The Transcaucasian Democratic

Federative Republic of 1918

The Transcaucasian Democratic Federative Republic (TDFR) was a unique,

bottom-up, and a fleeting display of political unity and federalism among
the main Armenian, Azerbaijani and Georgian political factions between 22
April 1918, when it declared its independence, and 26 May 1918, when it
was dissolved and replaced by the three nation-states of Armenia,
Azerbaijan and Georgia. Focusing on a crucial but poorly understood
moment in the modern history of the Caucasus at the end of the First World
War, this book offers a systematic, contextually rich and multi-perspectival
—Armenian, Azerbaijani, Georgian, Ottoman, German, British, American,
Italian, Bolshevik, Ukrainian and North Caucasian—account of the TDFR,
drawing on contributions (with the new material from archives in Tbilisi,
Grozny, Yerevan, Baku, Istanbul, Berlin, London, Washington D.C.) by a
new generation of historians and scholars working on the region.
The book argues that despite its month-long existence in this
geopolitically volatile region, the TDFR, with and its federative nature and
the various discussions about federalism and federation that it provoked,
continued to have an appeal for Georgians, Azerbaijanis, Armenians as well
as for the Great Powers well beyond its dissolution. Moreover, the
experience of the TDFR reifies federalism as a key political concept in the
modern history of the Caucasus.
The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of
the Caucasus Survey.

Adrian Brisku is intellectual historian working at Charles University

(Prague), Czechia; University of Vienna, Austria; and Ilia State University
(Tbilisi), Georgia. He is the author of Bittersweet Europe: Albanian and
Georgian Discourses on Europe, 1878–2008 (Berghahn Books, 2013);
Political Reform in the Ottoman and Russian Empires: A Comparative
Approach (Bloomsbury, 2017); and National Economy-Building in Albania,
Czechoslovakia and Georgia in the 1920s (Routledge, forthcoming 2023).

Timothy K. Blauvelt is Professor of Soviet and Post-Soviet Studies at Ilia

State University (Tbilisi), Georgia, and is also Regional Director for the
South Caucasus for American Councils for International Education. He has
published more than two dozen peer-reviewed journal articles and book
chapters. His book Georgia after Stalin: Nationalism and Soviet Power
(edited with Jeremy Smith) was published by Routledge in 2015, and his
next book, Clientalism and Nationality in an Early Soviet Fiefdom: The
Trials of Nestor Lakoba, is forthcoming from Routledge.
The Transcaucasian Democratic Federative Republic of 1918
Federal Aspirations, Geopolitics and National
Projects

Edited by
Adrian Brisku and Timothy K. Blauvelt
First published 2021
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Contents

Citation Information
Notes on Contributors

Introduction: Who wanted the TDFR? The making and the breaking of
the Transcaucasian Democratic Federative Republic
Adrian Brisku and Timothy K. Blauvelt

1 Between empire and independence: Armenia and the Transcaucasian

Democratic Federative Republic
Mikayel Zolyan

2 Azerbaijan and the Transcaucasian Democratic Federative Republic:

historical reality and possibility
Georges Mamoulia

3 The Transcaucasian Democratic Federative Republic (TDFR) as a

“Georgian” responsibility
Adrian Brisku

4 Pragmatism and expediency: Ottoman calculations and the establishment

of the Transcaucasian Democratic Federative Republic
Stefano Taglia

5 The German perspective on the Transcaucasian Federation and the

influence of the Committee for Georgia’s Independence
Lasha Bakradze
6 Feeble projects and aspirations: the Caucasian and Transcaucasian
federation/confederation in the geopolitics of 1918–1920
Beka Kobakhidze

7 Ideology meets practice in the struggle for the Transcaucasus: Stepan

Shaumyan and the evolution of Bolshevik nationality policy
Timothy K. Blauvelt

8 Ukraine and the Transcaucasus in 1917–1918: parallels, interactions,

influences
Timothy K. Blauvelt and Stanislav Tumis

9 Turning towards unity: a North Caucasian perspective on the

Transcaucasian Democratic Federative Republic
Sarah Slye

Afterword
Adrian Brisku

Index

Citation Information

The chapters in this book were originally published in the Caucasus Survey,
volume 8, issue 1 (March 2020). When citing this material, please use the
original page numbering for each article, as follows:

Introduction
 Who wanted the TDFR? The making and the breaking of the
Transcaucasian Democratic Federative Republic
Adrian Brisku and Timothy K. Blauvelt
Caucasus Survey, volume 8, issue 1 (March 2020) pp. 1–8

Chapter 1
Between empire and independence: Armenia and the Transcaucasian
Democratic Federative Republic
Mikayel Zolyan
Caucasus Survey, volume 8, issue 1 (March 2020) pp. 9–20

Chapter 2
Azerbaijan and the Transcaucasian Democratic Federative Republic:
historical reality and possibility
Georges Mamoulia
Caucasus Survey, volume 8, issue 1 (March 2020) pp. 21–30

Chapter 3
The Transcaucasian Democratic Federative Republic (TDFR) as a
“Georgian” responsibility
Adrian Brisku
Caucasus Survey, volume 8, issue 1 (March 2020) pp. 31–44

Chapter 4
Pragmatism and expediency: Ottoman calculations and the
establishment of the Transcaucasian Democratic Federative Republic
Stefano Taglia
Caucasus Survey, volume 8, issue 1 (March 2020) pp. 45–58

Chapter 5
The German perspective on the Transcaucasian Federation and the
influence of the Committee for Georgia’s Independence
Lasha Bakradze
Caucasus Survey, volume 8, issue 1 (March 2020) pp. 59–68
Chapter 6
Feeble projects and aspirations: the Caucasian and Transcaucasian
federation/confederation in the geopolitics of 1918–1920
Beka Kobakhidze
Caucasus Survey, volume 8, issue 1 (March 2020) pp. 69–80

Chapter 7
Ideology meets practice in the struggle for the Transcaucasus: Stepan
Shaumyan and the evolution of Bolshevik nationality policy
Timothy K. Blauvelt
Caucasus Survey, volume 8, issue 1 (March 2020) pp. 81–92

Chapter 8
Ukraine and the Transcaucasus in 1917–1918: parallels, interactions,
influences
Timothy K. Blauvelt and Stanislav Tumis
Caucasus Survey, volume 8, issue 1 (March 2020) pp. 93–105

Chapter 9
Turning towards unity: a North Caucasian perspective on the
Transcaucasian Democratic Federative Republic
Sarah Slye
Caucasus Survey, volume 8, issue 1 (March 2020) pp. 106–123

Afterword
Afterword
Adrian Brisku
Caucasus Survey, volume 8, issue 1 (March 2020) pp. 124–125

For any permission-related enquiries please visit:

http://www.tandfonline.com/page/help/permissions

Contributors
Lasha Bakradze College of Arts and Sciences, Ilia State University,
Tbilisi, Georgia.
Timothy K. Blauvelt College of Arts and Sciences, Ilia State University,
Tbilisi, Georgia.
Adrian Brisku Institute of International Studies, Charles University,
Prague, Czechia.
Beka Kobakhidze College of Arts and Sciences, Ilia State University,
Tbilisi, Georgia.
Georges Mamoulia CERCEC de l’EHESS, Paris, France.
Sarah Slye Faculty of History, University of Cambridge, UK.
Stefano Taglia Oriental Institute, The Czech Academy of Sciences, Prague,
Czechia.
Stanislav Tumis Department of East European Studies, Faculty of Arts,
Charles University, Prague, Czechia.
Mikayel Zolyan Brusov University of Languages and Social Sciences,
Yerevan, Armenia.

INTRODUCTION
Who wanted the TDFR? The making and
the breaking of the Transcaucasian
Democratic Federative Republic
Adrian Brisku and Timothy K. Blauvelt
During the brief period between 22 April and 26 May 1918, the leading
Armenian, Azerbaijani and Georgian political forces of the early twentieth
century, having established the shared federative structures of the
Transcaucasian Commissariat and the Seim in the preceding months,
declared an independent Transcaucasian Democratic Federative Republic
(TDFR) (see Figure 1). Emerging as it did from the ruins of an imploding
tsarist empire and the still glowing embers of the First World War, and
facing the imminent threat of invasion from the Ottoman army and the
power ambitions of incipient Soviet Russia, the TDFR seemed both to the
actors at the time and to later scholars of the region to be unique,
contingent, and certainly unrepeatable. For Noe Zhordania, for example,
who as leader of the Georgian Social Democratic Party played a key role in
the creation of the TDFR and the founding of the Georgian Democratic
Republic, declaring independence was entirely contingent upon the political
developments in Russia and the designs of the Ottoman Empire towards
those territories that it had lost in the 1878 Russo-Ottoman War. This sense
of contingency could be felt in his speech to the Transcaucasian Seim
shortly before the declaration of independence, entitled “On the
Independence of Transcaucasia,” in which he stated that such a political
union could achieve independence only if a democratic Russia abandoned
it, even though Transcaucasia would have to face the Ottomans on its own
(1919, 76). The hopes of Zhordania and many others for the emergence of a
democratic Russia failed to materialize, while an Ottoman invasion did,
forcing the main Transcaucasian political forces, primarily the Georgian
Social Democrats and the National Democrats, the Armenian
Dashnaktsutyun (or Dashnaks), and the Azerbaijani Musavatists, to agree to
declare the independence of the Transcaucasus/Transcaucasia.1
While the TDFR appeared to these historical actors, as well as to later
historians and scholars of the region (more on this below), as a unique
political phenomenon that resulted from happenstance, how the TDFR
emerged, what the political discourses were that sustained or contested it,
and what the positions of the main political actors and interested
parties/states towards it were have not been studied systematically. This set
of questions and others were addressed in the contributions of historians
and specialists on the region and its surrounding areas at an international
conference on the centennial of the TDFR that was organized at Charles
University in Prague on 24 May 2018.2 Building on the contributions from
the only international academic event to mark this centennial, this special
issue offers to readers interested in the region a comprehensive and multi-
perspective historical account of the TDFR. It does so via a few guiding
questions, namely: what was the TDFR, who created it and how, and who
among the relevant political powers actually wanted the TDFR? Whose
interests did it serve?
Figure 1 Boundaries of the TDFR from April 1918 and the new states as
they came into existence in May 1918. Note: Map created by Vladimer
Shioshvili.

These questions are posed in a context in which full and direct accounts
are lacking – though the larger historical background and the causes for its
collapse have been discussed at some length – either in Western historical
scholarship or in the respective national historiographies of the region
(Georgian, Armenian and Azerbaijani). It is clear that institutionally the
TDFR relied for its brief exercise of foreign policy (such as negotiating a
peace deal with the Ottoman government) and its domestic governance
(maintaining public order and land and labour reform policies) on the
Regional Centre of Soviets, the Transcaucasian Commissariat and the Seim
at the “federative” level, while at the “national” level on the three political
institutions comprised of the main nationalities, the Azerbaijani, Armenian
and Georgian national councils. These institutions emerged as necessary
responses to the Bolsheviks’ seizure of power in Petrograd in November
1917. The Regional Centre of the Soviets of Workers’, Soldiers’ and
Peasants’ Deputies, established on 8 November, together with the executive
committees of the Social Democratic and Socialist Revolutionary parties
called for the “preservation of order and unity of revolutionary democracy”
in the Caucasus. Eight days later, the Regional Centre of Soviets delivered
another resolution calling for the establishment of a government to be
comprised of representatives from the many existing parties, and as well as
for the creation of a Constituent Assembly. Aimed at strengthening the
powers of the democratic forces and halting anarchy and averting civil war,
the goals of this resolution came to fruition swiftly four days later, with the
establishment of Transcaucasian Commissariat. Comprised of three
Georgians, three Azerbaijanis, three Armenians and two Russians, this
“caretaker government” struggled to administer internal order and oversee
issues such as education, industry, commerce, transportation, food supplies
and social welfare, as well as to deal with the continuing war. This was not
only because of the lack of a clear programme for implementing all of these
policies, but also because, as the Commissariat’s President, Evgeni
Gegechkori, later stated, this government was “weak and inefficient,”
largely because it had to rely on the respective National Councils and could
not implement its decrees on its own (Kazemzadeh 2009 [1951], 54–58). In
the meantime, the need to make peace with the Ottomans at the Brest-
Litovsk peace negotiations then taking place between Soviet Russia and the
Central Powers (Germany, Austro-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire), as
well as the urgent necessity for a strong regional government to maintain
order and implement reforms prompted the Regional Centre of the Soviets
to establish the Seim on 23 February 1918, with the Georgian Social
Democrat Nikolai Chkheidze as its chairman (Hovannisian 1967, 125;
Dokumenty 1919, 28).
Indeed, in Western scholarship the very few discussions of the TDFR are
brief and tend to underscore its uniqueness. The British historian Stephen F.
Jones, for instance, in his comprehensive study of the rise of the Georgian
Social Democratic Party in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, views the
TDFR as “the first and last attempt at an independent Transcaucasian
union” (2005, 279). The British expert Thomas de Waal, in his panoramic
survey of the modern histories and cultures of the Caucasus region,
mentions the TDFR as “the only instance in history of a shared state for an
entire South Caucasus” (2010, 62). The American historian Michael
Reynolds, in his account on the last battles between the Ottoman and
Russian armies in the Caucasus, devotes a section to the causes of the
emergence of the TDFR, in which he echoes Zhordania’s sentiment that it
was only the Ottoman military threat that “forced [the peoples of the
TDFR] to be free” (2009, 166). The more detailed and extensive
discussions of the TDFR, found in the very few books about Transcaucasia,
such as Firuz Kazemzadeh’s Struggle for Transcaucasia, 1917-1921 (2009
[1951]), Werner Zürrer’s Kaukasien 1918-1921. Der Kampf der
Großmächte um die Landbrücke zwischen Schwarzem und Kaspichen Meer
(1978), Luigi de Matteo’s L’Italia e la Transcaucasia, 1919-1921: Alla
Ricerca di Materie Prime e Novi Mercati nella Crisi Postbellica (1990), and
Kaya çaglayan’s British Policy Towards Transcaucasia 1917-1921 (2010),
touch upon TDFR only in passing.
 In these accounts the details of the TDFR are “buried” in larger
narratives about the historical and geopolitical situations in “the region of
the Caucasus” between 1917 and 1921, while the sequence of historical
events – the onset of the “Caucasus Campaign” between tsarist and
Ottoman armies in the First World War; the Bolshevik October
revolution/coup of 1917; the establishment of the Transcaucasian
Commissariat, the Seim and the TDFR, and then the latter’s collapse;
Georgia’s, Armenia’s and Azerbaijan’s declarations of independence from
Russia in May 1918; and these states’ subsequent conquest by the Soviet
Red Army in 1920–21 – are familiar to most readers of this region’s history.
In this light, Kazemzadeh’s Struggle for Transcaucasia offers a glimpse at
the causes of the TDFR’s collapse, highlighting the lack of unity among the
republics and their inability to collectively defend their territory from the
Ottoman Army (2009 [1951], 120). Zürrer’s Kaukasien 1918-1921, on the
other hand, does not offer much about the TDFR, aside from focusing on
how the Great Powers shaped “the future of the strategically important
Transcaucasia” (Gaworek 1979, 1141). The perspectives of Matteo’s
L’Italia e la Transcaucasia, 1919-1921 and çaglayan’s British Policy
Towards Transcaucasia 1917-1921 (2010) are similar to those of Zürrer,
with particular emphasis on Italian and British intentions and ambitions and
assessing their impact in the context of these four tumultuous years.
Meanwhile, the Russian historian Vadim Mukhanov views the TDFR as “a
transitional bridge from the imperial past to an independent present”, one
fated for dissolution because of the contradictory views as to the future of
the region on the part of its constituent nationalities (2017, 72). The lack of
systematic analysis of the TDFR seems to have resulted from these
historians’ desire to tell larger stories about the region and their view of the
TDFR as an afterthought, and an “unsuccessful bid for a post-imperial
region” (Brisku 2013, 42)
There is also a marked absence of a full account of why the TDFR
emerged, of who wanted it and who did not, in the three respective national
historiographies. In these historical narratives, the TDFR appears either as
an insignificant moment or, at best, as a springboard to the establishment of
the three independent republics (Mkhoyan 2017, 911). Quite tellingly, while
numerous activities were organized during May 2018 in each of the region’s
contemporary states (Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan), and other
countries, to mark the centenary of these republics’ first declarations of
independence, no such event – expect for the International Conference in
Prague on which this special issue is based – was held to mark the
centenary of the TDFR. In this light, in some of the recent entries in the
historical literature by Azerbaijani authors on Azerbaijani political history
published by Western academic presses, the TDFR is either not mentioned
or the main events – which clearly took place during the time of the
Transcaucasian Seim and the TDFR – are narrated only as a part of the
Azerbaijani nation-state building process. For instance, Suha Bolukbashi in
his Azerbaijan: A Political History (2011) – a survey of country’s modern
political development – when referring to the period surrounding the TDFR
writes only that “the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution enabled Azerbaijan to
have independence from May 28, 1918 to the Bolshevik invasion in April
27, 1920” (2011, 7). Jamil Hasanli’s account of the First Azerbaijani
Republic’s foreign policy, particularly when narrating the sequence of
events between the “national awakening” of the late-nineteenth century and
“the Azerbaijani Republic, which appeared on the stage of world history in
1918” (2011, 2), offers little on the TDFR. Instead of treating the two key
events related to the existence of the Transcaucasian Seim and the TDFR,
the Trabzon (March–April 1918) and Batum(i)3 (May 1918) peace
conferences with the Ottoman Empire, as attempts to achieve a lasting
peace with the Ottomans and in so doing to forge a common Transcaucasian
foreign policy, the author narrates them as “Azerbaijan’s first diplomatic
steps towards independence” (2011, 30).
In the accounts of modern political history in Armenian historiography,
references to the TDFR vary between detailed descriptions of the events
and dilemmas surrounding “Transcaucasia” – as provided by the prominent
American-Armenian historian Richard G. Hovannisian in his book Armenia
on the Road to Independence, 1918 (1967, 106–215) – and other
contributions that discuss it as “something in passing” (see Mikayel
Zolyan’s article in this issue). Georgian historical scholarship, too, mentions
the TDFR briefly, either as an unsustainable project of regional political
unity that collapsed under external pressures and internal disunity
(Vachnadze and Guruli 2000, 107–108), or as a prelude to Georgian
political actors envisaging themselves as independent of Russia, indeed “as
a first instance among Georgian parties to have established a democratic
republic, independent of Bolshevik Russia” (Nodia and Scholtbach 2006,
92).
 This special issue therefore addresses such shortcomings by offering a
systematic and multi-perspectival account of the making and breaking of
the TDFR through reconstructing some of the main perspectives of the
TDFR’s constitutive nationalities, of the Great Powers involved prior to,
during, or after its existence, and crucially of the other regional de facto
states/entities that sought to cooperate with and perhaps even join the
TDFR. It also draws on new archival research conducted in Berlin, Grozny,
Istanbul, London, Paris and Tbilisi. In addition to addressing the central
questions of this special issue, these perspectives also tackle a series of
questions about the geopolitical, military, historical and ideological contexts
in the region; about the volatile circumstances in which each of the political
entities found themselves and the political vocabulary articulated by the
actors of the time; about how the concept of federalism/federation emerged
and how it competed with concepts such as nationality, nationalism and the
nation-state; about what actually happened in the Caucasus between the
Bolshevik revolution/coup and the declarations of independence of Georgia,
Armenia and Azerbaijan, and how these events affected the positions of the
actors; about the reasons behind the TDFR’s collapse, and what became of
its legacy in the succeeding years; and, crucially, about how the TDFR was
perceived, defended or dismissed by the main political actors of its three
constituent nationalities, the Great Powers, and the regional entities
surrounding or interacting with it.
To begin with, Mikayel Zolyan argues in his article that from the
Armenian perspective the TDFR was seen as a traumatic experience for the
Armenian political parties and people in general, because it was understood
as the outcome of military threats coming from the Ottomans, and because
it was an experience that highlighted the complicated relations that the
Armenians had with the other main nationalities in the region. Nonetheless,
Zolyan asserts that while these political parties – first and foremost the
Dashnaks – were opposed to the independence of the TDFR, once it came
to pass they were equally reluctant to move towards an independent
Armenian nation-state. Similarly, Georges Mamoulia, reconstructing the
Azerbaijani perspective on the TDFR in the larger context of the period,
argues that while Azerbaijani political forces were not initially as
enthusiastic as their Georgian counterparts about the independence of the
federation, they became more so with its declaration. They sought to
preserve it, Mamoulia argues, because Transcaucasian integration was in
their economic interest and it was in their political interest to cooperate,
especially with Georgians, and not to find themselves subordinated to the
Ottomans. Ottoman objectives vis-à-vis the TDFR in particular changed the
calculus of the Azerbaijani parties about alignment with the Ottomans, and
hence about maintaining sovereignty over the city of Baku and the Baku
governorate.
Adrian Brisku’s article on the Georgian perspective towards the TDFR
underscores the immense conceptual and political clout that the main
political groupings, particularly the Social Democrats, had prior to and
following the establishment of the federative structures and their direct role
in both the TDFR’s declaration of independence and its subsequent
dissolution. As the TDFR came into being, as was the case with the
Azerbaijanis and the Armenians, the Georgians were reluctant to then
dissolve it. Rather, they sought to ensure that it succeeded in progressing
from the status of a de facto state to that of an internationally recognized
one. In his speech on the occasion of the declaration of Georgia’s
independence, Zhordania saw the breaking up of the TDFR as “tragic”, and
contemplated its “resurrection” several times during the existence of
Georgia’s First Republic in 1918–1921.
Aside from these divergent and convergent positions among the three
constitutive nationalities of the TDFR, the Great Powers fighting on both
sides in the First World War, the Central Powers and the Allies, had their
own perspectives. Both sides were keen to pursue their war goals in the
Caucasus. In some cases, these ambitions coincided with the conception of
an independent TDFR and of federation in general as a framework for the
region in the period following their victory in the war. With this in mind,
Stefano Taglia’s article on the perspective of the Ottoman Empire, which
was a key player in the Caucasus among the Central Powers, argues that
Ottoman support for an independent TDFR was based on purely pragmatic
and expedient considerations, despite the fact that, based on their internal
debates about imperial political reform, the Ottoman leadership did not
consider a federal framework for a multi-religious and multi-ethnic state to
be feasible. Rather, they supported the independence of the TDFR because
they considered it to be an asset – “a minor partner to be pushed around” –
that could serve as a buffer zone between their dominions and Russia, free
of the potential presence of Russian or British military forces. Supporting
such a federation would be less expensive than occupying the region, while
at the same time it would allow them to exert influence.
Regarding the Imperial German perspective, Lasha Bakradze in his
contribution shows that given the alliance between Germany and the
Ottoman Empire, the former had delegated the responsibility for the war
effort in the Caucasus to the latter, and hence had paid little direct attention
to the region. At the same time, Germany began supporting national groups,
often among émigrés in Germany, such as the Committee of Georgia’s
Independence, which did not consider a structure such as the TDFR to be
viable. This had the implication for the TDFR that while Germany agreed
(albeit unsuccessfully) to mediate a peace deal between the Ottoman
Empire and the TDFR, it was the German backing – coordinated through
that Committee – for Georgian independence that led directly to the
dissolution of the TDFR. Nonetheless, Bakradze concludes, Germany
considered that through using independent Georgia as an anchor, a
“Caucasian bloc” could be established under German patronage.
Beka Kobakhidze in his contribution argues that following Russia’s
withdrawal from the war, the Allied Powers (Great Britain, the USA,
France and Italy) remained distant observers of the military and political
developments in the Caucasus in general and of the TDFR in particular. Yet
as they became more involved, the British in particular saw advantages in
the abilities demonstrated by Transcaucasian political elites in uniting the
TDFR politically. Then following the end of the First World War, not only
Great Britain but also the US and Italy began to conceive of the region as a
“Caucasian package”, with the British in particular advising the local
political leaders of the independent republics of Georgia, Armenia and
Azerbaijan to create once again a federation or a confederation. Meanwhile,
as Timothy Blauvelt argues in his contribution, the Bolsheviks, one of the
most important emerging geopolitical players in Transcaucasia, but who
were politically weak in the region due to the Russian Civil War and the
weakness of the indigenous proletarian movement, sought to undermine the
TDFR. The Bolsheviks considered themselves to be the rightful heirs to
Transcaucasia, and they viewed the TDFR as a separatist enterprise.
Focusing on the political thought and deeds of Vladimir I. Lenin’s
Commissar Extraordinary for the Caucasus, the Bolshevik theorist Stepan
Shaumyan, and his ultimate failure to provide a Soviet alternative to the
TDFR and the nationalist paradigm in the region, Blauvelt suggests that
Shaumyan’s failures along with the TDFR experience, served as lessons for
the Bolsheviks, and influenced how they conceived of and implemented
their later nationality policy in the region.
In addition to its internal challenges and interactions with the Great
Powers, the TDFR also dealt with other regional entities whom its leaders
considered important to win over to its side. Blauvelt and Stanislav Tumis
with their article on Ukrainian perspectives, offer a comparative account of
the similar events between taking place in the Transcaucasian and
Ukrainian theatres of war underscoring at the same time their similar
dilemmas in dealing with the Germans and Bolsheviks as well as the close
interactions between the independent Ukrainian governments and the
Transcaucasian Seim and TDFR. Insightfully also they point out that while
there were such interactions (military support) the leaders of the Ukrainian
Central Council recognized the vulnerability of the TDFR, and became
increasingly indifferent towards it. This was not the case, however, for the
main representatives of the Union of the Allied Mountaineers (UAM) of the
Northern Caucasus, according to Sarah Slye in her article. Underscoring
that the UAM warmed up to the Transcaucasian Seim only in the early
spring of 1918, Slye demonstrates that they soon came to believe in the
viability of the independent TDFR. So much so, in fact, that they declared
their own independence in preparation for joining the TDFR. Thus, for the
UAM, the TDFR was not an ephemeral state structure, but rather one in the
making.
This special issue unpacks all of these perspectives in succinct detail in
the pages below. In addition to the emphasis in existing literature on the
uniqueness and contingent nature of the TDFR, what the accounts here
essentially reveal, however, is that all of the sides/parties/powers (the local
actors and the Great Powers) for their own reasons and motivations, and at
various times, wanted the TDFR and/or its federative and confederative
framework because a larger and politically unified region was seen as more
viable (geo)politically, developmentally and ideologically than its
constituent parts. Yet while the appeal of the TDFR at the beginning of the
twentieth century emerged in the context of the geopolitical earthquake that
was the First World War and the ensuing Bolshevik revolution/coup and the
impact that these had on the larger region of the Caucasus, as well as in the
context of the vibrant and contested contemporary political vocabulary of
nationalism, liberalism, socialism, nation-state and supra-national
state/empire, its valence for the fractured Caucasus at the onset of the
twenty-first century remains to be seen.

Notes
1. These terms are used interchangeably in the articles in this special issue to refer to the
region that currently corresponds with the states of Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia; the
latter three are also referred to more commonly in the post-Soviet period as the South
Caucasus.
2. This conference could not have taken place without the generous financial support of the
Institute of International Studies (Q18 Program) at Charles University, and that of a good
friend, David Bouck, and his company, The Charnwood Company s.r.o.
3. In most of the articles in this special edition, the name of this town will be used with the
Georgian appellation, Batumi, except for the article on the Ottoman perspective, in which it
is referred to in the Ottoman (and also pre-revolutionary Russian) version as Batum.

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID
Adrian Brisku http://orcid.org/0000-0002-5691-1220
Timothy K. Blauvelt http://orcid.org/0000-0003-3023-1195

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Between empire and independence:
Armenia and the Transcaucasian
Democratic Federative Republic
Mikayel Zolyan

ABSTRACT
The period of the short-lived Transcaucasian Democratic Federative Republic
(TDFR) or Transcaucasian Federation was from the Armenian perspective a
traumatic one, defined by the military threat coming from the Ottomans and by the
complicated relations with the other major ethnic groups of the region. The
Armenian political elite and “common Armenians” were caught off-guard by the
Russian revolution. The Turkish advance of the Caucasus Front was seen by
Armenian political forces as an existential threat, yet this assessment was not
necessarily shared by counterparts in the Transcaucasian Federation, especially the
Muslim (Azerbaijani) political forces, leading to bitter divisions within the
emerging Transcaucasian institutions. These two factors determined the Armenian
perspective on the Transcaucasian Federation. The Armenian political entities
(first and foremost the Dashnaktsutyun) were opposed to the creation of the
Transcaucasian Federation, as they saw its emergence as the result of Ottoman
pressure. Yet they were equally reluctant when it came to the transition from the
Transcaucasian Federation to independent nation-states. This attitude was
reflected in the fact that the Armenian National Council lagged behind its
Georgian and Azerbaijani counterparts when it declared itself to be the central
body of power in the Armenian-inhabited lands.

Introduction: the forgotten federation

It is common for national historiographies to construct narratives in which
the focal point is the creation of the nation-state, usually presented as the
“achievement”, or more often as the “restoration”, of independence. In
Armenian historical narratives the creation of the independent Armenian
nation-state is treated as an outcome of a centuries-long struggle for
independence. Obviously, the short-lived First Republic of Armenia of
1918–1920 has a special place in the narrative of national history of
Armenia, promoted through school textbooks, government rhetoric, state
rituals, and holidays, and it is also commonly featured in the media (for a
discussion of twentieth century Armenian history narratives and the place
of the First Republic in them see Suny 1993, 119–133; Libaridian 1999,
149–161; Panossian 2006, 242–262; Libaridian 2007, 13–50). Meanwhile,
the short-lived Transcaucasian Democratic Federative Republic (TDFR)
receives much less attention, if any, within this narrative. Most history
textbooks mention it only in passing, and when the Transcaucasian
Republic does enter the narrative, it is perceived as a mere passing stage
through which the Armenians had to pass in order to realize their “age-old
dream” of independent statehood (on Armenian history textbooks, see
Zolyan and Zakaryan 2008).
In fact, the creation of the independent Republic of Armenia in May
1918 was not so much the result of a concerted effort for a “struggle for
national liberation”, as it was the outcome of the complicated geopolitical
setting. Moreover, neither the Armenian population at large nor the
Armenian political elites were actively campaigning for independence, and
they were arguably ill-prepared for independence when it came about. Prior
to the First World War, the national project among the political and
intellectual elite focussed on the so-called “Western [or Turkish] Armenia”,
the Armenian-inhabited regions within the Ottoman Empire. “Eastern [or
Russian] Armenia” was considered to be better off within the Russian
Empire, and even the most radical nationalist demands (e.g. those of the
Dashnaktsutyun Party) went no further than seeking a certain level of
autonomy. Similarly, the idea of an independent Transcaucasia had little
appeal for the Armenian political class (on the Armenian political project
prior to the years of independence, see Panossian 2006, 200–214).
Hence, as this article will argue, even the Armenian political elite, not to
mention “common Armenians,” was little prepared for the demise of
Russian imperial power that began with the October 1917 events. The
Turkish advance in the Caucasus Front was seen by the Armenians as an
existential threat, yet this assessment was not shared by the Georgians and
the Muslims (Azerbaijanis), leading to bitter divisions within the emerging
Transcaucasian power institutions. These two factors determined the
Armenian perspective on the Transcaucasian Federation. The Armenian
political leaders (first and foremost the Dashnaktsutyun) were opposed to
creating a Transcaucasian federation, as they saw its emergence as the result
of Turkish pressure (i.e. that Turkey was interested in separating the
Transcaucasus from Russia in order to advance its own expansionist
agenda). Hence, the resistance of the Armenian political leaders to the
proclamation of the TDFR as an independent entity.
Yet it is particularly interesting to observe that the Armenian political
leaders were equally reluctant when it came to the transition from the
TDFR to becoming independent nation-states. This is partly related to the
idea that the TDFR would be capable of resisting the Ottoman Empire more
effectively, even though in fact, as reality showed, the Armenian forces
were able to mount a more or less successful resistance to Turkish forces
only when the TDFR had virtually collapsed. There were also fears that the
ethno-demographic situation in Transcaucasia at the time would make
Armenians the biggest losers from separation. There were potential
territorial disputes on the borders of the future Armenia, Georgia and
Azerbaijan, and also the most numerous and wealthy Armenian
communities were centred in the cities of Tiflis and Baku, the future capital
cities of Georgia and Azerbaijan. It was a reflection of this attitude that not
only did the Armenian National Council lag behind its Georgian and
Azerbaijani counterparts, but even when it finally declared itself the to be
locus of power in the Armenian inhabited lands, it used ambiguous
language that fell short of an actual declaration of independence.

