with all its tragedies and its triumphs.

Any informed assessment of both must begin first by putting aside widespread prejudices that convict them as anti-Armenian, anti-national figures who did incalculable damage to the Armenian nation. Shahumyan had to refute such claims in his own day:

‘…From our opponents you have always heard that the Social-Democrats (Bolsheviks) do not recognize nationality, that they don’t wish to think about the Armenian nation, that the deep suffering of the Armenian people are foreign to them. When (we) first entered the arena of Armenian life, the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (ARF) declared us “national traitors”.

All this is a lie or an error (emphasis in original).’ (SS2, p407)

About Stepan Shahumyan, the uncompromisingly anti-Bolshevik and pro-ARF historian Roubina Piroumian quotes ARF organizer Aram Alchuchyan who collaborated with Shahumyan in defense of the Baku Commune as follows:

‘We were ideological opponents…but I must confess that Stephan Shahumyan in his feelings was a good Armenian (RP p113)

Miasnikyan on his part never concealed his pride in Armenian national history and culture:

‘The Armenians are also an ancient nation that has its historically developed culture that 1500 years ago, in the person of that genius Mesrop Mashtots, created the Armenian alphabet. That 5th century development brought forth a rich and fertile literature in classical Armenian, with a number of remarkable texts and equally outstanding historians (AM p78).’

A notable judgement on Miasnikyan is available from Simon Vratsian, the first Prime Minister of the anti-Bolshevik 1918-1920 Armenian First Republic. Miasnikyan he writes was a:

‘mature, serious…Armenian…(who)…worked together (with other) …enlightened and unquestionably patriotic (Armenian – EA) Bolsheviks (SV, p601, 603).’

A vast chasm did however divide Shahumyan and Miasnikyan from the Armenian nationalist movement that was then dominated by the ARF. Bolshevik strategy for Armenian emancipation represented a categorical break from everything the ARF and the Armenian nationalist movement stood for. Shahumyan, perhaps sarcastically, acknowledged that the nationalists all had ‘good intentions’ but added emphatically:

‘…your work and your strategy are disastrous for the Armenian people.’ (SS2 407)

The early Armenian Marxists rejected all nationalist conceptions of nationhood and definitions of what constituted the Armenian people. For them the Armenian ruling classes, the economic elites, the capitalists, landlords and Church hierarchy, were not part of the Armenian people. They were indeed its enemies, their wealth and power the Bolsheviks claimed were built on the exploitation of the common man and woman. The people’s struggle for full emancipation the Marxists insisted must at once be struggle for national rights against imperial-colonial oppression and a class struggle against domestic ruling classes and elites.

Contrary to traditional nationalist strategies Shahumyan and Miasnikyan also rejected alliances with the capitalist and imperialist Great Powers that had always betrayed the Armenian people. In their opinion the Armenian people’s only reliable allies were the common people of the world alongside whom they should do international socialist battle for emancipation from all exploitation – national, social, economic or otherwise.

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I. Principles and Strategic Visions

Armenian Bolsheviks came onto the scene in 1902-1903 in the midst of defining events in Armenian life. The 1895-1896 Ottoman state massacre of up to 300,000 Armenians and then the 1915 Young Turk organized Armenian genocide, together with the severe intensification of national oppression in Tsarist occupied eastern Armenia had almost destroyed the foundations of Armenian society, calling into question the very survival of people and nation. Further the 1905 and the 1917 Russian revolutions, the 1914-1918 First World War, the proclamation of the First Armenian Republic in 1918 and then the 1920 Sovietization of a surviving fragment of eastern Armenia all had a huge and tumultuous impact on the lives of the Armenian people and nation.

According to Shahumyan, the nationalist movement, exemplified primarily by the ARF, had proved impotent to protect the people against such repeated catastrophes:

‘“The nation”, that is the people in their majority, not only gained nothing from ARF… “patriotism” but suffered the most horrific punishment and fell victim to the most terrifying calamity (SS2 p409)

The ARF of course ‘is not responsible for the fact that the Armenian people’s destiny has been so unrelentingly terrible (SS2 408)’. But a party has a duty to struggle ‘to improve the condition of the people…and to skillfully lead the masses along the path of emancipation (emphasis in original, SS2 p408).’ This claimed Shahumyan, the Armenian nationalist parties had failed to do. Against what he judged a discredited nationalist path Shahumyan advanced his own Marxist socialist vision which he believed would also secure the Armenian people’s national emancipation.

The Armenian Marxist starting point was the rejection of any notion of nationalism, of patriotism, or of a ‘national interest’ that affirmed unity between the common people, the vast majority of Armenians, with the tiny minority of the Armenian ruling classes and elites – the landlords, capitalists, usurers and the Church hierarchy. Peasants, workers and artisans had absolutely nothing in common with landlords, capitalists and the Church hierarchy. In the Armenian Marxist view the terrible plight of the vast majority was a function not only of foreign oppression but a consequence also of systemic economic exploitation and social oppression at the hands of their own national ruling class, who moreover to secure their ill-gotten gain, more often than not, collaborated with the Ottoman and Tsarist national oppressors. The ‘patriotism’ of the Armenian ruling class was always exclusively self-serving. For the Caucasian Armenian ruling classes for example the liberation of ‘Turkish Armenia’ would serve only ‘to open up a vast new sphere for their endless exploitation’ of the Armenian common people and that ‘under the Tsarist umbrella’ (SS2 409).

National and socio-economic oppression and exploitation by foreign and domestic ruling classes Shahumyan and Miasnikyan would claim were inextricably intertwined. Focussing only on national emancipation would leave intact the system of social and economic exploitation that was the foundation for both imperial-colonial powers and the native ruling classes. Any accommodation to the Armenian ruling classes in the name of nationalism, patriotism or national unity would leave these elites in positions of power and privilege at the expense of the common people. What was required therefore was not a nationalist struggle that united the ruling classes and the common people but a class/socialist struggle of the common people that addressed all national and economic problems.

Genuine popular liberation Shahumyan and later Miasnikyan argued required simultaneous political organization against both imperial-colonial and domestic ruling classes and their political, social and economic order. It required a strategy the foundation of which would be the common people alone. So Shahumyan and Miasnikyan developed concepts of freedom, democracy, economy and national emancipation not for the elites, not for the Church or the bourgeoisie but for the oppressed and exploited population alone.

In Armenian critical thought Shahumyan’s and Miasnikyan’s conceptions of nation and class were in fact prefigured by radical democrats (See Note 1) Mikael Nalpantian (1829-1866) and Haroutyoun Sevajian (1831-1874). They all shared a common starting point – dedication to the people and hatred for the corrupt, greedy and privileged rich. Nalpantian back in the 1860s had already begun to redefine the nation and the popular political struggle. He both cut the ruling classes out of the nation and asserted the unity of the national and social struggle. Nalpantian wrote that:

‘By the term nation we must understand the common people and not those few families who have enriched themselves from the sweat and blood of the people.’ 

