The Cultural Edge
Caught Between Turkey, Russia, and Persia: 19th-Century Azeri and Armenian
Perceptions of National Identity
Emil Souleimanov April 28th 2012 GLORIA Center
[image: Turkey in Asia and the Caucasus (1885 Colton map)]
1885 Colton map, `Turkey in Asia and the Caucasian Provinces of Russia’
The ethnic conflicts that have dominated the political landscape of the
South Caucasus-a historical crossroads of many civilizations, empires,
cultures, and peoples-since the years following the Soviet Union’s collapse
have generated strong ethno-nationalisms. They have played a crucial role
in determining inter-ethnic, and to a certain degree also inter-state,
relations in this post-Soviet area. Given the strategic location of the
South Caucasus-with its small populace historically sandwiched between
great powers-local ethno-nationalisms have been considerably affected by
the perceptions of neighboring states. These states once used to be empires
encompassing what are now Azerbaijan, Armenia, and Georgia.
In fact, modern nationalisms of contemporary Azerbaijanis and Armenians
have been significantly shaped in a complex historical context of the
second half of the nineteenth century and the first two decades of the
twentieth century. This reflects the way local elites interpreted the
ethno-linguistic, cultural, and political legacy of three major
empires-Turkey, Persia (Iran), and Russia, of which Azerbaijan and
Armenia had been part for centuries.
Focusing on the historical context, this article seeks to highlight the
evolution of perceptions toward Russia and the Russians, Turkey and the
Turks, Persia and the Persians. They developed themselves in the milieu of
Azerbaijani and Armenian intellectuals, as these perceptions helped shape
modern ethnic consciousness of the two South Caucasian nations. The article
hence focuses on the period of the second half of the nineteenth century,
tracing the developments up until 1920/1921. This was when the two-year
intermezzo of Armenian and Azerbaijani independence came to an end
following the occupation of these territories by Communist Russia.
*Azerbaijan*
*A Historical Perspective of Relations with Persia and Persians or Turks
and Turkey*
Since the eleventh century, when Oghuz nomads entered the picture, Iran’s
history can be regarded as a Persian-Turkic symbiosis, taking cultural
influences from both of these civilizations. Following a *coup d’état* in
1925, the PahlavÃ- Dynasty, the first purely Persian dynasty in Persia, was
founded. Its power was not limited to the borders of historical Persia.
>From the eleventh century until that point, tribes and clans of Turkic
origin had ruled over Persian lands, Azerbaijan, and the surrounding areas.
For nearly ten centuries, Iran represented a peculiar conglomerate of
Iranian and Turkic nations; until relatively recently, the actual toponym
`Iran’ carried much greater semantic weight than it does today.
In the beginning of the sixteenth century, the Safavid ruler Shah Isma’il I
made Shi’i Islam the state religion. The spreading and strengthening of his
hold on the region rested on the military elite of the Qizilbash tribal
union, which brought together the Turkic tribes of Persia and the southern
Caucasus. The majority of Azerbaijanis and Persians adopted Shi’i Islam at
that time. This strengthened the devotion of Turkic tribes to the idea of
Iranian statehood and particularly intensified the Persianization of the
tribal elite. The new religion was a powerful impulse for territorial
expansion. Decades of so-called Persian-Turkish or Shi’i-Sunni wars
followed. The fortunes of war alternated, favoring one side then the other.
>From the sixteenth century through the first third of the nineteenth
century, the khanates of northern and southern Azerbaijan were either an
integral part of Persia or were in a state of war against
Tabriz/Isfahan/Teheran. Successful attempts to gain emancipation from its
domination were, however, not uncommon.
A definitive change did not arrive until the two Russo-Persian wars, in
which St. Petersburg was more successful. According to the peace treaties
of Gülistan (1813) and TürkmänÄ=8Day (1828), the territory of the
north-Azerbaijani khanates (north of the border on the river Arax) was
handed over to the Romanovs. Azerbaijan thus came to be divided into
northern and southern parts inhabited by one nationality that spoke one
language. From the turn of the nineteenth century onwards, the idea of a
divided homeland or *severance* (*ayriliq* in Azerbaijani) was reflected in
the ideological and political solidification of Azerbaijani national
consciousness. This influenced the beginnings of nationalism.