Reluctant participation: the Armenian political

leaders and their positions vis-a-vis the
Transcaucasian Federation
The Russian Revolution took Armenian society, and particularly the
Armenian political class, by surprise, and to a large extent they were
unprepared to deal with its consequences. The generally chaotic situation
which engulfed the entire region in the wake of the Russian Revolution was
also reflected in the political structures that sought to reflect the voice of the
Armenian population of the region. The body that claimed to represent
Armenians politically was the Armenian National Council, which was
based in Tiflis. It was established on the basis of the Congress of “Russian
Armenians,” convened in October 1917, and consisted of about 200
deputies from various regions with Armenian populations (Hovannisian
1967, 86–90; Hovannisian 2005, 17) The Congress formed the executive
body, the Armenian National Council, where places were assigned
according to party membership. It consisted of 15 members, and it acted as
a quasi-government of Armenia, or rather of the Armenians, in various parts
of Transcaucasia, until the Republic of Armenia was formed (Hovannisian
2005, 19). The degree of its actual influence on the prevailing state of
affairs, however, and the readiness of Armenians around the region to
follow the orders of the National Council remained under question.
There were several influential Armenian parties, though the Armenian
Revolutionary Federation, or as it is known in Armenian the
“Dashnaktsutyun”, or the “Dashnaks”, was particularly influential
compared to all of the others. By 1918 the Dashnaktsutyun had come to be
seen as the symbol of armed resistance and the fight for the national cause,
which contributed to its popularity among Armenians. This, coupled with
its well-organized structure and experience of armed struggle, made the
Dashnaktsutyun the obvious leader among the Armenian parties (for more
on Dashnaktsutyun see Donabedian 1981; Panossian 2006, 205–210). In the
Constituent Assembly elections in November 1917 the Dashnaktsutyun
received 558,440 votes, third only to the mostly Georgian-dominated
Social-Democrat (Menshevik) party and the Azerbaijani Musavat party.
Together these three parties received about 75% of all of the votes in
Transcaucasia (Vratsyan 1958, 30).
Yet it would be wrong to ignore other political forces that existed among
the Armenians at the time. While Dashnaktsutyun was indeed the largest
and best organized political organization, there were others as well, and at
certain times Dashnaktsutyun was willing to share the spotlight with them.
Thus, when the Armenian National Council was formed, Dashnaktsutyun
agreed that several parties should be represented in it: out of 15 places
Dashnaktsutyun took only six, while three other parties, the Popular Party,
the Socialist Revolutionaries and the Social Democrats, received three
places each, and three further places went to people without party affiliation
(Hovannisian 2005, 19). The only party that was not represented in the
National Council, as well as in the Congress that had elected it, was the
Bolsheviks. Historians disagree as to whether the Bolsheviks refused to take
part from the beginning, claiming that the Congress was a “bourgeois-
clerical gathering”, or if they had been present at the first session and then
decided to boycott the congress after the presentation of their programme
ended in a scandal (Hovannisian 2005, 17).
Of these parties the Socialist Revolutionaries and Social Democrats were
offshoots of larger Russian parties, and they criticized the Dashnaktsutyun
for its focus on Armenian nationalism. The Popular Party was more
focussed on Armenian issues, even though it was close in its ideology and
class base to the Russian liberal parties, and was formed by the Armenian
members of the Constitutional Democrat party. In 1918 and subsequent
years, the Popular Party was the second largest Armenian party, with a base
among the urban intelligentsia and bourgeoisie of Tbilisi and Baku
(Hovannisian 2005, 17–18). Of all these parties it was the Dashnaktsutyun
that would have become the obvious flag-bearer of the Armenian national
independence. But Dashnaktsutyun was far from being an advocate of an
independent Armenian statehood: it had earlier proclaimed the demand for
autonomy rather than full independence for Eastern Armenia, and even for
Western Armenia (Panossian 2006, 207–208).
Ultimately, due to the divisions between the Armenians and the
Muslims, it fell to the Georgians to decide whether Transcaucasia would
formally remain a part of Russia or would declare independence. This is
how Alexander Khatissian (Khatisov), one of the prominent leaders of the
Dashnaktsutyun and former Tbilisi mayor, described the situation:
As we said, there were two streams among the Georgians. One, led by Zhordania and
Gegechkori, wanted to continue the war and opposed the isolation of the Transcaucasus from
Russia. The second, under the leadership of Chkhenkeli and Ramishvili, was for independence
and concluding peace [with Turkey]. The struggle for these two currents was fierce, and the
voices were divided almost equally. After a couple of days of heated dispute, the Central
Committee of the Georgian ruling party finally made a decision, by a vote of nine against
seven, to declare Transcaucasia an independent republic, to appoint Chkhenkeli as head of
government, and to resume reconciliation talks with the Turks. (Khatissian 1968, 54)

As Khatissian explained, the Dashnaktsutyun had little choice but to accept

the Georgians’ decision and support the independence of the Transcaucasia.
There was no such fierce debate in the Dashnaktsutyuns. Everyone’s wish was to maintain
solidarity with the South Caucasian neighbors and, in particular, the Georgians, in order not to
find ourselves left alone to face the Turks. The Dashnaktsutyuns could not take on the sole
 responsibility for the war with the Turks, and that would have been the outcome if [we had
voted] against the Georgians. The mood of the Dashnaktsutyun leadership was then well
expressed by the Seim member Hovhannes Kajaznouni, who made the following declaration in
the Seim: ‘Citizens, members of the Seim. The Dashnaktsutyun Party faction, fully aware of
the great responsibility that it takes on this historic moment, joins in declaring Transcaucasia as
independent republic’. Karjikyan expressed these sentiments among the Dashnaktsutyun in a
lengthy and eloquent speech in the Seim a few days later. (Khatissian 1968, 55–56)

Military defeat: the trauma of spring 1918

The experience of the TDFR was a largely traumatic one for Armenia,
combining military defeat and a refugee crisis with political chaos and the
inability of the Armenian elite of the time to take control of the matter.
Some episodes of the history of these two months are particularly traumatic,
as they involve not just the military defeat and the suffering of the local
population, but they are generally seen as “shameful” within the Armenian
historical narrative. Initially, it seemed that the February revolution would
not spell trouble for the Armenians, as the Russian Provisional Government
declared that it would continue the war “to a victorious end”. Interestingly,
the position of the Bolsheviks was quite acceptable for the Armenians, in
theory even more so than that of the tsarist regime or the Provisional
Government. The Bolshevik decree on Turkish Armenia, signed on 29
December 1917, spelled out a demand of independence for “Turkish
Armenia” in accordance with the principle of “self-determination” that the
Bolsheviks championed (Hovannisian 2005, 21). Yet what really mattered
for Armenians was the Bolshevik “Decree on Peace”, which effectively
meant the collapse of the Russian armed forces on all fronts. Obviously, the
remote Caucasus Front was one of the first to feel the effects of this mass
desertion. By the winter of 1917, the majority of the Russian soldiers had
gone. Against this backdrop the Bolsheviks’ decree “On Turkish Armenia”
was more of a propaganda effort that aimed to show a progressive approach
to foreign policy, and that they were rejecting the imperialist policies of the
tsar (Boryan 1928-1929, 262).
The events of spring 1918 have become one of the most traumatic
episodes in Armenian collective memory, and the most disturbing of these
events coincided with the period when Armenia was part of the short-lived
TDFR. The trauma of this period was not only due to the military defeats,
the loss of civilian lives and the mass flight of the population from the
territories occupied by Turkish forces, but it was also the result of the
inability of Armenian forces to mount effective resistance to the Ottoman
armies, and in certain cases they were forced to surrender important
positions. The Brest-Litovsk Treaty, signed on 3 March 1918, provided the
diplomatic pretext for the Ottoman offensive, even though, as became
obvious later, the aims of the Ottoman command went far beyond
establishing control over the territories awarded to the Ottoman Empire by
the Treaty (Hovannisian 1967).
The Ottoman offensive that began in early 1918 led to a series of
military defeats of the Armenian and Georgian forces. Of these, the fall of
Kars occupies an especially traumatic place in the Armenian collective
memory, and it is often considered one of the most shameful moments in
Armenian history. The trauma of Kars was intensified because the scenario
of the shameful capitulation of the city in 1918 repeated itself in an almost
identical form two years later in 1920 during the Armenian-Turkish war of
1920 (on these events see Sasouni 1969; Zohrabyan 1979, 1997;
Hovannisian 1996).
The causes for the loss of Kars in 1918 became a matter of a heated
debate even at the time, and the arguments continue to this day. The
arguments surrounding the defeat are part of a larger debate about why the
Ottoman forces advancing on Transcaucasia in the spring of 1918 were met
with little effective resistance. Part of this was the inability of the TDFR to
form an efficient state structure that might have been able to organize a
coordinated military effort, both on the frontline and on the home front.
This is how the situation was described by Gevorg Melik-Gharagyozyan
(Georgi Melik-Karakozov), a prominent member of the Popular party, and a
future minister in one of Armenia’s governments:
Frankly, the Transcaucasian Seim … and the national councils presented a miserable picture.
Confused and stumbling at every turn, trembling before the approaching danger and fearing the
vengeance of the “Northern Colossus” [i.e. Russia], the Transcaucasian government failed to
organize the defense of the region, despite the considerable military supplies left behind by the
Russian Army and, as it turned out, the inadequacies of the Turkish military forces. But while
the latter were organized, united and guided by a single will … the Transcaucasian
“democracy” personified by the Seim, the government, the national councils and the parties,
was busy with endless talk, mutual reproaches, persuading each other and issuing ineffectual
appeals. (Melik-Gharagyozyan 2018, 8)

The most important cause of the defeat was the irreconcilable differences in
the interests and strategies of the three main ethnic groups, as they were
articulated by the institutions that claimed to represent them. The Ottoman
threat was perceived as an existential danger by the Armenians, who feared
a repetition of the genocide that had taken place in Ottoman Armenia on the
territory of Russian Armenia. At the same time, they had the feeling that the
backing of Georgians in the fight against the Turks could not be counted
upon, since Georgia was not threatened to the same extent as Armenia.
Obviously, Georgia stood to lose Batumi, which had been promised to
Germany under the Brest-Litovsk Treaty, and Georgians feared Ottoman
advance to Western Georgia and possibly even Tbilisi, but the Armenian
fears were exacerbated by the experience of mass extermination in Ottoman
Empire, while there had been no history of ethnic violence between the
Turks and the Georgians on a comparable scale. The Armenian leadership
suspected the Georgian politicians of desiring to cut a backroom deal with
the Ottomans at the Armenians’ expense. As for the Muslim population of
Transcaucasia and the Musavat Party that sought to represent them in the
Seim, the Armenians viewed them as natural allies of the Ottomans and
feared that they might instead give assistance of the advancing Ottoman
armies (Suny 1993, 124–125).
This is how Melik-Gharagyozyan describes the sense of crisis that
engulfed the Armenian population of Transcaucasia and its leaders:
The more successfully the events on the Caucasian Front developed for the Turks … and the
more obvious the nominal nature of the power of the Transcaucasian Seim and the government
became, the more the heterogeneity and even sharp contradictions of the national-political
orientation of the main Transcaucasian nationalities was revealed. The Transcaucasian Tatars
[i.e. Azerbaijanis] unequivocally longed for the arrival of the Turks. The Georgians hesitated,
choosing between diplomacy and war. The Armenians, knowing that there could be no
reconciliation and peace between themselves and the Turks, were in a state of a feverish
agitation as they realized they were completely alone in the face of mortal danger … . (Melik-
Gharagyozyan 2018, 9)

One of the reasons that the front collapsed with such ease was that the
Ottoman Army was not facing a well-organized military force. The
Armenian detachments, united in the so-called “Armenian Corps”, were
inferior to Ottoman troops in many respects. The Ottoman Army was not
the most efficient military force among the countries participating in the
First World War, but nevertheless it was a regular army, which had gone
through years of fighting against the Entente forces. The Armenian Corps
were hastily assembled out of Armenians serving in the Russian Army, as
well as members of volunteer detachments from Turkish Armenia. The
mood in the Armenian Corps, and the relationship between the military
personnel who had previously served in the Russian Army and the
volunteer detachments, was complex, as described by Melik-Gharagyozyan:
After four years of world war, the Armenian soldiers of the all-Russian Army, as well as the
members of the volunteer detachments, were naturally in state of fatigue. The withdrawal of
the Russian army from the front in the wake of revolution and the decay of the fighting spirit
could not but affect them as well. The destruction of the entire Armenian population in Turkey,
which had already become an indisputable and well-known fact, completely undermined the
whole moral sense of the old volunteer detachments. In addition to this sense of
purposelessness and loneliness, there was a recognition, shared by the entire Armenian
population, that the approaching Turkish troops would launch a merciless, life and death
struggle, as the previous clashes with them on the front lines had already shown. The Turks
had executed all of the Armenians who had been taken captive, while sparing the lives of the
non-Armenian prisoners of war. Such a psychology could not but affect the mobilization of the
Armenian army. (Melik-Gharagyozyan 2018, 10–11)

One of the advantages of the Armenian Corps was the presence of a highly
qualified officer staff, comprised of Armenian officers who had served in
the Russian Army. Back in 1917 the Armenian political parties, in
agreement with the Russian Provisional government, had organized the
transfer of ethnic Armenians officers and soldiers from the Russian Army to
the Caucasus Front, but this process was cut short due to the October
Revolution (Hovannisian 2005, 23). This circumstance facilitated the
organization of the Armenian Corps, but the former Russian Army officers
were not always well-qualified for the particularities of locally existing
conditions in the Caucasus.
This duality applied also to the commander of the Armenian Corps,
Tovmas Nazarbekyan (Foma Nazarbekov), a former General in the Russian
army. Melik-Gharagyozyan, while praising Nazarbekyan as a military
officer, nevertheless lamented his lack of the qualities required for the
moment at hand:
For that turbulent and fatal period, a military commander of a different caliber, temperament,
character and even perhaps age, was required. Nazarbekov was an experienced general of the
regular and already well-organized old Russian Army. But in order to hastily organize a new
national army on the ruins of a lost world war and to lead it against the battle-tried and tested
Turkish forces that were terrifying the Armenian population … there should have been a leader
who would have been more expansive and resourceful and with tremendous energy,
determined to follow solely the dictates of his sound instinct, even if this had meant going
contrary to the top Transcaucasian leadership. One might ask from where such a person might
be found, was there a person more suitable than Nazarbekov among the leading Armenian
officers? I do not know. Perhaps there was not … . (Melik-Gharagyozyan 2018, 13)
All these factors were among those that led to the fall of Kars. This tragedy
was made even more acute because of the fact that Kars was considered to
be an impenetrable fortress, and because at the time the fortress had huge
reserves of arms and ammunition left behind by the Russian Army (11,000
rifles, 2 million bullets, 67 artillery pieces and 19 machine guns). From a
military perspective, the fortress should have been able to hold out for at
least two months (Hovannisian 1967, 162–166). However, the combination
of the Ottoman military and diplomatic pressure, together with the
disagreements among the factions in the TDFR, resulted in the fortress
capitulating without firing a shot.
As the Ottoman troops occupied Batumi they offered a ceasefire, on the
condition that Kars be surrendered. The head of the government of the
TDFR, Alexander Chkhenkeli, agreed to this demand and telegraphed an
order to the commander of the Armenian corps, Nazarbekyan, to surrender
the fortress. Nazarbekyan was reluctant to obey, this demand for
capitulation from the government undermined his soldiers’ will to fight.
According to Khatissian, Nazarbekyan gave the order to surrender the
fortress, and Armenian forces and population withdrew in the direction of
Alexandropol (modern Gyumri). Khatissian described the withdrawal from
Kars:
There was a heartbreaking announcement that Kars would be evacuated. On April 14, Kars
Province Commissar Dzamoyan officially reported the following: “As the result of the
surprising and unplanned capitulation [of the city] issued by Tiflis, the population, which had
been ready to defend this greatest fortress of Transcaucasia, was forced to abandon everything
and leave Kars on April 12 by 5 pm, setting everything in the city on fire. The best buildings
were burning. The image of the population’s retreat is indescribable.” (Khatissian 1968, 58)

The fall of Kars led to a political crisis in the TDFR. According to

Khatissian, Chkhenkeli had no right to give the order to surrender Kars,
since Chkhenkeli, in his view, had at the time not yet been confirmed as the
leader of the Transcaucasian government by the Seim. In protest at
Chkhenkeli’s decision, the Armenians whom Chkhenkeli had invited to
become ministers in his government turned down his offer (Khatissian
1968, 56–57). The Armenian faction in the Seim demanded that Chkhenkeli
resign as the head of government. According to Khatissian, the Georgian
members of the Seim initially agreed, and suggested that the
Dashnaktsutyun member Hovhannes Kajaznouni become prime-minister.
Upon further reflection, however, the Dashnaktsutyun turned down the
offer, as an Armenian at the helm of the TDFR could have alienated the
Muslim population, which would lead, Khatissian explained, to the breakup
of the Federation as a whole. Thus, eventually, realizing that Kars was lost
and nothing could have been done to return it, the Dashnaktsutyun
reluctantly agreed to the premiership of Chkhenkeli and delegated its
members to participate in the new cabinet (Khatissian 1968, 56–57).
While the credibility of the TDFR had been fragile even before these
events, the fall of Kars dealt an irreparable blow to the image of the
Federation in the eyes of the Armenians. Many Armenians believed that the
surrender of Kars had been the result of a conscious sell-out of their
interests by the TDFR’s Georgian-dominated government. Whether the
order to surrender Kars was indeed the result of a backroom deal with the
Turks, or just an honest mistake, the outcome was disastrous not only for
the course of the war, but also for the future of the TDFR. It demonstrated
that the interests of the three main nationalities of the region, as conceived
by their political leaders, were irreconcilable. In the context of the
Armenian historical narrative, the fall of Kars, together with other
developments in spring 1918, contributed to the conditioning of the
Armenian political and intellectual elites’ scepticism towards the very idea
of a united Transcaucasia.

The “victories of May” and a reluctant

independence
While the negotiations continued in Batumi, their course showed that there
was already no longer a united Transcaucasian front, if ever had there been
one. According to Khatissian, who took part in the negotiations, the
situation was “increasingly turning into a Turkish-Armenian war”, as it was
becoming obvious that Georgia would enjoy the protection of Germany and
the Muslims were increasingly acting as Turkey’s allies. Khatissian
describes in particular the contradictions that emerged between the
Armenian and Azerbaijani delegates at the talks:
We explained that the Muslim members of the Transcaucasian Seim delegation were not
helping us, they only did us harm. They rejected our most basic requirements. Thus, for
example, when we demanded that the Turks leave the Armenian parts of Alexandropol
province, Azerbaijan’s Tatars insisted that the capital of the Republic of Armenia should be the
 village of Vagharshapat (Echmiadzin) and demanded that Yerevan be ceded to Azerbaijan.
Usubbekov and Khan Khoyski claimed that Yerevan was a Tatar city, so the Muslims would
not accept that Yerevan be yielded to the Armenians. Representatives of Gandzak [now Ganja]
and the Akhaltskha [Akhaltsikhe] Muslims, Sultanov, Rafibekov and others, who gathered
behind the Azerbaijani delegation were simply inviting the Turks to occupy the Caucasus. A
special note from the Akhaltsikhe and Akhalkalaki Turks, which had 40 signatures, was issued
to the Turks, demanding that these provinces be attached to Turkey. (Khatissian 1968, 74–75)

After the fall of Kars peace negotiations began in Batumi on 11 May.

However, the Ottomans were no longer content with the conditions of the
Brest-Litovsk Treaty, and they put forward new demands. The Ottoman
forces continued their offensive, entering Alexandropol on 15 May
(Hovannisian 2005, 30). The road to Yerevan and the Ararat valley was
open. It seemed that military defeat was imminent, and fears of new
massacres proliferated. Yet this gave new motivation to the Armenian
forces, which changed the course of the military campaign and resulted in
what in Armenian historiography are called “the victories of May”, a series
of battles in the last ten days of May in which the Ottoman forces were
halted and, in some cases, defeated.
This new-found determination to resist the advancing enemy was
reflected in the words of the Armenian Catholicos (Patriarch) Gevorg V:
The Turk, our bloodthirsty enemy, captured Alexandropol and moves towards the heart of our
country, our history, our faith, to Echmiadzin [the seat of the Catholicos]. Our commanders
offer to leave the Holy See of Echmiadzin to our enemy, to abandon our holy places, to
abandon the Armenian people and take refuge in Byurakan [a village in the mountains north-
east of Yerevan]. No, no, a thousand times no, I will not abandon the Holy See entrusted to me
by our holy ancestors. If our soldiers cannot stop the enemy’s advance themselves, if they
cannot save our holy places, then let me die right here. (Gevorg V 1918)

Melik-Gharagyozyan wrote in his memoir that “the Armenian public

organizations, in particular the Dashnaktsutyun Party, made extreme efforts
to raise the spirit of the masses, to raise recruits, to find money and
equipment, and to form proper military units” (Melik-Gharagyozyan 2018,
11).
The crucial battles took place around Sardarapat, a village in the Ararat
Valley not far from Yerevan, where at that time there was an important
railway junction. The battle began on the night of 22 May. After two days
of hard fighting, the Turkish troops abandoned Sardarapat. The Armenians
continued on the offensive, and by 27 May the Turkish forces withdrew to
Alexandropol. At the same time, fierce fighting took place in the vicinity of
the city of Karakilis (now Vanadzor). Eventually the Armenians were
forced to leave the city, but they managed to disrupt the Turkish offensive
and to relieve the Armenian forces fighting in Sardarapat. Finally, in the
Bash-Aparan area (now Aparan), the Turkish troops were stopped and were
forced to retreat (Hovannisian 2005, 35–37). For the first time since the
start of the fighting, Armenian troops not only mounted a successful
defence, but also went on the offensive and forced the enemy to flee.
While the outcome of these battles certainly gave Armenians some
breathing room, they could not alter the larger situation. The Turkish
delegation in Batumi insisted that the Transcaucasian Federation should be
dissolved and that separate peace treaties be negotiated between Turkey and
the three newly independent countries. The Armenians, who were the most
reluctant to declare the independence of the TDFR from Russia, were now
the most reluctant to accept its imminent dissolution. Khatissian describes
the feelings of the Armenian delegation faced with these demands in
Batumi, when the German General von Lossov, acting as mediator, told the
Armenian delegation that, according to his information, the TDFR was to
be dissolved so therefore he was preparing to leave. Here is how Khatissian
describes the mood of the Armenian leaders:
May 25 was a tragic day for us in Batumi. We had fallen into a desperate situation after the
failure of the German military mediation. The Tatars and the Georgians did not want to fight.
The Tatars demanded a peace treaty at any cost, and the Georgians achieved security for
themselves with German backing. We were the only ones left fighting in Sardarapat and
Gharakilisa [Karakilis]. Our paths had parted and we were absolutely incapable of finding a
common language. There was a feeling in the air that the Transcaucasian Republic would
collapse, but as people do not talk about death in the house of the deceased, so we too avoided
any mention of the destruction and dismemberment of the Transcaucasian Republic and its
amputation. (Khatissian 1968, 81)

In a meeting with the Armenian delegation on the evening of 25 May, the

future head of the Georgian government, Noe Zhordania, said, according to
Khatissian, that “We cannot drown with you … our people want to save
what they can; you also must find a way to make a deal with the Turks, you
have no other way out” (Khatissian 1968, 82).
On the next day, 26 May, the Georgian National Council declared
Georgia an independent country. On 27 May the Transcaucasian Seim
adopted a statement that declared effectively that the Federation ceased to
exist, and there were rumours that the Azerbaijani National Council was
going to declare independence on the following day (Khatissian 1968, 84).
Thus, on 28 May, on what is now considered to be the First Republic’s
independence day, the Armenian National Council gathered to decide what
was to be done in the existing situation. At 12 noon the Armenian National
Council in Tbilisi adopted a declaration of Armenia’s independence, even
though the word “independence” was not even mentioned anywhere in the
document. Here is the full text of the declaration:
With the dissolution of the political integrity of the Transcaucasia and the new situation created
by the declarations of independence of Georgia and Azerbaijan, the Armenian National
Council declares itself the supreme and sole government of the Armenian provinces. Leaving
aside the task of the formation of the Armenian National Government for the time being due to
certain weighty reasons, the National Council temporarily assumes all governmental functions
in order to perform the political and administrative leadership of the Armenian provinces.
(Khatissian 1968, 84)

After this declaration was adopted, the Armenian delegation returned to

Batumi for peace talks, thus accepting the majority of the Turkish
conditions. The ensuing Batumi Treaty, signed on 4 June, became the first
international treaty signed by Armenia. It envisaged Armenia as a small
state, consisting of the eastern half of the former Yerevan guberniya
(province or governorate), with a territory of comprising roughly 10,000
square kilometres. There were other humiliating conditions, as such
commitments to reduce the size of the army and to deport all citizens of
nations that fought against the Central Powers in the war (Hovannisian
2005, 37). Nevertheless, this was the first time for several hundred years
that an independent state called “Armenia” had emerged on the world map.

Conclusion
The commonly accepted view in Armenian historiography is that the battles
of Sardarapat, Karakilis and Bash-Aparan were instrumental in allowing
Armenia to become an independent state. Yet it seems that at the time there
was no agreement within the Ottoman leadership about how to deal with the
Armenians. According to Khatissian, who cited his own conversations with
Talaat Pasha, there were two approaches within the Turkish leadership: that
of Enver Pasha, who believed that even a small Armenian state would
present a danger to Turkey, and that of Talaat Pasha, who believed that the
existence of a small and weak Armenian republic would not only be
dangerous for Turkey, but it could also be useful. In Khatissian’s
interpretation, the Turks feared how the Armenian Question might have
been raised at future international conferences, and preferred to agree to the
creation of a small Armenian state as a concession to international public
opinion. That, according to Khatissian, would show that Turkey had helped
to solve the Armenian question. In addition, Khatissian continued, the
Turks realized that it would be difficult to exterminate the approximately
two million Armenians residing in the Caucasus, and the small Armenian
state would serve as a place for Armenian refugees from Turkey to gather
(Khatissian 1968, 88–89). Whether it was the battle of Sardarapat or the
fear of the international reaction that led the Ottomans to accept the
existence of an independent Armenia, today it is difficult to say. Most
probably it was a combination of both military and diplomatic
considerations. Turkey’s primary goal was obtaining the Baku oil, which at
the time was under the control of the Bolsheviks, who were cooperating
tactically with the city’s Armenian forces. Having to wage a battle in the
Ararat Valley would have derailed the Turkish army from its main
objective, so making peace with the Armenians made sense.
Independence for Armenia came not as a choice, but as a necessity.
Effectively, the Armenian National Council was left with no other option in
the situation when the TDFR was disintegrating, as the Russian Empire had
before it. However, the traumatic nature of the events that accompanied the
dissolution of the Federation and the contradictions and mistrust that
poisoned the relations among the political forces claiming to represent the
various nationalities left a deep mark in Armenian national historiography,
and through this, on Armenian collective memory more generally.

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

ORCHID
Mikayel Zolyan http://orcid.org/0000-0003-2890-0118
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Azerbaijan and the Transcaucasian
Democratic Federative Republic:
historical reality and possibility*
Georges Mamoulia

ABSTRACT
This article examines the origins, negotiations and considerations surrounding the
formation and then rapid dissolution of the independent Transcaucasian
Democratic Federative Republic (TDFR) in 1918 from the perspective of
Azerbaijani statesmen. Left with few alternatives in the rapidly changing
geopolitical situation to accomplish their goals and assure their interests –
primarily the economic and physical security of the Azerbaijani Muslim
population, and also the recovery of Baku from Bolshevik control – other than to
seek the backing of Ottoman Turkey, the Azerbaijani faction in the Transcaucasian
Seim nevertheless advocated for the principle of federation, stood up against
Turkish intentions regarding the status of Batumi, and did not support the
incorporation of their country into the Ottoman Empire. In order to properly
evaluate the role of the Azerbaijanis in the creation of the ephemeral TDFR, it is
essential to examine the fundamentals of the history of Transcaucasia from the
Bolshevik October coup in 1917 until the creation of the TDFR on 22 April 1918
and its dissolution into independent states on 26–28 May 1918.

Background to the creation of the TDFR

(November-December 1917)
Despite the “Declaration of the Rights of the Peoples of Russia” proclaimed
by the Bolsheviks during their first days in power, recognizing the rights of
peoples to self-determination, the political elite of the peoples of
Transcaucasia, including the Azerbaijanis, saw in the Bolsheviks most of all
a thread of widespread chaos, and for a long time they did not lose hope in
the resurrection of democracy in Russia. On 15 (28) November 1917 the
Transcaucasian Commissariat was created in Tiflis, in essence a temporary
administration of Transcaucasia that was to function until the restoration of
a legal authority in Petrograd and the convening of the Constituent
Assembly. Several Azerbaijanis held portfolios in this Commissariat
government chaired by the Georgian Social-Democrat Evgeni Gegechkori,
including F. Kh. Khoisky (the Commissar for Education), Kh. Melikaslanov
(Commissar for Trade and Industry), and Kh. Khasmamedov (Commissar
for State Inspection) (Dokumenty 1919, 7–8).
* Translated from Russian by Timothy K. Blauvelt.

Since all three of the primary nationalities of Transcaucasia were

represented in the Commissariat government, national factions were created
in parallel with the formation of the government in which all governmental
decisions were preliminarily examined before they went into force. Two
weeks after the creation of the Commissariat elections were held to the All-
Russian Constituent Assembly, as the result of which the Georgian Social-
Democrats received 11 seats, the Azerbaijani Musavatists 10, the Armenian
Dashnaktsutyun (Dashnaks) 9, the Muslim Socialist Bloc 2, and the
Bolsheviks, Social Revolutionaries (SRs) and Ittihad Party one seat each.
The course of the elections in the Turkic regions of Transcaucasia affirmed
that the majority of the population supported the idea of territorial
autonomy that the Musavat Party had stood for.

Ottoman initiatives in Transcaucasia (January–

February 1918)
The creation of the Transcaucasian Commissariat coincided with a period of
complex foreign policy challenges. As later events would demonstrate, the
leaders of the Commissariat often lacked the willpower, the experience in
state administration, and the swift decision-making skills necessary to deal
with such challenges in rapidly changing circumstances. By 5 (18)
December 1917 a temporary ceasefire was reached in Erzincan between the
Turkish command and the Russian Army, which had already started to
rapidly disintegrate as a result of Bolshevik propaganda (Dokumenty 1919,
15–16). In the text of this armistice agreement it was pointed out that it
would be binding “until the conclusion of a final peace”. It was particularly
emphasized in the document that the Turkish command was not to make use
of the ceasefire in order to relocate its forces from the Caucasus to the
Mesopotamian-Syrian front (Dokumenty 1919, 18–21). It should be noted
that the Muslim faction in the Commissariat was categorically opposed to a
continuation of the war with Turkey, with whom it was linked by shared
ethnic origins and religion. With this in mind, the Azerbaijanis stood for the
passing of a declaration affirming the absolute independence of the
government in questions of establishing relations with foreign states. The
proposal, which in the logic of things should have resulted in a declaration
of independence for the region, was not met with understanding on the part
of the Georgian and Armenian factions of the Transcaucasian government,
which continued to hold out for the restoration of democracy in Russia and
maintained a pro-Entente orientation in general (Hasanly 2011, 62).
Nevertheless, the creation on 10 (23) February 1918 of the Transcaucasian
Seim (parliament) was one more clear, though perhaps belated, step towards
independence. It is worth observing that the issue of the creation of the
Seim was decided as the result of an agreement between the Georgian and
the Azerbaijani (Muslim) factions. Seeing in this initiative a step towards
separation from Russia, the Armenians and the Russian SRs voted against
it.
Until the end of January 1918, the observable differences in foreign
policy orientation were pushed into the background by the events connected
with the demobilization of the former Russian Army, the order for which
was given on 19 December 1917. At that time a mass of demobilized
Russian soldiers threatened to drown Transcaucasia in waves of Bolshevik
anarchy, which for its part made steps towards independence impossible,
forcing the government to hold out for the moment when the flow of
soldiers from the former tsarist armies finally departed Transcaucasia.
On 1 (14) January 1918 the Ottoman command addressed the
Commissariat with the question of in what form contacts could be
established “with the independent Caucasian government” with the goal of
concluding a peace treaty (Dokumenty 1919, 24–25). As is now known,
from late 1917 the Ottoman Minister for War, Enver Pasha, appealed to the
German command with the request that Kars, Batumi, and Ardahan,
historical territories transferred from the Ottoman Empire to Russia under
the conditions of the Berlin Treaty of 1878, be handed over to
Constantinople. As materials from the German archives reveal, the Young
Turk leadership, as supporters of the creation of an independent
Transcaucasia able to serve as a buffer state between the Ottoman Empire
and Russia, nevertheless set for itself the following goals: (1) to obtain in its
favour the separation from Georgia of all of the latter’s Muslim-populated
borderlands (including those that were ethnically Georgian); (2) to restrict
the territory of Armenia to the boundaries of the Yerevan guberniya
(governorate or province); (3) in this way to maximally increase the role of
the Muslim population, under the influence of Constantinople, in any future
Transcaucasian state; and (4) in order to achieve this, the unification of the
northern Caucasus, or Ciscaucasia, and Transcaucasia. This plan, which
essentially undermined the possibility of the creation of a viable and united
Transcaucasian state, could have at least been partially neutralized, had the
Transcaucasian leaders been able to grasp the evolving situation more
clearly.
On 2 (16) January the Ottoman command proposed to the government of
Transcaucasia that they take part in the Brest-Litovsk Conference,
promising that the representatives of the Central Powers were prepared to
offer to devote “all of their efforts for the recognition of the independence
of the Transcaucasian government” (Dokumenty 1919, 52). Leaving to one
side the question of the sincerity of the Young Turks, this proposal
undoubtedly should have been accepted. By this time the territory
controlled by the Transcaucasian military units exceeded the existing 1914
Turkish-Russian border, and the fact that the representatives of all of the
Central Powers were taking part in the negotiations put the Transcaucasians
in a better position than if they had to face the Ottoman Empire one-on-one.
Although the Muslim faction decided in favour of accepting the Turkish
proposition, the Commissariat government rejected it, preferring to remain
a passive observer of the brewing events (Hasanly 2011, 75). Among the
reasons for this were the desire to maintain an orientation towards a
mythical “Russian democracy”, the promises of the Entente countries that
had begun financing the formation of Armenian and Georgian national
military units from the end of 1917, and finally a reluctance to take upon
themselves the responsibility for the declaration of independence without
sufficient guarantees from the Great Powers. The Young Turk leadership
did not hesitate to make use of the Caucasians’ refusal, having decided to
act behind their backs.
On 30 January (12 February), under the pretext of halting reprisals
against the Muslim population in the Erzincan-Erzurum regions at the
hands of the Armenian militias that had taken up positions on the front
abandoned during the collapse of the Russian Army, the Ottoman command
broke the ceasefire and went on the offensive (Dokumenty 1919, 47–49).
The seizure of Erzincan and Erzurum showed that the Armenian militias
were incapable of resisting the Ottoman advance. On 10 (23) February, the
Transcaucasian Commissariat and the Seim agreed to the proposal of the
Turkish command to begin peace negotiations, the location for which was
chosen as Trabzon (Dokumenty 1919, 66). It should be pointed out that the
position of the Azerbaijani faction in the Seim on the whole corresponded
with the interests of a united Transcaucasus. In particular, it was decided at
a session of the Muslim faction on 16 February (1 March) to seek to
conclude a permanent peace with the Ottoman Empire on the condition of
the preservation of Transcaucasia within the borders of the former Russian
Empire which had existed prior to the start of the war in 1914. The same
decision was taken by the full Seim on the same day (Dokumenty 1919).

The Brest-Litovsk Treaty, the Trabzon peace

conference and Transcaucasia (March–April
1918)
Nevertheless, on 17 February (2 March), on the eve of the departure of the
Transcaucasian delegation for Trabzon, an official memorandum arrived
from the representatives of the Soviet delegation at Brest-Litovsk informing
them that the Bolsheviks had been forced to concede Kars, Batumi and
Ardahan to Turkey (Dokumenty 1919, 84). As a result, the Transcaucasian
delegation was obliged to participate in the Trabzon negotiations with the
awareness of their losing position: as the formal part of a state that had
already conceded part of its territory to its opponent. Even before the
opening of the Trabzon negotiations, on 25 February (10 March) the
commander of the Turkish Army on the Caucasian Front, Vehib Pasha,
demanded the withdrawal of the Transcaucasian military formations
stationed in Kars, Batumi and Ardahan (Dokumenty 1919, 86).
It is worth noting that the position of the representatives of the
Azerbaijani faction in the Seim was by no means as unquestioningly pro-
Turkish on this issue as is often portrayed in the historical literature. Their
position was sooner dictated by Azerbaijani state interests. While agreeing
to the handing over of Kars and Ardahan to the Ottoman Empire, the
Azerbaijanis, expressing their own economic concerns, demanded that
Batumi remain within Transcaucasia. “Batumi is Transcaucasia’s only
outlet to the sea, Transcaucasia cannot do without it”, declared F. Kh.
Khoisky in this regard. N. Usubbekov, a member of the government
seconded to Trabzon as a member of the Transcaucasian delegation, also
stated in the Seim on 1 April that “Batumi under no circumstances may be
given away” (Hasanly 2011, 98).
On 13 April, when the decision was taken in Tiflis to declare war on the
Ottoman Empire with the goal of defending the Transcaucasian territories,
opinion among the Azerbaijani faction was divided: the representatives of
the Social-Democratic Hummet Party took the decision to support the
government, while the Musavatists, the Ittihad members, and the non-party
representatives took a joint resolution against war, pointing out that the
Azerbaijanis in any case lacked the military formations to participate in a
war (Hasanly 2011, 95).

The Baku events of March-April 1918 and the

beginning of political divergences
The transition of the Azerbaijani faction to a more clearly expressed pro-
Turkish orientation took place after Turkish troops seized Batumi on 2 (15)
April, presenting the Transcaucasus with a fait accompli. This was enabled
primarily because of the desperate situation in which the Muslims of
Western Transcaucasia found themselves after the massacre unleashed by
the Bolsheviks and Dashnaks against the Muslim population of the city of
Baku, and then in a number of the districts of the Baku guberniya. As the
result of this, the Bolshevik Soviet of Worker, Peasant and Soldier Deputies
headed by Stepan Shaumyan, who in December 1917 had been appointed
Emergency Commissar for Caucasian Affairs by the Bolshevik Sovnarkom,
was able to seize power in Baku. Having gained control over the Baku
guberniya, the Bolsheviks began threatening the neighbouring Elizavetpol
guberniya, which in turn bordered on the Tiflis guberniya. In the first half
of April, the Muslim faction started threatening to withdraw from the
Transcaucasian government unless the Commissariat took measures to
defend the Muslim population and brought Baku back under its control. In
the second half of April, seeing the inability of the government to alter the
situation, F. Kh. Khoisky declared that the population of the Elizavetpol
guberniya would itself appeal to the Turks for help if the government did
not resolve the Baku question: “That moment may come when the popular
masses will begin to act themselves, which will create a tragic situation, as
the question of life and death of Baku is the question of life and death of the
republic” (Hasanly 2011, 135).
It is relevant here to observe that after the taking of Batumi, M. G.
Gadzhinsky, a member of the Caucasian delegation who remained in
Trabzon, tried in personal discussions with Enver Pasha to convince him to
leave Batumi to Transcaucasia and thus to end the Turkish-Georgian War,
but in vain. Drunk with success, Enver Pasha declared that not only Batumi,
but the Muslim-populated regions of Akhaltsikhe and Akhalkalaki should
also become part of the Ottoman Empire. Azerbaijan, Georgia and Armenia
should take the form of a federation or a confederation and be placed under
a Turkish protectorate. If the creation of a Transcaucasian state should not
be successful, an Azerbaijan that shares a common border with Turkey
could directly enter into the latter according to a model similar to the state
structure of Austria-Hungary (Hasanly 2011, 139).