National independence must be cherished, but only if it helps to secure the ‘real and essential’ interests of the common man and woman. After all:

‘We have not devoted our life and our pen to the rich. Behind their barricades of wealth, they are protected even from the worst tyranny. But that poor Armenian, that exploited, naked, hungry and pitiable Armenian who is oppressed not just by foreigners but by his own elite, his own clergy and his own ill-educated intelligentsia, that is the Armenian who deserves and demands our attention.’

For Nalpantian nationalism was not a one-sided phenomenon serving only one sector of society. It is not merely a spiritual, metaphysical or cultural reality to uplift the soul of the intelligentsia. ‘Abstract nationalism is senseless.’ Naturally nation building requires the development of national language, art, literature and culture. But it is never reducible to these. ‘Should we bother preserving our heritage, our language, our traditions, in a word our nationality…?’ Nalpantian rhetorically asks. ‘Only if these give you the right to enjoy the wealth of the land and thus free yourself from slavery and poverty.’

Consistent with such an outlook, for the early Armenian Bolsheviks too concern for the Armenian nation meant concern only for its common people, for the workers, the peasants and the artisans. So, in his declaration announcing the publication of an Armenian Marxist journal Stepan Shahumyan’s declares that:

‘Our publication will be a mouthpiece for the Armenian workers, that small contingent of the international proletarian army…(it) will to its full ability work to serve the interests of Armenian workers and their natural friend and ally the poor Armenian peasantry (SS1 p125)

Besides removing the Armenian ruling class from their conception of Armenian emancipation the early Bolsheviks also shredded another central credo of Armenian nationalist politics. They dismissed strategies that relied on European, US or Tsarist great powers. In November 1921 Alexander Miasnikyan explained:

‘The Armenian bourgeoisie, its ideology and its political party the ARF, has always insisted and repeated that without Europe, without the ruling big bourgeois nations it is impossible to secure Armenian fortunes (AM 375).

But Armenian interests have always been readily sacrificed by these powers for whom ‘in reality…Armenia has always had the value of an insignificant toy (AM p375).’ Despite the bitter experience of history, traditional nationalism clung to the imperialist great powers.

‘The former Armenian bourgeois government always judged that our fortunes were dependent on the whims of European diplomacy, that the English bourgeoisie or France would be able to liberate Armenia or that the US would take up the Armenian Mandate (AM p392).’

Earlier, in April 1917 with Tsarist treachery against Armenians in mind (its collaboration with Ottoman tyranny, its national oppression in the Caucasus) Shahumyan condemns the ARF and its allies. These:

‘… “patriots” wanted to save the Armenian nation by entering into alliance with Nicholas Romanov, the greatest enemy of the Armenian people. And the consequences are already evident to you (SS2 p416).’

The early Bolsheviks were of course conscious that Armenians were a small people in need of international allies. So, in opposition to alliances with endlessly treacherous imperialist powers they argued for alliances with the working class and peasantry of neighboring nations and those in the imperial heartlands. Here Armenians could form their ‘small contingent’ in an international struggle for the ‘proletariat’s noble internationalist ideal’ of socialism that planned to eradicate all oppression, economic, national or social. Concretely, ‘with regard to the Caucasus’ Shahumyan wrote:

‘…taking note of its ethnic national diversity, we will strive to unite all socialists and all workers from the different nationalities into a single social democratic organization so as to better organize the struggle against the (Tsarist -EA) tyranny (SS1 46).’

Discarding traditional nationalist strategy did not however require abandoning Armenian national rights and national development. For Alexander Miasnikyan, the national development of oppressed peoples was in fact a precondition for the very success of international socialism and for the survival of the Soviet Union.

‘Yes! Without doubt without the national revival of the peoples of the East nowhere will it be possible to have the victory of the proletariat or the general laboring population as a whole (AM p443)

In 1905, in the extremely complex demographic realities of the Caucasus, Shahumyan defined and affirmed the national rights of all peoples. Given ‘the ethnic-national diversity of the peoples of the Caucasus and the absence of geographic borders between them’ he thought that ‘national political autonomy’ was ‘not realistic’, but he was insistent in his:

‘…demand for national autonomy in cultural life – complete freedom that is in language, schools, education etc. (SS1 p46).’

Later with the Armenian, Azerbaijani and Georgian Soviet republics in place Miasnikyan reaffirmed that:

‘We know that in our times each (national) culture develops and grows in its own particular conditions, that Azeri culture grows and develops within the Turkish language and Turkish traditions. The same applies to Georgian and Armenian culture (AM p498).’

Such national development he concludes should be a united and collaborative international effort where ‘national cultures as they develop (do) not obstruct but aid each other (AM 498).’

Men of action, both Shahumyan and Miasnikyan bring these principles to bear in the concrete conditions of their political interventions.

During the 1905 and 1917-1918 Russian revolutions and then during the first years of the Armenian Soviet Republic from 1921-1925 they fought for an alliance of the Armenian, Georgian and Azerbaijani common people against the Tsarist autocracy, and for an Armenian recognition and alliance with Bolshevik Soviet power as strategic options more beneficial for the Armenian people and nation than those offered by the traditional nationalist parties, again principally by the ARF.

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II. 1905 – United Anti-Tsarist Revolution vs Fratricidal Intra-National Pogroms

In the Caucasus the 1905 anti-Tsarist democratic Revolution set the ground for the first major clash between the Armenian Bolsheviks and ARF. The entire territory of the Tsarist Empire was swept by a popular revolutionary insurrection. The Tsarist autocracy teetered on the brink and its fall according to the Bolsheviks  could herald a democratic age to clear a path for genuine national, political and social advance for the Armenian, Georgian, Azerbaijani and all other peoples within the imperial Tsarist domain.

Stepan Shahumyan’s central concern therefore was for revolutionary unity among all the common people independent of nationality or religion. Popular unity among a nationally diverse imperial realm was indeed a precondition for success against a Tsarist state ready to deploy deadly divide and rule tactics. Popular unity among the Caucasian peoples was all the more critical as the Armenian, Azeri, and Georgian elites were engaged in bitter, often chauvinist, nationalist conflicts for regional primacy that made the area an easy target for Tsarism’s stratagems of divide and rule.

The Bolshevik vision of popular unity leading to democratic and national emancipation was however torn asunder by internecine pogroms. Shahumyan was aghast:

‘Instead of fighting together in the name of land and freedom the Azeri and Armenian peasantry (‘that had the same interests’ SS1 158) was occupied in senseless, fratricidal slaughter (SS1 171-172).’