The formation of the Azerbaijani identity at first played out as a contest
between two ideological and political currents. The first current stressed
the primacy of culture and religion (*société persane*), while the second
emphasized origin derived from language. The creation of a unified
Azerbaijani identity was effectively hindered not only by traditional
clan/territorial differentiation, but also by the existence of two
widespread denominations within Islam. While the preponderance of
Azerbaijanis were adherents of Shi’i Islam and were inclined toward the
Persians, the strong Sunni minority-inhabiting mainly the west and north of
Azerbaijani territory-identified more with their Turkish and Dagestani
fellow believers.
As Tadeusz Swietochowski writes, `the depth of the sectarian split was
reflected in the nineteenth-century wars waged by Russia, when the Tsardom
was able to use Shi’ite volunteers against Turkey in 1828 and 1853-1856 as
well as against Shamil’s Ghazavat (holy war) in Dagestan. By contrast, the
Sunnis tended to support Shamil, sometimes taking up arms, and showed
restiveness at times of Russo-Ottoman conflicts.’ In the 1830s alone, there
were three local uprisings in the northern areas of contemporary Azerbaijan
bordering on Dagestan, all connected with Shamil’s movement.
In the end, Turkish language and culture won out. In the early twentieth
century, the pro-Turkish or pro-Turkic orientation of Azerbaijani identity
was clearly profiled. In the meantime, the role of religion in the emerging
secular, pro-Western, modernistic nationalism was limited. The result was
the growing orientation of the local elite toward the Ottoman Empire, which
was regarded as the flagship of the (pan-)Turkic movement and at the same
time as a leading Muslim country. It was to the Ottoman Empire that the
pan-Turanist revivalists from the Crimea to the Altai tied their hopes.
No less intensely felt was the rediscovery of `Turkic brotherhood’ in
various parts of the Russian Empire-in the Volga-Ural region, northern and
southern Caucasus, Central Asia, and Crimea. Thanks to the developments in
the first decades of the twentieth century, the political forces that were
behind the emergence of the independent Azerbaijan Democratic Republic
(1918-1920) could declare: `The Muslims of the Transcaucasus [i.e.
Azerbaijanis] together with the Turks constitute one nationality.’ From the
beginning of the twentieth century, bourgeois circles in particular laid
claim ever more vocally to their Turkic identity. Still, not at all
uncommon among the aristocracy was a historically based orientation toward
Iranian statehood. Moreover, the apolitical countryside still identified
itself more on the basis of religious criteria as Muslims or in accordance
with family, clan, or territorial criteria, the foundations had been laid
for the Azerbaijani identity as a lingual and territorial phenomenon.
This noteworthy change of identity was sealed during the last months of
World War I, when in the autumn of 1918, after the withdrawal of the
Bolshevik army and of Armenian revolutionary forces, the Ottoman troops and
the mostly Azerbaijani Army of Islam briefly occupied Baku. The Turks were
welcomed in Azerbaijan as rescuers and liberators who, together with
Azerbaijani militia units, rid them of the bloody rampaging of Armenian
militias, even at the cost of murdering thousands of Armenian civilians in
the capital. Until their withdrawal in the fall of 1918, when they were
replaced by British occupation forces, Turkish troops were largely
responsible for the creation of an independent Azerbaijan. They also
provided significant aid in the fight against Armenian rebels in Karabakh.
*A Historical Perspective of Relations with Russians and Russia*
The relationship with Russians in the Muslim Caucasus has never been
unambiguous. By most of the population, Russians were regarded as
`infidels’ who-as opposed to the Christian Armenians and especially
Georgians-exhibited almost no sympathy toward Azerbaijanis, especially
during the initial period of colonization. For St. Petersburg, the Muslim
Azerbaijanis represented a potentially treacherous element. At the time of
the wars against Russia in the nineteenth century in the northern Caucasus,
there was a threat several times that the conflict could spill over into
territory inhabited by Azerbaijanis. This was potentially a very unpleasant
scenario for the empire in view of the local population’s strong ties to
Persia and Turkey.
According to the *Caucasian Calendar for 1853*, Caucasian Tatars (i.e.