The declaration of independence of

Transcaucasia: A state with splintering
foundations
On 9 (22) April, the Azerbaijani and Georgian factions of the Seim took the
decision to declare an independent Transcaucasian Democratic Federative
Republic (TDFR). A number of Azerbaijanis entered the government
headed by the Georgian Social-Democrat A. Chkhenkeli, who also held the
post of Foreign Minister: Kh. Melikaslanov as Minister of Roads and
Transport, F. Kh. Khoisky as Minister of Justice, N. Usubbekov as Minister
of Education, and M. G. Gadzhinsky as Minister of Trade and Industry
(Dokumenty 1919, 229).
 The tragedy of the newly-formed republic lay in the fact that only three
days after its creation, events took place which decisively split apart the
already fracturing foundation upon which it was to have rested. On 25 April
the Bolsheviks, headed by Shaumyan, seized complete control in Baku,
establishing the Baku Soviet of Peoples Commissars (Sovnarkom)
(Kazemzadeh 1951, 76–77). The Baku Sovnarkom’s declaration proclaimed
that it was struggling for the implementation of Soviet power not only in
Baku and the Baku guberniya, but also “in all of Transcaucasia and in the
Dagestan oblast’” (Hasanly 2011, 153). In the discussion about the
relationship of the Seim to the Baku Soviet, the Muslim faction declared
that if the government of the TDFR did not take measures to liberate Baku
from the Bolsheviks, the Azerbaijanis would walk out of the Seim. The
attempts of the Transcaucasian government to free Baku with the help of
units of Georgians and Azerbaijanis ended in failure. What was more, the
Baku Soviet was able to extend its power to all of the Baku guberniya,
reaching as far as Kyurdamir. Worse still, during voting in the Seim about
the relationship to the Baku Soviet the Armenian faction abstained, making
the following proposal to the Azerbaijanis: the Armenian militias that
comprised the majority of the Baku Soviet’s armed forces would overthrow
the Bolsheviks in Baku and assist in the formation of an international
government there which, in recognizing the authority of the TDFR, would
maintain a multi-national character while allowing the Armenian militias to
remain in Baku. The Azerbaijanis could not agree to such a resolution,
which would have deprived them of power in Baku. On 6 May the Muslim
faction in the Seim took a categorical decision that power in Baku should
belong to the Azerbaijanis, to which end Azerbaijani militias should enter
the city and the Armenian armed formations should withdraw (Hasanly
2011, 153–154). The implementation of such a plan, however, exceeded the
capacity of the TDFR government. Understanding this reality, in the second
half of May the Azerbaijanis decided to appeal to the Ottoman command
with a request for military assistance.

Germany enters the stage: the Batumi conference

and the collapse of the TDFR
All of these events were taking place at the same time that the peace
conference was taking place between the Ottoman Empire and the
government of the TDFR in Batumi, then occupied by the Turks. In contrast
to the negotiations at Trabzon, which had been held on a bilateral basis, at
the Batumi conference the Germans also took part as an intermediary,
represented by the Bavarian General O. von Lossov, assigned by the
German High Command in Constantinople. Expressing the opinion of
military circles in Berlin who, in contrast to the excessively cautious
German diplomats, were in favour of a more decisive policy both towards
the Bolsheviks and towards Turkey, General von Lossov opposed the
Young Turks’ expansionist plans for the Caucasus, considering the main
task of the Turkish Army to be operations against the British in the north of
Persia (Baumgart 1966, 181–182). By this time the German side, interested
in making use of the rich natural resources of Transcaucasia for its war
effort, decided to impose firm restraints on the Turks, beyond which they
were not to stray. The instructions given to von Lossov prior to the start of
the conference indicated that the interrelations between the Ottoman Empire
and Transcaucasia must be based on a strict interpretation of the conditions
of the Brest-Litovsk Treaty: Kars, Ardahan, Surmalin provinces and the
southern part of the Batumi district would go to the Ottoman Empire. The
Transcaucasian railway network and the operations of the Batumi port
should be implemented under state control through a cooperative
arrangement including German, Transcaucasian, and to a lesser degree,
Turkish capital. The independence of Transcaucasia could be declared only
upon the agreement of Bolshevik Russia, which Germany promised to
facilitate. If this should be accomplished, the Germans agreed to extend to
the Ottoman Empire the possibility of concluding a military alliance with
the Transcaucasian state, obliging it to defend Transcaucasia against
external enemies, but without the right to interfere militarily to impose
order on its territory. The Germans were inclined to reserve this right for
themselves, so long as it would not lead them into direct confrontation with
Moscow (Zürrer 1978, 56–59).
Immediately upon arriving in Batumi on 6 May, von Lossov entered into
negotiations with A. Chkhenkeli, the leader of the Transcaucasian
delegation. In order to reduce Ottoman pressure on Transcaucasia,
Chkhenkeli broached the question of the recognition of the Transcaucasian
state by all of the Central Powers and the initiation of economic linkages
with Germany, while welcoming General Ludendorff’s initiative to send a
German military mission to Tiflis under the command of General Kress von
Kressenstein. Still hoping for the possibility of preserving the unity of
Transcaucasia with German assistance, he asked for the transfer of
armaments and munitions to form military units to expel the Bolsheviks
from Baku and Baku guberniya. In the case that the Turks should continue
their brutish interference, Chkhenkeli requested that German troops be
dispatched to Transcaucasia. As a whole these proposals found some
resonance on the part of Quartermaster-General Erich von Ludendorff, who
advocated for the recognition of the Transcaucasia, providing it with
weapons and ammunition, and allocating German personnel for mustering
and training the future armed forces. As regards territorial arrangements,
the northern part of the Batumi district should remain part of Georgia, and
the Ottoman forces were categorically forbidden to advance on Tiflis. The
Baku-Batumi railway and all of its terminal points should under no
circumstances be yielded to Ottoman influence. As a form of compensation,
the Turks received the freedom of movement in the western part of Yerevan
guberniya and in the Talysh khanate in the south of Azerbaijan (Zürrer
1978, 60–62).
This schema, however, could not satisfy the Azerbaijanis, who
understood the illusory nature of plans to return Baku through the military
strength of the Transcaucasians themselves. At the same time, there were
significant differences in opinion within the German leadership itself over
relations with the TDFR. In distinction from Generals von Lossov and von
Ludendorff, who were thinking primarily from a military and strategic
perspective and who took into serious consideration the importance of
insuring the economic and political interests of Germany in the Caucasus,
the German Foreign Ministry, headed at that time by State Secretary
Richard von Kühlmann, held more cautious views and a strictly legalistic
approach. In the view of the German diplomats, the question of the
recognition of the independence of Transcaucasia was directly linked with
German policy towards Soviet Russia, the country with which the Central
Powers had recently concluded the Brest-Litovsk Treaty that had put an end
to military action on the Eastern Front. The recognition of the independence
of the TDFR by Berlin, as with the more general German policy aims in the
Caucasus, should not cause any kind of break with Moscow that might
threaten a renewal of hostilities with the Bolsheviks (Baumgart 1966, 181–
182).
At the same time, finding themselves in a very complicated situation, the
Bolsheviks were ready to agree to Germany’s recognition of Georgia,
although they could by no means accept German recognition of Azerbaijan
and particularly of Baku, given the oil production capacity of its
surrounding region, which had comprised 83 percent of the pre-war oil
industry of the former Russian Empire and which continued to have
strategic significance for Soviet Russia. In Moscow it was understood that
the critical danger for the Baku oil came not from the Germans but from the
Turks, who were striving to possess Baku and all of Azerbaijan at any cost.
For their part, the Germans reasonably assumed that with this
fundamental threat hanging over the city, the Bolsheviks would be all the
more inclined to offer Berlin a deal under which Germany would gain the
right to acquire the oil that it needed from Baku on the condition that it
would restrain the Turks from seizing the city. Jumping a bit ahead, we can
observe that this compromise arrangement in the final analysis enabled the
Bolsheviks to agree to the German recognition of Georgia, and also to the
presence of German troops on Georgian territory (Mamulia 2013, 141). As
the result of this, a form of compromise was reached as well between the
German generals and the German diplomats. This was undoubtedly
facilitated by the fact that on 11 May, at the only plenary session of the
Batumi conference, the Ottoman delegation chairman Halil Bey presented
an ultimatum to the Transcaucasian delegation demanding the concession
not only of Kars, Ardahan and Batumi, but also of the Akhaltsikhe and
Akhalkalaki districts of the Tiflis guberniya and the Armenian town of
Alexandropol. General von Lossov’s attempts to soften the Ottoman
pretensions did not meet with success. On 15 May, despite the protests of
the Transcaucasian delegation, Ottoman troops occupied Alexandropol.
Now convinced that the Turks were unwilling to take the considerations of
their allies into account and were instead determined to present them with
faits accomplis, Berlin decided to give them some of their own medicine.
On 13 May during a meeting in the Belgian town of Spa, General von
Ludendorff proposed the rapid dispatch of a German military mission under
General Kress von Kressenstein to Tiflis and the recognition of the
Georgian Republic, and in so doing he advocated for the dissolution of the
TDFR, which had lost hope of continuing to exist. This opinion was shared
by the German Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, Graf von Bernstorff,
who proposed handing the Adrianople-Culfa (Julfa) railway line over to the
Ottomans, which would allow them to maintain a direct link to Azerbaijan
and thus reduce the Turkish pressure to the north so that the Germans could
“communicate with Georgia independently”. As the German scholar V.
Zürrer justifiably asserted, “in this way Berstorff backed the
implementation of the von Ludendorff policy of a separate treaty with
Georgia, and at least a temporary allocation of the rest of Transcaucasia to
their ally Turkey” (1978, 66–67).
On 24 May the German Foreign Ministry approved the generals’ view
regarding policy towards Georgia and the temporary provision of freedom
of action in the rest of the Caucasus to the Turks. Events then developed
with a kaleidoscope-like rapidity, as the Ottomans, Germans and
Caucasians all attempted to get ahead of one another. On 26 May the
Ottomans reiterated territorial demands going far beyond the conditions of
the Brest-Litovsk Treaty to the Georgians and Armenians in the form of an
ultimatum. In addition to Kars, Ardahan and Batumi, which had already
been occupied by Ottoman forces, the Turks demanded the handing over of
Akhaltsikhe, Akhalkalaki and Alexandropol, together with the imposition
of Ottoman control over the Alexandropol-Culfa railway link (Baumgart
1966, 179; Dokumenty 1919, 309–310).
With these conditions Turkey assured itself, in essence, not only political control over
Transcaucasia, but also with of a close territorial contiguity to Azerbaijan and to Persia (i.e. to
the Persian Azerbaijan) – in other words, to countries with an ethnically Turkic and Turkic-
speaking population. (Avalov 1924, 42)

On 26 May, the same day as the Turkish ultimatum, Georgia, attempting to

save itself from the onslaught of Turkish forces through German
intervention, declared itself an independent state. On the same day the
German command took the final decision regarding the deployment of a
military contingent to Georgia, the guarding of the Georgian segment of the
Batumi-Baku railway line, and the provision of assistance for the formation
of Georgian armed forces (Zürrer 1978, 74). On 28 May Azerbaijan and
Armenia followed suit and also declared their independence (Dokumenty
1919, 330–338).
Conclusions: causes of the nonviability and
dissolution of the Transcaucasian Federation
From the materials examined it follows that the direct cause of the
dissolution of the Transcaucasian state was the fact of Transcaucasia’s
informal division into zones of influence. Georgia, whose objective
interests coincided fully with German strategic goals, was already no longer
interested in remaining within the Federation. To the contrary, it was in the
interests of Tiflis, having received the recognition of Berlin as an
independent state, to take up a German defensive shield against further
territorial encroachments by the Young Turks. For the Georgians, the
declaration of their country’s independence meant gaining a potential, if
belated, possibility to bring Germany to its side in order to offset the threat
of Turkish expansion and at least partially offset the damage that this had
already done.
For their part the Azerbaijanis, understanding that only the Ottoman
Empire had both the power and the desire to liberate Baku from the hands
of the Bolsheviks, set their course on independence, though despite their
strong pro-Turkish orientation, they were not in favour of joining their
country directly to the Ottoman Empire. For the Azerbaijanis, finding
themselves in a desperate situation (with the Baku guberniya and the city of
Baku itself under the control of the Bolshevik Sovnarkom), the only
alternative was to accept Ottoman assistance in the form of the Caucasian
“Army of Islam” under the command of Turkish General Nuri Pasha, which
had been mustered at the end of June 1918 near Elizavetpol.
In summing up, it becomes obvious that a realistic chance for the
creation of a viable Transcaucasian republic existed only in the second half
of January and February 1918, when Ottoman forces were still beyond the
borders of Transcaucasia and the Bolsheviks had not yet managed to
impose their monopoly on power in the future Azerbaijani capital: in other
words, during that brief period of political vacuum when the Ottomans had
still not yet invaded Transcaucasia and the Bolsheviks had not yet
consolidated themselves in Baku, the critically important industrial centre
of the region. Yet both the Azerbaijanis and the Georgians, the two key
potential supporters of independence, lacked the will, the objective
evaluation of reality, and the decisiveness required to take the initiative to
take a decision as earth-shattering as secession from Russia. After the
Brest-Litovsk Treaty and the violent events in Baku that followed in March
1918, the creation of a unified republic in Transcaucasia ceased to be
feasible; for the resolution of the cardinal problems facing the Azerbaijanis,
Georgians and Armenians it had now become necessary to draw in the
Great Powers, whose goals often contradicted one another.
In conclusion, it is worth emphasizing that up until the TDFR’s
declaration of independence, the Azerbaijanis on the whole stood for a
platform of close cooperation with the Georgians, seeing in this a possible
means to ensure Azerbaijan’s interests. This showed itself in particular with
regard to the issue of Batumi, which they saw as a strategic object essential
for the future of all Transcaucasia, and on which they did not at all
subordinate themselves to the directives of Constantinople. The insistence
on Transcaucasian integration in the interests of the strategically important
Baku-Batumi line ran as a unifying thread through all of their actions all the
way up to 22 April 1918. The annexation policy of the Ottoman Empire,
which was attempting to tear Georgia’s Muslim regions away and impose
its own protectorate over Transcaucasia, made the schism in the TDFR in
the middle of May 1918 inevitable. In parallel, the Azerbaijanis’ decisive
crossing over to the side of Constantinople represented for them the only
possibility to regain their sovereignty over Baku and the Baku guberniya as
a whole, which they were able to accomplish in September 1918. It is not
irrelevant to observe that, as German archival documents show, Enver
Pasha, an advocate of declaring the Azerbaijani Republic under an Ottoman
protectorate, was nevertheless not inclined to include any stipulation in the
text recognizing the future state that would oblige Constantinople to defend
Azerbaijan’s independence should it face future aggression from the
Bolsheviks.

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

References
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Baumgart, Winfried. 1966. Deutsche Ostpolitik 1918. Von Brest-Litowsk bis zum Ende des
Ersten Weltkrieges. Vienna and Munich: R. Oldenburg Verlag.
Gruzinskaya Respublika. 1919. Dokumenty i materialy po vneshney politike Zakavkaz’ya v
Gruzii. Tiflis: Tipografiya pravitel’stva Gruzinskoy Respubliki.
Hasanly, Jamil. 2011. Russkaya revolyutsiya i Azerbaydzhan. Trudnyy put’ k nezavisimosti.
1917-1920. Moscow: “Flint”.
Kazemzadeh, Firuz. 1951. The Struggle for Transcaucasia (1917-1921). New York:
Philosophical Library.
Mamulia, Georgiy. 2013. “Kavkaz i derzhavy Chetvernogo soyuza v 1918g.” Nowy
Prometeusz 5: 125–158. Warsaw: Studium Europy Wschodniei Uniwersytety
Warszawskiego.
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zwischen Schwarzem und Kaspischem Meer. Düsseldorf: Droste.

The Transcaucasian Democratic

Federative Republic (TDFR) as a
“Georgian” responsibility
Adrian Brisku

ABSTRACT
This article looks at the historical perspectives and positions of key Georgian
political figures – mostly leading Social Democrats such as Noe Zhordania and
Akaki Chkhenkeli, as well as National Democrats such as Niko Nikoladze – on
the making and unmaking of the Transcaucasian Democratic Federative Republic
(TDFR) by analyzing their reflections on the most heated political concepts of the
first two decades of the twentieth century: nationality, nationalism, the nation-
state, federation, economic development, and socialism in the Georgian,
Transcaucasian and imperial contexts, given the rapidly shifting geopolitics of the
region triggered by the onset of the Great War and aggravated by the Bolshevik
Revolution of November 1917. The article demonstrates that already having
conceptualized the socio-economic and cultural needs of the nation as developing
outside of the framework of the nation-state, Zhordania and Chkhenkeli viewed
these instead within a regional federative context under a revolutionarily
 transformed imperial centre, while assuming that the Social Democrats would
hold the commanding political position in Georgia. This prepared them to take
responsibility for establishing de facto federative political institutions for
Transcaucasia. That responsibility facilitated the making and unmaking of the
short-lived, independent TDFR.

A “new political formula”

The Georgian political parties were divided when, together with their
Armenian and Azerbaijani counterparts, they agreed on 22 April 1918 to
declare at the Transcaucasian Seim (Assembly) in Tiflis the independence of
the Transcaucasian Democratic Federative Republic (TDFR). The debate in
the Seim on the motion for independence showed that the Azerbaijani
Musavat Party fully backed the motion, the Armenian Dashnaktsutyun
Party opposed it, and the Georgian Social Democrats, the National
Democrats and the Socialist Revolutionaries were split (Dokumenty 1919,
200–203; Kazemzadeh 2009, 103–105; Reynolds 2011, 205). But in the end
they all agreed to it nonetheless.
This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic
content of the article.

The reason why the Georgian political elites agreed to the independence of
a common state for the three nationalities was much more straightforward
than the reason why they were divided. De facto, the Transcaucasian
Commissariat and the Seim – the political institutions established on 15
November 1917 and 28 February 1918, respectively – had taken on the
functions of a state, but most of the Georgian political leaders, like their
Armenian counterparts, were reluctant and even opposed to the idea of
independence for this federation. Yet they were not opposed to the concept
of federation per se. In fact, as this article will argue, key figures among the
Georgian leadership1 had already for some time engaged seriously with this
concept. And when such political institutions came into existence, the
Georgian political parties, particularly the Social Democrats, took the
political responsibility of playing a central role in declaring independence –
albeit pressured by the outcome of the Brest-Litovsk Treaty and the
decisions of the Ottoman state – and maintaining it for as long as they
could. They were divided because of different understandings and
conceptualisations of the past and future of the Georgian nation, both in the
region and vis-à-vis the Russian Empire.
One of these understandings was that geopolitically, political elites
viewed an independent Georgia or Transcaucasian region as impossible:
tsarist Russia would never allow it. Prominent intellectual and political
figures of late 19th and early twentieth century Georgia, such as Ilia
Chavchavadze and Niko Nikoladze, had contemplated this alternative for
Georgia. But while Chavchavadze did not see the necessity of its
independence (1987, 178–186), Nikoladze did not view it as a possibility
(Brisku 2016, 306). One group, however, which did consider Georgia’s
independence was the “League for the Liberation of Georgia.” Initially
established to restore the Georgian monarchy and its privileges – when
Russia annexed Georgia 1801 it reneged on the terms of the 1783 Treaty of
Georgievsk that had guaranteed Georgia’s sovereignty – this group
appealed to the Hague International Conference of 1907 to restore
Georgia’s lost political freedom (Gordadze 1999, 76). The other
understanding was purely ideological. Noe Zhordania, who, as one of the
leaders of the Georgian Social Democrats espoused Marxist doctrine, did
not see political nationalism as the path to Georgian national development
(1922, 55–56), and by extension to the development of the
Caucasian/Transcaucasian region.
Thus, a “Georgian perspective” for Transcaucasia’s independence
required that conceptual and geopolitical shifts be made. To be sure, in early
March 1918, Zhordania gave a speech in the Seim entitled “On the
Independence of Transcaucasia” asserting that independence could come to
be only if a democratic Russia left the Georgians alone to face the Ottomans
(1919, 76). At this particular moment there was strong Ottoman pressure to
declare Transcaucasian independence, while the Georgians themselves were
highly reluctant to go it alone and take the responsibility for independence.
Indeed, just two days before the declaration of independence the Social-
Democrats voted against the motion at their Tiflis party conference. The
final decision to declare independence was taken by the Georgian National
Council, one day after Akaki Chkhenkeli, another leading Social Democrat
figure who headed the Seim’s delegation to the peace negotiations with the
Ottomans in Trabzon, convinced them of the policy of independence on
which “he had been working for weeks” (Hovannisian 1967, 159–160).
 The Seim’s declaration of independence was a manifestation of
geopolitical pragmatism on the part of the three nationalities rather than any
sort of expression of enthusiasm for the newfound political freedom of their
multinational state. According to prominent historian Richard Hovanissian,
only “second rate” Social-Democrats tried to generate enthusiasm by
viewing it as a “new political formula” for the region’s nationalities, faced
with existential threats from the north (from Soviet Russia) and from the
South (from the Ottoman Empire), and united in pursuit of a foreign policy
of peace and international recognition (1967, 160–162) For his part,
Chkhenkeli, as one of the architects of this independence, took state
building seriously. He had been chosen as the Chairman of the Seim and the
foreign minister in the government that was formed three days later,
comprised of twelve posts: four ministers for each of the three constituent
nations, with Georgians occupying the most important ministerial profiles:
Foreign Affairs, War, Interior, Agriculture. Chkhenkeli pledged to the Seim
a foreign policy of peace and international recognition, and a domestic
agenda of state-building: establishing public order, writing a constitution,
drawing the borders and land reform (Dokumenty 1919, 219–233;
Kazemzadeh 2009, 107–108).
Locating the Georgian nationality: nation-state,
federation, or part of democratic revolutionary
Russia
To be sure, the geopolitical changes allowed for a conceptual shift towards
a “new political formula”. But what exactly were some of the
understandings of the leading Georgian political figures and parties that
came to public attention after the Imperial Manifesto of 1905 which
legalized political participation in tsarist Russia about national statehood
and about potential federative arrangements for the Caucasus and for the
whole of the empire?
As briefly mentioned above, the conceptualization of independent
Georgian statehood ranged from viewing it as an impossibility to seeing it
as an unnecessary alternative. Within this spectrum it was possible to find
attempts at conceptualizing the needs of the Georgian nation within a
Caucasian federation. Indeed, the earliest such attempt was contemplated in
1874, when some Georgian students, including Niko Nikoladze and Giorgi
Tsereteli, both active figures during the months of the Transcaucasian state,
together with other Russian, Dagestani and Armenian students organized a
conference in Geneva on the questions of an independent Caucasian
federation (Bendiashvili 1980, 139–154; Jones 2005, 45). Nothing came of
this at the time, until the geopolitical flux stirred up in the region by the
First World War and the Bolshevik Coup/Revolution of November 1917, in
large part because the Social-Democrats, as the oldest and the largest
political force in the Georgian context (Kautsky 1921) opposed separatism
in principle, finding the idea of a nation-state unpragmatic and outdated
(Jones 2005, 192).
Zhordania, for one, thought that the future of the Georgian nation should
not be built on the framework of the nation-state. In 1894 in a seminal
article entitled “Economic Development and Nationality” Zhordania
defined the nation in terms a growing economy, a national culture and
common interests of both capital and labour, rather than by history and
common blood (1922, 22). Nearly fifteen years later he argued in “The
Georgian People and Nationalism” (1911) against Georgian political
nationalism. For him political nationalism threatened to undermine a
renewed alliance with the Russian state and interethnic relations in Georgia.
Indeed, in his understanding of the evolving nationalistic discourse of the
time, Zhordania thought that Georgian nationalists, by which he meant the
new Georgian entrepreneurs among the national bourgeoisie, “invented a
chauvinist, anti-Russian and anti-Armenian discourse” in order to gain the
support of the Georgian people because they were unable to challenge the
influence of the Armenian bourgeoisie in Tiflis (1922, 56; Brisku 2016,
308). He opposed the idea of a nation-state for Georgians on the grounds
that theoretically “the notion of one nation – one state does not exist”
(1922, 200; Brisku 2016, 310), as in fact Georgia was ethnically diverse.
Hence, emphasizing Georgians national rights diminished those of non-
Georgians. The state, which he saw as primarily an economic phenomenon,
had to remain neutral not only with regard to religious differences, but also
to ethnic ones (1922, 172; Brisku 2016, 311), particularly in Tiflis and the
entire region of the Caucasus where “Georgians blended with other nations
and vice versa, Georgia does not comprise Georgians and Georgians do not
comprise Georgia” (1922, 173).
While opposing nationalism and the nation-state, Zhordania nevertheless
embraced the concept of nationality. When reflecting on this, Zhordania
drew also on the perspective of the Austro-Marxist Karl Renner. He saw
Renner’s “culturalist” reading of nationality, implying establishing cultural
autonomy through schooling, arts and professional skills taught in the
native languages in the multinational Austro-Hungarian context, as fitting
for circumstances in Georgia and Transcaucasia. Taking seriously the
political task of the Social-Democrats in Georgia and the region as one of
generating economic development and supporting the rights of “working
people” rather than strictly those of only the proletariat, he conceived of a
future in the region whereby Georgian labour and capital were not confined
by politically defined ethnic borders. He envisaged the possibility that these
“working people” could be open to foreign political (meaning Russian) and
economic (meaning Armenian, Russian and Western European) influence,
while at the same time defending their interests in a “new worker’s
organization in the Caucasus” (1922, 78–80).
Certainly not everybody shared his understanding. For Nikoladze and
even Joseph Stalin – whose approaches could be read as “territorialist” –
cultural autonomy had to be bounded by a geographical and historical
territory (Nikoladze 1913, 4–5; Brisku 2016, 306). Chkhenkeli, too, agreed
with most of what Zhordania had to say about the question of nationality.
For his part, Chkhenkeli, as he discussed in his article “The National
Question” (1908), thought that the concepts of the nation and the state
should not be mixed. In hindsight, however, in the late 1930s, years after
the fall of Transcaucasian and Georgian democratic republics while in exile
in France, he argued in his booklet The State and Nation that they were
reconcilable in the Georgian context through the notion of citizenship
(1939, 35–37). But more than Zhordania, Chkhenkeli saw the Social-
Democrats in Georgia as “a national party … [and an] expression of the
aspirations of the Georgian people” (1908, 3; Jones 2005, 230). Nationality,
he believed, would not dissipate with the rise of capitalism and socialism,
and recognizing like Zhordania the reality of ethnicity in the Caucasus, he
favoured institutionalizing cultural autonomy at the regional level. He
suggested setting up “decentralized institutional structures based on cultural
autonomy for Caucasia,” and an “administrative plan for Caucasia” in
which the region’s nationalities would have jurisdiction over cultural
matters through national representative bodies (a Georgian Parliament in
this case), while cooperating with each other in an all-Caucasian Seim. A
transformed Russian centre would still maintain jurisdiction over the
region’s legal and economic issues, but “the Transcaucasian peoples, in
keeping with ‘self-determination’, must have fully independent cultural
autonomy” (1908, 3; Jones 2005, 231).
This institutional arrangement, he thought, would encourage inter-
Caucasian cooperation, even though there was the potential for ethnic
“conflicts over resources among immature nations” (1908, 3; Jones 2005,
232). To Zhordania, however, Chkhenkeli’s approach was problematic
because in its essence it remained a “territorialist” one. What constituted
“immature nations” and who decided this remained undetermined
questions. In this way, the Georgian ruling classes, for instance, could
suppress the cultural rights of Armenians, Jews, Tatars, Ossetians and Leks
in the Georgian territories, while the others could do the same to the
Georgians in other parts in the Caucasus. For him, there were needs of
Caucasian nationalities that could be discussed and institutionalized in a
regional body (a Seim), but such needs would be “the natural economic
interconnections among the Caucasian population” rather than cultural
interconnections. Like Chkhenkeli, he thought that economic interactions at
the regional level should be dealt with in an all-Russian legislative
framework. Yet it was crucial for Zhordania that while handling economic
and political issues in the Seim, these nationalities should demonstrate to
the imperial centre that they had the capacity for self-rule and that they
could avoid conflict (Jones 2005, 234).
Irrespective of these contested “culturalist” and “territorialist” positions,
Zhordania, Chkhenkeli and “almost all Georgian groups envisaged some
form of federalism to accommodate Georgia’s needs” (Jones 2005, 43). But
the Social Democrats exhibited a “conceptual preparedness” to see
Georgian nationality within a federative framework, more than within a
nation-state that would be independent of Russia. No Georgian political
force, including the most pro-independence ones, such as the Georgian
National Independence Committee that was established at the onset of the
First World War and played a key role in establishing German-Georgian
relations of the spring 1918 that led to the declaration of Georgia’s
independence on 26 May 1918 (Bakradze 2010), viewed independence
from Russia as a possibility. One of this Committee’s most prominent
voices, at least until 1917, Mikhail Tsereteli, thought that a protectorate
status for Georgia rather than full independence, similar to that outlined in
the Georgievsk Treaty of 1783, would be the most viable option,
particularly if Georgia would be left to fend for itself against the Ottoman
Empire (Jones in Bakradze 2010, 312).

The making of the de facto Transcaucasian state:

the social-democrat dominance
Although the Georgian political elites, especially the Social-Democrats,
were proactive in considering the needs of the Georgian nation in some
form of a regional federal arrangement, the impetus to do so – and their
“natural default” – was triggered by the “geopolitical existentialism”
engendered by the First World War and the Bolshevik Revolution/Coup on
7 November 1917. As the largest political force in the tsarist Georgian
guberniyas (provinces or governorates), the Social-Democrats, led by
Zhordania, felt it was their responsibility to lead the way not only for the
Georgian nation but for the region as a whole. Four days after the Bolshevik
capture of the imperial state, in a gathering of all political parties in the
region on 11 November, the Georgian Social-Democrats (Mensheviks) and
the Bolsheviks joined in a political compromise, together with all the soviet,
military, party and trade union representatives, in front of 400 delegates.
Zhordania suggested the idea of establishing a “political authority which
will lead Caucasia out of this catastrophic position … We must organize a
regional power to lead us until a constituent assembly or an authoritative
central power is established”, including a “temporary Caucasian
parliament” (1919, 52). At the same time, this new regional “political
authority” was to replace the recently-established regional political
structure, the Ozakom (which had replaced the tsarist viceroyalty) that had
answered to the Provisional Government in Petrograd that the Bolsheviks
had overthrown several days earlier (Kazemzadeh 2009, 57).
To be sure, though, the Transcaucasian Commissariat, which came to the
existence four day after Zhordania’s proposal, went far beyond what
Zhordania and Chkhenkeli had conceived of in their earlier writings,
becoming a political institution underpinned by the local soviets and local
self-governing bodies that took up far more regional prerogatives. This was
apparent in the pledge made by the Chairman of the Commissariat, the
Georgian Social-Democrats Evgeni Gegechkori, who promised social-
democratic financial, economic, administrative, and land reforms for the
region (Jones 2005, 279). While doing this, Gegechkhori also declared that
the Commissariat’s authority was to last until an all-Russian Constituent
Assembly was formed. If not, he added, then the “Constituent Assembly
members from Transcaucasia and the [northern] Caucasus” would supplant
its legitimacy (Hovannisian 1967, 108). The Commissariat had in its ranks
political figures from the most influential regional parties, except for the
Bolsheviks: the Social-Democrats (mostly Georgians), the Musavatists
(Azerbaijanis), the Dashnaktsutyun or Dashnaks (Armenians) and the
Socialist Revolutionaries (mostly Russians and Georgians) (Kazemzadeh
2009, 57). Yet despite this diverse representation, the Social-Democrats
took for granted their leading role because of their previous international
political experience (their exposure to the socialist movement), their
domestic experience (positions held in the Russian soviets), and the
grassroots support that their party had enjoyed in the tsarist Georgian
guberniyas. Their preponderance did not go unnoticed. Some Armenians
criticized their own Dashnaktsutyun Party for allowing this “Georgian
supremacy” in the Commissariat (Hovannisian 1967, 108).
Beyond the composition of the Commissariat, the Social-Democrats’
preponderance – Chkhenkeli became the Commissariat’s Internal Affairs
Commissar – was exercised through the national military and political
structures that each of the three nationalities agreed to maintain, in this
case, the Georgian National Assembly that was constituted in lat|e
November 1917. Significantly, Zhordania also chaired the Soviet Regional
Centre in Tiflis. It was again Zhordania who stated during the first session
of this Georgian National Assembly that the Assembly was necessary for
discussing national issues, assigning tasks to the Commissariat, and even
planning ahead for establishing a representative regional legislature, a
Transcaucasian Seim (Hovannisian 1967, 116). Gegechkori experienced the
Georgian influence – as well as those coming from other national councils –
on the “weak and inefficient body” that was the Commissariat in regional
administrative, law and order, and military matters; as concerned the latter,
the Military Council of Nationalities was created to defend Transcaucasia
after the departure of the imperial army (Kazemzadeh 2009, 57–83).
Certainly, Georgian political forces and the Social-Democrats, most
notably Zhordania, had a powerful influence in forming the de facto
federation’s nascent foreign policy, even as it came under internal and
external pressures. When the Brest-Litovsk negotiations began on 22
December 1917 between the Central Powers (Imperial Germany, Austro-
Hungary and the Ottoman Empire) and Soviet Russia, the Ottomans put
increasing pressure on the Commissariat to establish formal relations and to
negotiate a mutual and just peace with an “independent government of
Caucasia”, and Zhordania made sure that the Commissariat did not bow to
this pressure. In a speech in late January 1918 at the Georgian National
Assembly, he rejected the idea of independence from Russia unless the all-
Russian Constituent Assembly failed to convene, to which a Georgian
National Democrat responded that an independent Transcaucasia was
possible with the support of the Central Powers (Kazemzadeh 2009, 84), to
which the Ottomans were allied.
But as the political situation was changing by the day – on 19 January
the Bolsheviks disbanded the all-Russian Constituent Assembly in
Petrograd which all three nationalities hoped would preserve the link with
Russia and would serve as a source of legitimacy for the region – the
Georgian Social-Democrats’ position came under further pressure. Indeed,
at a Commissariat session on 28 January a debate flared between
Gegechkori and Chkhenkeli on the fallout from this event. Chkhenkeli
suggested that the Ukrainian legislature, the Central Rada, could serve as
the constituted all-Russian Constituent Assembly, and Transcaucasia could
follow the example of its Ukrainian counterpart and enter into negotiations
with the Central Powers, and hence with the Ottomans. Even further, he
suggested the necessity of a unified Caucasia, inviting the newly constituted
Union of Allied Mountaineers (the Mountain Government from the
Dagestani and Terek oblasts), because “on the Caucasus Front it is our own
Caucasian nationalities who are responsible, and if all of the local
nationalities were united, things would not be so bad. Our misfortune is that
we are not unified” (Dokumenty 1919, 34). Neither of these suggestions
was taken up – in fact the Ukrainian government declined the invitation –
yet the decision to establish a regional body, the Seim, that could enter into
peace negotiations with the Ottomans was agreed at the Regional Centre of
the Soviet. The Seim was expected to come into existence by mid-February,
so Gegechkori informed the Ottomans that his government was prepared to
enter into negotiations with them once the Seim set out the conditions for
“an acceptable and just peace” (Hovannisian 1967, 124).