The ‘horrific weight’ of this ‘fratricidal slaughter’ ‘fell equally on both sides (SS1 158)’. In the course of 6 months even according to pro-ARF historian Hrachig Simonian Azeri and Armenian mobs and their organized political-military squads killed thousands of ordinary Azeri and Armenian men, women and children, burnt and reduced to rubble hundreds of Armenian and Azeri villages and destroyed staggering amounts of the Armenian and Azeri peasantry’s livestock and material wealth. Instead of unity, attack, retaliation and counter retaliation created an inferno of blood lust, a deranged festival of savagery the like of which had not been witnessed before. Innocent Armenians were slaughtered and so were innocent Azeris. Instead of unity the Armenian and Azeri people stood before each other with bloodshot eyes flashing hatred (For a full discussion of the bloody events of 1905-1907 see The Critical Corner – ‘Baku 1905 – savagery in the Caucasian Family’, Part One and Part Two, 23 March and 30 March 2015.)

Shahumyan’s depiction and denunciation of this mutual ‘fratricidal slaughter’ was no anti-national Bolshevik propaganda. His view was echoed by staunch nationalist and official ARF historian Michael Varantian, who in his ‘History of the ARF’ speaks of and details the barbarism of both sides. ‘In the motherland’ referring here to the Caucasus:

‘From one end to the other, the Turk burns, plunders, murders and the Armenian does the same (MV, p390)’.

Contemporary historian Hrachig Simonian, a firm ARF sympathizer, in his well-researched first volume of ‘On the Paths of Liberation’ also acknowledges the horrors of mutual murder. In addition, he provides statistics that indicate overall Azeri casualties to have been much higher that Armenian ones (HS1, p234, 237, 244, 372, 379*, 410, 551, 554, 643)!

For Shahumyan the Armenian-Azeri pogroms delivered ‘a fatal blow to the (democratic, anti-Tsarist) 1905 revolution in the Caucasus (SS3 33)’:

‘…The Caucasus would never have played such a miserable role in the…uprising, it would never have suffered such a miserable failure had it not been for the misfortune of the (Armenian-Azeri) pogroms… (SS1 159).’

He especially regretted the Armenian peasantry being drawn into the pogroms. It had ‘represented such beautiful potential’ and ‘could have brought what power to bear on the battle in the Caucasus (SS1 172)!’ But instead of unity there was mutual slaughter. And it was in relation to this that the Bolshevik-ARF clash took on its sharpest form.

In Shahumyan’s view the ARF with a ‘dense network of organizations throughout the Armenian provinces (SS1 50)’ could have and should have used its influence to unite Armenian and Azeri common people as the best path for securing their political, national and social rights from the Tsarist state. But instead, the ARF under the slogan of ‘defense of the fatherland’ took the lead in organizing Armenians in a war against the Azeri peasantry.

Shahumyan does not hold the ARF responsible for causing the pogroms. ‘We have never charged the (ARF) intelligentsia with responsibility for the Armenian-Azeri slaughter (SS1 119).’ Neither did he attribute guilt to the Armenian or Azeri common people. The slaughter ‘is not the fault but the tragedy of the Armenian and Azeri people (SS1 176).’ Responsibility rests with the Tsarist state:

‘The massacres are instigated by the Tsarist government. In pursuit of its provocative counter-revolutionary aims it (the Tsarist state) exploited that enmity and antagonism on the one hand between the Azeri aristocracy and bourgeoisie and on the other the small and large Armenian bourgeoisie (SS1 118).’

But the ARF, and the Azeri nationalists, are however responsible for failing to oppose ‘massacre…instigated by the Tsarist government’. Blinded by nationalist slogans and entrapped by Tsarist machinations:

‘In this sad conflict…instead of encouraging the development of Armenian and Azeri class consciousnesses (and therefore unity – EA) they…strengthened and solidified the Azeri and Armenian masses’ estrangement and national hostility (SS1 118-119).’

Worse still, instead of leading the peasantry in united struggle against the autocracy and the local landlords:

‘The ARF’s hired units threw themselves into the fight proclaiming themselves “saviors of the fatherland” but in reality, they only sharpened Armenian-Azeri enmity (SS1 287).’

Shahumyan is dismissive of ARF attempts to exonerate its conduct:

‘“The entire responsibility for the Armenian-Azeri pogroms falls upon the Azeri people.” This is what our “patriots” want to convince us of!

But who are you trying to deceive…not only among the ignorant Armenian masses but among…our (Armenian) “progressive” “revolutionary” cadre there are hooligans who demonstrated no less savagery and barbarism than did the Azeri mobs during this fratricidal war. And this not only against aggressors but even in cases where one could not speak of self-defense (SS1 175-176).’

In underlining the ARF’s direct, active and leading role in the pogroms Shahumyan was again not being a dogmatic ‘anti-national communist’. His evaluation is confirmed by Hrachig Simonian’s chilling account of systematically organized ARF violence against innocent Azeri communities. Massacre and slaughter were not committed by uncontrolled mobs, nor by Tsarist provocation alone but by highly organized forces on both sides. ‘No less than Azeri mobs’, Simonian concludes, Armenians led by the ARF ‘manifested evil, killing left and right (HS1 p454)’.

Besides the slaughter of Azeri peasants, the ARF in Shahumyan’s opinion was essentially ‘an army of mercenary soldiers…acting as bodyguards for the Caucasian Armenian bourgeoisie (SS1 262)’ despite this bourgeoisie’s history of exploitation of Armenian people, highlighted among others by novelist Shirvanzade’s recollection of the conditions of Armenian workers in Baku’s Armenian owned oil fields. The charge sounds outlandish. But it is supported again by Mikael Varantian who writes that as they were assailed by their Azeri foes the Armenian bourgeoisie ‘sought to save their skin, their grand mansions and their property from plunder and arson’ by turning to ‘ARF soldiers’ whom they now ‘tended with great care’ and ‘looked upon with pride, putting at their disposal their palaces and…much material support… (MV p426)’. Shahumyan may have been polemical but he was not inaccurate.

Beyond the rural battlefields, Shahumyan charged the ARF with blocking a developing unity among the small working class of the Caucasus as well. In Baku, Tbilisi and Yerevan as well the mines of Alaverti and Ghaban, in railway depots in Gyumri and along the Caucasian rail network thousands of workers of all nationalities struck for freedom, for improved wages and better conditions. In Baku Armenian and Azeri workers organized jointly, even producing a bilingual newspaper. In the mines of Ghapan official efforts to incite Armenian-Azeri hostility failed with Armenian and Azeri leaders demonstrably embracing at a public meeting (Note 3). Rather than encourage such developments to create a united international force the ARF insisted Armenians organize in their own separate national unions (SS1 291). It was a policy the party pursued even after 1905 (SS2 22).