Azerbaijanis) are `fiery, impatient, predisposed to brutality, preferring
an itinerant way of life; when the government weakens they cross over to a
different government or to anarchy; they do not forgive wrongs, but are
vengeful, tenacious …’
About ten years earlier, a Russian officer reported from Karabakh that with
the Tatars, their way of life and their morals were inconsistent:
`According to their customs and beliefs, lying, banditry and plundering are
worthy of praise,’ and to abduct a girl, and while doing so to kill `at
least a man or even her very own parents and then to marry her is
praiseworthy, youthful heroism.’ As a consequence, `they cannot be real
supporters of the Russian government, and in case of any political
upheaval, they will be prepared to rise up against us.’
Even sources that attribute to Azerbaijanis mostly positive qualities
(`hard-working, manly, full of determination, not inclined toward changes
and novelties’) do not fail to emphasize that `one cannot at all rely on
their peacefulness and loyalty.’ Still, the number and the extent of
anti-colonial uprisings in Azerbaijani lands were small, especially in
comparison with other areas of the Muslim (northern) Caucasus. Among other
things, this was due to the fact that in its regional policy, St.
Petersburg relied on the established Azerbaijani aristocracy, who were
granted a certain degree of autonomy. At least at first, this approach
provided the appearance of continuity of power and legitimacy in the eyes
of ordinary farmers and herdsmen, for whom the arrival of the Russians
changed almost nothing. Occasional local disturbances were generally
suppressed by the armed forces of the local feudal lords, khans, or beks,
and not by mounted Cossacks or the army.
Existence within the framework of the Russian state provided the
inhabitants of the southern Caucasus with decades of stable socioeconomic
growth. However, it was primarily Russian, Armenian, and foreign capital
that profited from the oil wealth of Baku. Also playing a considerable role
was the long-term influence of Russian culture and learning, especially for
the formation of the local intellectual elite, for whom the Russian
language and culture served as a bridge to Western culture and modernizing
tendencies that (Western) Europe was undergoing. This is another reason the
Azerbaijani revivalists of the nineteenth century, with their anticlerical
tendencies, had generally positive relations with Russia and Russian
domination.
Although the Azerbaijanis, as a Muslim nationality, were relieved of the
duty of serving in the Russian army, some of the old feudal elite regarded
military service as an honorable privilege. Still, there was noticeably
less participation by Azerbaijani nobility in the officer corps of the
Russian army than by the nobility of Georgia and Armenia, also
corresponding to the degree of involvement of those ethnic groups in the
societal life of tsarist Russia. Relatively weak anti-Russian attitudes
characterized the period after the Russian revolutions of 1917. This can at
least partially be explained by the fact that the disappearance of the
power of St. Petersburg from the region left behind a power vacuum that
both the Armenians and Azerbaijanis tried to fill, striving for control
over several areas that they jointly populated. Armenians and not Russians
were perceived as the chief threat accompanying the brief existence of the
independent Azerbaijan Democratic Republic (1918-1920). Even after the
South Caucasian republic had been occupied in April 1920 by divisions of
the eleventh Red Army, anti-Russian attitudes did not strengthen. The armed
resistance to the occupation in certain areas of the country was not,
however, definitively suppressed until 1924.
The period of Soviet domination was characterized by escalating autonomy
for Azerbaijan-especially after World War II, the newly established local
elite played an ever greater role-and by generally calm Russian-Azerbaijani
coexistence. Yet the ultimate outcome was tragic. On January 20, 1990,
Soviet Army units invaded Baku. Their official goal was to prevent the mass
murder of Armenian civilians, being instigated by fanatical crowds, mainly
refugees from Armenia. The Soviet troops deployed in the capital city and
its environs had been following the events passively for more than a week.
The Azerbaijanis, however, clearly interpreted this brutal attack, which
led to the deaths of dozens of civilians and injury of hundreds more, as
punishment from Moscow for the increasingly emphatic demands for
independence heard at ongoing demonstrations by many tens of thousands
followers of the nationalist opposition in Baku. Their original mission had
been to prevent the transfer of Nagorno-Karabakh under the administration
of Yerevan.
*Armenia*
*A Historical Perspective of Relations with Turks and Turkey*
>From the ecumenical Council of Chalcedon (451 CE), Armenia began to view
the West and Persia to the south) as a source of constant threat. Since
then, the geostrategic interests of Constantinople, which strove to gain
this important territory in its struggles with the Persians and later the
Arabs, combined with a religious effort to bring the Armenian `heretics’ to
Orthodox Christianity. Although the Armenians gave Byzantium a number of
important statesmen and military commanders, Greek-Armenian antagonism was
so strong at that time, that many Byzantine Armenians viewed the victorious
breakthrough of Seljuq Turks into Anatolia a thousand years ago as
salutary. This antagonism continued, and even seemed to have strengthened
during the Ottoman era.