The Seim as the realm of unity, and

Transcaucasian independence as the cause of its
disunity
Together with the Musavatists, the Georgian Social-Democrats played the
leading role in establishing the Transcaucasian Seim. In early February
1918, Zhordania presented a Menshevik-Musavatist resolution at the
Regional Centre of Soviets that called for the creation of the Seim, which in
addition to making peace with the Ottomans – given that the all-Russian
Constituent Assembly was no longer viable – was required “to exercise
legislative prerogatives in all local questions” (Hovannisian 1967, 125), and
to function as a strong government “capable of maintaining revolutionary
order in the country and of carrying out reforms” (Dokumenty 1919, 28;
Kazemzadeh 2009, 85). The Seim thus came into existence on 23 February,
and it elected the veteran Georgian Menshevik Nikolai Chkheidze as its
chairman by a wide margin. The Georgian Social-Democrats and the
Musavatists held 30 seats each in the body, and the Dashnaks 27 seats
(Kazemzadeh 2009, 88).
The consensus, to a large extent, rested on shared perceptions among the
political elites of the three nationalities about the situation in Russia, the
Ottoman threat, and their political-economic visions for the federation. In
one Seim session, Gegechkori drew a contrast between Bolshevik Russia,
which in negotiating with the Germans at Brest-Litovsk had become a
“colony of German imperialism”, and the democratic Transcaucasia. The
Dashnaks in this session supported his view, and were keen to embark on
social-democratic policies (such as nationalization and the abolition of
private land ownership) and to create “just provincial boundaries within a
federated Transcaucasia” (Hovannisian 1967, 127). Zhordania, in a session
on 28 February, agreed with the Dashnaks’ pursuit of socialist policies
within a democratic framework, and called for the “country’s” (i.e.
Transcaucasia’s) defence against “Bolshevik reaction”. He did not
recognize the Bolshevik’s negotiations with the Germans at Brest-Litovsk,
and authorized the Commissariat to negotiate a separate peace with the
Ottomans (1919, 65–71; Kazemzadeh 2009, 89). Particularly on the latter
point, the Seim acted in unison by setting out four conditions for the
Transcaucasian delegation (to be led by Chkhenkeli): the delegation could
negotiate, but only the Seim could conclude peace with the Ottomans; the
peace agreement had to be permanent; the pre-1914 boundaries – this was
one of the items negotiated at Brest-Litovsk – were to be maintained; and
finally, a self-determining, autonomous Turkish Armenia as part of the
Ottoman state had to be demanded (Dokumenty 1919, 83–84; Kazemzadeh
2009, 90).
When the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk was concluded between the Central
Powers and Soviet Russia on 3 March 1918 – an outcome that the Seim had
declared it would not recognize – Chkhenkeli’s delegation, comprised of
delegates from the three nationalities, began negotiations with its Ottoman
counterparts on 14 March. The Transcaucasians were faced with the
provision of the Brest-Litovsk Treaty that returned the three regions of
Kars, Ardahan and Batumi to the Ottomans and an Ottoman ultimatum
(issued by General Vehid Pasha) that this be implemented. Zhordania, in a
session in the Seim on 11 March, rejected the outcome of Brest-Litovsk and
gave assurances that the Transcaucasians would hold these vital regions,
because for him Batumi was Transcaucasia’s “window to the West”, and the
fortress at Kars was a pillar of the region’s defence. If they were to be
taken, said Zhordania, speaking in the name of all nationalities, then the
Transcaucasians would seek to claim Ottoman Armenia from the Ottomans
(Hovannisian 1967, 132). The Seim’s unanimous official statement –
delivered by its chairman Chkheidze – was that Transcaucasia did not
recognize the Russian Soviet government and its peace deal at Brest-
Litovsk (Dokumenty 1919, 87–88; Kazemzadeh 2009, 93).
Yet as the peace negotiations began in earnest in Trabzon – there were
five sessions between 14 and 20 March 1918 – the consensus on the future
of the de facto federation among the three nationalities, and also among
Mensheviks as well as between Zhordania and Chkhenkeli, began to
founder. From the very outset, Chkhenkeli’s negotiating position was
undermined by his Ottoman interlocutor, Rauf Bey, who wanted
Transcaucasia as a state to accept of the results of Brest-Litovsk.
Chkhenkeli’s response, in the second session, was that “Transcaucasia de
facto [sic] presents itself in the form of a state, even though it has not yet
declared itself independent” (Protokolebi 15 March 1918, 10) and had acted
as such since the Bolshevik Coup (Protokolebi 14 March 1918, 5–9;
Dokumenty 1919, 117–119; Hovannisian 1967, 133; Kazemzadeh 2009,
95). However, Rauf Bey increased the pressure further by declaring that “it
would be desirable for Transcaucasia to declare its independence and
announce its form of government before these negotiations reach the final
agreement so coveted by both sides”. Chkhenkeli responded that the Seim
was considering the question of independence (Hovannisian 1967, 138–
141).
This Ottoman pressure to declare independence as a precondition to
concluding a peace deal triggered disagreements, distrust and accusations
among the Armenians, Azerbaijanis and Georgians. This discord was laid
bare at the Seim’s session of 25 March, summoned to debate the Ottoman
proposition; the Georgian Social-Democrats and Dashnaks opposed it,
whereas the Azerbaijanis called for separation from Russia and a peace deal
with the Ottomans. This disagreement was not made easier given the
eruption of open inter-ethnic violence among the three nationalities
throughout the month of March. A bloody and vengeful situation reigned
between Armenians and Azerbaijanis in the Yerevan district, and between
Georgians and Armenians in Ardahan, where the Georgian Social-
Democrats declared that there was “an enemy within the country”. Even
more tragic events took place in late March and early April in the Soviet-
controlled city of Baku, in which Red Guard and Armenian Dashnak
militias violently suppressed an Azerbaijani uprising, killing more than ten
thousand Azerbaijanis. Considering this dark situation, it is surprising how
the Transcaucasian political forces were able to stand together in the Seim
in Tiflis, with Georgian Social-Democrats dominating the Seim’s stance to
not declare independence and investing Chkhenkeli with extraordinary
powers to achieve an “honourable settlement” between the Transcaucasian
and Ottoman sides (Hovannisian 1967, 145–149; Kazemzadeh 2009, 97).
From Chkhenkeli’s vantage point in Trabzon, however, such a stance
was no longer sustainable. Having been vested with extraordinary powers,
he put these to use at the sixth Trabzon plenary session that began on 6
April by breaking with the Seim’s position and agreeing to Ottoman
demands to vacate Batumi, Kars and Ardahan, to declare independence, and
to sign a peace deal, with the provision that this be done with the mediation
of the Central Powers. To be sure, Chkhenkeli had informed the Georgian
Social-Democrats of his intentions the night before in a secret message sent
to the Georgian National Assembly on 10 April, pointing out that the
Ottomans threatened to overrun Tiflis if they did not agree to concede
Batumi. The Menshevik leadership refused to accept this, on the grounds
that conceding Batumi would result in a collapse of the Georgian economy
and then to political destruction (Hovannisian 1967, 152). The split between
Chkhenkeli’s policy and that of his party’s leadership in the Seim became
apparent when the latter ordered mobilization to defend Batumi
(Dokumenty 1919, 160; Kazemzadeh 2009, 98). The Seim declared war on
the Ottomans on 13 April with the passage of three resolutions, drafted by
Zhordania, that established martial law and called in multiple languages for
the defence of Transcaucasian democracy (Dokumenty 1919, 187;
Kazemzadeh 2009, 102). At the same time, the Georgian Social-Democrats’
leadership recalled Chkhenkeli’s delegation from Trabzon without having
reached an agreement.
The Transcaucasian intentions to defend Batumi fell short, however, as
they were virtually unable to mount any resistance against the Ottoman
troops. Thus, the Ottomans re-annexed both the economically vital port
town of Batumi and the strategically important castle at Kars (Avaliashvili
1940, 24; Reynolds 2009, 159). This devastating outcome forced the three
nationalities in the Seim to agree to declare the independence of the
Transcaucasian Democratic Federative Republic on 22 April. Rather than
displaying enthusiasm about political independence and the implementation
of the “new political formula”, most of the representatives instead felt
“forced to be free” (Reynolds 2009, 166).

The independent TDFR and its exercise of foreign

policy
Despite developing sophisticated conceptualisations about federalism that
could accommodate Georgian national needs in the region – without
foreseeing the possibility of independence from Russia – and having played
a key role in establishing a de facto federation while refraining from
declaring independence until it was “forced upon them”, Georgian political
forces (excluding the Bolsheviks) took the main responsibility to try to
make this state function. Yet their efforts were undermined by the
exuberance of the Ottomans, who were keen to acquire even more
territories and access, which in turn intensified the disunity among the three
main nationalities. As a result, it would be the Georgians who would make
the decision to end the Transcaucasian experiment in federalism.
This was not apparent from the outset, however, especially when the
Federation began to exercise a foreign policy that sought peaceful relations
with the only country that had pushed for and recognized its independence,
the Ottoman Empire. It also vied for the recognition and backing of other
Great Powers, most notably Germany. Five days after the declaration of
independence, Chkhenkeli, serving as both prime minister and foreign
minister, sent a letter to the Ottoman Foreign Minister seeking friendly
relations between the two sides, for now that “we have declared
independence many internal and external enemies are trying to create an
unfavourable impression to disturb our inhabitants”. As politically painful
as the outcomes of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk and the Ottoman ultimatum
had been to the new state, Chkhenkeli asked the Ottoman side not to harass
the Armenian population evacuating Kars and not to stir up the Georgian
Muslim population on Georgian (Transcaucasian) territory (amierkavkaziis
1918, 5–7).
His efforts achieved equitable relations between the two sides to a
degree, yet they were ultimately undermined from the outset. This became
particularly evident when on 11 May 1918, at the second attempt to
negotiate a peace agreement in the recently conceded town of Batumi, this
time between two independent states, the Ottoman side, headed by Khalil
Bey, produced a draft entitled “Treaty of Peace and Friendship between the
Ottoman Government and the Confederative Transcaucasian Republic”.
The draft treaty stipulated that the Ottoman side would agree to a peace
deal, provided that the Transcaucasian state allowed Ottoman troops, who
were eager to seize Baku and Mosul, free access to Transcaucasian territory,
including its railway network. This demand triggered intense disagreement
between the Armenian and Georgian members of his delegation on the one
side and the Azerbaijanis on the other, with the latter agreeing to the
demands. In fact, three days later Ottoman troops traversed the Armenian
towns of Alexandropol and Lori, against which Chkhenkeli protested
forcefully to Khalil Bey, informing him that a letter of complaint had been
sent to Major-General von Lossow, the German representative in the region.
Khalil Bey responding that he taken the note and sent it to all of the Central
Powers’ governments (Dokumenty 1919, 271; Kazemzadeh 2009, 112).
Chkhenkeli informed the Ottoman side that if any peace deal was to be
achieved between the two sides, representatives from the Central Powers,
and particularly from Germany, would have to serve as mediators
(Kazemzadeh 2009, 102).
The need for third-party assistance became vital not only in terms of the
peace deal with the Ottomans, but also in the context of the future
development of the Transcaucasian state and its foreign policy. This was
evident in Chkhenkeli’s response to requests to expanding the Federation to
include new members. The only request to join the federation came from
the Provisional Mountain Government, a request first made in February and
now backed by the Ottomans, on 30 April, which Chkhenkeli initially
welcomed as a desire to unite on a federative basis (Mamoulia et al. 2015,
224). In fact, in a letter sent to Chkhenkeli on 8 May, the head of Mountain
Government, Haidar Bamatte, informed him that his people had decided to
declare independence (kavkaziis mtiel khalta 1918, 1–2). Chkhenkeli
responded from Batumi five days later, stating that it fell within “the shared
political and economic interests of Transcaucasia and the North Caucasus”
to establish “a single confederated whole” (Mamoulia et al. 2015, 235).
However, Nikoladze, as an adviser to Chkhenkeli’s delegation, made it clear
to him that “We should not unite without outside help, and no Georgian can
place the responsibility for his Motherland on unification with the North
Caucasus without the certainty of a guarantee that no one will attack us”
(Mamoulia et al. 2015, 224). This time, Chkhenkeli responded to Bamatte
that his request would be discussed at the conference.
Thus, outside assistance, from the Georgian perspective, could come
only from Germany. On 18 May, with the Batumi talks stalling, the German
General agreed to serve as mediator. But in a move that undermined
Transcaucasian unity, the Azerbaijani members rejected this. In fact, a
meeting was held between the three nationalities of the Transcaucasian
delegation three days later, at which Azerbaijanis questioned the viability of
the federation, suggesting instead that a “dual state” between the Georgians
and Azerbaijanis should be formed. It would be the Georgian side, however,
that would decide a day later while meeting separately in Batumi and in
coordination with the Georgian National Council – without informing either
their Armenian or Azerbaijani counterparts – to dissolve the federation and
declare Georgia’s independence, entrusting Georgia to German protection
(Kazemzadeh 2009, 115). On 26 May, the same day that the Ottomans
delivered another ultimatum to the Transcaucasian state demanding further
territories and vowing to continue their fight against Armenian forces,
Zhordania read out Georgia’s Declaration of Independence in Tiflis
(Kazemzadeh 2009, 116–117). Meanwhile, Chkhenkeli sent a letter from
Batumi to General de Lossow informing him of the Georgian government’s
decision to proclaim independence while seeking German support and
protection from the latest Ottoman offensive (sakarvelos mtavrobis 1918,
12).

Conclusion: From a Federation to a

Confederation?
Despite the fact that the Georgian leaders had declared the independence of
the first Georgian nation-state in modern times – driven more by
geopolitical exigencies than by any pre-conceived conceptual clarity – they
did not give up on the idea of federation in the Transcaucasus. In fact, they
repeatedly called for of a Transcaucasian Confederation (amierkavkaziis
konpederatsia). In one such instance, in a speech before the declaration of
Georgia’s independence on 26 May 1918, Zhordania began by stating that
this day was both “historical and tragical”, because one state, TDFR, had
perished in order for a new one, Georgia, to be born from its ashes. If the
TDFR “was to ever be resurrected, you must rest assured that between them
(the TDFR and Georgia) there will always be common interests (applause)
[sic]” (2018 [1918]: 20), and such a resurrected version would most likely
take the form of a “Caucasian Confederative Union” (2018 [1918]: 21).
Moving on to reading the act of independence, he again recalled how the
interests of the TDFR and of Georgia had been intertwined, and how
Transcaucasia had been an exercise in freedom, self-rule and responsibility
in unity for the three nationalities in which Georgia had played a leading
role. As he put it, “left to their own devices, Georgia, and with her all of
Transcaucasia, took into their hands the direction of their own affairs,
creating the necessary institutions for this purpose”. This unique exercise in
self-rule and political unity met with an undesired and unexpected collapse
because of external pressures; “under pressure from exterior forces [the
Ottomans]”, he added, “the links which united the Transcaucasian
nationalities were broken, and the political unity of Transcaucasia were thus
dissolved”, forcing Georgia to declare its independence (2018 [1918]: 22–
23).
Thus, Zhordania and the members of his government never gave up the
hope of re-establishing a possible Transcaucasian political entity. This point
became especially important in November 1918, when Germany, the
guarantor of Georgian’s independence, conceded defeat in the First World
War. As a Georgian delegation was preparing itself to participate at the
Paris Peace Conference that opened in January 1919, the Georgian
government drafted a set of recommendations for it. One of these was to
seek support “for a future Transcaucasian Confederation, provided that the
Great Powers recognize first the independence of the individual republics”
(Claims 1919). Yet these hopes became increasingly difficult to sustain, for
as Zhordania explained in mid-1920, “to build a real and strong federal state
again, there is one indispensable condition: Armenia and Azerbaijan must
take on a Transcaucasian orientation. This will only be possible when their
particular antagonism will end” (in Mkhoyan 2017, 911).
Clearly, from the legalization of political participation in Imperial Russia
in 1905 to the declaration of the independent TDFR in 1918, Georgian
political leaders, and especially the Social-Democrats, conceived of the
needs of the growing and ethnically diverse Georgian nation in terms
beyond those of historical borders, but rather as part of an overlapping
regional federative framework within a revolutionized imperial space. That
federative framework was to evolve from the three nationalities, potentially
including as well the nationalities of the northern Caucasus, and it would
encompass cultural and economic issues as well as political and security-
related ones. Because of this conception, together with the consequences of
the geopolitical earthquake set off by the First World War in the Caucasus,
the emergence, initially, of the Commissariat, and then of the Seim, and
finally of the independent TDFR, guaranteed the Georgians a leading
political role and thrust upon them the responsibility for the common
political and security interests that emerged among the three nationalities.
Ultimately, even when their interests diverged as separate republics, for the
Georgians, and particularly for the Social-Democrats who formed the first
government of the Georgian Democratic Republic, the idea of a federative
arrangement or of a looser confederation for the region remained appealing.

Note
1. Ronald Grigor Suny saw the Mensheviks as “reluctant” towards independence, soon
realizing that “the embryonic republic was doomed” (1994, 191–192). Eric Lee asserted
that the TDFR was not a Menshevik initiative, but rather an Azerbaijani one (2017, 40).
Meanwhile, Ghia Nodia and Alvaro Pinto Scholtbach view the TDFR as a first instance of
an agreement among Georgian parties to establish a democratic republic independent of
Bolshevik Russia (2006, 92). Merab Vachnadze and Vakhtang Guruli read it as an
unsustainable project because of the external military threats from both the Ottoman and
the Soviet armies and from internal discord. Hence, in their view, the Georgian politicians
took the right decision when they declared Georgia’s independence and oriented it towards
Germany in order to preserve national territorial integrity (2000, 108–109). As for
Bakhadze and Mamoulia, they see the TDFR as one of the main attempts at cooperation
between Georgia and North Caucasus in the 1917–1921 period (N. D., 5).

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

ORCID
Adrian Brisku http://orcid.org/0000-0002-5691-1220

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Reynolds, Michael A. 2011. Shattering Empires: The Clash and Collapse of the Ottoman and
Russian Empires 1908-1918. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
“sakartvelos mtavrobis depeshebi akaki chkhenkelisadmi batumshi sakartvelos
damoukideblobis shesakheb.” 1918, 26 May. sakartvelos sakhelmtsipo saistorio arkivi,
Tbilisi, Fond 1831, o. 2, d. 48, 12.
Suny, Ronald G. 1994. The Making of the Georgian Nation. 2nd Edition. Bloomington and
Indianapolis: Indiana University Press.
Vachnadze, Merab, and Vakhtang Guruli. 2000. sakartvelos istoria (XIX-XX saukuneebi).
Tbilisi: Ivane Javakhishvili Tbilisi State University.
Zhordania, Noe. 1919. Za dva goda: doklady i rechy. Tiflis: Tipografia gruzinskago
pravitel’stva.
Zhordania, Noe. 1922. “ekonomiuri tsarmateba da erovnoba.” In erovnuli kitkhva, 1–55.
Tbilisi: N. P.
Zhordania, Noe. 1922. “kartveli khalkhi da natsionalizmi.” In erovnuli kitkhva, 55–80. Tbilisi:
N. P.
Zhordania, Noe. 2018 [1918]. sakartvelos sakhelmtsipos khelmdzghvanelebi: Noe Zhordania,
opitsialuri dokumentebi, sitkvebi da gamosvlebi, tomi XIV. Tbilisi: National Library of the
Georgian Parliament.
Pragmatism and expediency: Ottoman
calculations and the establishment of the
Transcaucasian Democratic Federative
Republic
Stefano Taglia

ABSTRACT
This article interrogates Ottoman sources from the period leading up to and
following the creation, in 1918, of the Transcaucasian Democratic Federative
Republic (TDFR) to shed light on the reasons behind Istanbul’s initial backing for
this Caucasian state. Despite the suggestion that Ottoman Unionist policies were
informed by pan-Turkist ideals, it emerges that Istanbul considered, first and
foremost, the geopolitical interests of the Empire. Whether this entailed using
foreign Muslims to control a strategic area or favouring the creation of a political
entity that was not considered fully feasible, Ottoman self-interest was paramount.
Controlling the Caucasus, limiting German, British and Russian influence, and re-
gaining lost territory were the only considerations that guided Ottoman policies.
This explains Ottoman ambivalence in supporting the emergence of the TDFR, as
well as Ottoman willingness to pursue further territorial claims which undermined
the very existence of the TDFR itself. The conclusions reached in this article have
significance for the larger understanding of Ottoman policy in the late nineteenth
and early twentieth century, as too often pan-Turkism and pan-Islamism are used
to explain the policies of Istanbul, while the Ottoman political elite was more
usually guided by pragmatic considerations.

Introduction
This article analyses the reasons motivating the Ottomans to support the
creation of the Transcaucasian Democratic Federative Republic (TDFR) in
1918. From the sources analysed, it emerges that the Ottoman State’s take
on policies in the Caucasus was mostly informed by practical reasoning and
pragmatic considerations rather than by thoughts of religious fraternity
related to the welfare of the Azeris and other Muslims of both the North and
South Caucasus. The TDFR represented a federative attempt by Armenia,
Azerbaijan and Georgia to stave off the imperialist ambitions of almost all
of the powers that fought in the First World War and to autonomously
devise a future that would avoid strife, population displacement, and
protracted armed conflict, in the region. Although short lived – proclaimed
on 22 April 1918 and dissolved on 28 May of the same year – the
Federation represented an alternative to the consolidation of imperialist
geopolitical aspirations in an area that was not only contested during the
war years, but that had been the theatre of prolonged fighting for centuries
and was disputed by the very ethnicities that inhabited it.
It was precisely with these considerations in mind that the Ottomans first
welcomed the creation of the Federation, yet they were equally quick in
dismissing its importance and withdrawing their support once their interests
either changed or were held not to be best served by the establishment and
consolidation of such a federation. In analysing Ottoman policies towards
the TDFR, one must also consider how quickly the circumstances were
evolving during the crucial years of the war and the months immediately
following it, and how this affected the development of Ottoman policy
making. The primary Ottoman decision makers for Caucasian affairs,
during this period, were Halil Bey, Minister of Justice and Head of the
Ottoman Delegation to Transcaucasian Affairs, Vehib Pasha, Commander in
Chief of the Ottoman army, Rauf Bey, Senior Chief of War, Talat Pasha,
Grand Vizier, and Enver Pasha, the Minister of War.

Pan-Islamism and pan-Turkism versus

pragmatism
The main problem in giving a fair assessment of the topic of Ottoman
involvement in the Caucasus is that a considerable amount of Ottoman
historiography views events through the prism of the overarching
dominance of the ideologies of pan-Islamism and pan-Turkism, which have
been understood to guide the policies of Istanbul and to represent the
sentiment of Muslims residing beyond the Ottoman domains (Akçam 2006;
Demirağ 1995; Landau 1995; Roy 2000; Zürcher 2004). However, a view
of Ottoman backing for the creation of the Federation through the lens of
these ideologies risks overlooking the real Ottoman motivations and fails to
exhaustively assess the events surrounding Ottoman involvement in the
creation of the TFDR. More broadly, it ignores the nuances of the general
history of ideas and political events in the Ottoman domains from the
beginning of the reform period, in 1839, to the creation of the Republic, in
1923.
It is undeniable that the rights and fate of the Muslim peoples of the
North and South Caucasus were an important consideration in Ottoman
policy-making and, beyond governmental concern for coreligionists,
conceptions of image-management had to include the fact that in the eyes of
many the Sultan, as Caliph, had a duty to uphold the rights of fellow
Muslims around the world. After having analysed both the secondary
literature and the large quantity of primary source materials held at the
Ottoman Archives, however, a different picture emerges. The political elite
in Istanbul was mostly interested in the fate of the North and South
Caucasus as highly strategic areas. The Empire’s statesmen were equally
concerned about the future of the Armenian population which, in their eyes,
had been a problem and a constant source of apprehension for some time
and a possible challenge, if not a threat, for the near future. Moreover, the
initial Ottoman backing for and recognition of the TDFR was first and
foremost an attempt to secure the creation of a sovereign state which could
limit the expansion of Germany and England; at the same time, it would
serve as a buffer against possible future Russian resurgence.
Among the reasons specific to the Federation itself, the Ottoman policy
makers thought that grouping Georgians and Azeris together with the
Armenians would possibly restrain the latter’s attempts at expanding an
Armenian national project into Ottoman-controlled areas, and the multi-
ethnic decision-making structure in the Transcaucasian Seim would
politically side-line the Armenians, especially considering the frictions
evident between the Georgians and Armenians in this period. At the same
time, the Muslim brotherhood card could be played in order to manipulate
the Azeri component in the emerging state leadership and to influence, even
if only up to a point, the internal decision-making process. Finally, even
though it was not explicitly stated in the official documents, it is possible
that Ottoman backing for the establishment of the TDFR – as with that for
the creation of the Union of the Mountaineers of North Caucasus and
Dagestan – could have been seen as a form of revenge against Russia for
previous Ottoman territorial losses. A further aspect that statesmen in
Istanbul might have considered was that Ottoman involvement in what had
been Russian territory, and the possibility of extending Istanbul’s influence
on the broader Muslim population of the area, could have been viewed in
the Ottoman capital as retribution for Russian involvement in Ottoman
internal affairs, as protector of Ottoman Orthodox subjects, and for the
restrictions imposed upon them under the Treaty of Küçük Kaynarca, in
July 1774.

The Elviye-i Selase: Ardahan, Batum and Kars

All of these considerations shared one crucial variable: the fate of the
Elviye-i Selase, the three livas (districts) of Ardahan, Batum and Kars.
While they were prepared to give up on all of the rest of the Caucasus, it
emerges clearly that the Ottomans’ major goal was to reacquire that which
they thought to be theirs. As Halil Bey stated while speaking to the
Ottoman Chamber of Deputies, the restoration of the üç sancağımız (“our
three sancaks”) in the aftermath of the Brest-Litovsk Treaty was the one
issue on which Istanbul would not negotiate (Reynolds 2009, 154). The
Elviye-i Selase, recovered by the Ottomans not through negotiations but
rather conquered through brutal and costly warfare against a host of
opponents, were to become a crucial variable in all Ottoman dealings over
Transcaucasia.
Over a span of three years, the Russian Army and the Georgian and
Armenian militias tried to repulse the Ottoman advance on the three livas.
Save for a fairly serious setback in Ardahan in 19151 on the whole the
Ottoman Army managed to push through, advancing from the çoruh Valley,
and to gradually inflict substantial enemy casualties and equipment losses,
especially on the part of the Russians.2 The existence of Georgian and
Armenian militias in particular complicated the relationships among the
future components of the TDFR and between the latter and the Ottoman
Empire. There were significant reverberations in the European press,3
which accused the Ottomans of having perpetrated massacres. These
reports, incidentally, clash with the internal communications sent from the
3rd Army Command to Istanbul, which stated that “all Rums and
Armenians, without distinction”, were being treated well.4
Given the fact that both sides had a vested interest in depicting a
different picture, it is hard to state, with certainty, the extent of the
massacres and the real character of the skirmishes. The nature of the clashes
with the Armenian and Georgian militias is also fairly obscure, as while the
same previous source speaks of conflict with both of them, other sources
claimed that the Armenians and the Georgians were fighting against each
other, particularly in the areas of Roli and Ahıska.5 The Danish and Swiss
press accused the Ottomans of putting civilian populations at risk of future
massacres and claimed that there existed a pan-Turkist and pan-Turanian
plot for a broad conquest of the Caucasus and Black Sea region.6 In the end,
Ardahan, Batum and Kars were formally returned to the Ottomans
following the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk on 3 March 1918. The official
recognition of the return of the three provinces was described in the pages
of the newspaper Vakit (Time) not as a “conquest, but as the repair of an old
injustice” (Reynolds 2009, 157), and from then on, the return of the three
livas and the terms of the Brest-Litovsk Treaty which sanctioned it became
the raison d’être for all Ottoman negotiators to follow.

The broader geopolitical picture

After the creation of the Transcaucasian Commissariat, the precursor to the
Federation which did not initially officially recognise the outcome of the
Brest-Litovsk Treaty, its delegation met with its Ottoman counterpart in
Trabzon on 14 March 1918. As the Ottoman position on the post-war
acquisitions was non-negotiable, the talks were deadlocked, and the
Transcaucasian delegation left for Tiflis. A new conference was organised
in Batum in early May 1918, as will be discussed at length below. From the
start of that year, Ottoman policies were openly oriented towards
recognising the establishment of the TDFR, with the assumption that any
claims on the three livas would be excluded, and also to side-line as much
as possible the Armenian component both within the Federation and in the
Caucasus region as a whole (Reynolds 2011, 201). The positive reception of
the prospect for a federation was, as hinted earlier, the outcome of a series
of strategic considerations.
 Although an Ottoman ally during the war, Germany was tirelessly
working to restrain Istanbul’s influence in the area while simultaneously
striving to increase its own, about which the Ottomans were well aware.
Following discussions between Georgian representatives and the German
government in 1917, the Chairman of the Georgian Independence
Committee, Prince Giorgi Machabeli, sent a letter to Baron von Wesendonk,
the contents of which became known to the Ottoman leadership. In this
letter, Machabeli officially thanked the German government for the support
given to the Georgian people during the preceding three years and
acknowledged German readiness to recognise Georgian independence,
should this be proclaimed, and to intercede on its behalf in peace
negotiations.7 On top of this, in March 1918, following the German-Finnish
alliance of early that year, İbrahim Hakkı Paşa, then Ottoman Ambassador
to Germany, wrote to Halil Bey to express his worry at Germany’s growing
geopolitical influence. According to this letter, Germany had communicated
to Finland its continued support, and had compelled the Nordic country to
promise that it would not cede any part of its territory without the prior
consent of Germany. Thus, Hakkı Paşa declared that Finland may become a
protectorate of Germany which, given the recent Russian losses on the
Baltic coast largely reducing Russia’s outlet to the sea to just the window of
Petrograd, would make Germany the de facto master of the Baltic Sea.8
Considering that German influence was growing in the Caucasus and
elsewhere, it comes as no surprise that the Ottoman government thought it
prudent to support the creation of the TDFR in order to hinder further
German gains.
The creation of the Federation and the temporary pacification of the
region would also allow the Istanbul government to concentrate its political
and diplomatic efforts on other disputed and strategic areas at a crucial time
when borders were in flux and were being decided on a day-by-day basis.
The events then taking place in the consolidating Ukrainian state were
undoubtedly a sensitive issue for the policy-makers in Istanbul, as from
very early on since independence, the government in Kiev had begun
voicing claims over Crimea. Through a note sent to Istanbul in July 1918 by
the Vice-Presidents of the Military Council of the Muslims of Russia, we
know that the Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Doroshenko officially
addressed the German Ambassador, von Mumm, writing that
 … the Ukrainian State considers the annexation of the Crimean Peninsula within the borders of
the Ukrainian state to be necessary. Crimea is tightly linked with the life of the Ukrainian
population from an economic, political and ethnographic point of view.9

As much as this may have been of concern to the Muslims of Russia, it

must have posed a threat to the Ottoman Empire as well. The settling of the
Transcaucasian issues would naturally allow the Empire a sense of security,
at least on one front.