In Shahumyan’s final judgement of the ARF; the reason for his almost blind opposition to all that it stood for, was that in 1905 it had acted as a willing accomplice and agent in ‘…a savage operation’ by ‘the dying tyranny that shut the door of the revolutionary movement before the Armenian and Azeri population (SS1 235).’ It was as a result of the ARF and the Azeri nationalists’ complicity that ‘the terrible (Tsarist) Satan’ was able to ‘exploit the enmity between the two people to deliver a deadly blow’ to the 1905 democratic revolution in the Caucasus (SS3 33).’

The 1905 fratricidal slaughter was to leave a cruel and ugly stamp on future Armenian-Azeri relations. The Armenian and Azeri common people gained nothing from this murder and mayhem. If there was any victor it was Tsarism and to a lesser extent the Azeri nationalist elites whose confidence in its struggle against the Armenian bourgeoisie received an immense boost. Speculation on historical development is rarely illuminating. But for sure instead of mutual pogroms a united Armenian Azeri struggle for ‘land and freedom’ in 1905 could have created stronger foundations for democracy and national emancipation and so served to avoid future internecine warfare that to this day takes its toll on the lives of Armenian and Azerbaijani people.

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III. 1917-1918 – Imperialism or Revolution, The People or The Ruling Classes

Within the wider 1917-1918 socialist battles, one of Shahumyan’s central preoccupations was the demand for a strategic Armenian alliance with Bolshevik Russia as the best defense of the Armenian people against an expected renewal of Ottoman-Turkish genocidal aggression and as the surest course for securing Armenian political, national and social rights against the danger of a Tsarist return.

The Bolshevik Revolution of October 1917 toppled the Tsarist State and ended Russian involvement in World War 1. The new government immediately decreed the distribution of the nation’s land to the peasantry, ejected the ruling classes from positions of political and economic power and enacted pro-working class labour laws. Critically for small nations, the new government recognized their right to self-determination right up to and including secession. But deposed Tsarist elites and their US, British and French backers immediately launched civil war that virtually brought the Bolsheviks to their knees.

In the Caucasus, headed by Stepan Shahumyan, Baku and the Baku Commune (See Note 2) was the centre of Bolshevik power. But its influence was severely limited. The major regional force was the Transcaucasian Commissariat (TC, later to become the SEYM) dominated by anti-Bolsheviks and the major nationalist parties drawn from the three main Caucasian national groups – the Armenians with the ARF, the Azerbaijanis and the Musavat party and the Georgians with the Georgian Mensheviks. Seizing its opportunity the Commissariat declared autonomy in November 1917 and so became the de facto leadership of a confederation of three separate nascent nation states.

From the outset the TC lacked all cohesion or united purpose and was little more than a battleground as each national grouping sought to grab choice bits of Caucasian territory with little regard for demographic-national composition. As the Georgian Mensheviks reached out to imperial Germany the Azeri Musavats turned to the Ottoman-Young Turks. The weakest of the triumvirate, the Armenian elites, previously most dependent on Tsarism and lacking any economic foundation within the borders of the emerging Armenian state vacillated helplessly proving incapable of steering an independent or consistent course on the Transcaucasian Commissariat and in the SEIM. Even when it became clear that both Georgian and Azerbaijani factions were unalterably positioned against Armenian interests the ARF didn’t have the wherewithal to separate itself and went along with tolerating their pro-German and pro-Turkish machinations (RP p76-77).

Despite autonomy, the Caucasus were in a thousand and one ways bound to developments in Russia now embroiled in civil war and the Caucasian peoples and their leadership were therefore compelled to make rapid decisions on their attitudes to the new Bolshevik state, their position on the civil war, on the Great Powers’ attempt to crush the Bolshevik Revolution and on whether they would emulate the Bolshevik’s radical land, labour and economic policies that were applicable as much to the Caucasus as to Russia.

Shahumyan was clear. The immediate needs of the Caucasian peoples and most particularly of the Armenian people rested with the recognition of and an international alliance with the Soviet government as well as the local enactment of Soviet land and labour policies. A member of the Bolshevik Party, Shahumyan accepted Transcaucasian autonomy (SS3 27) but demanded still that the Commissariat:

‘…recognize the revolutionary government of the Soviet People’s Commissars, introduce its land and labour decrees, democratize the army and break with Kaledin (a leader of the anti-Bolshevik war machine, SS3 35).’

Shahumyan’s logic, from his Marxist standpoint, was self-evident. Introducing Soviet-style land and labour decrees, expropriating the elites and distributing all land to the peasantry and enabling working class power in the economy, in the factories and the mines, few as they were, would be in the direct interests of the Armenian people and nation, understood as the common people, the overwhelming majority.

Soviet ‘land and labour’ policies would be a step in the liberation of the Armenian and Caucasian peoples from their own national capitalist and landlord classes. Naturally these radical measures were not acceptable to the Armenian elites and to the ARF, despite its claims to be a socialist party! After all, as a traditional nationalist party, the ARF deemed Armenian capitalists and landlords to be an integral part of the Armenian nation whose needs had to be catered for in the new order. In Shahumyan’s eyes, the ARF’s refusal to endorse radical social and economic measures marked them as supporters of Armenian elites against the Armenia of the common people.

Equally pressing for the Bolsheviks was securing the Transcaucasian Commissariat’s recognition of the new Soviet government and supporting it in its war against the British, European and US backed pro-Tsarist armies. The ARF had supported the Russian Provisional Government that emerged for the February 1917 Revolution had had affirmed that Armenian fortunes were best served by remaining within a Russian federation of autonomous states enjoying full national democratic rights. In the wake of the October 1917 Revolution Shahumyan demanded a continuation of this policy, but with the Soviet rather than the Provisional government.

In this demand too, together with his wider considerations of the socialist revolution, Shahumyan’s thinking was shaped by concern for the fortunes and future of the Armenian people. A Caucasian alliance with the Bolshevik Government would improve its chances of defeating anti-Bolshevik forces that were intent on recolonizing Transcaucasia, reversing the region’s national autonomy and blocking all possible radical reforms. It would also strengthen Armenian resistance to possible Ottoman-Turkish aggression.  The Transcaucasian Commissariat however would neither recognize nor support the Soviet regime and moved to formally detach itself. For Shahumyan this anti-Soviet stance represented an immediate and huge political-military danger for the Armenian people.