At first, the strengthening of the Turkish element in Asia Minor actually
brought Armenian communities in Anatolia more religious freedom. The Muslim
rulers granted this to the vassals of other faiths in exchange for loyalty.
This benevolence included the possibility of maintaining their own faith
and identity. The Armenians in the Ottoman Empire, like other `People of
the Book’ (Christians and Jews), enjoyed the status of *dhimmis* or wards
of the Muslim community or state. They were regarded as an independent *
millet*, i.e., political-religious community. While that formally
determined their lower social status, they still had the guaranteed
possibility of stable development within the framework of communities under
autonomous administration.
During the Balkan uprisings in the first half of the nineteenth century,
the Armenian community, unlike the other Christian subjects, did not
question the sultan’s authority. As a result of their loyalty, Armenians
received the distinction of being called *millet-i sadika* or a faithful
nation. In the nineteenth century Turkey, the standing of the Armenian
urban community-generally the bourgeoisie and intellectual elite=80’grew
enormously. It reached its apex in the late nineteenth and early twentieth
centuries, when Armenians were at the heart of the economic, cultural,
and-in a certain sense-political life of that empire of multiple
nationalities.
During this period, however, the Armenians of eastern Anatolia became
targets of ever more intensive attacks by the Ottoman army and Muslim
militias. From 1894 to 1896, there were massacres of the Armenian
population. According to various estimates between 80,000 and 300,000
Armenians were killed. This sharp turnaround in Ottoman relations with
Armenians was caused by a whole series of factors.
Foremost among them was the new tax system introduced in Turkey in the
second half of the nineteenth century. Yet the higher taxes had to be paid
without the abolition of the old taxation system, which existed in areas of
Anatolia in parallel to the new one and accommodated the traditionally high
demands of feudal lords-landowners, the Kurds generally and Armenians as
well. This also left room for ubiquitous corruption, cronyism, and anarchy.
The situation further deteriorated after thousands of so-called Muhajirs or
Balkan Muslims were settled in the none too fertile regions inhabited by
Armenians. This was usually done to the detriment of the Armenian and
Syriac Christians.
As if that were not enough, at the same time Istanbul gave approval for
ever larger numbers of nomadic Kurdish tribes to migrate farther to the
north and northeast, i.e., into territory that had traditionally been
populated by the Armenian element. `The Kurds, nomads and semi-nomads,
would winter in the regions of Mush, Van, and around Ararat, occupying
upkeep and tribute from the Armenian peasants, forcing them to purchase
their protection (*hafir*), pillaging with impunity, and carrying off women
and flocks. The usual reactions of the Armenian peasant and artisans were
flight and emigration toward Constantinople, Smyrna, and Transcaucasia.’
In response to these developments, in the mid-nineteenth century in some
areas of Anatolian Armenia, armed divisions began to appear spontaneously.
Their main goal was to resist Kurdish raiders. The first Armenian
rebellions (in 1862 in Zeitun and in 1863 in Van and Erzurum) were
anti-Kurdish in character. As with the earlier Balkan uprisings, Christian
farmers initially asked for the sultan’s protection. Yet `[l]ocal Turkish
officials ran the towns with little regard to central authority, and
Kurdish beys held much of the countryside under their sway. Often the only
way Istanbul could make its will felt was by sending in the army.’
These events, which took place in the Anatolian countryside, coincided with
an emancipation movement that was gaining strength among Armenian
intellectual circles in Russia and Europe as well as in the major Ottoman
cities. Once the `Armenian question’ had entered the stage of grand
European diplomacy at the Congress of Berlin (1878), it was politicized
once and for all. The initial efforts of a handful of Armenian revivalists
to improve the situation of the Armenian population in the Ottoman Empire
were soon taken up by St. Petersburg as part of its foreign policy agenda.
This was an excellent tool for meddling in the internal affairs of the
`sick man of the Bosporus.’ The publicly declared goal of protecting
Ottoman Christians was a convenient excuse for expansion into the interior
of Anatolia.