Negotiating in Trabzon
All of these considerations aside, Ottoman support for the creation of the
TDFR was, as mentioned earlier, centred around territorial concerns,
namely the future of Ardahan, Batum and Kars. Even before the conference
at Batum convened, the support for the TDFR and the future of the
territories had been discussed in parallel. In the aftermath of the signing of
the Brest-Litovsk Treaty, on 6 March, the Senior Chief of War Colonel Rauf
Bey had been appointed, together with the Director of the Council Office
Nusret Bey and Chief of Military Police of the 3rd Army Rıza Bey, to a
Committee “created to be informed about the general circumstances and
administration of the constituent Caucasian government”.10 Rauf Bey
addressed a letter to the Russian delegation in which he remarked that the
Ottoman government was ready to negotiate with the representative of the
emergent Republic of the Transcaucasus in order to reach a treaty of
friendship, even though the exact shape of the new state was not yet clear.
Simultaneously, the Colonel stressed the fact that this recognition could
only take place if all claims on the three livas were dropped. In the view of
the Ottoman government, Rauf Bey underlined, the Empire had been given
the right to intervene in the establishment of the new order of things in the
region, and it was Istanbul’s prerogative to encourage the establishment of
economic relations between the territories of the Elviye-i Selase and the
emergent Transcaucasian state.11 During the negotiations in Trabzon, the
issue of the link between the recognition of the Transcaucasian State and
the fate of the three livas came up yet again, at the same time as the
Ottoman Army was pushing for more territorial gains in order to reach an
agreement from a position of strength.
 In the meantime, at Trabzon the Ottoman Delegation exploited what they
regarded as the amateurish diplomatic skills of their Transcaucasian
counterparts (Reynolds 2011, 199). In an exchange of notes between the
Transcaucasian and Ottoman delegations, it emerged that the government in
Istanbul was ready to establish neighbourly relations with the emerging
Republic, though when asked specifically about the shape of its
administrative structure, the Transcaucasian delegates replied that the
territory of the Republic included Baku, Ganja (Gence-Elizavetpol),
Yerevan, Tiflis, Kutaisi, the regions of Batum and Kars and the areas of
Sokhumi and Zaqatala.12 According to the same folio of sources, a week
later the Ottoman Delegation replied in writing that since the
Transcaucasian Republic had not been a recognised political entity at the
time of the signing of the Brest-Litovsk Treaty, it could not claim exclusion
from the stipulations of this Treaty over Ardahan, Batum and Kars, or have
grounds to protest their status. In conclusion, the Ottoman Delegation
reiterated what had been stated prior to the start of the Trabzon conference,
that negotiations over official recognition of the Transcaucasian Republic
could not take place unless the emergent state officially renounced any
possible claim on the Elviye-i Selase. At the same time, the correspondence
reminded all of the involved parties that according to the treaty signed with
Russia, the Ottoman Empire had the right to intervene in the livas, and that
Russia had the obligation to withdraw from the area and completely
disengage; in parallel, Istanbul stated its willingness to do everything in its
power to facilitate the economic relationships between the parties.
The Transcaucasian Delegation, whose head, Akaki Chkhenkeli – the
Transcaucasian Foreign Minister – was urging his government to accept the
terms of Brest-Litovsk in order to avoid war,13 was given 48 h to respond.14
The Delegation agreed to some concessions regarding the three livas, but
not to their outright recognition as Ottoman possessions. As the Ottoman
Delegation balked and pressed for time, and without the agreement of the
Transcaucasian Seim, Chkhenkeli communicated to the Ottoman
representatives on 6 April that his Delegation accepted the Treaty of Brest-
Litovsk, including its provisions about Ardahan, Batum and Kars, and was
ready to continue the negotiations on the basis of that treaty.15 This did not
settle the issue, however, as the Transcaucasian side pleaded for the
Ottomans to allow other countries to participate in the talks, which Rauf
curtly dismissed. The result was that after a reiteration of the
Transcaucasian acceptance of the terms of Brest-Litovsk on 10 April, the
negotiations were nevertheless suspended, and the Transcaucasian
Delegation walked out upon being recalled by its government.16 On 12
April, with the Ottoman Army pushing towards Batum, the Transcaucasians
declared war.
All of this demonstrates that although the Ottomans initially considered
the creation of a state in the Caucasus to be a positive step from a
geopolitical point of view, by March 1918 they seem to have changed their
minds and were in reality pressing for the creation of a weak
Transcaucasian state in order to secure recognition of the gains sanctioned
in Brest-Litovsk, or even to acquire more territory. Ottoman military
supremacy vis-à-vis the Transcaucasian forces became clear almost
immediately: the capability of Transcaucasia’s fighters failed to match the
rhetoric of its parliamentarians, and in a matter of hours the Ottoman army
seized Batum. As a Georgian is reported to have observed, “On the same
day that Noe Zhordania declared, ‘We are officially entering the military
arena’, the Turks perfectly officially entered Batumi’” (Reynolds 2011,
204). Thus, on 19 April, less than a week following the resumption of
hostilities, the Ottomans entered the city as victors. By the end of that
month the Transcaucasians’ hopes of establishing the new state from a
position of strength had significantly diminished.
Compelled to re-enter into negotiations with the Ottomans before things
became even worse, on the 22 April, following Vehib Paşha’s assertion to
Chkhenkeli that the Ottoman advance could be halted only by a resumption
of talks,17 the TDFR was proclaimed. This was yet another Ottoman
diplomatic victory, as the Istanbul delegates had, in various instances,
claimed that they would “talk serious business” only once a state had been
established and its territorial boundaries somehow sanctioned. Even more to
Ottoman satisfaction, the Republic was born weak, with its Muslim
component leaning towards the Ottomans, the Georgians ambivalent and
slowly falling into the German sphere of influence, and most of the (pro-
British) Armenians set against it (Mikaberidze 2015, 258; Reynolds 2011,
206). As the Istanbul government recognised the new state, Ottoman troops
took Kars by 25 April. Now the stage was set for a new peace conference,
one in which the Ottomans had much greater bargaining leverage.
The end of it all: the Batum conference
The fact that the Ottomans regarded the creation of a Transcaucasian state
as a secondary concern and the new Federation as a minor partner that
could be pushed around emerged even more clearly during the Batum
Conference of 11 May. Delegates from the Union of Indigenous People of
the North Caucasus and Dagestan also attended, represented by Haydar
Bamat Bey (Haidar Bamatte) and Zober Bey Temirkhanoff (Zubair
Termirkhanov), in order to gain official recognition of independence and
thus full access to the negotiations. Halil Bey was explicit at the conference,
exemplifying Istanbul’s view of their interests and their stance towards the
TDFR, and that the events following the failure of Trabzon were well
known: blood had been shed between the Ottoman and Transcaucasian
forces, and the relations between the two entities had consequently changed
drastically. As a result, the clauses of the Brest-Litovsk Treaty would no
longer be considered the sole basis for negotiations.18
While the Transcaucasian Delegation had hoped to resume the talks
where they had left off in Trabzon, the Ottomans extended their territorial
claims even further, demanding “substantial privileges on trade and
navigation, frontier traffic, full Ottoman transit rights through
Transcaucasia, and a sharp reduction in the armed forces of the
Transcaucasian government in Tiflis” (Gökay 1998, 37). The Istanbul
government now sought to secure “the Kars-Alexandropol-Jaffa railway,
the Akhaltsikh and Akhalkalaki districts of the Tiflis province, the city of
Alexandropol and most of the district of that name, and part of the
Echmiadzin district” (Reynolds 2009, 160). The new acquisitions would put
the Ottomans into a very favourable position from which to intervene into
northern Iran and, in sum, place the Ottoman Empire strategically in the
Caucasus with a view to possibly expanding their control further. Whether
this had been the Ottoman goal all along, or if it rather evolved as events
unfolded, it is clear that in Istanbul’s eyes the TDFR was a weak pawn, and
Ottoman backing for its establishment was highly dependent on the
prospect of gains for Istanbul. It all began with the demand for the
“repossession” of the Elviye-i Selase, at Brest-Litovsk, then developed
further with the formalisation of these gains while dealing with the brand-
new political entity in Trabzon, and it could have resulted in much more at
the Batum Conference. In the end, the establishment of the Transcaucasian
state was a means to an end for Istanbul, regardless of whether the
populations passively involved were Christians or Muslims whom the
Ottomans could exploit at the right juncture, and at a time when Russia was
temporarily at its weakest.
By this point the Georgians had calculated that the newly formed
Federation could not withstand Ottoman might on its own, and they
therefore approached the Germans to request protection. German assurances
were duly forthcoming, and the Georgian Council found itself with the
necessary backing to declare Georgian independence on 26 May. The
Transcaucasian Federation ceased to be; two days later Armenia and
Azerbaijan declared the establishment of two more independent republics,
with Yerevan and Ganja (Gence) as their respective capitals. On 4 June
1918 the three independent republics signed separate agreements with the
Ottoman government in Batum. In the relations leading up to Ottoman
recognition of the Georgian Republic and the signing of a treaty of peace
and friendship between the two, Halil Bey declared with a healthy dose of
sarcasm and irony that:
On the day of my arrival in Batum, I declared to the people gathered there to greet me that I
left Constantinople with the firm resolve to bring peace to the Caucasus, … I am happy to note
that my wishes have been realised. … we want to remain on friendly terms with the Republic
of Georgia and we wish to see these borders consolidated and the development of an
increasingly happy and independent Georgia.19

The peace treaty was sanctioned on 5 June 1918. At this juncture, what had
seemed a catastrophe for the Ottomans on the broader background of the
war actually now looked rather positive: not only had they recovered the
borders of 1914, but these had been pushed back to what they had been
prior to the settlement of the 1877–1878 Russo-Turkish War. These would
turn out to be, however, only temporary gains, which evaporated when the
Ottoman Army conceded defeat in the Armistice of Mudros, on 30 October
1918.

Ottoman reasoning and calculations

In considering all of the above, it emerges quite clearly that the creation of
the TDFR, by establishing a rather fragile political entity that served a
number of overlapping purposes, offered the Ottoman Empire a great
opportunity. The first of these involved the Ottomans’ archenemy in the
region and the power that, since the Treaty of Küçük Kaynarca, had
consistently harassed the Ottomans and imparted severe headaches. From
1774, Russia claimed the right to meddle in Ottoman affairs as the protector
of the Orthodox populations of Ottoman domains; at the same time parts of
the Ottoman territory had either become independent or had fallen under the
control of the Tsar, as had happened with Crimea in 1783. More territorial
losses came after the Ottoman’s disastrous defeat in the 1877–1878 Russo-
Turkish War. As Michael Reynolds has aptly put it,
the Ottomans’ goal was not unification with their ethnic or religious brethren. Rather, their
overriding objective was more straightforward and far less romantic: to weaken Russian power
by splitting apart the Russian Empire and to put a buffer between their borders and Russia’s.
(Reynolds 2009, 139)

It is through this prism that, for example, one must view Ottoman
involvement in Ukrainian affairs. Prior to the Great War, Istanbul had been
in close contact with the Union for the Liberation of Ukraine. Similarly,
both Talat Pasha and some of the Ottoman journals, such as Tanin (“The
Bell”), had voiced euphoric acceptance of Ukrainian independence before
Ukrainian claims on Crimea arose. According to Talat Pasha, the creation of
an independent Ukrainian state would somehow help in setting up a Muslim
political entity in the Caucasus (Kurat 1990, 382). The creation of the
Transcaucasian Federation was to be exploited as just such an opportunity,
as it was unlikely to emerge again: as mentioned earlier, Russian weakness
was seen as temporary, and the Ottoman government had to act fast while
this window of opportunity was still open. It would create a buffer zone
between the Ottoman domains and Russia, and this would also be useful in
facing the other powers: British and German statesmen both aspired to
expand their influence in the Caucasus, primarily in order to control the oil
fields at Baku and the surrounding areas. The Federation could prevent this
from happening and would limit, as in the case of the Germans, the
expansion of influence of an antagonistic power. In other considerations,
the next Ottoman concern was how to manage or, even better, limit the
capabilities of the Armenian population. Incorporating them within a larger
entity would decrease the risk of future issues with a population that the
Ottomans viewed as problematic and which had engaged in bitter fighting
with Muslims, both in the Caucasus and in the Ottoman Empire. Talat
Pasha himself is reported to have said:
I am absolutely not in favour of the Armenians establishing a government. A small Armenian
autonomous [government] will five years later become a five-million-strong Armenian state, it
will dominate the Caucasus, and it will become the “Bulgaria of the East”. All the Armenians
in Iran and America will gather there and … they will get every form of aid from the English
and the French, and in the future they will move against us with the Christian Georgians … it
is necessary that Armenia be formed in an extremely weak and unviable form. (cited in
Reynolds 2009, 165)

Enver Pasha shared Talat’s apprehension regarding the formation of an

Armenian state. In a letter to Military Commander Vehib Pasha, he stated
that
[i]f today in the Caucasus a small Armenia possessing a population of five to six hundred
thousand and sufficient territory is formed, in the future this government, together with the
Armenians that will come mainly from America and from elsewhere, will have a population of
millions. (Reynolds 2009, 165)

Apart from debates on the future capabilities of an Armenian state, Ottoman

statesmen were also alarmed at the possibility that a potential Armenian
state could be used in the future by the British as a base from which to drive
the Ottoman population out of eastern Anatolia.
Yet another pragmatic consideration for upholding the right of the three
peoples to create a federation had to do with the situation of the Muslim
population of the area. Incorporating Georgian and Azeri Muslims into a
multi-religious political entity would contain them within a state, and at the
same time it could prevent the possibility of the creation of a Muslim
sovereign state. The latter, depending on its political nature, might have
served as an example and inspiration for Ottoman Muslims who opposed
the existing Ottoman regime. Simultaneously, the Muslim population of the
Federation could have been used, at a moment of need, as leverage for
manipulating the Federation’s own policies, or as an internal factor for
creating disturbances.
A pressing problem that had been a thorn in the side for Ottoman
statesmen since the late eighteenth century was that of mass influxes of
refugees. From the Russian conquest of Crimea in 1783 until 1908, for
example, “an estimated 5 million Muslims arrived in the Ottoman Empire
from Russia and the Balkans” (Meyer 2014, 9). More precisely, during the
years 1856–1864, within a massive wave of immigration from the Caucasus
to the Ottoman Empire, between 600,000 and 700,000 Muslim Caucasians
immigrated to Ottoman domains (Fisher 1987, 361–362). After the 1880s,
this wave subsided but certainly did not end (Meyer 2007, 20). Following
the 1877–1878 war, an estimated 515,000 Muslim Turks left the Balkans
for the Empire, with only 187,000 Bulgarians making the journey in the
opposite direction (McCarthy 2010). We also know that “[o]n February
1899, the Ottoman Commission for Refugees [Muhacirin-i İslamiye
Komisyon-i Alisi, created in 1860 – S.T.] reported that a group of Kazakhs
from the Kuban region, numbering some twenty thousand, had received the
Tsar’s permission to immigrate to Ottoman soil” (Deringil 1994, 411).
Lastly, during the Balkan Wars of 1912–1913, a reported 440,000 Muslims
migrated from Thrace and Macedonia as a consequence of the fighting and
the concomitant ethnic displacement (İçduygu and Sert 2015, 88).
These waves presented a series of problems for the Ottoman state.
Accommodating the new arrivals came at a significant economic cost at a
time when Ottoman finances were far from booming. But there were other
and possibly more serious consequences of this influx of refugees. Some, if
not many, of these would settle in the Empire, bringing with them possibly
seditious ideas and expecting to find a regime ready to listen to their
political demands and expectations, potentially posing a serious challenge
to the institutional status quo. This was particularly the case with Muslims
from Russia; “[h]aving developed a liberal and oppositional stance, the
‘Russian Turks’ were often at variance with the Ottomanist worldview of
Istanbul which was just as autocratic as that of St. Petersburg” (Deringil
1994, 412). For this reason, it seems that the “Ottoman authorities
considered non-Ottoman Muslims a very dangerous Fifth Column which
could be brought to bear against them by the colonial powers” (Deringil
1994, 414). Similarly, Russian Muslims moving to the Ottoman Empire, if
they retained Russian citizenship, could be claimed as Russian subjects by
St. Petersburg, which could then demand administrative authority over
them.
A final consideration regarding the risks presented by the influx of
immigrants had to do with the ongoing construction of a nationalist
discourse within Ottoman lands. This had been carried out by Sultan
Abdülhamid II as well as the Unionist regime that came to power after
1908, and more autocratically after the events of 1909 and the elections of
1912. Both regimes had spent considerable effort in devising a nationalist
discourse that was less ethnic, religious or linguistic and more civic and
territorial, yet with varying points of reference: the House of Osman for the
Sultan; rigid ideas of order and progress in the case of the Unionists. A
disproportionate influx of refugees could have, in the views, hampered the
creation of a homogenous sense of national identity based on the meaning
and values of (Turkish) Ottomanism rather than on Turkic ethnicity or pan-
Islam. Therefore, it was very pragmatically considered that the creation of a
sovereign state such as TDFR could help to prevent new waves of refugees
and thus avert the problems that had been previously experienced or that
were feared might result from further large influxes of refugees.
The considerations of the Ottoman leadership regarding supporting the
creation of the TDFR were thus largely pragmatic. From the sources
analysed, it does not appear that any thought was given to how the situation
in the Caucasus should be approached from the point of view of religion or
ethnicity. Muslims from the area were considered to be Russian Muslims,
and so they should remain. From an ethnic point of view, only a full
acceptance of the Ottomanist/Turkist project and the adoption citizenship
based on this could have turned these Muslims into something more than
just foreigners, as was demonstrated in the case of Ahmet Ağaoğlu who,
once in Istanbul, “made an immediate commitment to his new
surroundings, becoming an Ottoman subject and joining the CUP
[Committee of Union and Progress – S.T.]” (Meyer 2014, 153). Similarly,
Yusuf Akçura, a figure usually associated with pan-Turkism, once in the
Ottoman Empire found little concrete space for that ideology. After
founding the journal Turk Yurdu in 1911, he realised that pan-Turkist
sentiments were not at the heart of Istanbul policies and, in 1919, he
became one of the founders of a nationalist group and joined the numbers of
the Kemalist followers (Meyer 2014, 153).
Overall, pan-Turkism in the Ottoman Empire was, in this era, at best a
discourse about solidarity with other populations linked by ethnicity or,
mostly, a literary venture used at a time when nationalist discourses were
emerging, quickly developing, and adapting to the frequent and
unpredictable political changes. Ottoman statesmen, in fact, seem to have
passed from an Ottomanist affiliation to a Turkish discourse that did not
transcend borders, but rather erected them. From a religious point of view,
pan-Islamism, or more generally a sense of responsibility to assist and
foster the welfare of fellow Muslims, was not the sole guiding consideration
among Ottoman statesmen, both during the Hamidian and the Unionist eras.
Pan-Islamism was frequently used by Sultan Abdülhamid as a political
expedient, for the leverage it could have over Muslims abroad who were
chaffing under European colonial rule. Thus, such discourse could be used
to stir up revolts and to sow seeds of discord among, for example, the
Muslims of Russia and India in order to harass Ottomans’ major adversaries
on the world stage. Pan-Islamism, in the end, was frequently used for
external consumption rather than for internal dynamics.
During the Unionist time, a reliance on religious discourse aimed at
fomenting solidarity did take place, but, again, it seems that this was done
out of practical considerations, and anyway it was aimed predominantly at
Ottoman Muslims. After an early phase beginning in 1908 and thereafter, in
which the CUP put great emphasis on the idea of Ottomanism and Ottoman
brotherhood, things changed. Especially after the experience of the Balkan
War, the CUP started relying on religious discourse to galvanise its Muslim
conscripts, but it is debateable how far this was a religious policy or an
expedient to have the military perform better on the battlefield. Used
mainly in terms of affiliation to territorial Islam, and not as a pan-Islamic
discourse, religion was used to harness efficacy in fighting, since the
attempt to have soldiers identify with, and commit to ideas of “nation” and
“fatherland” had not produced the desired results. As Yiğit Akın has
observed, “the Balkan War experiences convinced the Unionists of the
power of religion as a motivating factor for the ordinary soldier” (Akın
2018, 34–36) as well as attempting to foster among the Muslim population
a sense of identification in the efforts of the Ottoman army. However, as
stated earlier, this was a practical expedient and a realisation that the
Empire’s population was becoming predominantly Muslim.
In the end, to be of Turkic descent or of Muslim faith did not necessarily
translate into receiving Ottoman assistance or a warm welcome. In order to
be embraced, one needed to be an Ottoman, and to embrace, of one’s own
accord, the Ottoman dream of a (Turkish) Ottoman nation, be this embodied
in Ottomanism or Ottoman “Muslim-ness”. All such considerations for
backing the Transcaucasian Republic, however, paled in comparison to the
crucial territorial variable that was at stake: the repossession of Ardahan,
Batum and Kars. The lack of official recognition of Ottoman authority over
these territories was a good enough reason to stall the negotiations at
Trabzon. Once these were resumed in Batum, the successful Ottoman
military advance in the area bolstered Istanbul’s appetite for more, making
the very existence of the Transaucasian Republic into an expendable factor,
subject to geopolitical considerations.

The federal option reconsidered

A final point remains to be discussed; and this has to do with whether the
Ottomans really believed in the feasibility of federalism in principle. I have
major doubts about this and, yet again, it seems that pragmatic calculations
were at the heart of Ottoman considerations. Experience had taught them
that federalism did not work in a multi-religious or multi-ethnic empire.
During the time when the Young Turk Movement was in opposition (1899–
1908), federalism had featured centrally in their plans for a future
administrative organisation of a reformed empire. However, aside from the
fact that the Sultan flatly rejected such an option, even within the CUP
many, if not most, viewed the federalist programme as unfeasible, and the
faction that supported this view, headed by Prince Sabahaddin, lost primacy
in the movement fairly early on.
Once the CUP acquired power, unity and towing the party line became
the guiding principles, with little or no space allowed for considerations of
religious or ethnic differentiation within a federal structure, so much so that
the Prince himself became locked in a bitter fight of words with the
Unionists in power in the pages of certain periodicals, especially Terakki
(Progress). I find it very difficult, therefore, to believe that in 1918 a
federation of the Armenians, Azeris and Georgians could have been thought
of as a viable option among the Ottoman statesmen; rather, until the
negotiations in Batum took place, it was at most a convenient and expedient
means to repossess the Elviye-i Selase, to create a buffer zone with Russia,
to keep the British and Germans in check, to avoid a mass influx of
refugees, and to forestall the creation of an independent Armenia that could
seriously obstruct the Ottomans in Anatolia. It seems most likely, therefore,
that the temporary Ottoman recognition of the Transcaucasian Federation
resulted from pragmatism rather than from other considerations linked to
common ethnicity or religion. In the end, Istanbul was oriented first and
foremost towards the wellbeing of the Ottomans themselves, not that of
Muslims or Turkic peoples; and in so doing, the future of fellow Muslims or
kindred ethnic Turks was nothing more than an expendable variable when
furthering the security and prosperity of the Ottoman nation.

Notes
1. HR.SYS.2109/06 19 January 1915.
2. HR.SYS.2108/10 28 November 1914; HR. şFR. 04.562/107 4 July 1916.
3. HR.SYS. 2885/47 16 May 1918; HR.SYS.2885/39 20 April 1918.
4. DH.İ.UM20.19/13.01 17 Receb 1336, 28 April 1918.
5. DH. şFR.607/6 20 Kanunievvel 1334, 20 December 1918.
6. HR.SYS.2886/10 21 July 1918.
7. HR.SYS.2371/4 4 May 1918.
8. HR.SYS.2371/4 4 May 1918.
9. HR.SYS.2371/5 4 May 1918.
10. BEO.4506.337896 23 Cemaziyelevvel 1336, 6 March 1918.
11. HR.SYS.2371/5 4 May 1918.
12. HR.SYS.2371/4 4 May 1918.
13. YB.(21).7/9 31 March 1918.
14. HR.SYS.2371/4 4 May 1918.
15. HR.SYS.2371/4 4 May 1918.
16. HR.SYS.2398/2 11 May 1918.
17. YB.(21)7/41 22 April 1918.
18. HR.SYS.2398/2 11 May 1918.
19. HR.SYS.2398/2 11 May 1918.

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

ORCHID
Stefano Taglia http://orcid.org/0000-0002-7228-2137

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The German perspective on the

Transcaucasian Federation and the
influence of the Committee for Georgia’s
Independence
Lasha Bakradze

ABSTRACT
At the onset of the First World War in August 1914, a group of Georgian émigrés
in Europe and the Ottoman Empire offered their cooperation to the German side.
Intent on weakening the Entente through supporting uprisings among those states’
colonized nations, the German government was interested in such cooperation. In
September 1914 the “Committee for Georgia’s Independence” was formed, which
up until 1918 maintained close relations with various state agencies of Germany
and its allies, as well as with the anti-Russian forces of the Caucasus and the
Russian Empire. The Committee for Georgia’s Independence aspired to present
 itself as a firm pillar for Germany among what the Germans referred to officially
as the “revolutionizing” of the Caucasus. What vision of the future for Georgia
and the Caucasus did this Georgian Committee harbour? To what extent did these
visions influence German policies? And did the Committee play any role in the
events that unfolded in the Caucasus in 1917–1918?

Introduction
On 12 May 1918, Akaki Chkhenkeli, serving as both prime minister and
foreign minister of the Transcaucasian Democratic Federative Republic
(TDFR, or Transcaucasian Federation) and having attended the first official
session of the Batumi peace conference with the Ottomans, sent a secret
letter to his party comrade, TDFR Interior Minister Noe Ramishvili,
describing the atmosphere at the conference. The situation was dire and the
demands of the Turks were unacceptable, as they were asking for more than
they had been given under the terms of the Brest-Litovsk Treaty. The
interests of the three Transcaucasian nations diverged to such a degree that
it was clear that the Transcaucasian Federation was no longer viable. “So
what is the way out?” Chkhenkeli asked, and he provided his own answer:
Translated from Georgian by Salome Asatiani.

Georgia will go its separate way. The National Council will assume the role of the government,
and it will not be difficult to declare Georgia’s independence. Once the Russian troops leave, it
will become an official body once again, returning to the situation of 1801. Also, last fall
official notes were exchanged between Germany, Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria and the Ottoman
Empire, stating that they are obliged to recognize Georgia’s independence. These notes were
not conditional; Georgia was not asked for anything in return. And this is not the old document
of 1915, in which a Georgian uprising was cited as the condition. I was informed by the
German delegation in secret that this is the case, and then a confirmation was received from
Berlin.1

The influential parties and institutions of the Transcaucasus did not

recognize the October (Bolshevik) 1917 Revolution, and on 15 November
they formed a government called the Transcaucasian Commissariat, led by
Evgeni Gegechkori. This government replaced а weak governing body, the
Special Transcaucasian Committee (or Ozakom), which had been formed by
the Russian Provisional Government. On 10 (23) February, the
Transcaucasian Commissariat convened the Transcaucasian Seim, or
legislature, which was comprised of the representatives of the
Transcaucasian political parties who had been elected to Russia’s
Constituent Assembly.2
Nikoloz (Karlo) Chkheidze was elected as the head of the Seim. Two
months later, on 22 April 1918, the Transcaucasian Seim annulled the
Commissariat and announced the formation of the TDFR. Akaki
Chkhenkeli became the head of its government and simultaneously its
foreign minister. As had been the case during the existence of the
Commissariat, Chkhenkeli served as the chief peace negotiator with the
Ottomans. With the creation of the Transcaucasian Federation, the de facto
separation of Transcaucasia from Russia was now officially proclaimed.
But how did it happen that already in 1917, the Central Powers
exchanged notes about their readiness to recognize Georgia’s
independence? And, moreover, how was it that in 1915 Germany, in a
similar document, pledged such recognition (Bakradze 1996a, 305–306)?
Who had prepared this positive predisposition of Germany and her allies
towards the idea of Georgian independence and Germany’s readiness to
take Georgia under its protection in May 1918?

The Georgian émigrés and Germany: early

encounters
At the onset of the First World War in August 1914, a group of Georgian
émigrés in Europe and the Ottoman Empire offered collaboration to the
German side. The German government, which desired to weaken its rivals
through fostering uprisings among the colonized nationalities of the Entente
states, was interested in such collaboration.
In September of 1914, the “Committee for Georgia’s Independence”
(Bakradze 2010) was established, which up until 1918 maintained close
relations with various official departments in the German government and
among its allies, as well with as anti-Russian forces in the Caucasus and
elsewhere in the Russian Empire. The Committee strived to represent itself
as the most reliable pillar for Germany to rely upon in dealing with those
whom the Germans officially referred to as the “revolutionaries” of the
Caucasus. How did the Georgian Committee envisage the future of Georgia
and the Caucasus? To what extent did these visions affect German policies,
and did they have any significant influence on the course of events in the
Caucasus in 1917 and 1918?
The German ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, Baron von
Wangenheim, who was assigned to direct Germany’s policies towards the
Caucasus, sent a letter as early as 14 September 1914 to the Georgian
émigrés, including those who had moved to Constantinople with help from
the German government. “Once the current war is over, if given an
opportunity to dictate its will to the warring sides,” he wrote, “the German
government assumes responsibility to … enable the materialization of the
wishes of the Georgian government, to the extent that it may be able”. The
Germans promised the Georgians that the border with the Ottoman Empire
that had been in place since 1878 would be maintained. This directly
contradicted the aims of Germany’s ally, the Ottoman Empire, which at that
point had not yet become involved in the war. The Germans were thus
guaranteeing that the district of Batumi, populated with Georgian Muslims,
as well as the northern part of the Kars district, were to be included in the
future territory of Georgia (Bihl 1975, 65; Zürrer 1978, 12–13). One year
later, on 3 (16) September 1915, the Ottoman Empire also recognized that
the district of Batumi belonged to Georgia (Georgia’s Relations 1996b,
276–282). Nevertheless, showing favouritism towards Georgians in the
Caucasus could not have been in the interests of the Sublime Porte. This,
naturally, would in time become evident.
On 17 September 1914, in a memorandum addressed to the German
Foreign Ministry, the Georgian Committee claimed that a rebellion in the
Caucasus was “assured”. Two-and-a-half million Georgians, including
300,000 Muslims and 50,000 Catholics, urgently needed weapons,
ammunition and funds. The “neutralization” of the Caucasus “will create a
wide domain for trade and economic relations for Europe, and particularly
for Germany, whose influence will spread unhindered throughout the
Caucasus and Asia Minor”.3 In September 1914, Giorgi Machabeli told von
Wesendonk, the rapporteur for the Near East, that that Georgians would be
able to deploy 50,000 rebels, and that for this they required 40,000–50,000
rifles, 5 million rounds of ammunition, 10 machine guns, 10,000 swords,
20,000 bayonets, 5,000 revolvers and 100,000 revolver bullets.4 If such
assistance would be provided, Machabeli and Tsereteli were certain that an
uprising could be staged that would impede the deployment of the Russian
Army to the front and make continued Russian mobilization in the
Caucasus impossible, thus freeing up Germany’s Eastern Front. What was
more, this rebellion would serve as an example for other oppressed peoples
in the Russian Empire.5
The Georgian plans coincided with German aims to impose a unilateral
peace settlement upon Russia, and also to reduce Russia to its ethnically
Russian territories through promoting insurrection among the non-Russian
populations of the Russian Empire. In early 1915, Machabeli claimed that it
would be possible to muster a 500,000-strong Caucasian army in just two
months (excluding the Armenians, he assumed).6 The Germans, for their
part, believed that such a large figure could explained by taking into
consideration the number of Muslims remaining in the Caucasus whom the
Russians excluded from conscription into their army.7 Needless to say, these
phantasmagorical plans never materialized.

Visions, plans and memorandums

Giorgi Machabeli and Mikheil (Mikhako) Tsereteli presented the German
Foreign Ministry with two memoranda. The first, dated 24 September 1915,
was headed “Your Excellency”, and the second, an appendix to the first,
was entitled “A Project to assure the neutrality of the Caucasus and to
determine its future political configuration”.8
The first letter briefly addressed the history of the Georgian people and
their struggle for independence. “The Georgian people are neither
conspirators nor traitors, nor are they a disorganized mass, but they are
rather a unified nation with a history that stretches over twenty-three
centuries. And further, despite suffering many misfortunes, they have not
ceased to exist”. In the same letter, Machabeli and Tsereteli asked Germany
for assistance in the fight for the independence of the Georgians and the
Caucasus, pointing out the positive results that Germany and its allies
would gain from such an uprising and then the establishment of a neutral
status. The second letter presented a more detailed argument about who
should be interested in making the Caucasus neutral and why, and about
what territories the authors envisaged might be included in a future
Caucasian Federation:

1. The Georgian Kingdom

 2. The Armenian-Tatar Cantons
3. The Federation of the Mountaineers

The creation of Armenian-Tatar Cantons was deemed necessary because the

Armenians and the Tatars (referring to Azerbaijani Muslims, or today’s
Azerbaijanis), who undoubtedly were to acquire full cultural and religious
autonomy, lived in such intermingled communities that it would be
impossible to separate them territorially. As to the question of who was to
become the leader of this future country, this could be a Muslim prince and
a constitutional monarch of the restored Georgian Kingdom, albeit not a
local one, nor a member of the exiled historical Bagrationi royal dynasty (so
as to avoid future intrigues among the many heirs), but rather a Western
European prince, in order to increase the influence of Europe.

Meetings, movements and contacts

In early October 1915 the Georgians gathered in Constantinople, where
Machabeli and Tsereteli joined them from Berlin. There an expanded
Independence Committee was officially formed, which was also referred to
as the National Committee. The eldest among them, Petre Surguladze (who
was only 41 at the time), was chosen to be the head of the Committee.
Giorgi Machabeli, Mikhako Tsereteli and Giorgi Kereselidze were to serve
as the Committee’s envoys to Berlin. Leo Kereselidze was tasked with
military affairs and was sent to the Ottoman-Russian border, to the Black
Sea coastal town of Vitse (the present day Findikli), in order to create a
Georgian legion. The nucleus of the Committee also included the Catholic
priest Shalva Vardidze (a Georgian Catholic monastery in Constantinople
served as the Committee’s headquarters), and the Georgian Muslims
Meliton Kartsivadze, also known as Osman or Meliton Bey, and Zia Bey
Abashidze. The Georgian Committee always maintained that the Georgian
nation was inclusive of Orthodox and Catholic Christians, Georgian
Muslims, and Georgian Jews. For instance, on 15 November 1916, the
newspaper kartuli gazeti featured an article that stated: “we, the Orthodox
Christians, have also contributed to this undesirable conflict. An attitude
has been formed within the Georgian nation that only the Orthodox are real
Georgians”.
 The actions of the Georgians stimulated activity among the peoples of
the North Caucasian and the Caucasian Tatars. The Turks, of course,
viewed the Caucasian Muslims more favourably, and they helped them to
establish contacts with the Germans. Fuad Pasha, a Circassian living in
Turkey, and Fazil Pasha, a Lezgian and a relative of North Caucasian
insurgent and leader Imam Shamil, contacted the Germans in
Constantinople. In 1915, a Chechen named Uzden Arzamakov, who called
himself Gazavat,9 offered cooperation to the Germans (see Zürrer 1978). In
late 1915, a Russian military agent wrote to the head of the high
commissariat headquarters in Romania:
In my latest report, I spoke about the intention of Austria-Hungary to stage an uprising in
Georgia. It turns out that Machabeli, Semil Bey, Merker Aziz Bey, Mehmed Said Bey, Doctor
Issa Bey, Abu Bekir Khosm Bey, Fuad Pasha and Mehmed Ali Bey visited Vienna and were
received at the Foreign Ministry on several occasions.

A surprised Russian bureaucrat later wrote on a copy of this report, with a

red pencil “what kind of Georgians are these?”10

The Georgian POWs and the Committee

With a view to establishing a Georgian legion, in addition to seeking
volunteers from among the ranks of the Georgian Muslims and Lazs that
resided in the Ottoman-Russian border areas, the Georgian Commitee also
tried to recruit Georgian prisoners of war held by the Germans and
Austrians, and to propagate “the Georgian cause” among them. The German
diplomat and military officer Rudolph Nadolni, head of the Third “B”
Section of the General Staff, had some specific ideas about the role of the
POWs: “the Muslims, Indians and Georgians should fight for us; the
Muslims on behalf of Jihad, the Indians and Georgians for their
independence”.11 As soon as such an uprising would erupt in Georgia, the
Georgian POWs were to be deployed in the Caucasus, the Muslims in
Turkey, and the Indians in the Indian sub-continent.
One of the aims of this propaganda was to cultivate positive attitudes
towards Germany once the war was over. In the same year, 1915, the
German Foreign Ministry created a semi-state body, Nachrichtenstelle für
den Orient (Information Bureau for the East) which, apart from gathering
information, engaging in propaganda and other activities, published
newspapers for the POWs. On 5 March 1915, newspapers were launched
simultaneously in Hindi, Urdu, Arabic, “Turkish-Tatar”, Russian and
Georgian. For the Muslims, the paper was published in several languages,
including Russian, and was called El Jihad; the paper for the Indian POWs
was called Hindostan. The newspaper for the Georgians was not named for
Georgia, but rather was called The Caucasus. This can be seen as yet
another manifestation of the ways in which the Germans viewed the
Georgians as the main power that would foster the separation of the
Caucasus as a whole from Russia.
The Georgian Committee, however, disliked both the title and the
newspaper’s style and format. All of the other language versions continued
to be published, but in February 1916 The Caucasus ceased to exist.
Instead, with the insistence of the Georgians and with Georgian typeset
brought from Geneva, kartuli gazeti (“The Georgian Gazette”) was
launched in March. This paper, which published articles by Georgian
authors, proved to be much more popular among the Georgian POWs than
the previous handwritten and lithographed version had been.

Other committees
The Georgian Committee actively promoted the “Georgian cause”, not just
among the Georgian POWs and German institutions, but among
representatives of other nations as well, first and foremost among the other
minorities of the Russian Empire. The Georgian-German Society, founded
in Berlin in the early 1916, maintained active contacts with other
organizations of similar character. The year 1916 saw the formation of
another organization, Liga der Fremdvölker Russlands (“The League of
Russia’s Oppressed Nations”) which took part in the Third Conference of
Nationalities, held in Lausanne in June 1916. Mikhako Tsereteli addressed
this conference with a well-received speech and informed the international
community about Georgia and its situation.
The Committee was very particular in its relations with other Caucasian
nations, and these relations would encounter complex situations and
obstacles. The Ottomans were also particularly attentive towards the
Caucasian peoples. Apart from the recent cases of migration, the Ottoman
Empire had a strong, integrated and influential Caucasian diaspora. In 1915,
on the orders of Enver Pasha, the senator Fuad Pasha, a descendent of
Circassians who had dreamt of a Circassian uprising since the onset of the
war, established a Caucasian Committee under the guise of a “Turkish
Sanitary Mission”. The members of this Committee included its leader,
Fuad Pasha; Aziz Meker, also a Circassian and the head of Istanbul’s
Agricultural Academy; Doctor Isa Kotsek Pasha, a Dagestani, the sanitary
inspector of the Ottoman army; Selim Bay Bebutov, the head of a brigade
and a representative of Azerbaijani Tatars and Lezgians; Kiamil
Tavdgiridze, and Giorgi Machabeli. According to a memo of 15 October
1915, the Caucasian Committee’s goals were: (1) preparation for an armed
uprising; (2) the creation of a Caucasian Confederation, with autonomy for
each member state; (3) a military agreement with Turkey; and (4) gaining
support from Germany and Austria-Hungary through accentuating the
impact a Caucasian uprising would have on Turkestan, Persia, Afghanistan
and India. On 17 December 1915, the Committee presented the
memorandum to the Germans in Berlin, and on 9 January 1916 to the
Austro-Hungarians in Vienna.
On 17 December, Bebutov, a “Tatar from Baku”, spoke on behalf of “all
of the Tatar and Dagestani governorates” and asked for help with weapons
and ammunition in order to stage rebellions in the Baku governorate
(guberniya), throughout all of the Transcaucasus, and in Persia. By the end
of 1915, another Tatar from the Caucasus, Ali Husseinzadeh, and a Tatar
from the Privolzhsky District, Iusub Akçura Oğlu – both of whom later
participated in the Lausanne Conference – presented a memorandum in
Budapest on “The Committee for Protecting the Rights of the Russian
Muslim Turk-Tatar Peoples”, in which they demanded a restoration and
broadening of the Bukhara and Khiva Khanates, the Crimea Khanate (under
Turkey’s protection), and the Kazan Khanate.
The second letter, sent by The League of the Oppressed Peoples to the
American President Woodrow Wilson, was signed by Akçura Oğlu and the
Azerbaijanis Husein Zadeh and Ağa Oğlu on behalf of the “Turks, Tatars
and Kyrgyz” (the signatures of the first letter arrived later). On 21
December 1915, the Circassian Aziz Meker demanded independence for the
Circassians in the Caucasian Federation. He believed that the Circassians
would be able to form a 50,000-strong military unit in Trabzon. The Turks
were not particularly fond of the idea of a Circassian “legion”, all the more
so if it would be under German leadership and comprised of Ottoman
deserters of Circassian descent, which was being demanded by the
Circassian Bekir Samibeg, a former ambassador. The Turks themselves
would often utilize this idea, however, in order to intimidate the Georgians
and the Germans, saying that they might dismantle the “Georgian Legion”
and instead form a “Caucasian” one.
Due to internal disagreements, conflict soon erupted between the
members of the Committee from the north Caucasus and from the
Transcaucasus. In 1916 the Committee was dissolved and its north
Caucasian members united under a different name, “The Committee of
North Caucasian Refugees in Turkey”. Other committees and circles united
around similar ideas also existed, with varying connections to Turkey’s
ruling party, and which tried to operate from within the Ottoman Empire.
Yet it is very difficult to speak about the extent to which they may have
influenced the only serious insurgency to take place within the Russian
Empire during the war prior to 1917, the 1916 revolt in Turkestan.