To their west Ottoman-Turkish armies were poised to retake the large swathes of Ottoman-occupied Armenian community homelands that then still remained under Bolshevik military control. Turkish forces also had eyes on the Caucasus and Baku particularly with its huge oil reserves. Shahumyan warned that the TC’s anti-Bolshevik position would be disastrous for the Caucasus and the Armenian people. It would accelerate the already rapidly disintegrating 500,000 strong overwhelmingly pro-Bolshevik Russian army that was the only realistic rampart against an Ottoman-Turkish attack.

So, against the trend, even against central Bolshevik policy and of Lenin’s direct call for Russian soldiers to return home, Shahumyan used the smallest window of opportunity to preserve Russian forces on the Turkish-Armenian border. Again and again he demanded that the Transcaucasian Commissariat recognize Soviet power. Without recognition, Russian soldiers were unlikely to stay in post.

‘An army of half a million Russian soldiers are stationed in the Caucasus, soldiers who for three years have spilt blood defending Caucasian borders. What do you think? Can they, will they comfortably remain in place when you are betraying the Russian revolution, when you chose Kaledin over Lenin? (SS3 27).’

Clinging to its anti-Soviet positions the Transcaucasian Commissariat would only speed up an already ‘elemental and utterly disorganized flood away from the front (SS3 34)’.

‘The most painful result of Caucasian nationalism is the dissolution of the war front. It is natural that as no peace treaty has yet been signed, the (Bolshevik) troops must defend the front. But is it possible to retain Russian battalions in place in the atmosphere created by the Caucasian nationalists? (SS3 34).’

In this debate, again at the centre of Shahumyan’s concern besides of course the success of the Bolshevik revolution, was the security of the Armenian people. He argued that the ‘dissolution of the war front’ would be disastrous for the Armenian people. Any:

‘…unexpected withdrawal of Russian forces will create an extremely serious situation in Turkish Armenia (now partly still under Russian army control – EA). We already know of the hundreds of thousands of Armenian deaths during this cursed war…Knowing the situation in that unfortunate land we have to assume that a new hell will be created there (Emphasis added SS3 38).’

A similar disaster awaited Armenians in the Caucasus.

‘If this (anti-Soviet) policy continues then the Armenian population (of the Caucasus) is threatened with the same total annihilation that it suffered in Turkish Armenia (SS3 217).’

But Transcaucasian Commissariat solidarity with Bolshevik power would give a huge political and moral boost to remaining Soviet battalions so critical to defending Armenian and Caucasian fronts. It would inspire them to:

‘… carry out (their) revolutionary duty – defending the Russian held front (from Turkey) until the signing of peace accords (SS3 35).’

Such was Shahumyan’s hope, and so his relentless demands for a change of direction by the Transcaucasian Commissariat. But the latter stuck fast to its policy and so the Russian Army disintegrated and was effectively disbanded. The ARF, unwilling to break with the Commissariat, went along with Georgian and Azeri operations, some savagely violent, to remove Bolsheviks troops from the region.

Subsequent developments appeared to confirm Shahumyan’s fears for the future.

Without Soviet Russian military support, the Armenian people were left easy prey for Turkish armed forces. Confident of Azeri support and of Georgian indifference, Ottoman armies seized the initiative. From February 1918 they attacked on all fronts and in the space of three months the Armenian army, additionally sabotaged by Georgian and Azerbaijani intrigue and machinations, was overwhelmed and driven from western Armenian community homelands previously held by Russian troops. 

Commenting on the collapse of Armenian forces, H Simonian in the second volume of his biography of Antranig writes that after Erzerum was ‘scandalously abandoned’, the ‘140,000 Armenians that remained in western Armenian provinces’ were once more ‘uprooted’ and, so ‘began yet another round of tortured retreat.’ (HS2 p72) The retreat went beyond even the 1878 Ottoman and Russian occupied Armenian borders. On 12 April 1918 the heavily fortified fortress of Kars was abandoned, and that without a fight. In Simonian’s view the surrender of Kars was:

‘… striking evidence that the Tbilisi-based national forces (that were constituents of the Transcaucasian Commissariat) were … unable to offer wise and effective leadership. (HS2 p112)

‘As Antranig rightfully noted’ concludes Simonian the ‘main responsibility’ for Armenian defeats ‘rests with the national leadership’ whose failures he adds led to ‘heavy defeats’ that ‘left the wide expanse of Western Armenia to the enemy (HS 2 p34).’

By the end of April and beginning of May 1918 advancing Turkish armies seized large chunks of Caucasian Armenian and Georgian territory and later in the year, on 15 September, they entered Baku. The consequences for the Armenian people were, as Shahumyan had predicted, calamitous. Turkish forces took control of 20% of Transcaucasian land, thousands were slaughtered, scores of villages destroyed and countless numbers driven from their homes. The Turkish entry into Baku was followed by four days of pillage and massacre that cost 30,000 Armenian lives. British forces invited into Baku 26 July 1918 by anti-Bolsheviks that had by then seized command of the Commune, despite promises to defend the city, left without a bullet fired but with plenty of stocks of Baku’s oil. Ottoman Turkey was in effective control of the Caucasus.

A victorious and arrogant Ottoman Turkey that had destroyed western Armenian community homelands now imposed a humiliating settlement on the Armenian people. To pre-empt any Soviet objections and designs Turkish commanders forced the Caucasian nations to formally declare independence from Soviet power. By the end of May the region was divided into three separate nation states independent in name only. Armenia was reduced to an arid 10,000 sq. km. Turkish vassal state. It was as if Shahumyan’s warnings about the disaster of the ARF’s anti-Soviet positions had been confirmed.

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IV. The Interregnum – 1918-1921 – the Tragedy of ‘Independence’ 

The First Armenian Republic declared under duress on 28 May 1918 was not the realization of a national ideal born on the wave of mighty popular triumph over provincialism and foreign domination, as had been the case in Garibaldi’s Italy for example, or the unification of the Chinese or Vietnamese nations. It was rather an almost unsustainable entity foisted upon the Armenian people by Ottoman Turkey, and on an unwilling Armenian elite, against its will and in circumstances beyond its control. Repeating a widely held view H Simonian, again in his biography of Antranig argues that in 1918:

‘The establishment of an independent Armenian state in the conditions that then prevailed flowed from Turkish interests and were to the detriment of the Armenian people.’ (HS2 p158)

The travesty of independence was exposed a week after its proclamation when on 4 June 1918 representatives of the allegedly independent state signed the humiliating Treaty of Batum whose terms reduced Armenia to a dependent, apartheid Bantustan-like state. Presided over by representatives of a weak elite that had little enthusiasm for independence, some 800,000 people, many ill and starving remnants of the Genocide, were squeezed into a patch of virtual stone and desert around Yerevan. Turkey furthermore obtained rights to use Armenian road and rail facilities to transport its troops across the Caucasus. Under the pretext of maintaining law and order it also secured rights to intervene in domestic Armenian affairs. 