The disconsolate state of Armenian farming in Anatolia became the center of
attention for several Armenian revivalist organizations. This included the
three oldest and largest Armenian socialist revolutionary parties, whose
members did not hesitate to use terrorist or diversionary-terrorist means
of armed resistance during certain periods. These were the revolutionary
group Protectors of the Homeland, founded in 1882, and the three
aforementioned socialist revolutionary parties-Armenakan (meaning
`Armenian’ in the Armenian language), founded in 1885; Hnchak (Armenian for
`bell’), founded two years later; and the Armenian Revolutionary Federation
(Haykakan heghaphokhakan dashnaktsutiun), also known by the shorter name
Dashnaktsutiun, founded in 1890.
In various stages of their existence, these parties aspired for the
founding of an independent Armenian state or the incorporation of eastern
areas of Anatolia, regarded as an integral part of western Armenia, into
the empire of the Romanovs. Before long, it came to clashes with Kurds in
several east-Turkish areas. Attacks were also launched against Ottoman
military units and police. Sometimes the targets of the attacks were even
Muslim civilians. It was generally believed that St. Petersburg was
supporting these activities. The revivalist organizations thus helped to
mobilize originally apolitical Armenian villagers, leading to the formation
of an armed resistance movement.
In a relatively short time, Ottoman Muslims began to view the Armenians as
a homogenous ethnic-religious community, a `fifth column,’ trying to
undermine the state’s integrity with the support of foreign powers. In any
case, after a series of uprisings and wars-which cost the humiliated
Ottoman sultanate extensive territory in the Black Sea region and the
Balkans while also causing the arrival of hundreds of thousands of Muslim
refugees to an economically devastated country-the seeds of distrust of the
Ottomans toward their Christian fellow citizens had now been sown.
The High Porte was entirely deaf to the desires of its Anatolian vassals.
Wherever possible, it resolved attempts at separatism in the standard
manner-through military intervention. This was also confirmed by the
suppression of several local rebellions of Kurdish tribes in Anatolia
before the 1860s by army units. Sultan Abdul Hamid II (in power from 1876
to 1909), nicknamed `the Butcher’ (not only among Ottoman Christians),
ruled during a period of Ottoman fears of the destructive activity of
European powers trying to break up the empire. The efforts toward
emancipation of the Armenian community were thus *a priori *interpreted in
the light of this global Christian conspiracy against the caliphate.
At the same time, Istanbul was becoming more and more concerned with the
increasing cooperation between certain Kurdish tribal chiefs with ideas of
autonomy and the Russians. These fears were confirmed during the
Russo-Turkish War (1877-1878). Turkey was defeated in 1891. Soon after, on
the basis of an analogy with mobile Cossack regiments, whose deployment in
the previous war had proven extraordinarily successful, Abdul Hamid II
authorized the formation of the Kurdish militia divisions (*hamidiye*), to
which he lent his name. Besides, `it was important to stiffen the resolve
of Kurds as part of the empire.’ The Kurdish tribes from which members of
the hamidiye were recruited were exempt from paying taxes. Their only duty
was military service to the sultan, for which they received regular pay.
Nonetheless, `when the government could not afford to pay hamidiye
officers, it offered them tax-collecting rights on local Armenian villages,
causing further hardship for the latter.’
Before long, the armed Kurdish tribes, given broad authority for protection
of the border with Russia in the eastern provinces, began engaging in
battles over the region’s limited resources. This occurred both among
individual hamidiye divisions and between those divisions and the local
population, whether Kurdish, Turkish or Christian. `Local commanders did
not differentiate between enemies of their tribe qua tribe, and enemies of
the hamidiye cavalry.’ Eastern Anatolia thus became an arena of regular
armed conflicts of a local character, in which the Christian population
suffered the most.
The Armenians’ calls on Istanbul to intervene in the name of protecting its
Christian vassals and in order to stabilize the remote East-Anatolian
vilayets were in vain. At the end of the nineteenth century, Istanbul
generally avoided armed intervention in the area, partly in order not to
incur the wrath of the populous and powerful Kurdish tribes, and partly
because the Kurdish-Armenian antagonism seemed to have suited Istanbul.
Given this situation, the aforementioned massacres of 1894-1896 took place
with the participation of local police forces and especially of hamidiye
units and ordinary local Muslims.