Travels to Georgia
Ivane Machabeli’s travels to the coasts of Georgia by submarine is another
important element to the story of the Committee and the Caucasians.
Machabeli visited Georgia as early as in October 1914, where he met with
the representatives of local parties and informed them about the
Committee’s activities on behalf of the Germans.
By 1916, contacts with the Caucasus became more difficult. At
Machabeli’s request, the Germans began transporting Georgians and their
Caucasian allies by submarine to the Black Sea coasts of Georgia. On 1
June, three Georgian officers traveled from Constantinople, and on 26 June,
Machabeli himself, together with two other Georgians, the Azerbaijani
Selim Bey Bebutov, and the Chechen Uzden Khadji-Murat Arzamakov (aka
Gazavat), travelled to Georgia on the German submarine U-38 and reached
the Anaklia coast on 29 June. The Circassian Aziz Meker also requested
transportation by submarine, but this request could not or would not be
fulfilled. These submarine journeys ultimately proved to be futile in
establishing enduring contacts in the Caucasus, and they yielded no results.
After his submarine voyage, Machabeli briefly fell off the radar for the
Germans as well as for the members of the Committee, and he only
reappeared in March 1917, informing the Germans about the adventurous
details of his travels.

Germany and the newly independent Georgia

Following the outbreak of the February Revolution and then the October
(Bolshevik) Revolution in 1917, the dominant political parties in the
Transcaucasus refused to recognize the new Soviet Russian central
government in Petrograd, and Germany continued to view the National
Committee as its main political pillar. Towards the end of 1917, Germany
gave the Committee members guarantees that it would recognize Georgian
independence, which provided the Committee with a mandate to continue
negotiations with the de facto rulers of the Transcaucasus. In the fall of
1917, the deployment of Georgian revolutionaries by submarine to the
Georgian coast resumed.
A 1916 article entitled “The Future Constitution of the Caucasus”
published in issues No. 15, 16 and 17 of the newspaper kartuli gazeti
clearly outlined the views of the Georgian Committee towards the idea of a
federation in the Caucasus. The conception of such a federation among the
nationalities of the Caucasus, born among the ranks of the Georgian
intellectuals,
spread throughout the entire Caucasus, and today a federation of Caucasian nationalities
constitutes the political credo of the Caucasian peoples, to create a second Switzerland
between the Black and Caspian Seas (with the exception of the Armenians, who would like to
see the reign of the Russians in the Caucasus).

The author discussed the views of the Social-Democrats and the Social-
Federalists about a Caucasian federation and autonomy, criticizing these as
too idealistic.
We believe that constituent assemblies of these three groups – the Georgians, the Tatars and
even the mountaineers – will be easy to form, and they will produce a constitution. There will
be no disagreements serious enough to break apart the assemblies or to make creation of a
political body impossible. However, the same can not be said about the constituent assembly of
the entire Caucasus. Such an assembly is not as easily feasible in the Caucasus as many,
particularly our Federalists, seem to believe. Switzerland and other examples are not relevant
 here. The differences among the three above-mentioned Caucasian groups are much larger than
those of Switzerland’s “cantons”.

We believe the three aforementioned groups should first independently (and perhaps even in
competition with one another) form their own political bodies. The territories of the Georgians,
Tatars, and mountaineers, over with the laws of each of these groups will be in effect, should
be clearly delimited. … And when the representatives of these political bodies will gather
together in order to address or solve common issues, they will have a clear understanding of
whom they are representing and whose interests they should serve. This will make it possible
to have conversations and to reach agreements. … After a lengthy process, genuine unity will
become feasible. But we cannot even know for sure if this unity will ever materialize.

The Georgian Committee did not see a Caucasian or Transcaucasian

federation as viable, so therefore they aimed for the creation of a separate
state of Georgia. On 5 December 1917, the Georgian Committee asked the
German government in a letter addressed to Baron von Wesendonk and
signed by Giorgi Machabeli and the press-secretary, Giorgi Kereselidze, to
confirm in writing that “in the case that Georgia should declare its
independence, Germany will recognize it and will support it in peace
negotiations”. On 17 December, the German Foreign Ministry replied:
… regarding the oral statement delivered to your representative in August of this year, the
Imperial Government, in the case that an independent state is formed within the borders of the
Russian Empire and official relations are established with it, is prepared to recognize this state
(signed by Freiherr von der Bussche) (Bakradze 1996a, 305–309).

It was about this note that Akaki Chkhenkeli spoke on 12 May 1918 (he
also spoke about it to the Russian ambassador Joffe on 10 June, trying to
persuade him and his Moscow leadership to recognize Georgia) (Berliner
Jahrbuch 1995, 223–266). With Germany’s support, on 26 May 1918
Georgia declared its independence. The TDFR, founded on 22 April, was
not even to last for a month and a week. The TDFR disintegrated because
the three main nationalities of the Transcaucasus lacked the will and did not
see future prospects for joint development. Once the Caucasian republics
became independent, there would never again be the opportunity or even
the time to consider the formation of a joint federal state. The subsequent
attempt to unite the three new, now Soviet republics, the Transcaucasian
Socialist Federative Soviet Republic which existed from 1922 to 1936, was
imposed from Moscow and met with resistance in the Transcaucasus.
Conclusion
The interim agreement, reached in Poti on 28 May between the German
Empire and the newly-independent Democratic Republic of Georgia, can be
seen as a de facto recognition of this new state. The fact that Germany was
interested in Georgia, as such, does not mean that they did not see the need
for a unification of the Caucasus in the future, under German influence
naturally.
It was precisely through empowering Georgia that the Germans sought
to establish their long-term pillar and a nucleus, around which it would be
possible to unite the other states of the Caucasus. As General Ludendorff
wrote to General Groener on 12 June 1918,
If Germany strengthens its positions in Georgia, creates a small, effective German army there
and demonstrates its intention to deepen its interests in the Caucasus, with time, automatically,
other new Caucasian states will join Georgia. And, in the future, it will be entirely feasible to
create a Caucasian bloc that will have close ties to Germany and will play a very important role
for Germany, both in times of war (in terms of the provision of raw materials and an effective
military force) and after (in economic and military terms). (see von Botmer 1997)

Germany was deliberately consistent in its policy towards the political

recognition of Georgia. On 27 August 1918, the 13th clause of the German-
Russian agreement – an addendum to the Brest-Litovsk Treaty – included
the following: “Russia proclaims that it agrees to the German recognition of
Georgia as an independent state body”, while the 14th clause read that
Germany would not give support to military operations of third states
outside of Georgia’s borders in the territory of the Caucasus (Deutsches
Reichsgesetzblatt Band 1918, 1154–1171). The coincidence between the
interests of Germany and Georgia in the given period formed a solid bases
for mutual cooperation. However, the future of this policy of cooperation
was doomed: Germany’s defeat in the First World War turned out to be a
major loss for Georgia as well.

Notes
1. National Archives of Georgia, f. 1861, o. 2, d.23, l. 1, originally cited in Gelava 1992.
2. The number of Transcaucasian delegates to the Russian Constituent Assembly was tripled
for the purposes of the Transcaucasian Seim, in order to allow for greater participation.
 3. Haus-, Hof- und Staatsarchiv, Abteilung (HHStA), Pa I 947, Memorandum (Absch.) an das
AA (17.9.1914) = Beilage zu Palavicini Nr. 90 / P G an Burian (26.10.1915).
4. Politisches Archiv, Auswärtiges Amt (PA AA), R 21008 (Wk 11d secr, Bd.1), Wesendonk
27.09.1914.
5. Politisches Archiv, Auswärtiges Amt (PA AA), R 21008 (Wk 11d secr, Bd.1), Denkschrift
von 24.09.1914 und Ergänzung von 27.09. 1914.
6. Politisches Archiv, Auswärtiges Amt (PA AA), R 21010 (Wk 11d secr, Bd.3), Wesendonk
19.01.1915.
7. Politisches Archiv, Auswärtiges Amt (PA AA), R 21010 (Wk 11d secr, Bd. 3), Jagow an AA
22.01.1915.
8. Politisches Archiv, Auswärtiges Amt (PA AA), R 21008, 24.09.1914 (Bl.65-70) u.
27.09.1914 (Bl.78-85).
9. A reference to the usual term for Islamic holy war used in the Caucasus from the 18th
century.
10. National Archives of Georgia, f. 13, o. 27, d. 5412, ll. 21 (8.12.1915).
11. Politisches Archiv, Auswärtiges Amt (PA AA), Wk Nr. 11s, Bd. 1, Nadolny an
Kriegsministerium, 18.01.1915.

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

References
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und dem Auswärtigen Amt des Deutschen Reiches.” Berliner Jahrbuch für osteuropäische
Geschichte 2: 305–309.
Bakradze, Lasha. 1996b. Exchange of notes between the Georgian National Committee and
the Foreign Ministry of the German Empire. sakartvelos urtiertoba evropisa da amerikis
kveqnebtan [Georgia’s relations with countries of Europe and America]. Ilia Tabakhua, ed.,
t. III (VI), Tbilisi: Metsniereba.
Bakradze, Lasha. 2010. germanul-kartuli urtiertobebi pirveli msoplio omis dros [German-
Georgian Relations During the First World War (The Activity of the Georgian National
Committee 1914-1918)]. Tbilisi: Pegasus Publishing.
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Außenpolitik.” Unveröffentlichte Dokumente (Teil II, Mai-Juni 1918), eingeleitet, übersetzt
und kommentiert von Dietmar Wulff 2: 223–266.
Bihl, Wolfdieter. 1975. Die Kaukasus-Politik der Mittelmächte. Ihre Basis in der Orient-
Politik und ihre Aktionen 1914–1917. Teil I. Wien, Köln, Weimar: Böhlau.
Deutsches Reichsgesetzblatt Band. 1918. Deutsch-Russischer Ergänzungsvertrag zu dem
Friedensvertrage zwischen Deutschland, Österreich-Ungarn, Bulgarien und der Türkei
einerseits und Rußland anderseits. 130: 1154–1171.
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ramdenime dokumenti sakartvelos demokratiuli ganvitarebis istoriidan.” saistorio moambe
 63–64: 166–180.
von Bothmer. 1997. S grafom Mirbakhom v Moskve: Dnevnikovye zapisi i dokumenty za
period s 19 apr. po 24 avg. 1918g. 2nd ed. Moscow: RAN In-t. ros. istorii. (Originally
published as von Bothmer. 1922. Mit Graf Mirbach in Moskau. Tagebuchaufzeichnungen
und Aktenstücke vom 19. April bis 24. August 1918. Tübingen: Osianderʹsche
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zwischen Schwarzem und Kaspischem Meer. Düsseldorf: Droste.

Feeble projects and aspirations: the

Caucasian and Transcaucasian
federation/confederation in the geopolitics
of 1918–1920
Beka Kobakhidze

ABSTRACT
The collapse of central power in the Russian Empire 1917 left the peoples of the
Caucasus alone in the midst of the havoc of the Great War. While political elites
were forced to detach the region from Soviet Russia, they simultaneously realized
that Transcaucasia could survive only in unity, and thus formed first a
Commissariat and then a Federation. Yet geopolitics, the shared imperial legacy,
the economic prognoses, the complex ethnic demography, and the existing
boundary disagreements ultimately made federation impossible. Nevertheless, the
victorious Allies of the Great War saw their interests in the Caucasian “package”,
advising that a Federation or a Confederation be created in the region. This article
examines the geopolitical significance of the discourse surrounding this proposed
Caucasian and Transcaucasian federation/confederation.

Introduction
The regional approach, or the “package policy,” of the political West to the
Russian imperial borderlands is an old story. Historians study the Baltic,
Caucasus, and Central Asian cases and the Russian connection to the
Balkan region from this prospective. The success or failure of the small
nation-states of the imperial borderlands, by this view, is a hostage of
geopolitical dispositions. The former components of the Russian Empire
have been seeking to secure Western sponsorship of their independence,
from the Bolshevik seizure of power up until the present day. For the West,
geography and regional cohesion among the local stakeholders matter a
great deal. From these perspectives, the Baltic case was a success story,
both immediately following the Great War and then after the collapse of the
Soviet Union. The geographical proximity of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia
to the West and their regional collaboration were instrumental in the
survival of their independence up until 1940, and then their acceptance into
NATO and the European Union (EU) in the third millennium. The Caucasus
faced an opposite scenario: no cohesive regional package could be created,
and they were geographically more distant from Europe. In these
circumstances each of the regional states had to face Bolshevik occupation
on their own and without tangible Western backing.
There are various levels of regional integration, from the creation of a
unified economic space to a federal union. After de facto secession from
Russia in November 1917, Transcaucasia endeavoured to organize a
federation which existed in the form of a Commissariat until 22 April 1918,
and from then to 26 May as a Federation. These enterprises proved to be a
failure. The geopolitics and politics of this period have been
comprehensively studied, particularly in the works of Hovannisian (1967).
Yet while the idea of federation/confederation in the Caucasus was
consistently on the minds of Western decision-makers up until the Soviet
occupation of Azerbaijan in 1920, this topic remains under-researched.

Turbulent 1917
As the result of the Bolshevik coup d’etat of November 1917, both the
Entente and the peoples of Transcaucasia found themselves in an awkward
position: the Great War was still continuing, the Ottomans were launching
an assault on the Caucasus and threatening to conquer the entire region, and
at the same time both the Ottomans and the Germans were drawing closer
to what then was perceived as the “British Orient”. Prior to 1917 the
peoples of Transcaucasia hardly dreamed of secession from Russia. This
was an era of Great Powers, while international law left scant space for self-
determination and the sovereignty for smaller nations. Moreover, the
conquest of the weak by the strong was the order of the day. Functional
international regimes such as the United Nations, the Organization for
Security and Co-operation in Europe and other peacekeeping and
monitoring missions did not yet exist, only their more ineffectual
antecedent, the League of Nations. In their nationalist aspirations most local
political elites oscillated between advocating for political autonomy or for
cultural self-governance.
Nevertheless, it had now become an undeniable fact that hopes for a
democratic Russia were quashed, and the democratic elites of the region
refused to recognize the Bolshevik seizure of power, and meanwhile
Ottomans were forcing their way in. What could have been done in these
circumstances? The Transcaucasians had to stop the Turks, and they could
do this more effectively if they were united, and with Allied support if
possible. Consequently, on 15 November 1917, a provisional political
entity, the Transcaucasian Commissariat, was established under the
leadership of the Georgian Social-Democrat Evgeni Gegechkori.

Seeking a patron
The Commissariat was unable to hold out on its own without Allied
support, yet for the Allies Transcaucasia was a distant and little-known
quarter of the world. Just months before it had been an integral region and
the internal affair of their Russian ally. The Allies obviously lacked the
capacity to have any specific policy, or even expertise, regarding Russia’s
internal regions. By the end of 1917 a German and Ottoman conquest of the
region seemed imminent, and the Allies’ eastern position was weakened
because the Bolsheviks were withdrawing Russia from the European war
and entering into a bloody Civil War that was about to engulf the large
swathes of Europe and Asia that comprised the former Russian Empire.
In December 1917 the British, French and Americans were summoned to
a conference in Paris to decide what to do with the eastern theatres of the
war that Russia had abandoned. At that very moment, the US Consul to
Tiflis, Felix Willoughby Smith, wired the Secretary of State, Robert
Lansing, to suggest the recognition of Transcaucasian Commissariat and the
provision of substantial assistance to fight against the Ottomans. It was a
time when the key decision-maker for US foreign policy towards the
Eastern hemisphere was not the Secretary of State, but rather President
Woodrow Wilson’s personal adviser, Colonel Edward Mandell House.
Lansing thus telegrammed to ask Mandell House in Paris what was to be
done with Transcaucasia. The latter replied that provisional recognition of
the Commissariat and military assistance could lead to secession and the
collapse of Russia (FRUS, Russia 1918, Vol. II. 580-586). On the other
hand, the British and the French signed an agreement on 23 December to
divide among themselves separate spheres of responsibility: Ukraine,
Crimea and Bessarabia were to go to the French, and the Caucasus to the
British (CAB 28/3 I.C. 37, 23 December 1917).
In the midst of the war the Allies were too busy to supervise new spheres
of responsibility; they failed to formulate any kind of coherent policy,
creating an opening for the Turks to march towards the Caucasus. They,
together with Germans, signed a separate treaty with the Bolsheviks in
Brest-Litovsk on 3 March 1918. According to this agreement the Ottomans
were granted the Georgian region of Batumi and the Armenian region of
Kars. The Transcaucasian Commissariat was neither a participant nor a
signatory of the treaty. The Turks launched an offensive to take possession
of that which they had been granted. They did not recognize the
Commissariat, thus in order to engage in diplomatic negotiations with the
Ottoman Empire, Transcaucasia proclaimed on 22 April an independent
Transcaucasian Democratic Federative Republic (TDFR) comprised of
three main nationalities, Georgians, Armenians and Azerbaijanis.
Now that the Ottomans had been left alone with their prey they sought to
gain more than what the Brest-Litovsk Treaty gave to them. A group of
Georgians called the Independence Committee who had maintained links
with the German Foreign Office since 1914 now called upon the Second
Reich for support. Despite the hardships they faced in the European theatres
of the war, the German oriental policy of drang nach osten (drive to the
East) aimed to gain control of the rich Caucasian oilfields and to clear a
path towards the jewel of the British Empire, India (Baumgart 1970, 64–
65).1
 The Allies, unable to do anything, observed this havoc and German-
Georgian flirtation from afar and with suspicion. The New York Times
published a series of articles in March 1918: on 6 March, “Germany in the
Caucasus: Manganese and Oil Surrendered by Russia”; on 9 March,
“Germany in the Caucasus: a Big Scheme to Reach Central Asia through a
Vastly Extended Turkish Empire”; on 16 March, “Armenians Block Foe’s
Way to India”; on 25 March, “Kaiser and Turks Plan Drive to India”; and
on 31 March an article “British Aid in the Caucasus” called on Great
Britain to take substantial measures to aid the Caucasians in the fighting.

The British perspective

The Department for Military Intelligence (DMI) of the British War Office
produced a monthly series of analytical papers on “The Turco-German
Advance into the Caucasus”. From these reports one can see that the British
analyses of the Transcaucasian state order were not particularly nuanced, as
they did not differentiate between the Commissariat and the Federation;
most importantly, it was only military officers who took an interest in the
Caucasus from their prospective, and not decision-making politicians or
Foreign Office officials.
It is worth noting that the DMI had very limited and sometimes
inaccurate knowledge of events. For example, in a July report it is written
that “Jenkali”, meaning Akaki Chkhenkeli, the Chairman of the
Transcaucasian Government, and one of the leaders of the Georgian Social-
Democratic Party was representing a “pro-Turkish” party; according to this
report, this party prevailed and that was why the independence of
Transcaucasia was declared on 22 April 1918 (CAB 27/28 EC 618). In
Georgia and in Armenia at that time there is no documented evidence of the
existence of any pro-Turkish parties. Moreover, the Ottomans had placed
the Georgian and Armenian political elites into a “lose-lose” position: had
they not declared the independence of the Transcaucasian Federation, the
Turks would have refused to hold diplomatic negotiations and would have
proceeded with their offensive while ignoring the protests of the
Transcaucasians; but when independence was declared and the parties were
summoned to the negotiations table, then the Ottomans made further
demands. The same document claims that the Transcaucasian delegation in
reality was led only by the Georgians and that it was they alone who
dissolved the “Diet”, as the DMI referred to the federation. “Jenkali”, the
report continued, was on good terms with the Ottoman warlord Vehib
Pasha, and he formed a Cabinet of independent Georgia (CAB 27/28 EC
618). In reality the Cabinet was formed not by Chkhenkeli, but by Noe
Ramishvili, who took over the negotiations with the Ottomans and signed a
peace treaty with them on 4 June, when Chkhenkeli, now in the capacity of
Georgian Foreign Minister, had gone to Berlin; moreover, there is no
evidence to support the view that Chkhenkeli was on good terms with Vehib
Pasha. Nor was it explained in the document why the two terms, Diet and
Federation, were interchangeable.
As the months passed, reports were regularly updated and the DMI
became better informed: in a report of 4 October, “Jenkali” was transformed
into “Chehengeli,” and he was no longer accused of being a member of a
pro-Turkish party. The declaration of Transcaucasian independence was
described in the October DMI report as follows: “The presidency of the
Trans-Caucasian government now passed from the more intransigent
Gegechgori to Chehengeli, who was willing to accept the terms of Brest-
Litovsk as a basis of settlement. On the 22nd April the reconstructed
government proclaimed the independence of Trans-Caucasia, and proposed
[to the Turks] the resumption of negotiations.” This report was not only
more accurate, but it had references given in footnotes. The sources were
secondary and indirect, but progress was still obvious in comparison with
the earlier June report (CAB 27/37 EC 2556). This improvement did not
emerge all at once, but the reports were gradually getting better throughout
August and September 1918 (CAB 27/30 EC 1072; CAB 27/31 EC 1399;
CAB 27/32 EC 1570).
When the British Foreign Office belatedly became involved, it produced
more precise documents. Professor James Simpson of the Political
Intelligence Department (PID) circulated a memorandum on 9 July 1918 in
which explained the reasons for the dissolution of the Federation. He
advanced social arguments that the “Tartars” (Azerbaijanis) were
landowners, hence they feared that the Georgian and Armenian political
elites would deprive them of their lands; there were also political
considerations: “the Tartar and Mohammedan clergy, educated in special
seminaries at Constantinople, further find themselves entirely in agreement
with Enver and Talaat Pashas.” This was true not only about the clergy, but
about the Azerbaijani political elite as well, a large number of whom shared
the pan-Turkic (Turanian) political views of the Ottoman ruling triumvirate
of Enver, Talaat and Jamal.
Simpson discussed the geopolitical considerations under which the
Germans made use of Ottoman pressure over the Georgians to win latter’s
sympathies. In part, he continued, this approach was beneficial not only for
the Germans, but for the Ottomans as well, since by encouraging the
Azerbaijanis to abandon the Federation and pushing the Georgians to
declare independence, they “intended to secure the prevention of the
formation of a strong Trans-Caucasian Republic” (CAB 27/29 EC 892).
Foreign Secretary Lord George Nathaniel Curzon submitted his own
memorandum on Transcaucasia to the British Cabinet in December 1919. In
historical sketch, he noted that:
When the Russian Army on the Caucasian Front collapsed, the Transcaucasian Diet was
formed at Tiflis in the shape of a coalition of Georgians, Tartars and Armenians, with a view to
the creation of a Federated Caucasus, and to the defence of the frontiers against Turkish
invasion. This attempt at combination proved abortive. The Tartars of Azerbaijan were in open
sympathy with the Turks, while Armenians considered that the Georgians were attempting to
establish a central Georgian administration to govern the Caucasus from Tiflis (CAB 24/95 CP
336).

The federation project failed, but at the end of 1919 Curzon still did not
believe that these states, Georgia and Azerbaijan, could exist separately or
could contribute any value without one another. He advanced the economic
argument that the Baku-Batumi railway and the oil pipeline made the two
republics existentially interdependent. The Foreign Secretary had personal
sympathies towards the Georgians, but he observed the necessity of an
independent Azerbaijan in order to guarantee security provisions for
Georgia: “[Azerbaijan] has no more moral claim to independence than have
the inhabitants of the Persian provinces of Ghilan and Azerbaijan”, but,
Curzon concluded, “If the Russians are allowed to cross the Caucasus range
and occupy Azerbaijan at one end of the Batoum-Baku railway, the liberties
of Georgia can never be secure.” This was a very insightful observation on
his part, because the Bolshevik occupation of Transcaucasia began in Baku,
and when the Bolsheviks achieved this victory in April 1920, there was no
stopping them all the way to Erevan, Tiflis and Batum. Curzon called on the
Great Powers, primarily Britain, to recognize the independence of the
Transcaucasian states and take a mandate over them, but he proposed two
preconditions to be met by the regional political elites: a) the formation of a
federation; and b) the formation of a government based on democratic
principles (Ibid.).
Throughout years of independence in 1918–21 the Caucasus never had a
more influential advocate than Lord Curzon, and his conclusions were a
clear indication of how important it was for the political West to see some
sort of federalism in the region. Yet Curzon was very realistic: a year before
he submitted the aforementioned memorandum to the Cabinet, Curzon
spoke of the Transcaucasian Federation at a meeting of the Eastern
Committee2, labelling it a “foolish experiment”, because “whole races and
creeds [were] fundamentally opposed to each other” (CAB 27/24 Eastern
Committee 40th Meeting, 2 December 1918).
When Germany was defeated in the war in November 1918, British
troops were preparing to occupy Transcaucasia. Sir Eyre Crowe of the
Foreign Office drafted a “Memorandum on a Possible Territorial Policy in
the Caucasus Regions”. He noted a dilemma that supported Curzon’s
viewpoint: while a federation in the Caucasus seemed impossible, the
separate existence of independent republics would prevent any outside great
power from taking responsibility over them (CAB 27/36 EC 2359). That
same month the Foreign Office created one more document, entitled the
“Future Settlement of Trans-Caucasia with Special Regard to British
Interests.” In this nine-point document the first point emphasized that the
principle of national self-determination was to be exercised in the region
and the three independent republics of Georgia, Azerbaijan and Armenia
should be assembled into a federation. “This would also imply that they
should be free, at any rate in the meantime, from Russian dominion, and
that the Caucasus should become the frontier of a restored Russia” (CAB
29/2 P-84).
Among British diplomats Oliver Wardrop was a champion of sorts of
Caucasian federation, and the best-informed expert on the region
(Kobakhidze 2015). He had been working for the Foreign Office since the
1890s, and even before that in 1888 in London he published a book, The
Kingdom of Georgia, in which he was probably the first in the West to
suggest a regional union of independent Caucasian peoples, at a time when
the region was an integral part of the Russian Empire and there was no hint
that this might ever collapse. He wrote “It is especially upon England that
their [Georgian] hopes are fixed, for they are well aware of the fact that the
existence of a strong, independent state between the Black Sea and the
Caspian would be an enormous advantage to our country” (Wardrop 1888,
167). In August 1919, Wardrop was dispatched by Curzon to Tiflis as His
Majesty’s High Commissioner to Transcaucasia. Prior to his departure he
submitted a memorandum to the Foreign Secretary in which he supported
the secession of the Caucasus from Russia and stressed that the idea of a
Federal Caucasus had existed for 30 years (FO 371/3662/1015/97451/58).
In his private letters to his wife, sent from Tiflis to England, he labelled
himself as the most powerful man from the Black Sea to the Caspian
(Kobakhidze 2015, 257). When in Tiflis he began settling disputed issues
between the discordant neighbours and he lobbied the idea of federation.
On 20 October 1919 he wired Curzon that the three republics of
Transcaucasia were working to form such a federation (FO 371/3664
Wardrop to Curzon, 20 October 1919).
During the period when hostilities broke out between Armenia and
Azerbaijan over the disputed region of Zangezur, Wardrop summoned the
prime ministers of Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan to a conference in
Tiflis. As a result treaties were signed between Georgia and Armenia and
between Azerbaijan and Armenia according to which the parties abolished
customs regulations, thus creating a unified economic space, and they
committed to solve their boundary disputes through negotiations and
arbitration.3 Wardrop gave great importance to these accords, believing that
the region could be spared from future anarchy and that unity was
imminent. He joyfully wrote an intimate letter to his wife:
The Prime Ministers of Armenia and Azerbaijan signed a treaty of peace which may affect the
whole future history of this country and Asia in general. I was not present, so I shall not figure
in the film which was made of the proceedings, but I had been behind the scenes and I not only
brought about the meeting but suggested the policy. I have played a good part in the episode
and am satisfied (Kobakhidze 2015, 258).

When in January 1920 General Anton Denikin of the Volunteer Army was
defeated by the Bolsheviks and the Red Army approached the Caucasus,
Wardrop suggested fortifying the region by creating a strong confederation
under British sponsorship. Further, he wanted to include Dagestan in this
new body (FO 371/3666/1015/167875/58; FO 371/3673/166767-
177987/175434/58).
 Wardrop was the main British driving force for the unification of the
Caucasus under some sort of federation. He had an affinity for these
peoples and saw the importance of making a strong regional package, but
he was often misled by his wishful thinking. Overall British policy makers
desired to see more consolidation and coordination in the region, but they
were unable to do enough in support of this goal, as it was extremely
difficult, if not impossible, to overcome the existing ethnic, religious and
political differences. The alternative British view was that of the War
Office, which was clearly articulated by the Commander of British Black
Sea Forces, General George Milne. He wrote the Chief of the Imperial
General Staff, Field-Marshal Sir Henry Wilson:
I am fully aware that the withdrawal of the British troops would probably lead to anarchy but I
cannot see that the world would lose much if the whole of the inhabitants of the country cut
each other’s throats. They are certainly not worth the life of one British soldier. … I think it
wants to be clearly understood at home that if we accept responsibility to help these countries
we will have to retain troops here not only for one or two years but possibly for 10 years, while
the education of the people to manage their own affairs will be the work of several generations
(Fisher 1997, 54).

Milne’s outlook was arrogant and imperialistic, but there was some truth in
the idea that the locals were too often eager to prove their readiness to cut
each other’s throats. In the end this viewpoint prevailed, and in 1919 and
1920 the British troops abandoned the region, thus opening the playing field
for the entry of the Bolsheviks.

The French absence

As the Anglo-French Agreement of 23 December 1917 gave the British
responsibility over the Caucasus, the French did not bother to have any
policy or views towards the region. After the Great War, Andre Tardieu, an
assistant to Prime-Minister Georges Clemenceau, composed a policy
guideline document for the French delegation at the Paris Peace Conference
which did not mention the Caucasus (Tardieu 1921). Since the end of 1918
the British had around 20,000 troops deployed from Baku to Batumi, while
the French had only a three-man Mission Militaire (see more in De
Courtivron 1983) for whole of the Caucasus, and this contrast in numbers
demonstrated well how different their interests were. In December 1919
Clemenceau told Lord Curzon that the Armenians could have a republic or
whatever they wanted, but France was unwilling to spend any money in
Armenia (CAB 29/81 ICP 1, December 11, 1919; Documents … , 1948,
734). Although he said here “Armenia,” probably he had in mind the
Caucasus as a whole.

The armenophiles of the United States

The Americans had very distinct armenophile sentiments (Hovannisian
1971, 133–44), and this required that they have a policy towards the
Caucasus. The Intelligence Section of the US Peace Delegation at Paris
drafted guidelines for American diplomats. The document suggested that
Russia should be reunified with exceptions of Poland, Finland, Armenia
and possibly Lithuania, because “they represent nationalities whose
severance from the Russian Empire would not destroy the Russian
economic fabric … ” For Georgia and Azerbaijan, provisional
independence was suggested, but if Russia failed to restore itself, the
possibility of their permanent secession from Russia was not dismissed. In
the latter case, a federal union between Georgia and Armenia was preferred:
“There has developed between them a certain amount of political
difference, and for this reason provisional independence is recommended. If
this tension can be diminished a future union would be desirable.”
Azerbaijan too could join this federal union, the document concluded
(Miller 1924, 220–30).
Similar lines were repeated by US President Woodrow Wilson. On 28
May 1919, on the one-year anniversary of the establishment of the
Azerbaijan Democratic Republic, he spoke with the head of the Azerbaijani
delegation in Paris, Ali Mardan Bey Topchibashev. The President listed
three main points to him: 1) the US did not support the breaking up of the
world into small pieces; 2) the question of Azerbaijan could not be settled
in any other way except that it be tied to the larger issue of Russia; and 3)
he supported the creation of a confederation in the Caucasus, the mandate
for which should be taken on by one of the Great Powers (Topchibashev
1998, 38).
Obviously, with this statement Wilson linked Azerbaijan to a possible
US mandate over Armenia. Since the armenophiles in America pressed
harder for it and the President himself was a champion of the Armenian
case, he needed a well-calculated argument for such a big decision.
Therefore he personally dispatched General James Harbord on a fact-
finding mission to Anatolia and the Caucasus. Harbord travelled all around
these regions, met Mustafa Kemal, visited Erevan, Tiflis and Baku, and
finally produced a report. The head of the fact-finding mission proposed an
even larger confederation under the mandate of a single power, including
Constantinople, Anatolia and Transcaucasia, because “if separate powers
exercised such a mandate the inevitable jealousies, hatreds, exaggerated
separatist tendencies, and economic difficulties would compel failure.”
Harbord found it impossible from a security and economic perspective to
see a better future for the region without some form of union. Of course, he
saw factors hindering a federation, such as “tribal rivalry”, but a larger
mandatory power was to be there in order to suppress such regional clashes
(Harbord 1920, 16–20).
The Republican majority in the Congress was set in opposition to the
Democratic White House and Wilson was not permitted to implement his
policy towards Armenia. Moreover, when Harbord submitted his report to
Congress, Wilson’s health had deteriorated to such a degree that he was
never able to read the document.
When the British Cabinet decided to withdraw its troops from
Transcaucasia, the Americans suggested that the Allied High Commissioner
was to be sent to Armenia in order to ensure a concerted policy on the part
of the Great Powers. In August 1919, US Colonel William Haskell was
appointed to this position, and he was deployed to Armenia on behalf of all
of the Allied Powers. After only three months Haskell spoke before the
Allied Supreme Council in Paris. He highlighted that the republics were “at
daggers drawn with each other on almost all points,” that the railway from
the Black Sea to Persia was paralyzed because it was not under a unified
control, and that there were contested boundary issues that were causing
animosity. Haskell and the Head of the US Delegation, Frank Polk, pressed
for an extension of the Allied High Commissioner’s power to Georgia and
Azerbaijan (FRUS PPC, Vol. 9.: 167-168). But the British had the highly
esteemed Oliver Wardrop working on behalf of His Majesty’s Government
in Tiflis, and they were not about to hand over this privileged position to an
American colonel.
The Italian mandate over the Caucasian package
Since the British troops were leaving the region their political elite were
alarmed not to take responsibility for a possible repeat of the annihilation of
the Armenian population by the Turks. They were therefore looking for a
substitute great power to enter the region in their place. Lloyd George
struck upon the Italians, whose Prime Minister Vittorio Emmanuel Orlando
was dissatisfied with Italy’s lack of territorial acquisitions as the result of
the Great War. “Occupy Georgia, it is rich with oil and will be welcoming
to you”, Lloyd George told Orlando (Sforza 1945, 85). Here is an
interesting case in which the British Prime Minister mentioned the name of
Georgia, but in fact he meant oil-rich Azerbaijan, another indication that the
decision-makers saw their interests in these countries only in the form of a
union.
The Italian PM became interested and wrote to his King, Vittorio
Emmanuel III, that he had been offered a terra di promessa. The King
enquired “why are the English leaving the region? It is well-known that
Great Britain never leaves a region if it is worth something.” (Petricioli
1972, 85–87). A disagreement emerged between the King and his Prime
Minister. They dispatched an extensive mission to the region headed by
Colonel Melchiade Gabba.4 The 18-man mission was given the task of
studying the region in detail.
One member of this mission, Captain Granafei, was tasked with drafting
a report on administrative matters. On 30 May 1919 he submitted a paper to
Gabba, and he brought a second copy to Paris for the Prime Minister.
Granafei noted the high rate of criminality, the lack of roads and the failure
of the railway which was being poorly administered by the three countries
of Transcaucasia. Granafei suggested a Caucasian Confederation, with the
inclusion of Georgia, Azerbaijan, Armenia, and Dagestan, and occupation
of the Caspian Sea. He thought that such a Confederation would make it
easier to solve territorial disputes within the region and that the abolishment
of customs and the unification of the transportation system would
encourage better economic interaction, thus granting more income to the
mandate power.5 The Italian Government never thought of including of
Armenia and Dagestan under the Italian mandate, but kept Azerbaijan and
Georgia together in their plans (see more in Vincelli and Carteny 2012).
 Orlando persistently pushed through his decision. Italian troops were
gathered at the port of Taranto and made ready for their mission, but on 23
June the Italian Parliament impeached the Prime Minister, and his
replacement, Francesco Nitti, immediately reversed his decision.