One significant clause in the Treaty highlighted the intractable demographic complications even within Armenian state borders. Intent on organizing and deploying Turkish and Azerbaijani communities as a 5th fifth column within Armenia in anticipation of a further offensive to terminate the new republic, the Turkish state inserted a clause in the Treaty that curtailed Armenian government jurisdiction over these communities. The Armenian government meanwhile was required to demobilize a substantial part of its army. Finally, Turkish officers were to be stationed in Armenia to supervise implementation of these clauses.

By the Republic’s second anniversary the state, the economy and the nation were in deep crisis. The ARF government and its political and social order had solved not a single one of the critical problems that confronted the Armenian people and nation. Simon Vratsian in his ‘The Republic of Armenia’ inadvertently acknowledges the ARF government’s impotence and its failure to deal with the socio-economic and political catastrophe being suffered by the common people.

Explaining why communists were gaining ground – they were ‘not a negligible force’ in Yerevan and enjoyed a bigger following in Gyumri (SV p402, 412-414) – Vratsian blames the communists for ‘exploiting’ the menace of ‘famine and economic crisis’, the ‘breakdown of food supplies’ and the ‘running down of stocks of flour (SV p407-408, 411, 415)’ that was plaguing the nation under ARF rule. Instead of evaluating the efficacy or otherwise of ARF policy and strategy Vratsian condemns ‘hungry and impoverished’ masses that neither government nor elites were able to feed. He charges them with ‘becoming easy prey to Bolshevik propaganda. ‘A weary population’ he says just became ‘blind instruments’ of Bolshevik ambition. Naturally no effort to explain why the ARF was unable to lead the nation out of crisis (For a fuller discussion of the crisis of the First Republic see The Critical Corner ‘On the Collapse of the First Armenian Republic’, Part I and Part II, 19, 20 December 2021).

From November 1920 to January 1921, whatever the concrete circumstances and the detail of the transition, unable to withstand the immense pressures upon it the ARF government surrendered power to the Bolsheviks. This is no place for a detailed examination of the transition and its immediate aftermath. But within what remained of Armenia in the wake of Soviet-Turkish negotiations and treaties for the Armenian people and nation a new epoch had begun. (See Note 4)

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V. 1921-1925 – Steps to Recovery

The 1921 establishment of Soviet power in Armenia presented the best of Armenian Bolsheviks, then personified by Alexander Miasnikyan, with the opportunity to put into practice aspects of their vision for Armenian national revival within the wider international project to create a new world order. The challenge was immense. Miasnikyan took the helm, as head of the Peoples’ Commissars of Armenia, in the wake of the First Armenian Republic and the immediately following sectarian Bolshevik frenzy of the first months of Soviet rule that in turn sparked the short-lived February 1921 ARF revolt.

Miasnikyan judged the ARF era as a catastrophe for the peoples of Armenian and of the Caucasus both in terms of inter-national relations and economic life. During the 1918-1920 years he writes:

‘We saw the… Transcaucasian nationalist republics, Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan explode with nationalist, xenophobic poison. Transcaucasia was ripped apart, in one place they slaughtered each other, in another they spilt blood in the streets, in the villages and in the towns, destroying material and spiritual culture (AM 494).’

On the socio-economic front too:

‘The ARF destroyed the Armenian railways, turned agriculture upside down and wrecked the financial system. It then turned a begging hand to European blood suckers and American hypocrites hoping to scatter some crumbs from their table to the hungry Armenian people…

The conduct of bourgeois Armenia and the ARF created thousands of Armenian and Muslim refugees, impoverished, naked, hungry, weeping, half-dead, sick, bereft of all human appearance, an exiled and persecuted refugee population (AM 377-378).’

During his very short period in leadership Miasnikyan worked to halt the ‘endless national wars (AM 338)’ of the ARF years, ‘eliminate antagonisms between people and secure genuine and complete inter-national peace (AM 455).’ His ambition was to enable nations to ‘extend a fraternal hand to each other and begin to live as members of one harmonious family (AM 494).’ A ‘harmonious family’ was the foundation for all future development:

‘The fundamental of the moment – in Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan – is the termination of antagonism between the people and the establishment of real and complete international peace and harmony (AM 455).’

Setting to work, Miasnikyan advanced the idea of a Transcaucasian Federation of Soviet Republics as the overarching structure and mechanism for the development of each nation. This idea was drawn not from any dogmatic Bolshevik ideology folder but was dictated by prevailing economic and demographic realities. The ‘critical factor in driving them (the Bolshevik leaders) to the idea of organizing a federation’ Miasnikyan wrote was that the ‘Caucasus constituted a single economic unit (AM 366)’ and only through federation, only with planned collaboration and organization across the region would it be possible to secure the best progress for all the peoples of the Caucasus.

The region’s demographic fragmentation was of equally critical import. 

‘In these territories (Armenians, Azeris and Georgians) are mixed. For example, in eastern Georgia, according to pre-World War figures, 44% of the population was Georgian, 19% Armenian and 13% Azeri. In Armenia the figures are 53% Armenian, 31% Azeri. In Baku 59% Azeri, 2% Armenian, in Gantzak 61% Azeri, 33% Armenian (AM 451-452).’

Collective organization and agreed planning across national boundaries would facilitate different national communities enjoying full national, social and economic rights and benefits irrespective of the particular national republic in which they found themselves.

Miasnikyan’s proposals for sturdy and integrated inter-republic collaboration had an additional ambition. As against individual and isolated small republics, a Federation would serve as a united bulwark to see off offensives by the old ruling classes and their imperialist allies ever ready to seize chances to restore their lost powers (AM 366).

The federal project was however born in a web of dangerous national animosities. Despite Soviet power, the legacy of national chauvinism had left its terrible mark so that even within their allegedly socialist and internationalist domains the commanding forces of ‘small nations previously persecuted’ ‘became themselves Great Powers in relation to their own national minorities (AM 448)’. This was evident in soviet ‘Georgia with Georgian attitudes to the Abkhaz people, to Armenians, to the Osser and Ajar people’, in soviet Armenia ‘with Armenian attitudes towards Turks’ and in soviet Azerbaijan ‘with their attitudes to Armenians and Jews (AM 448)’. But Miasnikyan remained confident.