The tragic climax of the deepening crisis was the so-called Armenian
Genocide in 1915. The circumstances of this event have not been
satisfactorily brought to light to this day. The Young Turk regime appears
to have decided in part for the liquidation of the Armenian population and
in part for its expulsion, in order to prevent the feared penetration into
the interior of Anatolia. The result was the murder of hundreds of
thousands of people, the greater part of the Armenian population of
Anatolia, by Ottoman divisions and hamidiye units; others were subjected to
fatal conditions during deportation. The remaining Armenian survivors were
then Kurdified of Turkified, and tens of thousands of others managed to
escape to the disintegrating Russian Empire, the West (to France or the
United States), Syria, Lebanon, or other Arab areas of the sultanate (which
before long came under the mandate of France or the United Kingdom).
Massacres also recurred during the assault of the Turkish army across the
entire newly-created Armenian Democratic Republic in 1918 as well as during
the brief Turkish-Armenian War (1920). In response, there were extensive
ethnic cleansing and murders of thousands of people belonging to the
Turkish and Azerbaijani population, who constituted approximately one third
of the population of independent Armenia. Used as an excuse for this was
the fact that Turkish farmers and herdsmen had largely taken the side of
the Turks.
It was during the period of the tragic events at the end of the nineteenth
and beginning of the twentieth centuries that the view of Turks as a
`nation of murderers and ruffians’ became definitively sealed in the
Armenian national consciousness. This was further strengthened by conflicts
with the Azerbaijanis of the southern Caucasus. The interpretation of the
catastrophic year 1915 fit in thematically with the religiously imbued
self-image of Armenians as a nation of martyrs. This seems to be the source
of the ease with which the events became an integral part of the Armenian
national myth. Even before 1915, literary and musical works had spoken of
the suffering of Armenian women and children, the courage of Armenian
partisans, and the boundless brutality of the Turks.
*A Historical Perspective of Relations with Russians and Russia*
Russia’s penetration of the Caucasus was welcomed by the Armenian
intellectual and especially clerical elite, as well as by ordinary people.
Their common religion played no small role in this. Divisions of Armenian
volunteers had existed beginning with the two Russo-Persian Wars
(1804-1813, 1826-1828), during which the territory of eastern Armenia
became part of the empire of the Romanovs, and in nearly all of St
Petersburg’s Turkish campaigns in the Caucasus and eastern Anatolia
(1806-1812, 1828-1829, 1877-1878, 1914-1917).
The Russians were perceived by the Armenian revivalists, whose ideas had a
significant cultural/religious component, as liberators from the
thousand-year yoke of the `heathen.’ In the first half of the nineteenth
century, some Armenians even believed St. Petersburg would allow the
restoration of a sort of Armenian tsardom, as an autonomous entity under
the protectorate of the Romanovs’ empire. Although for various reasons such
optimistic hopes were never fulfilled, Armenian migration to the Caucasus
from the Ottoman Empire and Persia was supported by Russian authorities in
every possible way. Between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries,
hundreds of thousands of Armenian refugees founded numerous prospering
communities all over the Caucasus as well as in the southern parts of
Russia itself.
As far as the Russian view of Armenians is concerned, these attitudes
underwent certain changes during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
Until 1917, hatred toward the `Jews of the Caucasus,’ as Armenians were
often called for their business talent, was not uncommon among `Greater
Russian’ chauvinists. Unlike the Azerbaijanis, who were generally
distrusted by the Russian authorities and who were sometimes seen as having
the character of noble savages, Armenians were regarded more as a
religiously and politically kindred element. According to the Russian
opinion of the day, Armenians `without any doubt take first place among the
inhabitants of the Transcaucasus for their ability, industriousness and
effort to educate themselves’ and `have always been regarded as the most
industrious workers of the East.’ Russian authorities accounted them as
`peaceable, gentle, cautious, calculating, diligent, tied to their
families, industrious, delicate, quiet, obedient, trying to act [in
compliance with] the law …’ Besides their talent at business, many
documents underscored the unquestionable loyalty of the Armenians, who were
viewed as `devoted to the Russian government and could not betray us.’
>From the early 1900s, with elements in the Armenian elite becoming
revolutionary, the Russian attitude began to regard Armenians as a
potentially dangerous `nation of revolutionaries and conspirators.’
According to the daily *Russkoe slovo*, `any Armenian in the Caucasus is
regarded as a revolutionary just for being Armenian.’ The Armenians were
the most politically conscious inhabitants of the Transcaucasus at the time
and offered the stiffest resistance to the Russification campaign that St.