Within the Caucasus: aspirations and

impossibilities
Within the Caucasus the attitudes towards the Federation varied greatly. At
the initial stage, in spring 1918 the Armenians, engaged in fighting against
the Ottoman Empire, saw Georgia as their only possible ally, and they did
not want to dissolve the Federation. When in autumn the Ottomans
surrendered to the Allies, the Armenians switched their priorities from an
alliance within Transcaucasia to an extension towards their kinsmen in
Turkey, the Anatolian or Western Armenians. They hoped for the Allied
protection and for a favourable attitude on the part of a White Russia
(Hovannisian 1971, 375).
Georgia had to abandon the Federation on 26 May 1918, but on 21
November, following the German defeat, the Georgian Cabinet composed
recommendations for its delegation to the Peace Conference. The second
point of a seven-point document suggested a possible confederation in
Transcaucasia in the future, but on the precondition of the strengthening and
international recognition of the individual republics (GCHA 1861/4/3/5-6).
In 1919, Azerbaijan formally articulated the idea of a Caucasian
Confederation in a memorandum submitted to the Allied Supreme Council.
However, this claim was slightly different from the Georgian one, as it
included the Mountainous Republic of the North Caucasus (Claims of the
Peace Delegation of the Republic of Caucasian Azerbaidjan 1919).
Dagestan provided a gate for Russia to enter Azerbaijan, and it was crucial
for the latter to maintain the North Caucasus as an independent buffer state.
The Georgians reached the same conclusion, so therefore they helped the
rebel mountaineers with arms and munitions and gave them asylum in
Tiflis, although the Georgians thought that any real political affiliation with
a mostly non-existent or feeble state located to the north of the Caucasus
range would harm their international prospects. When Dagestan was
occupied by General Denikin in the summer of 1919 and the White
Russians unblocked the highway into Transcaucasia, Georgia and
Azerbaijan concluded a defensive treaty and invited Armenia to join it. This
was a good chance to establish a unified security space in Transcaucasia,
but the Armenians thought that they could enjoy a favourable relationship
with both Denikin and the Allies, hence they did not need to pick a fight
with Russia and declined the proposal.6

Conclusion
In general terms, the Caucasian states realized that from the perspective of
their economic welfare and external security they had to negotiate some
form of unity, whether federation or confederation. At various stages the
Armenians and Georgians, Georgians and Azerbaijanis, and Azerbaijanis
and North Caucasians demonstrated such readiness in practice. These topics
always featured in the agendas of the Caucasian Conferences that were held
in Tiflis throughout 1919 and 1920. Most likely it would have been
unreasonable to expect from these embryonic states an immediate and
smooth transition from being imperial guberniyas of Russia to the creation
of a solid federative unit. Very few of the Transcaucasian districts were
homogenous; the political elites of each nationality had their own historic
memories and narratives; and many of them were inexperienced and
unprepared for an independence that they never expected.
Apart from that, the empires played their parts as well: the Ottomans
undermined unity by proposing to Azerbaijan, and to some extent to
Georgia, somewhat better prospects in a relationship with them than with
the Armenians, and of course the Azerbaijanis and the Georgians had little
desire to be buried alongside the Armenians in the spring of 1918; after
1919 it was Denikin who suggested partnership and independence to
Armenia if latter did not join an alliance with her neighbours against
Russia. The result was that from 1920 to 1921 Russia and Turkey took and
shared Azerbaijan, Armenia and Georgia one by one, and they finally
signed the treaties of Moscow in March 1921 and of Kars in October of that
year, which one can compare to the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact in terms of
dividing up independent smaller states in an imperial manner. There was
sometimes economic geography behind the regional disputes: Azerbaijan
and Georgia were interdependent, since Azerbaijan intersected with the
West through Georgia and Georgia was dependent on Azeri oil. This
balance alone, apart from the Russian menace, made them amicable.
Meanwhile, Armenia needed both the Azeri oil and the Georgian corridor,
but it could offer nothing in exchange and upset its neighbours by using
Allied or Russian pressure against them.
It was a common pattern among the British, Americans and Italians that
they were asking for a single economic, security and political space in the
region. In their rhetoric, the terms confederation, federation and even diet
were used interchangeably, while they did not truly get deeply into defining
what was meant by these terms. They did not propose comprehensive
projects. The Caucasus was a peripheral issue for the Allies, the region too
distant and risky for them to assume security or economic responsibilities
over it, and it became even less attractive by the failure of the new
Transcaucasian states to demonstrate the long-term feasibility of a
federative union.
Notes
1. See also PA AA, R7317, Kress: Bericht über die Tätigkeit der Deutschen Delegation im
Kaukasus 1918, Grossgrundlach, 20. 8. 19.
2. This was a consulting body to the Cabinet dealing with issues relating to the “British
Orient” i.e. from the eastern shores of the Mediterranean to India, including the Caucasus.
The Eastern Committee was created on 10 March 1918 and dissolved in January 1919.
Lord Curzon was the chairman, and the members included the Chief of the Imperial
General Staff Sir Henry Wilson, Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour, and the State Secretary
for India Sir Edwin Montague.
3. Georgian Central Historic Archive (GCHA) 1864/2/77-78-90; FO 371/3660/512/159650/58;
FO 371/3665/1015/157888; FO 371/3665/1015/155472/58; Documents on British Foreign
Policy 1919-1939, 1948, 734; United States Department of State 1919, 606–607;
Hovannisian 1982, 217–222.
4. Gabba became a General and wartime Minister of Italian Africa during 1943–1944.
5. In 1980s Professor Ilia Tabaghua worked for several years in the archives of the Ministry of
Foreign Affairs of Italy, and while there he copied documents related to Georgia. Years
after of his death, the National Centre of Manuscripts acquired the surviving part of the
professor’s personal archive. The documents related to Italian-Georgian relations are
distributed in six boxes. Unfortunately, the papers are in such a fragile state that the
references assigned to them in the Italian archives are not readable. Thus the National
Centre of Manuscripts has not catalogued the documents; hence it is also impossible to
provide Georgian references for them. The author of this article was troubled by
improvising his own system for referencing them. In this case: National Centre of
Manuscripts, personal papers of Ilia Tabaghua, report by Captain Granafei of May 30th
1919.
6. FO 608/118 nos. 13477 and 16780; FO 371/3662/1015/94192/58; FO
371/3662/1015/113022/58; Archives de Ministere des Affaires Etrangeres de la France
(AMAE), Europe, Russie, Caucase (Georgie) 1918–1919, Vol. 833, ff. 228-231; GCHA
1864/2/114/45-49; GCHA 1864/2/79/1-9.

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Funding
This article was written through the generous support of the Shota Rustaveli
National Science Foundation of Georgia.
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w
Ideology meets practice in the struggle for
the Transcaucasus: Stepan Shaumyan and
the evolution of Bolshevik nationality
policy
Timothy K. Blauvelt

ABSTRACT
The Tiflis-born Stepan Shaumyan (1878–1918) was one of the most active
revolutionaries in the Transcaucasus and a prolific theorist about the “national
question” who corresponded regularly with Lenin and other leading Bolsheviks. In
a crucial moment in the spring of 1918, as the Russian Empire was disintegrating
and the Russian Civil War was breaking out, Shaumyan, appointed by Lenin as
Commissar Extraordinary for the Caucasus, attempted to create a compelling
internationalist and “Soviet” appeal to challenging the emerging nationalist
paradigm in the Transcaucasus. Shaumyan’s efforts to consolidate Bolshevik rule
in the “Baku Commune” in 1918 contributed to a bloody ethnic massacre, and his
attempts to spread Soviet Power in the region failed, resulting in his execution
together with the other “26 Baku Commissars” in September of that year. Making
extensive use of Shaumyan’s writings, including his early work held in manuscript
form in the Georgian Party Archives in Tbilisi, this article examines Shaumyan’s
conceptions of the “nationality question” and their implementation in the
Transcaucasus under his leadership in 1918, and the lessons that the Bolsheviks
may have drawn from failure of his program for the later formulation of Soviet
nationality policy.

The Bolsheviks and the Transcaucasus in the

revolutionary period
Overall, the Bolsheviks held a weak hand in the Transcaucasus during the
revolutionary period of 1917–1918. Given the weakness of the proletarian
identity and the intensified mass appeal of nationalism, especially in the key
regional capital of Tiflis, Baku became the only viable platform from which
to consolidate their position and power. The disintegration of the Caucasus
Army deprived them of an important target constituency and flooded the
region with weaponry and potential combatants, the erupting civil war cut
them off from the Bolshevik stronghold in Soviet Russia to the north, the
terms of the Brest-Litovsk unbound the Turks to renew their offensive to
the west, and ethnic tensions continued to escalate. The Bolsheviks’
situation in the Transcaucasus became increasingly precarious. They and
their leftist allies in the Baku Soviet declared loyalty to the government of
Lenin and the Sovnarkom in Petrograd and were therefore devoted to the
view that Soviet Russia represented the rightful heir to the Russian Empire
and that Soviet authority and ideology should rightfully extend to all of its
territory, at least until such time as world revolution would extend that
authority even further. Thus, their overriding goal was to prevent separatism
and the emergence and consolidation of institutions that might serve to
encourage independence or legitimize incursions by the warring Great
Powers into the region, especially Germany and Ottoman Turkey. They
viewed the Transcaucasian Federation that emerged in the spring of 1918 in
much the same way as some of the nationalist leaders and later historians,
as a bridge between the imperial past and an independent future for the
three emerging nations of the Transcaucasus (Mukhranov 2017, 72), only
they viewed this as a suboptimal outcome and did everything in their power
to subvert and prevent it. While struggling to maintain a bare foothold in
Baku and Sukhumi, the Bolsheviks formed short-lived and desperate
“Communes” that they were forced to abandon after only several months,
but not before launching a frantic military campaign to offensively defend
the revolution in the region.
There are clearly a number of reasons for the Bolshevik failure: tactical
errors in their attempts to either consolidate or seize power in Tiflis; the
small size of the proletariat in the region, especially beyond the largest
cities; the disintegration of the Caucasus Army; the Bolsheviks’ hubris in
attempting to spread Soviet power by force beyond Baku; the naivety of
their expectation that uprisings would take place throughout the region and
would destabilize the existing regimes; and in the end either an excess of
democracy1 or simply a lack of the will (or the capacity) to hold on to
power no matter the cost. Ultimately, though, the central element in
Bolsheviks’ failure in the Transcaucasus revolves around the “nationality
question”: their flawed assurance that class identities would trump ethnic
ones, their inability to put forth a programme compelling enough to
compete with those of the national parties, and their inflexibility in practice
towards questions of real autonomy.
One of the most influential of the Bolsheviks in the Transcaucasus
during the revolutionary period with regard to the “nationality question”,
both in its theoretical evolution and exposition in the years preceding the
revolutions, as well as in its practical application as events unfolded in the
region over the course of 1917–1918, was Stepan Georgevich Shaumyan.
Born and raised in multi-ethnic Tiflis, Shaumyan was a revolutionary
activist and a prolific theorist about the “national question” who
corresponded regularly with Lenin and other leading Bolsheviks. In a
crucial moment in the spring of 1918, as the Russian Empire was
disintegrating and the Russian Civil War was breaking out, Shaumyan,
appointed by Lenin as Commissar Extraordinary for the Caucasus,
attempted to create a compelling internationalist and “Soviet” appeal to
challenging the emerging nationalist paradigm in the Transcaucasus and the
resulting institutional frameworks of the Transcaucasian Seim and the short-
lived Transcaucasian Democratic Federative Republic (TDFR). Lacking
worker or military support in Tiflis, after failing to overthrow the Seim in
February 1918 Shaumyan and the Bolsheviks made their stand in Baku.
Following the ethnic violence of the “March Days” between the Armenians
and the Azerbaijanis, Shaumyan became head of the Bolshevik “Baku
Commune” from April to July 1918, and was among the famed “26
Commissars” executed by the Transcaspian government and the Whites
near Krasnovodsk in September of that year.

Shaumyan and conceptions of territorial

autonomy
On the eve of the Bolshevik coup in Petrograd early October 1917, at the
1st Congress of Bolshevik Organizations of the Caucasus that took place in
Tiflis, a heated debate broke out in the discussion period involving
Shaumyan, Filipp Makharadze, Mamia Orakhelashvili, and Anastas
Mikoyan. Shaumyan in particular criticized the emerging consensus to
frame the question in terms of what he called “oblast’ self-government”,
which, he argued, was based on an outdated understanding of the Party’s
platform on the national question: “At the conference of Bolsheviks in
19132 our programme on the national question was somewhat expanded,
and in place of oblast’ self-governance the autonomy of oblasts was
accepted at the suggestion of Comrade Lenin” (Ivanidze 1969, 60). He
explained that oblast’ self-governance meant giving local institutions
cultural and “economic-administrative” functions and taxation, while
oblast’ autonomy meant creating a legislature, or Seim, with wide
legislative rights, and a central government that “delegates to the local
autonomous oblasts a certain number of issues”. Shaumyan criticized what
he called “cultural-national autonomy” as “reactionary and clearly
nationalistic”. Thus, in place of the proposed “oblast’ self-governance”,
Shaumyan proposed forming “national-territorial oblasts” with the division
of the Transcaucasus with consideration for nationality, which had been
rejected by the other delegates:
We must divide Transcaucasia into three oblasts: Western Transcaucasia, including the Kutaisi
and Batumi districts and part of the Tiflis district; Eastern Transcaucasia, including the
Yerevan district, part of the Tiflis district, and the districts of Kars and Elizavetpol; and Baku,
which would include part of the Elizavetpol district and the Dagestani oblast’.

He suggested that if the local population of “Turkish Armenia” so desired,

they should be allowed to become part of Russia and “should be joined to
the Armenians” (Shaumyan 1958, 104–105).
The stenogram of this discussion session has not been preserved, but the
memoirs of Mikoyan and Orakhelashvili describe how Shaumyan’s
proposal to create three autonomous territories were rebuffed by a grouping
of “young members”, and this has often been repeated in the secondary
literature (Ismailov 2011; Kazemzadeh [1952] 2008; Suny 1972). Mikoyan
wrote that Shaumyan arrived only at the end of the congress, and criticized
the delegates for their outdated and overly theoretical approach to the
national question, before making his own proposal to create the three
territorial national autonomous unions (ob”edinenie) based on ethnic
considerations. “Unfortunately”, Mikoyan wrote,
the Congress did not understand the new demands of the changing political situation and
rejected Shaumyan’s proposal. I was a delegate of this Congress and also (although I thought I
understood the nationality policy of our party) turned out to be among those who did not
understand and did not support Shaumyan’s proposal. This was our political mistake.
(Mikoyan 1999, 48)
This seems to follow a line in Soviet historiography to describe the apparent
rejection of Shaumyan’s more “progressive” proposal (in that it was close to
the nationality policy that the Bolsheviks eventually adopted) as a rash error
of the young delegates present. The Soviet Georgian historian K. Ivanidze
wrote in 1969 that “This was a serious mistake; the Bolsheviks of the
Caucasus then for several years did not admit their mistake, and only
understood and admitted it at the moment of the victory of Soviet power in
the Caucasus [in 1920–1921]” (1969, 65).
Orakhelashvili described the “young members” who challenged
Shaumyan as “speaking in a manner that we would today [writing in 1928]
call ‘left deviation’ and ‘gushing’ (perekhlyostyvali)”, they “did not want to
hear about administrative structuring of Transcaucasia according to national
criteria, and only after repeated interventions by Shaumyan they
‘compromised’ and agreed to the ‘formula’ that administrative borders
could coincide with national ones” (Orakhelashvili 1928, 65). Thus, in
Orakhelashvili’s recounting, there was actually general agreement about
national territories. We know that a commission was formed as a result of
the discussion, comprised of Shaumyan, Orakhelashvili and Toroshelidze,
which then presented a resolution “composed strictly on the basis of the
Leninist programme of the Party and the resolution of the April Conference
of the RSDRP(b) on the national question”, which was then included
among the other final resolutions of the 1st Regional Conference in October
1917. The “demands” of the resolution on the “national question” included
(1) oblast’ autonomy of the Caucasus with the creation of a Seim elected by
the entire population of the region without distinction for gender, religion or
ethnicity; (2) wide local self-governance together with the creation of new
administrative units; and (3) mandatory, state-funded general education
with the provision of instruction in native languages (Ivanidze 1969, 66;
Khachapuridze 1936, 386–387). Thus, rather than being rejected outright,
the essence of Shaumyan’s proposals were accepted, at least in a general
sense.
While reiterating in broad terms the right of nations to self-
determination, the resolution nevertheless “did not recommend” separation,
as this would be harmful to the interests of the working class:
Recognizing the right to self-determination of all nations, up to and including separation, our
Party demands from the Provisional Government an immediate and open declaration of this
right for all nations populating Russia, including for the peoples of the Caucasus. In addition,
 the Congress declares that it does not recommend their separation or the formation of
federative states for the Caucasus nationalities. To the contrary, taking into consideration the
diversity, quantity, and also the inter-mixed nature of nations and tribes (plemena) of our
region and, on the other hand, deriving from the interests of the unity of the workers’
movement in the Caucasus, we call upon the toilers of all peoples of the Caucasus, without
distinction of nationality, to a most close unification and convergence (sblizhenie). (Ivanidze
1969 [with slightly different wording], 67; Khachapuridze 1936, 387)

The language of this resolution in 1917 was very similar to that used in
another, “On the national question”, at the Session of the Caucasian Organs
of the RSDRP two years before, in October 1915 in Baku, that was drafted
directly by Shaumyan himself. Here too there are general words of
recognition of the right of nations to self-determination and of separation
from Russia, yet
Being certain that the nationality question in Russia will be resolved through the path indicated
in our programme, and considering the demand for federative division of Russia and the
demand for cultural-national autonomy to be utopian, we hold that the propaganda of these
demands at the current time bears a harmful, reactionary character. Instead of convergence
(sblizhenie) of the worker and democratic layers of the population in the name of the struggle
for international and general democratic ideals, they lead to increasing national conflict and
hostility. (Khachapuridze 1936, 374)

The 1915 resolution, like that of 1917, also demanded “regional self-
government for localities, distinguished by particular everyday and
economic conditions, and the particular national composition”. Thus, one
might conclude that Shaumyan’s language about the creation of three
autonomous national territories in 1917 was just as vague and general as it
had been in 1915, and that the language about national determination in
both the 1915 and 1917 resolutions was intended primarily for external
consumption in polemics with the other parties, rather than as a concrete
plan intended for implementation.
Indeed, both before and after the October 1917 Congress, Shaumyan had
been fundamentally hostile to what he called “cultural-national
autonomies”, which he understood as separate legislatures (seims) and
administrative organs for the different territories, divisions by nationality
that he considered to be “contradictory to the cause of economic
development of peoples and extremely harmful from the point of view of
democracy and the international worker movement” (from the 1915
resolution, Khachapuridze 1936, 373). Even if taken at face value,
Shaumyan’s proposal for the territorial divisions of the three autonomies
was rather imprecise. One Soviet Georgian historian accused Shaumyan of
intending to dismember Georgia, vis-à-vis his suggestion to divide the Tiflis
district among two territories, rather than of creating actual nationally-based
territories (see Ivanidze 1969, 63–64).

Shaumyan, Lenin, and the “nationality question”

We see something of the consolidation of both Shaumyan and Lenin’s
views on the “nationality question” in their correspondence on the topic in
1913–1914, around the time of the “Summer Conference”. There Lenin
criticized Shaumyan for opposing autonomy but supporting oblast’ self-
governance and for suggesting that “the right to self-definition means not
only the right to secession, it also means also the right to federation”. As a
federation is a union of equals that demands multilateral agreement, “how
can there be the right of one side to the agreement with it of the other side??
This is absurd”, Lenin complained (Shaumyan 1959, 35). Lenin insisted
that “self-determination” only meant the right of secession, that “we are for
the right to secession, but not for secession”, Nationalities should in
principle have the right to secede, but if they do not make such a decision,
then they have no right to demand any kind of federation. “You don’t want
to separate? Then excuse me, don’t decide for me, don’t think that you have
a right to federation”. Lenin emphasized that while the party opposed
federation in principle, as it “weakens the economic linkages and is an
inappropriate form of government”, broadly defined autonomy was nothing
to fear and, unlike federalism, it did not provoke separatism:
Autonomy is our plan for the construction of the democratic state. Separation is not at all our
plan. We do not at all pursue separation. But we stand for the right of separation, in view of
Great Russian Black Hundred nationalism, which has so corrupted national cohabitation that
sometimes more linkage results after separation!! … The right to self-determination is an
exception from our general premise of centralism. This exception is certainly necessary in the
face of Black Hundred Great Russian nationalism, and the slightest rejection of this exception
is opportunism (as with Rosa Luxemburg), it is an ignorant game that plays into the hands of
Great Russian Black Hundred nationalism. But an exception must never be understood more
broadly. There is nothing, absolutely nothing here besides the right to secession, and there
must not be. (Shaumyan 1959, 36; emphasis here and elsewhere in the original)

Thus, self-determination meant only secession, and had nothing to do with

determining the rights and privileges of autonomous entities, which would
be determined by the legislature of the central government. As Shaumyan
later commented, the Bolsheviks did not “recommend proselytizing”
secession, but rather “we support secession when it is dictated by the rights
of the working masses, who compose the majority of the nation”. To
Lenin’s view that nationalities should have the right of secession,
Shaumyan added that this decision belonged in particular to the working
class of those nationalities, and presumably therefore to the Bolshevik
party, as the vanguard of that class (1959, 40).
Shaumyan disagreed with Lenin’s criticism of his support for Russian as
a state language, replying that
it’s as if you’re playing the role of a Social Democrat-Great Russian, who magnanimously
renounces all the privileges and language [of the Russian] nation as a counterbalance to
unrestrained nationalism. But I don’t think the party should take this view. It seems to me that
in composing the September resolution you have exaggerated the danger of Great Russian
nationalism. (1959, 46)

When earlier the federalist opponents of the Bolsheviks, such as the

Dashnaks and Georgian Socialist Federalists, had tried to use the arguments
of Karl Kautsky, “we answered them that their premise was wrong, that
among the popular masses in Russia there were no separatist aspirations
among any specific nationalities, this was something made up by the petty
bourgeois and the newspaper men”. The new platform, with its discussion
of autonomy, was dictated, in Shaumyan’s opinion, by an exaggeration of
the anti-Russian sentiment in the masses (Ibid.). Shaumyan held that the
existence of a state language would not impinge upon the use of local
languages in state and non-state institutions. Probably reflecting his own
social milieu in the educated urban centres in the Transcaucasus, Shaumyan
thought that Russian as a state language was especially necessary here:
Why do you not allow that small nations, like the Armenians, Georgians, Tatars and
mountaineers (I am listing the Caucasian nationalities) may choose voluntarily that their
mutual communication in state institutions in the Caucasus should be recognized as a common
language, the Russian language; and why should we not propose, recommend this to them?

Although it was understandable that Poles would not want to use Russian
for this purpose, “in the Caucasus and in all the other localities in Russia the
small nations will not only have nothing against Russian [as a shared state
language], but they themselves will recognize its essentiality” (Ibid.).
 In Shaumyan’s view, the significance of the recent emergence of
nationalist sentiments in the Caucasus was exaggerated. The Party’s new
1913 platform, with its discussion of autonomy, was dictated, in
Shaumyan’s opinion, by an exaggeration of the anti-Russian sentiment in
the masses (46). While full autonomy for Poland was appropriate, for the
Transcaucasus and other parts of Russia Shaumyan thought that limited
autonomy, with subordination to a central legislature and local authority
only over cultural, economic and administrative issues, better served the
interests of the population.
Shaumyan’s positions in his correspondence with Lenin reflected those
laid out in his 1906 brochure The National Question and Social Democracy.
There he argued that the issues of centralization or federalism was not a
question of absolute principle, but rather one of political expediency and
historical development, and that autonomy should be considered “from the
point of view of the interests of the proletariat of Russia in general and of
the expediency of centralization for the class struggle of the proletariat”.
Shaumyan clearly did not see such autonomy as beneficial in the
Transcaucasus, which “already composes a part of the economic system of
Russia, and one of the most backwards and uncultured parts”. As such, it
would be “incomparably more profitable to be linked in the strongest form
with the larger state organism”, since “in separating in one degree or
another from Russia, the Caucasus will be slowed in its economic and
cultural development, and this is very harmful for the proletariat”.3

Ideology meets action in Baku

All of Shaumyan’s statements and actions when in power reflected his
hostility towards genuine autonomy and against forms of federation that
might facilitate separation from Russia. In his view they were inherently
nationalist rather than internationalist. What were posing as revolutionary
Soviets were in fact proto-national institutions supported by the ruling
classes. As he emphasized in an appeal to all Soviet and all workers,
soldiers and peasants of the Caucasus in January 1918,
instead of international-democratic and revolutionary Soviets of worker, soldier and peasant
deputies, we have reactionary bourgeois or landowner national Soviets [emphasis in original –
T.B.] that are playing the role of national governments … thanks to this nationalist policy the
 Caucasus is careening inevitably towards the abyss of counterrevolution and national war.
(Shaumyan 1958, 153)

As the Azerbaijani Bolshevik Sultan Medzhid Efendiev later wrote in the

wake of the mass violence of the March Days,
the question of federation of the future political situation was very interesting. Comrade Stepan
Shaumyan was of the opinion that no federation was necessary, the national question must be
resolved in the sense that Russian culture and language are among the greatest of world
languages and cultures, and that the Caucasian nationalities (narodnosti) through this language
should join into the common culture. (cited in Ismailov 2011, 265)

Shaumyan and the Bolsheviks in the Transcaucasus in 1918 essentially

decided to ignore nationality both as a means of appeal and as an organizing
principle, and instead counted on the unifying and mobilizing power of
class identity and economic interests.
A paradox of this approach, and a lesson for Bolsheviks leaders for their
future considerations of the “nationality question”, was the problem of
positionality. The Bolsheviks in Baku were unable to transcend who they
were and the situation that they found themselves in: the fact that
Shaumyan, some other visible Bolsheviks, and much of the Red Guard were
viewed first and foremost as Armenians, and that justly or not the goals of
the Bolshevik movement in Transcaucasia were perceived, especially by the
Muslims, to be identical to those of the Armenian nationalist parties; the
fact that the Bolsheviks were unwilling or unable to address the Muslims’
demands for weapons to balance their capacities vis-à-vis the other national
groups, or their demands for federal autonomy because of the centrality of
Baku for Bolshevik aspirations in the region; and that ultimately without
such concessions the Bolsheviks were unable to make their case to most
Muslims, or to offer security guarantees that might have counterbalanced
the appeal of the intervening Turkish army.
Instead of reducing ethnic tensions in the regions that the Bolsheviks
controlled, disregarding nationality directly enabled the violence of the
March Days and contributed to the emerging security dilemma. The
Bolsheviks both ignored ethnicity but played the “ethnic card”, especially in
Shaumyan’s proclamations about Muslim atrocities in the Shamkhor
incident and the nationalist ambitions of Muslim beks and landlords (see
Mukhranov 2017, 39–61). They consciously entered into an alliance with
the Armenian parties while fully aware of the precarious ethnic balance in
the region, encouraging their betrayal of the Muslim parties and then ethnic
massacre that only further intensified ethnic animosity, no matter how much
they tried to justify that decision to themselves as a necessary tactical
maneuver and the resulting carnage as a civil, rather than ethnic, war.
Much has been written about the so-called “March Days” that shook the
city and then the surrounding region at the end of March and the beginning
of April. The details of the precipitating events are somewhat obscure and
mutually contradictory. Whatever the pretext, the situation was highly
incendiary, and it took little to push the existing security dilemma over the
line into full-scale conflict. The apparent betrayal by the Dashnaks of the
Muslims is also controversial. It seems uncontestable that they gave signals
to the Musavat that they intended to at least remain neutral in the brewing
conflict between the Muslims and the forces of the Soviet, and when it
broke out their armed units joined in on the Bolshevik side and inflicted
much of the carnage on the Muslim population in Baku and in cities and
towns of the surrounding region, resulting in thousands killed and injured
and the Muslim quarter bombarded by artillery.4 In contemporary
Azerbaijani historiography the March Days are viewed as a premeditated
assault on the Muslim population to destroy the power of the Muslim elites
in Baku and cow or expel the population, carried out by a cabal of the
Armenian parties and the Bolsheviks, many of whose leaders and soldiers
were also Armenian (as in Kurban Said’s novel Ali and Nino, many of the
Muslims in Baku saw little distinction between Shaumyan and the
Dashnaks).5 The Bolshevik-Dashnak alliance was a long time in the
making, in many ways predetermined given their commonality of interests
and fears and their incompatibility with those of the Muslims in Baku.
In Bolshevik interpretations, both at the time and in later Soviet
historiography, efforts were made to downplay the ethnic element of the
violence and to instead view the events as a civil conflict based on class
interests. Once the dust had settled and the Muslim leadership agreed to a
total surrender and to disarm and disperse their remaining combatants, the
Baku Soviet leadership placed the blame firmly on the Muslims and
Musavat for provoking and continuing the conflict. In his explanatory letter
to the Sovnarkom on 13 April, however, Shaumyan admitted to the
Bolsheviks’ role in provoking the massacres, and also their ethnic essence.
 During the course of three days … a bitter battle took place in Baku. On one side was the
Soviet Red Guard, the Red International Army that we organized, the Red Fleet … and the
Armenian national units. On the other side were the Muslim Dikaya division, among whom
were no few Russian officers, and bands of armed Muslims led by the Musavat party … The
results of the fighting were excellent for us. We dictated the conditions to them, and they
accepted without reservations. Soviet power in Baku had always hung by a string thanks to the
opposition of the Muslim nationalist parties … If they had been victorious in Baku, the city
would have been declared the capital of Azerbaijan, and all of the non-Muslim elements would
have been disarmed and had their throats slit … We had to push back, and we used as a pretext
the first armed attack on our cavalry unit and launched the assault on all fronts. Thanks to the
efforts of the local Soviet and of the Military-Revolutionary Committee that relocated here
(from Tiflis and Sarykamis), we had a military force, about 6000 men. The Dashnaktsutyun
had about 3000–4000 national troops, which were at our disposal. Their participation gave the
civil war in part the character of an ethnic massacre, but it was not possible to avoid this. We
took this step consciously. The Muslim poor suffered greatly, but now they are uniting around
the Bolsheviks and around the [Baku] Soviet (1958, 208–212).

The Bolsheviks painted the events as a Muslim conspiracy of old elites to

undermine Soviet power in Baku and establish an autonomous Azerbaijani
state (Suny 1972, 218). In his address to the Baku Soviet on 19 April,
Shaumyan emphasized that “Any authority must have coercive power, and
thus recently, thanks to the efforts of the Military-Revolutionary Committee
of the Caucasus Army, we have such a military force”. Once again
characterizing the Muslims in class terms, Shaumyan emphasized that “the
beks, and agalars are supporters of a Turkish protectorate and of
Azerbaijani autonomy … We even had to resort to the help of the Armenian
regiment, we could not even allow ourselves the luxury of refusing their
services”, and in the end “our victory was so great that this little darkens the
reality” (Ismailov 2011, 283; Shaumyan 1958, 214; see also Shaumyan
1924, 156–158). As Kazemzadeh concluded, “the Soviet provoked ‘civil
war’ with the hope of breaking the power of its most formidable rival, the
Musavat, but things degenerated into a massacre” ([1952] 2008, 47).
Paradoxically, depending on how much information about what had
transpired had been disseminated throughout the region in 1918, the March
Days likely contributed to the instability of the Transcaucasian Federation
by undermining the possibility for interethnic trust between Muslims and
Armenians beyond Baku and highlighting the incompatibility of their
interests and futility of seeking common ground, dooming the project even
before it formally began. The events surely represented an escalation in
ethnic violence that then begot further violence in return, the echoes of
which were felt in the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict of the early 1990s and
down to the present day.