Propounding his vision Miasnikyan was at pains to point out that federation did not eliminate national independence, neither did it imply denial of nationality or national assimilation. In a 12 March 1925 speech he was emphatic. A federation ‘… does not mean that we eliminate nations and national cultures (AM 498)’ On the contrary strengthening individual nations by giving them a sound economic foundation and enabling peaceful national and community relations federation consolidates the development of independence. Miasnikyan was additionally at pains to elaborate exactly what he understood national independence to mean. It was the ability to:

‘Protect national life, local customs and traditions, to develop national culture and recognize total and comprehensive national autonomy (AM 443).’

In this context he also details his conception of ‘national culture.’ It:

‘…is language, schools, literature, art, the sciences, all types of cultural institutions that develop in national circles. The mother tongue is the instrument that builds and develops national culture. Culture and language for every nation forms the foundation of their self-activity and is indispensable for their development (AM 443).’

Besides acting as a secure foundation for national development, the socio-economic consolidation of a Caucasian federation would additionally generate a transnational Caucasian pride and patriotism in the joint achievements of collaborating national groups. It would generate a national pride and patriotism in which:

‘…every communist from a particular republic does not think their republic is self-contained and self-sufficient…that for every Transcaucasian communist every Transcaucasian republic should be a motherland as with Transcaucasia as a whole (AM 500)

Such then was Miasnikyan’s and his comrades’s vision of Armenian national development within a harmonious Caucasian federation and the wider Soviet Union. Miasnikyan was confident that it had begun to produce results early. By January 1922 he was cheered by the fact that:

‘Today, in the day of the Soviet government we are witness to the fact that from the very first moment all international animosities that were normal during the ARF days have been eliminated (AM 394)?’

By 1925 in his 12 March speech shortly before his death on 22 March in a mysterious plane crash Miasnikyan confidently announces:

‘Comrades the significance of the Federation is not only that through it we are able to restore the economy, our finances, the post and railways. On top of that the greatest significance of the Federation is that it has enabled a spiritual transformation among the peoples of the Caucasus (AM 501).’

Miasnikyan’s early death and then rise of Stalin was to cast a murderous blanket over both Stepan Shahumyan’s and Miasnikyan’s grand transformative project.

As Stalin’s counter-revolution won the day a great deal of old-style nationalist chauvinism and ethnic hostilities were to resurface in the powerful bureaucratic forces of the Stalinized communist parties that in turn led to appalling soviet era national discrimination, forced assimilation and widespread ethnic cleansing across all Caucasian republics and indeed through the USSR. The simultaneous development of a corrupted Stalinist theory of nationality during the post-Miasnikyan era encouraged the consolidation of chauvinist nationalisms that was to be fuel to fire war and violence in the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union.

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VI. Stepan Shahumyan’s Catastrophic Blind Spot

No discussion of the early Armenian Bolsheviks can avoid a judgement of Stepan Shahumyan’s terrible stand on the 19th and 20th century pan-Armenian national movement that spanned Ottoman and Tsarist occupied Armenian communities. With an astonishing Caucasian-Eastern Armenian centered provincialism Shahumyan dismissed the entire movement and the liberation struggles of Ottoman occupied Armenian communities in particular as irrelevant to the Armenian common people. Worse still he claimed that the very idea of Ottoman Armenian emancipation was a diversionary fantasy born of the fevered imagination of the Caucasian Armenian nationalist intelligentsia.

Against all historical and contemporary evidence Shahumyan acted as if Ottoman and Tsarist occupied Armenian communities had no common historical, national, cultural or social-political bonds or relations. He was blind to the vast cultural, intellectual, educational and political revival that from the 17th century on, cut across Ottoman and Tsarist Armenian communities to begin knitting together an all-Armenian modern national movement. Shahumyan appears to have had little idea of Armenian intellectual history and seems utterly unaware of pre-Bolshevik progressive trends in Armenian life – the remarkable Armenian bourgeois democrats and the outstanding radical democrats (See Note 1 and Note 5) – that, among others, set the basis for a progressive national movement.

Even Mikael Nalpantian, for example, a revolutionary ‘utopian socialist’ and indeed a predecessor of the late 19th and early 20th century Armenian socialist movement never features in Shahumyan’s work. This in spite of Nalpantian anticipating Shahumyan’s uncompromising opposition for the Armenian ruling classes and perhaps because of his dedication to the emancipation of both Ottoman and Tsarist controlled Armenian communities! Unlike Alexander Miasnikyan, Shahumyan scoffed at the legacy of Armenian critical thought making no distinction between progressive and reactionary trends that were engaged in permanent ideological conflict. In an obituary to Bolshevik Souren Spantaryan he writes:

Souren…had cut all ideological connections with the Armenian intelligentsia from whom he had nothing to inherit… (SS2 387)’

So different from Miasnikyan’s more rounded grasp of the national question, Shahumyan’s positions led him to oppose the progressive anti-Ottoman Armenian National Liberation Movement (ANLM), a position that proved irrecoverably disastrous to Bolshevik fortunes in Armenian life.

Prior to World War I and the Genocide years, preoccupied exclusively with the Caucasus Shahumyan was unremittingly hostile to the liberation movement in Ottoman occupied Armenian homelands where the vast majority of all Armenians in fact lived. The very ‘idea of the liberation of the Turkish Armenian people was’ he wrote ‘fantastical and adventurist (SS1 284).’  Betraying a shocking, retrograde provincialism and an incomprehensible indifference to the suffering of western Armenian communities, he rhetorically asks:

‘Does this aim (the liberation of Ottoman occupied Armenians) have any connection with the interests of the Armenian masses in the Caucasus? … Would the socio-economic and political conditions of the Armenian proletariat and the poor change even in a small measure were that party (the ARF) to succeed in liberating “Turkish Armenia” (SS1 282)?’

The Armenian political struggles and armed insurrections in Zeitun, Sassoun, Van, Vasbourakan and elsewhere were deemed of no relevance to the common people of the Ottoman Empire, let alone the Caucasus. Unlike Marxists such as Rosa Luxembourg, Karl Liebnecht, Jean Jaures and others, all like Shahumyan members of the Second International, Shahumyan failed to see the struggles of western Armenians as a genuine and historically progressive national and social movement. He did not deny the reality of Armenian oppression but following a remark by Engels he counseled Ottoman Armenians to passivity. The priority was the struggle against Tsarism; ‘so long as Russian Tsarism continues to exist’ he wrote ‘the Turkish Armenian people can never be free from the claws of death (SS2 p416).’ So his dismal disregard for the Armenian liberation movement in the Ottoman Empire!

Unforgiving in his opposition to what he regarded as the ‘bourgeois nationalist’ ARF that dominated the ANLM, Shahumyan failed to acknowledge the contradictory character of that movement. Extraordinary for a Marxist he did not examine the conflict between class forces within the ANLM that consistently accommodated to the prevailing social order demanding only reforms that would improve the position of elites and privileged strata and those forces that were dedicated to uncompromising opposition to the Ottoman order that would benefit the masses.