Petersburg had begun in the 1880s. Russian relations to the Christian
Armenians during this period could be best characterized as condescending
accommodation.
In spite of occasional disappointment with the policies of St. Petersburg
in the affairs of eastern Anatolia or the none too pro-Armenian approach of
the colonial authorities regarding the so-called Armenian-Tatar War of
1905, the Armenians were always sympathetic toward Russians. This was the
result of the Armenians’ increasing concerns for their own safety.
They saw
themselves as `an island of Christendom in a hostile (i.e., Turkic-Muslim)
environment.’ In direct proportion to the deterioration of Armenian
relations with their immediate neighbors (the Turks and Azerbaijanis) over
time, the orientation of Armenia’s elite toward Russia strengthened. Russia
was seen as the only power willing and able to provide sparsely populated
Armenia with a guarantee of existence in a situation of geopolitical
stalemate.
In spite of the country’s occupation by the Eleventh Red Army (1920) and
the end of Armenian independence, during the following decades this
consciousness served for the consolidation of the nationality both in the
Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic and among nationalistically oriented
Armenians in the diaspora. The 70 years of existence within the USSR
further strengthened Armenia’s orientation toward Russia. Also contributing
to this was the significant social role played by Armenia in the Soviet
state. These factors also help explain why in Armenia-unlike in neighboring
countries-the breakup of the Soviet Union was accompanied by almost no
anti-Russian sentiment.
*Conclusion*
During the Soviet and post-Soviet period, a modern national self-awareness
for Azerbaijanis and Armenians arose. This reflected the process of
self-identification that afflicted small peoples of the borderland areas at
the crossroads of empires. In case of Azerbaijanis and Armenians, that
process involved Russia, Turkey, and Persia.
The Azerbaijani intellectual elites in the nineteenth century considered
`Persianness’ and `Turkishness’ as two identity options for themselves. The
first principle mentioned reflected the existence of a highly Persianized
culture and common Shi’i religion of the predominant part of the
Azerbaijani populace that had been part of Persia for centuries. The second
phenomenon emphasized the primacy of language and thus ethnic origin, which
was thought to cement Turkophone Azerbaijanis with Anatolian (or Ottoman)
Turks. The primacy of language eventually prevailed as Azerbaijanis
overwhelmingly began to identify themselves with neighboring Turkey=80’and
their Turkic roots.
Over time, their nationalism obtained strongly Turkic intonations. This was
amplified as early as 1918, when Azerbaijanis found themselves in a bloody
armed conflict with neighboring Armenians. It was the aid provided by the
Turkish forces in the Caucasus that helped Azerbaijanis eliminate the
Armenian threat and lay the foundations of independent Azerbaijani
statehood. In the meantime, a once close relationship to Persia gradually
diminished. This was conditioned by the strongly secular character of
Azerbaijani nationalism and the overall decline of religiosity during the
Soviet period. The Russians and Armenians were also considered as
adversarial cultures.
While the perceptions of Persia played a rather marginal role in the
development of Armenian self-consciousness of the last centuries, the
dramatic events of the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth century that
took place in eastern Anatolia and the South Caucasus laid the ground for
modern Armenian nationalism. Since then, anti-Turkic sentiments have been
the core of that ethno-nationalism as they established themselves during
the last decade of the existence of the Ottoman Empire. This period was
marked by a series of massive Armenian pogroms and massacres culminating in
the events of 1915-1916 in which hundreds of thousands of Armenians were
murdered.
The negative perceptions of Turkey and the Turks were further magnified
during what came to be known as the Armenian-Tatar War of 1905, as well as
during the 1918-1920 wars waged by independent Armenia with neighboring
Azerbaijan and Turkey. Importantly, Azerbaijanis began to become
increasingly identified with Anatolian Turks, which helped refocus
anti-Turkic sentiments toward Turkophone Azerbaijanis as well. In the
meanwhile, the image of Russia was sealed as the only ally-a Christian
nation that was able and willing to provide Armenians with the necessary
assistance for the latter to secure their physical survival in the
unfriendly environment of Turkic (Muslim) neighbors.
*Emil Souleimanov is assistant professor at the Department of Russian and
East European Studies, Faculty of Social Sciences, Charles University in
Prague. He wrote this
articlefor
the
*MERIA Journal*, a project of the GLORIA Center,
from where it is adapted.*