Concretely, opposing the Diaspora based political leadership of the ARF that accommodated to the interests of Armenian elites and their readiness to compromise with the Ottoman state Shahumyan also opposed the Armenian fedayeen, the armed wing of the ANLM that in however distorted a manner expressed the interests of the common people, primarily the majority peasantry living in their homeland communities in western Armenia and dedicated to the destruction of the Ottoman state (Note 6). The Fedayeen’s legendary popularity born of its frequently successful battles defending homeland Armenian peasant communities meant nothing to Shahumyan. Some of their best representatives, men such as Aghbyur Serop, Kevork Chavush, Bedo that he names, are dismissed as nothing but false idols:

‘“national saints” that ARF propagandists ‘loved to repeat both at suitable and unsuitable moments (SS2 158).’

A criticism of the ARF’s strategic vision, its reliance on imperialism and its attempt to bend the Fedayeen to its own opportunist ends is understandable. But to disregard the actual class and revolutionary aspect of the ANLM expressed in the armed peasant guerrilla movement that the ARF dissolved after 1908 in order to secure its pact with the Young Turks is surely unforgivable.

In the absence of clear statements of solidarity for the oppressed western Armenian peasantry and their revolutionary Fedayeen, Shahumyan’s description of the ‘Turkish Armenian liberation struggle’ as ‘adventurist’ appears not just as heartless but lacking that genuine internationalism for which he prided himself and should have remained true to even if he thought that the western Armenian movement had no organic connection to that of the Caucasus.

Together with his position on the Ottoman Armenian emancipation movement was Shahumyan’s a-historical and one-sided treatment of the ARF itself. He did not see the ARF in its historical development – from a once revolutionary national democratic movement to the party that  collaborated both with the Young Turks and tragically eased the Ottoman-Young Turk pathway to Genocide and with the oppressive Tsarist regime. Unable to restrain himself, in his determination to discredit the ARF he even sinks to lie and slander, charging the ARF with ambitions ‘to set up an Armenian kingdom’ across eastern and western Armenia (SS2 174, 282).

The early Armenian Bolsheviks paid a very heavy price for their crude and vulgar stance on the national question. They failed to secure a significant popular following, even in eastern Armenia. After all, even in the Caucasus, with substantial segments of its Armenian population first or second, generation refugees from Ottoman oppression, there was indeed a clear and growing consciousness of a pan-Armenian reality. But a political party that failed to acknowledge this had little prospect of garnering mass support. So it was with the early Bolsheviks. It was to be their undoing.

The Armenian Bolshevik’s position isolated them from much of Armenian life in the Caucasus, their main sphere of action. It drove the Armenian common people not towards the Bolsheviks or socialism but to the nationalist parties and in particular to the then flourishing ARF. In 1917 albeit indirectly, Shahumyan recognizes this in a speech he delivered to Armenian workers in Baku. He says that:

‘For a long while you remained distant from our international class organizations. Pained by the conditions of your Turkish-Armenian brothers you have been completely captivated by the nationalist parties and have followed their counsel (SS2 414).’

Stating a perfect truth, Shahumyan did not care to analyze why most Armenian workers preferred the ARF to the Bolsheviks. Often, he simply explained it away by referring to the ideological backwardness of the Armenian population that ‘remains on the lowest rung of any socio-political consciousness (SS1 235).’ No hint of necessary self-criticism here!

Nevertheless, this said, it remains the case that as has been noted above during the years of the Genocide and the Russian Revolution and until his murder in 1918 the fate and fortunes of Ottoman occupied Armenians did become central not just to Shahumyan’s thought but to his action too. It was alas action less effective in major measure due to his blind spot on the pan-Armenian national question.

* * * * * * * * *

A tentative judgement: despite their early deaths elements of Shahumyan’s and Miasnikyan’s legacy to the Armenian people’s national development endured through even the harshest periods of the Stalin era. These are evident in the development of Soviet Armenia, in the unprecedented demographic and economic growth, in the immense national cultural, literary, artistic and scholarly accomplishments, in the stunning achievements in science, in the eradication of poverty and illiteracy, in the securing of the small Armenian state against Turkish nationalist ambitions and in the absence of internecine war in the Caucasus for near on 70 years. Shahumyan and Miasnikyan contributed to building the foundations for all this and for all their shortcomings and despite the Stalinist catastrophe and the subsequent collapse of Soviet Armenia, they deserve space in any critical evaluations of visions and strategies for the emancipation of the Armenian people.

NOTES

Note 1 – A History of Armenian Critical Thought Part Three, ANN/Armenian News, The Critical Corner, 27 August, 2018

Note 2 – Ronald Grigor Suny, The Baku Commune, 1917-1918, 412pp, 1972, USA

Note 3 – T A Muratyan, Armenia During the First Russian Revolution, 260pp, 1964, Yerevan

Note 4 – The infamous Soviet-Turkish 1921 Treaty of Kars that resulted in an Armenia so territorially diminished as to render it almost unsustainable, was recognized as damaging by Miasnikyan and in large measure as a result of ARF policy. Alas in the greater battles for Soviet survival especially after the fall of Baku and the murder Shahumyan Armenian Bolsheviks had little weight in negotiations whose remit went well beyond Armenian territorial borders.

Note 5 – A History of Armenian Critical Thought Part Two, ANN/Armenian News, The Critical Corner, 7 May, 2018

Note 6 – The Betrayal of the Armenian Fedayeen, Parts One, Two and Three – ANN/Armenian News,  The Critical Corner, 28 October, 18 November and 31 December 2019

BIBLIOGRAPHY

AM – Alexander Miasnikyan, Selected Works, 519pp, 1957, Yerevan

HS1 – Hrachig Simonian, On the Paths of Liberation, Volume 1, 816pp, 2003, Yerevan

HS2 – Hrachig Simonian, Antranik’s Times, Volume 2, 832pp, 1996, Yerevan

MV – Mikael Varantian, History of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation, Volume 1, 510pp, 1932, Paris

RP – Roubina Piroumian, Armenia Within the Orbit of ARF-Bolshevik Relations: 1917-1921, 421pp, 1997, Yerevan

SS1 – Stepan Shahumyan, Selected Works Volume 1, 336pp, 1955, Yerevan

SS2 – Stepan Shahumyan, Selected Works Volume 2, 583pp, 1955, Yerevan

SS3 – Stepan Shahumyan, Selected Works Volume 3, 529pp, 1955, Yerevan

SV – Simon Vratsian, The Armenian Republic, 704pp, 1993, Yerevan

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