Conclusion. Implementing ideological

orientations: results and lessons for the future
Shaumyan’s positions and actions in practice were largely consistent with
his ideological stances prior to the revolution, and these attitudes were most
likely shaped to a significant degree by his upbringing and experiences in
the urban intellectual and revolutionary communities in the Transcaucasus
of his time. Yet in the dramatic events in the region in 1918 the
operationalization of this ideology and outlook proved disastrous. The
ideologically grounded underestimation of the appeal of nationalism and
ethnic grievances as a mobilizing force, the unwillingness to take national
autonomy seriously, and the framing of nationalism as exclusively a proxy
for class interest led Shaumyan and his comrades to take actions and make
appeals that were not understood by large segments of the minority
populations in the intended way, which resulted in intensification rather
than amelioration of animosity and mutual distrust. In trying to both ignore
nationality and to make use of it for pragmatic purposes, by framing
nationalist sentiments and fears as illegitimate pretexts used by elites
(especially Muslim ones), Shaumyan’s appeals contributed to existing
tensions.
Shaumyan and other Transcaucasian Bolsheviks appear to have assumed
that they could be perceived as being above the fray because of their
internationalist revolutionary credentials, as they surely would have been
among their own social circles who were familiar with their writings,
biographies and revolutionary reputations. Yet this supposed objectivity was
lost upon much of the population, and especially upon the Muslims, who
saw them first and foremost as Armenians. What was more, the likely flight
of many of the Russian and other non-Armenian soldiers from the former
army units now comprising the Red Guard in Baku meant that the latter had
in reality become a primarily Armenian force, little different from the
Dashnak paramilitaries. This seems to have been understood
unambiguously by the Muslims, yet the Bolsheviks had convinced
themselves that the Red Guard was by definition international rather than
national.
Somewhat eerily, in his 1906 The National Question and Social
Democracy Shaumyan himself seems to have predicted that unleashing
class conflict in the culturally and ethnically diverse Caucasus would have a
bloody outcome:
if the Transcaucasus were to turn, wholly or partially, into an arena for political class struggle
of the proletariat, we will create here such a hell, the equivalent to which would be difficult to
imagine, just taking alone the bloody Tatar-Armenian drama. Every small nation would begin
its life with a massacre, with bloodshed.6

Though his entire life’s work was devoted to a peaceful and harmonious
future for the Caucasus, ultimately the implementation of his own
ideological orientations into practical action in itself contributed directly to
the very violent outcome that he so feared.
The Bolsheviks failed dramatically in the Transcaucasus in 1918. Yet
this experience (combined with the similar challenges they faced during the
same period in the Bolsheviks’ struggle for Ukraine)7 forced them to
fundamentally reconsider their approach to ethnic minorities and
nationalism and to reformulate a nationality policy in that took into
consideration the national aspirations of peoples in the periphery while
maintaining the unity and cohesion of the Soviet project, a process that was
already underway in Lenin’s thinking and in the drafting of the first Soviet
Russian constitution in the summer of 1918, although this had yet to
percolate to the periphery. The situation in 1920–1921, when the
Bolsheviks eventually returned to conquer the Transcaucasus, was
fundamentally different. Instead of needing to appeal to constituents in a
crowded field, now they were accommodating vanquished peoples backed
by overwhelming force and a monopoly over the political system. Yet the
lessons of 1918 were not lost: rather than ignoring nationality and their own
positionality with regard to it, and denigrating the concept of political
autonomy in principle, the Bolsheviks would instead attempt to harness
these to the furtherance of their own power and legitimacy in a genuine
rather than in a purely demonstrative manner.

Notes
 1. This is a central point in R.G. Suny’s thesis, that the Bolsheviks in Baku surrendered power
as the result of losing the vote in the Soviet (1972, 351).
2. A reference to the Joint Conference of the Central Committee of the RSDLP and Party
Officials, also known as the “Summer” or “August” Conference, held in 1913 in the village
of Pornonin near Kracow.
3. This essay was published in Armenian in a collected edition in 1948 (see Akopyan 1956,
11), and exists in a handwritten, Russian-language version in the Georgian Party Archive
(formerly known as the Party Archive of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of
Georgia, or Partarkhiv TsK KP(b) Gruzii), now Sakartvelos shinagan sakmeta saministro
arkivi, section II, hereafter Sakartvelos shss arkivi (II), f. 13, o. 1, d. 181. The file is dated
1922, and it is not clear if the handwriting is that of Shaumyan himself, or of a later
translator.
4. For example, in a telegraph to Seim Chairman Chkheidze and Commissariat Chairman
Gegechkori, Elisavetpol District Muslim Committee Head Alikperbek Khasmamedov
described the destruction by a 2000 strong military unit of Bolsheviks from Baku, using
artillery and machine guns, of the city of Shemakh and 15 Muslim villages along the way,
killing thousands of Muslim women and children. Sakartvelos shss arkivi (II), f. 8, o. 3, d.
251, l. 82.
5. In Kurban Said’s fictional recounting of the “March Days” in Baku in the novel Ali and
Nino ([1937] 2000, 264), a Muslim character says

And I don’t believe the Armenians will fight with us against the Russians anyway. Who
are these Russians? Just rabble, anarchist robbers. Their leader’s name is Stephan
Shaumian [sic], and he too is Armenian. Armenian anarchists and Armenian
Nationalists will make friends much quicker than Mohammedan Nationalists and
Armenian nationalists. That is the mystery of the blood. There will be a rift, as sure as
the Koran is always right.

6. Sakartvelos shss arkivi (II), f. 13, o. 1, d. 181, l. 16.

7. See the contribution by Blauvelt and Tumis in this special edition regarding Bolshevik
nationality policy and a comparison of the Transcaucasus and Ukraine.

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

ORCHID
Timothy K. Blauvelt http://orcid.org/0000-0003-3023-1195

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Shaumyan, Stepan. 1958. Izbrannye proizvedeniya (v dvukh tomakh). Moscow: State
Publishing House for Political Literature.
Shaumyan, Stepan. 1959. Pis’ma: 1896–1918. Yerevan: State Publishing House of Armenia.
Suny, Ronald Grigor. 1972. The Baku Commune 1917–1918: Class and Nationality in the
Russian Revolution. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Ukraine and the Transcaucasus in 1917–

1918: parallels, interactions, influences
Timothy K. Blauvelt and Stanislav Tumis

ABSTRACT
While the state of communications technology, the vicpen issitudes of war and
revolution, and vast distances created obstacles to communication and interaction
on the territory of the former Russian Empire during 1917–1918, very often
during these revolutionary years, events in one region of the periphery were
 profoundly shaped by similar things taking place in others. Through a cross-
regional and comparative analysis, this article considers the parallels between the
situations in the Ukrainian and Transcaucasian theatres, and also the interactions
that took place between the independent Ukrainian governments and the
Transcaucasian Seim and Federation during this period, and also the ways in
which the similar experiences and challenges facing the actors in these spaces,
particularly among the ultimately victorious Bolsheviks, influenced their longer-
term perspectives towards issues of nationalism, national sentiments, autonomy
and federation in the minority regions of the periphery.

De facto local autonomy following the February

Revolution
In the period after the February Revolution in 1917, the Ukrainian
nationalist leaders of the Central Rada, the dominant political institution in
the Ukrainian territories, and the Georgian, Armenian and Azerbaijani elites
who comprised the leading political institutions in the Transcaucasus,
shared a common intellectual outlook that combined social democracy and
national autonomy, and they faced similar ideological and practical
challenges. Most of them came from socialist intellectual backgrounds and
orientations, viewing themselves as advocates for the working class, while
the rapidly changing circumstances of the period compelled them to
transform themselves into the voices of newly emerging nations.
Convictions based in internationalism and federal autonomy on the
background of social-democratic federalism gradually gave way to the
defence of national sovereignty and independence.
The authority of the Provisional Government in the periphery of the
former Empire after the February Revolution was constrained in both
Ukraine and the Transcaucasus. When news of the collapse of the tsarist
regime arrived in Kyiv, an Executive Committee was created in Kyiv as the
representative of the new Russian government, and in the Transcaucasus the
Special Transcaucasian Committee, or Ozakom, filled that role. In both
places local Soviets of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies came into
existence, on the model of those created during the Revolution of 1905.
Unlike in Petrograd, however, in Kyiv a specifically Ukrainian institution
was established by an alliance of liberal moderates and social democrats in
the form of the Central Rada, which gained widespread popular support;
and in the Transcaucasus the similarly socially diverse Tiflis Council
subordinated the Ozakom to its authority: in early 1917, the Provisional
Government in the Transcaucasus “had only as much power as they had
support from the soviet and the populace” (Suny 1994, 186). Thus, in both
regions the representative institutions of the Provisional Government
became marginalized from early on, and unlike in Petrograd and central
Russia the Soviets of Workers’, Soldiers’ and Peasants’ Deputies were not
viable bases for mobilizing support for the extremist Bolsheviks. In both
regions, in any case, the Bolsheviks were numerically and politically weak
in the capitals, with their greatest strength in institutions dominated by
ethnic Russians, such as the railroads and the remnants of tsarist army units,
and in the industrialized regions to the east (in Kharkiv and the Donbass in
Ukraine, and in Baku in the Transcaucasus) where there was a more sizable
proletariat.
During 1917–1918 the Ukrainian national movement and the Central
Rada served as an inspiration for some of the Transcaucasian leaders, and
especially for the Georgian Mensheviks. Such sympathies can be
demonstrated by a number of examples. On 8 April 1917, the
representatives of Georgian organizations in Kyiv, headed by a certain Mr.
Koiava, welcomed the Ukrainian National Congress, expressed their
grievances over the unhappy common fate of both nations under the
Russian Empire, and articulated hopes for the future:
You Ukrainians and we Georgians are particularly close to each other as friends. We share the
same past. Ukraine and Georgia joined Russia under the condition that we would maintain our
full rights of national self-determination, but the nefarious rulers of Russia violated the
agreements and attempted to exterminate us.

Yet now “our hearts are full of joy, and together with you we shout ‘Long
live free Ukraine! Long live the Federative Republic!’” (Ukrainian Central
Rada 1996–1997, Vol.1, 61). Similar sympathies towards the Central Rada
resonated during several other meetings. In September 1917, a Congress of
Nations was held in Kyiv, and several Georgian, Armenian and Azerbaijani
representatives, including the Georgian Iosip Baratashvili and the
Azerbaijani Mustafa Vekilov, called for ensuring the equal rights of all
nations. All of the speakers emphasized that this must take place within the
scope of a Russian federative state that would provide wide autonomy to all
of its national territories. They also praised the efforts of the Ukrainian
Central Rada and its leading role in this endeavour. Following I.
Baratashvili’s election of as the head of the Georgian National Council in
November 1917, he appealed to Ukrainian politicians to show firm
leadership towards all of the neighbouring democratic nations in the post-
imperial space (Ukrainian Central Rada 1996–1997, Vol.1, 288–312;
Matvienko 2002, 160–161; Adygozalov 2013, 158).
The view that Ukraine was a key ally of Transcaucasia and Georgia was
repeatedly affirmed by the Transcaucasian Commissariat from its
establishment on 15 November 1917 under the leadership of the Georgian
Menshevik Evgeni Gegechkori, and also during the Georgian First National
Congress on 20 November 1917. All of the representatives of
Transcaucasia, and particularly the Georgian politicians, repeatedly
emphasized the idea of national-territorial self-government with a guarantee
of wide autonomy for minorities on the territories of Georgia and Armenia.
Up until the dispersal of the Constituent Assembly in the beginning of
January 1918, and possibly rather longer, they strongly believed that their
rights to autonomy would be finally realized within the boundaries of a
democratic and federative Russia and in cooperation with the other non-
Russian nations, particularly Ukraine, which was expected to play a
substantial role to play in the implementation of this arrangement
(Matvienko 2002, 161–162). Ukraine was potentially important to the
Transcaucasian Commissariat for other reasons. Leaving aside unrealistic
and even utopian speculations about a Caspian-Black Sea or Baltic-Black
Sea Federation, cooperation with Ukraine and the other “awakened nations”
was promising not only for the current situation, but for the future as well.1
Despite all of Ukraine’s weaknesses, Kyiv had the potential to become an
important force in the space between Germany and Russia, and Ukraine
played no small role as a maritime power in the Black Sea (Hovannisian
1969, 120–121).

The October Revolution and steps towards

independence
The Bolsheviks’ seizure of power in the name of the Petrograd Soviet in
October/November 1917 was condemned as illegal and irresponsible by the
leaders of both the Central Rada and of the Transcaucasians. Rather than
recognizing the authority of the new Bolshevik government of the Soviet of
Peoples’ Commissars (Sovnarkom), the three leading national parties of the
Transcaucasus, the Georgian Mensheviks, the Armenian Dashnaks, and the
Azerbaijani Musavat, declared a Transcaucasian Commissariat on 11
November. Similarly, on 20 November the Central Rada issued its Third
Universal2, declaring the creation of the Ukrainian National Republic
within a federated Russia that would be governed by the Central Rada and
its Secretariat until the meeting of the Constituent Assembly. Both thus
attempted to follow their own paths to the anticipated Constituent Assembly
that they hoped would finally give rise to a constitutional federation on the
territory of the former Empire.
In the conditions of late 1917 and early 1918, Ukraine was important for
Georgia and Armenia as there were a number of Georgian and Armenian
civilians and soldiers living in the Ukrainian territories and, facing invasion
by the Ottoman Empire, the Transcaucasian leadership acutely needed
military personnel and equipment. On 17 December 1917, the Georgian
National Council authorized Ivan Lordkipanidze, a member of Socialist-
Revolutionary (SR) Party, to serve as Military Commissar (actually a
military attaché) to the government of the Ukrainian People’s Republic.
When Lordkipanidze departed for Petrograd in January 1918, his deputy
David Vacheishvili took up the position. Armenia followed the Georgian
example and appointed an Armenian Military Commissariat in Ukraine on
7 January 1918, under the leadership of A. Toniev-Toniyants (Ukrainian
Central Rada 1996–1997, Vol. 2, 344). Historians have interpreted these and
succeeding steps on the part of Georgia and Armenia as preparations to
function as de facto independent states.
Both of the Military Commissars from the Caucasus serving in Ukraine
were involved in these negotiations with the Central Rada concerning the
transfer of Transcaucasian soldiers and civilians from Ukraine back home.
On 13 January 1918 the Georgian Military Commissariat prepared an
agreement with the Ukrainian military and foreign affairs ministry. This
document, signed by Georgian Commissar D. Vacheishvili and other
Georgian representatives, including Dr. Khramelashvili, Captain Svanidze,
and Executive Committee member Koganashvili, and on the Ukrainian side
by the military official I. Kolos and foreign affairs representative V.
Diakonenko, contained the following points:
 “(a). The formation of detachments of Georgian soldiers who had previously served on the
front on the territory of Ukraine; (b). the transfer of all such detachments to Georgia after their
establishment; and (c). in the case of an announcement of mobilization by the Georgian
National Council, to muster units from Georgian recruits on Ukrainian territory and transfer
them to Georgia.” It was also agreed, among other things, that Ukrainian representatives “will
acknowledge the Georgian Military Commissariat in Ukraine as an accredited body of the
Georgian National Council … and detachments and units formed of Georgian soldiers will be
provided with all necessary equipment while they are present on the territory of Ukraine and in
transit Georgia; they will be also provided with travel documents … and all expenses linked to
accommodation of and recruitment of Georgian soldiers will be reimbursed to Ukraine, either
from the general state budget of the Federation to which Georgia belongs or by the Georgian
National Council in an amount specified by a special committee composed of representatives
of both nations.”

While the Ukrainian state guaranteed the protection of Georgian citizens

and soldiers, Georgian soldiers were at the same time subjected to the
authority of the Georgian Military Commissar in all military matters. D.
Vacheishvili emphasized during the negotiations that he was responsible for
the protection of the rights of all of Georgian citizens resident in Ukraine,
and he asked the Ukrainian Minister of Foreign Affairs to keep him abreast
of all cases concerning Georgians, including conscription, arrests or police
raids (Petrenko 2016, 178–180). The Armenian Military Commissariat of
Ukraine, Moldova and the Crimea signed agreements with the Ukrainian
government Kyiv on 13 January. The Armenians also benefitted from a
treaty enabling the transfer of Armenian soldiers from Ukrainian territory to
the ranks of the Armenian national militias (Matvienko 2002, 165).

Bolshevik attempts to seize power

In both Ukraine and the Transcaucasus the Bolsheviks attempted to make
use of their support among soldiers and local soviets to provoke a seizure of
power along the same lines as in Petrograd. In Tiflis, on 29 November Red
Guard units loyal to the Mensheviks disarmed Bolshevik soldiers who
attempted to gain control over the city’s military garrison (Suny 1994, 190).
In Kyiv in late November and December a much more organized attempt
was made by the Military Revolutionary Committee of the Kyiv Soviet (the
VRK, the same structure through which the Bolsheviks seized power in the
name of the Petrograd Soviet) and the Oblast’ Committee of the Bolshevik
Party (RSDRP(b)) to force a re-election of the Central Rada and a transfer
of power from it to the Kyiv Soviet, a move that the Central Rada was able
to pre-empt (Koval’chuk 2012). The Bolsheviks performed very poorly in
both regions in the elections to the Constituent Assembly.
The final blow for the Bolsheviks in Kyiv took place on 17 December
when they found themselves greatly outnumbered by representatives of the
Ukrainian parties at the All Ukrainian Congress of Soviets that they
themselves organized. Following this humiliation, the Bolshevik faction
withdrew to Kharkiv, where they proclaimed a Soviet Ukrainian epublic.
Similarly, in December 1917 Lenin dispatched Stepan Shaumyan to Tiflis
with a large sum of rubles in order to provoke a Bolshevik seizure of power
in the Transcaucasus, which culminated with a mass demonstration of
Bolshevik supporters across the street from the meeting hall on the occasion
of the declaration of the Transcaucasian Seim on 23 February, which the
Transcaucasian authorities perceived as a preparation to storm the building
and seize power, and which they suppressed with machine gun fire.
Following the failure of his efforts in Tiflis, Shaumyan and his allies
(including the Military Revolutionary Council of the now defunct Russian
Army of the Caucasus) retreated to Baku, where they were able to seize
power in the name of the Baku Soviet, which like the Soviet Ukrainian
government in Kharkiv, recognized the authority of the Bolshevik central
Sovnarkom in Russia.3
In both places these self-proclaimed Soviet governments in exile began
planning to seize power in the capitals by force of arms. In January 1918
the Bolshevik Ukrainian Soviet in Kharkiv launched an offensive led by
Vladimir Antonov-Ovseyenko against the territories controlled by the
Central Rada. In the face of this invasion, the Central Rada fled Kyiv.
Realizing that its only hope for survival was to seek the assistance of the
Central Powers as an independent state, the Rada issued its Fourth
Universal that conclusively declared the independence of the Ukrainian
National Republic from any form of Russian federation and directed the
General Secretariat, now renamed the Council of National Ministers, to
negotiate a peace treaty with the Central Powers and to request their
intervention against the Bolsheviks. This triggered an enthusiastic response
among an influential segment in Tiflis. Given the Bolsheviks’ precarious
position in the Russian Civil War, the Germans felt amenable to the
Ukrainians’ request for assistance, motivated not only by the perceived
weakness of the Bolsheviks, but also by prospect of securing vital food
supplies from the fertile Ukrainian lands. After the Brest-Litovsk Treaty,
signed both by the Bolsheviks and Germans and also by the Ukrainian
Central Rada in February 1918, Ukraine became a de facto German
protectorate, required to provide foodstuffs and raw materials for the
German war effort. Nevertheless, by April 1918, dissatisfied with the
ineffective Central Rada, the Germans dispersed it and installed a puppet
government, known as the Hetmanate, under the leadership of Hetman
Pavlo Skoropadsky (Pipes 1997, 114–134).

Ukraine as intermediary, a cooling of relations,

and Transcaucasian independence
With Ukraine functioning under both the Rada and the Hetmanate as a
German protectorate, it was in a position to mediate contacts with the
Germans, now dominating the “Western Borderlands” of the former
Russian Empire, on behalf of the Transcaucasians. Germany, as an ally of
the Ottomans, could, in turn, help Transcaucasia to mitigate the extensive
Turkish claims to Transcaucasian territories and privileges when the peace
talks began in Trabzon. Although these discussions ultimately proved
fruitless, the Germans played a significant role in brokering a settlement
between the Turks and the Transcaucasians before and after the TDFR was
declared in April 1918 (Forsyth 2015, 371–373; Pipes 1997, 107, 193–195).
Despite the fact that the Central Rada members had found the time just
before its evacuation to discuss an invitation from the head of the
Transcaucasian Commissariat, E. Gegechkori, for Ukrainian delegates to
participate in the peace negotiations between the Transcaucasian
Commissariat and the Ottoman Empire, planned for Tiflis but held in
Trabzon in February and March 1918, both the Ukrainians and the
Transcaucasians found themselves very much on the defensive, and they
had no other choice but to rely on their own strengths and to seek security
assurances from more powerful allies (Ukrainian Central Rada 1996–1997,
Vol. 2, 123). Thus, ultimately the Ukrainian delegation did not participate in
the February–March peace negotiations in Trabzon. Together with
withdrawal of Ukrainian soldiers from the Caucasus, this was interpreted as
a meaningful signal that Ukraine had lost interest in direct cooperation with
the Transcaucasian Commissariat, and some of the Transcaucasian
delegates to the peace talks therefore argued there was no reason to delay
the negotiations with Turks (Hovannisian 1969, 120–121). This Ukrainian
apathy might be explained by the complicated situation in which the
Ukrainian politicians found themselves, and particularly by the fact they
had placed all of their bets on cooperation with the Central Powers, and first
of all with Germany, the ally of the Ottoman Empire (Pipes 1997, 106).
Thus the developing political situation led to a chill in the relations
between the Ukrainian and Transcaucasian representatives, and the
Ukrainian politicians in particular lost interest in actively assisting the
Transcaucasian project. Despite the change of relations with the Central
Rada, at that moment the Transcaucasian politicians had no other choice but
to continue to communicate with the Ukrainian representatives because they
needed to transport as many of their soldiers to the Caucasus as rapidly as
possible. Therefore, the Georgian and Armenian Military Commissars D.
Vacheishvili and A. Toniev-Toniyants individually addressed V.
Golubovych on 7 and 8 March 1918, respectively, with requests to re-affirm
the agreements that had been signed by both Military Commissariats on 13
January 1918, and in addition, for the granting of credits and provision of
trains and wagons for the transfer of soldiers from the Caucasus (Matvienko
2002, 168). This request was discussed on 13 March during a session of the
Ukrainian Council of National Ministers, which passed a general resolution
stating that
All of the national armies will be obliged to dissolve themselves from the moment they are de-
mobilized; previously existing military units were dissolved only by a directive of the Minister
for War. All units will enjoy of guarantees of unimpeded transit out of Ukraine in echelons
without their weapons. Regarding the reimbursement of funds, this issue can be resolved only
on the basis of an agreement with the national or regional governments to which these units
belong. (Ukrainian Central Rada 1996–1997, Vol. 2, 199)

This formulation enabled the Rada to avoid responsibility for the

Transcaucasian soldiers, and in the wider sense for any involvement in the
problems of the Transcaucasus. At the same time, it severely damaged the
prestige of the Central Rada in the Caucasus, yet as an entirely dependent
de facto protectorate of Germany and facing unenviable economic
conditions, Ukraine could hardly have acted differently.
Even the realization of the conditions of the agreement between the
Military Commissariats of the Transcaucasus and Ukraine raised a number
of problems. Both Military Commissars complained about delays in the
repatriation of soldiers to Georgia and Armenia, drawing attention to the
fact that thousands of servicemen, military doctors and other personnel
experienced months of hunger, illnesses and other problems in Ukraine
because the Kyiv government refused to provide them with essential
supplies. On 9 April 1918, D. Vacheishvili informed the representatives of
the Ukrainian Ministry of Foreign Affairs about the situation of one
particular trainload of Georgian military personnel that had departed Kyiv
on 19 March and was still on Ukrainian territory three weeks later
(Matvienko 2002, 169). It was almost certain that this incident was not an
exception. Yet such problems were most likely not the result of any
calculated policy on the part of the Ukrainian government, but rather
probably flowed from the chaos and uncertainty of the period. After all, the
German “protectors” were also exceedingly dissatisfied with the
organizational capacity of the Central Rada to provide the Germans with the
necessary supplies and to effectively control Ukrainian territory. The Rada
was even gradually losing popularity among its own Ukrainian population.
Therefore, on 28 April 1918, the Germans decided to dissolve the Rada and
replace it with Pavlo Skoropadsky’s Hetmanate regime (Subtelny 2009,
353). Ultimately Germany, as Ukraine’s patron and protector, found it in its
interests to push its ally, the Ottoman Empire, to offer the Transcaucasian
states more moderate peace conditions. Certain Ukrainian politicians had
also commented to the effect that they preferred a Georgian victory in the
war with the Turks, as that would be more advantageous for Ukraine; yet at
the same time they argued regretfully that Georgia was destined for defeat
because it lacked a real army. Some Ukrainian representatives even once
again discussed the revitalization of the idea of a Black Sea federation
(Matvienko 2002, 169–170).
Meanwhile, the Transcaucasian Commissariat and Seim found
themselves in an ambiguous situation, facing pressure from the Turks,
pushing for acknowledgement of the results of the Brest-Litovsk Treaty,
which would mean agreeing to abandon substantial parts of Armenian and
Georgian territory. At the same time, as Berlin had done with the
Ukrainians shortly before, Istanbul urged the Transcaucasian leaders to
declare the independent Transcaucasian Democratic Federative Republic
(TDFR) as a precondition for further dialogue on a state-to-state basis
(Forsyth 2015, 371). Thus, given the terms of Brest-Litovsk (at which,
unlike the Ukrainians, the Transcaucasians were not directly represented)
the Transcaucasian Seim was compelled by the Central Powers to declare
the independence in April 1918 in order to gain standing to engage in
diplomatic negotiations, in the first instance in the face of an invasion from
Ottoman Turkey, which was itself one of the Central Powers. While in
Ukraine the Germans’ concerns for the practical incompetence and
ideological unreliability of the left-leaning Central Rada compelled them to
overthrow it in favour of the military Hetmanate of Skoropadsky, in the
Transcaucasus the Germans ultimately encouraged the Georgian
Mensheviks to declare independence from the Transcaucasian Federation in
May 1918, and the Armenians and the Azerbaijanis followed suit shortly
afterwards. Ultimately the conflicting and incompatible aspirations,
outlooks and fears of the three constituent nationalities of the Transcaucasus
proved insurmountable. While the Azerbaijanis saw the advancing Turks as
a potential ally and the Armenians saw them as an existential threat, the
Georgians, like the Ukrainians, viewed the Germans as their best guarantee,
in their case to prevent a further Turkish advance from the west and the
threat of Bolshevik insurrection and attack from Baku in the east. Many
Georgian intellectuals were sympathetic to German culture (the Mensheviks
respected the German traditions of social democracy, the conservatives
favoured its traditionalist monarchy and saw it as a means to restore the
Georgian royal line), and they viewed Germany as a promising window to
Europe at a time when the Central Powers’ victory in the war seemed
entirely possible. Like Ukraine, the German high command viewed Georgia
as a valuable source of raw materials (particularly manganese), and
additionally as a strategic means of access to British possessions in the
Middle East and India. Unlike in Ukraine, however, the Germans found the
Georgian Menshevik leadership more competent, despite its leftist leanings,
than the Ukrainian Central Rada, and left it in place.
During the one month that the TDFR and the Hetmanate co-existed there
was little space for any substantial contact between the representatives of
each state; the Transcaucasian politicians were fully occupied with the
peace negotiations with Turkey, where there was no Ukrainian delegation
present. Thus, contacts between Ukraine and Transcaucasia primarily
concerned the continuing complaints of the Georgian and Armenian
Military Commissariats about specific incidents on the territory of Ukraine.
The Georgian Military Commissar D. Vacheishvili was replaced on 9 May
1918 by Nikodim Bregvadze. At the same time, M. Jugeli was appointed as
the new Commissar for the Odessa Military Perimeter, responsible for
repatriating Georgian soldiers. Both of these Georgian Commissars were
obliged to deal with difficult situations when a German detachment under
the leadership of a Ukrainian officer assaulted Georgian officers and
soldiers in Kyiv and later in Odessa. After the intervention of the Ukrainian
Ministry of Foreign Affairs with the Ministry for War on 15 May 1918, it
was agreed that it was essential to assure that stocks of arms and
ammunition were secure in order to prevent further violence. Both incidents
were finally resolved by the Ukrainian authorities, and no further such cases
were recorded (Matvienko 2002, 173).

Ukraine, the Transcaucasus, and Bolshevik

conceptions of nationality policy
In the complex geopolitical circumstances of 1918, for leaders in both
Ukraine and in the Transcaucasus calculations regarding potential alliances
and optimal partners were perhaps both less ideological and less inevitable
than they appear in retrospect. The Georgian Mensheviks split from the
same Russian Social Democratic Labour Party as the Bolsheviks, and
differed from them more in tactics and methods rather than in worldview
and aspirations towards an ultimate outcome. As Ronald Grigor Suny
recently put it, with regard to their radical line in the pre-revolutionary
period and in their position vis-à-vis the bourgeoisie, “the Georgian
Mensheviks were closer to the Bolsheviks than the Russian Mensheviks,
and the Georgian Bolsheviks were closer to the Mensheviks than the
Russian Bolsheviks.”4 The same principle appears to hold true for the
relationship between Zhordania and the Bolsheviks (especially the faction
of Georgian and other Caucasian Bolsheviks of the non-Stalin faction)
during 1918 and afterwards. According to some accounts, for example, after
the failed Bolshevik coup attempt in Tiflis in February 1918, Zhordania
helped Shaumyan escape to Baku rather than arresting him, as “social-
democratic solidarity turned out to be stronger than the instinct for self-
preservation” (Rayfield 2017, 412). Armenian leaders considered
cooperating with the Bolsheviks at several points during 1917 and 1918,
and negotiated with them secretly without informing their partners in the
Commissariat, and Baku in particular both the Dashnak and Musavat
leaders at points worked closely with Shaumyan and the Bolshevik
leadership of the Baku Soviet (Hovannisian 1969, 111–113).
Attitudes among certain factions of the Ukrainian Central Rada
leadership towards the Bolsheviks were similarly ambiguous. In the initial
period following the Bolshevik coup in Petrograd, the Rada aided the
Bolsheviks during the struggles between the Bolsheviks and the Army Staff
in Kyiv, and in general they preferred at first a friendly neutrality towards
the Bolsheviks, whom they viewed as less threatening than the Provisional
Government (Subtelny 2009, 350). With the collapse of Skoropadsky’s
Hetmanate following the defeat of the Central Powers in the war in 1918
and the establishment of the Directory of the Ukrainian People’s Republic,
divisions among the Ukrainian leadership over the approach towards the
Bolsheviks and Soviet Russia came to the fore, and even more so with the
start of the second Bolshevik invasion of Ukraine in late 1918. The
Directory’s First Chairman, Volodymyr Vynnychenko, continued to
maintain contacts with the Bolsheviks. Prior to the collapse of the
Hetmanate he and other members of the Ukrainian socialist parties met
secretly in Kyiv with Bolshevik leaders Khristian Rakovsky and Dmitrii
Manuil’skii in which Vynnychenko agreed to the establishment of Soviet
power in Ukraine so long as a policy of “Ukrainification” would be
guaranteed (Savchenko 2006, 415), and disagreements about whether to
make peace with Soviet Russia was one of the points of disagreement
between Vynnychenko and the other leading figure of the Directory, Symon
Petliura, that ultimately contributed to the Directory’s collapse. As the
situation for the Directory worsened, significant factions broke off from the
Social Democratic and the Social Revolutionary parties, including the so-
called Borotbystsy, who adopted a pro-Soviet platform and joined the
Bolsheviks.
The prevailing view among the Bolsheviks in 1918 was that in theory
nationalism was a holdover of the bourgeois phase of historical
development and bound to give way to the interests of class, and in practice
that the preservation of most of the territory of the former Russian Empire
under the guise of “socio-economic unity” was politically and economically
vital for the survival of Soviet Russia and for the continuation of world
revolution. Marxist ideology about the ephemeral nature of national identity
was tested in the first and second invasions of Ukraine at the beginning and
end of 1918 and in the attempt to spread revolution by force to the rest of
the Transcaucasus from the Bolshevik base in Baku in the summer of the
same year. In both cases the local nationalists, national aspirations, and
concerns for national identity were dismissed as counter-revolutionary and
class betrayal, and little thought was given to taking them into account in
any meaningful way. The failure of the Bolshevik offensives in all three
cases demonstrated for some among the Bolshevik leadership the
continuing vitality of nationalism, and the need to both recognize its
endurance and to somehow co-opt it for tactical and strategic benefit. The
fact that there were clearly significant elements among both the Ukrainian
and the Transcaucasian national leaderships who viewed the Bolsheviks as
a lesser threat and were willing to seek compromise further emphasized the
potential benefit to the Bolsheviks of seeking a modus vivendi with local
nationalisms.
Lenin in particular was more willing than some of the Bolshevik factions
to make tactical concessions and to form alliances with “bourgeois
nationalists,” and he was especially concerned that the legacy of “Great
Russian chauvinism” from tsarist rule could compromise relations with
non-Russian peoples. In his writings and correspondence on the “national
question” prior to the Revolution, including those with Stepan Shaumyan,
Lenin maintained that all nations had a right to self-determination, and that
in particular the nations of the former Russian Empire had the right to
separate, although such separation should not be encouraged. For those
nations that did not separate, local self-governance could be offered only in
the form of “regional autonomy,” without the demarcation of ethno-
territorial units: thus “a stark choice, either full independence and
separatism from the rest of Russia, or become part of a future unitary
socialist state with all of the cultural and civil rights guaranteed for working
people” (Kivelson and Suny 2017, 270), along with a presumption that this
choice should be made primarily by the working class of a given nation,
rather than by the nation as a whole. The nationalist experience and
aspirations experienced during the campaigns in Ukraine and the
Transcaucasus, including the implementation of “nationalization policies”
of local language use in administration and education in those places
(especially under the Hetmanate in Ukraine and the Georgian Democratic
Republic), suggested that it might be both necessary and beneficial to
consider a middle course between full separation and unitary subordination.
Lenin’s first emissary to the Soviet Republic of Ukraine, the ethnically
Ukrainian Bolshevik revolutionary Mikola Skrypnyk (sent initially to assist
the Bolsheviks in Ukraine in late 1917, and elected as Secretary of the
Ukrainian Central Executive Committee and People’s Commissar for
Labour), appeared to have reached this conclusion upon arriving there, if
not before. He became convinced that Soviet Ukraine should exist as a
semi-independent republic that would have federal ties to Soviet Russia,
and also that there should be a separate Bolshevik Ukrainian Communist
Party that would cooperate with the Russian Party through the Comintern
(Bilinsky 1978, 108). The attempt to create a separate Ukrainian
Communist party led to a factional conflict within the Ukrainian Bolshevik
leadership, and it ultimately failed.5 Nevertheless, following the setbacks in
the Transcaucasus and Ukraine in 1918 and 1919, Lenin began to
understand the value of Skrypnyk’s insistence on the creation of a formal,
quasi-independent, federal autonomy, a line of thinking that was already
finding expression in the drafting of the first Soviet Russian constitution in
the summer of 1918.6 There was also a movement among Ukrainians in the
Party that was critical of the Russia-centric and russification policies that
had characterized the Bolsheviks’ previous incursions into Ukraine, that
argued that “Ukraine cannot accept as ready-made the forms of life which
have been developed in Russia,” and that the Bolshevik leadership had
misjudged the importance of local nationalism (Subtelny 2009, 375). As
Skrypnyk wrote in 1920 about the experience of 1918,
Our tragedy in Ukraine [in 1917–1918 – T.B & S.T.] is that with the help of a working class
that is either ethnically Russian or russified and often dismissive towards even the slightest
suggestion of the Ukrainian language and Ukrainian culture, we were to win over to our side
the ethnically Ukrainian peasantry and rural proletariat who, because of complex historical
conditions, is hostile and distrustful towards all that is Russian or “Muscovite”; for this reason
the primary task of every mindful worker is to understand that in order to implement their
class, proletariat, and Communist tasks, the working class in Ukraine should not – absolutely
must not – conflate themselves with the Russian language and Russian culture, not contrapose
their Russian culture to the Ukrainian culture of the peasantry, but to the contrary, must in all
ways seek to meet the peasantry halfway, not as a Russian or as a Ukrainian, as a bearer of one
linguistic culture to the bearer of a different and “inferior” language culture, but rather as a
proletarian to an underprivileged peasant, as a progressive fighter for Communist revolution to
a toiler who has not yet recognized his class interests (Skrypnyk 1920 (2016)).
Lenin himself admitted that “to ignore the importance of the national
question in Ukraine, of which the Great Russians are very frequently guilty
… means committing a profound and egregious error” (Ibid., 376). This
insight can only have been magnified by the unexpected failure of the
Transcaucasian Bolsheviks to mobilize local uprisings based on class
grievances outside of Baku in July-September 1918. What is more, some of
the local Caucasian Bolsheviks, such as Filippe Makharadze, Mamia
Orekhelashvili, and Budu Mdivani, seem to have held views about local
national concerns that were similar to those of Skrypnyk. When the third
Ukrainian Soviet government was formed in December 1919, language was
included about defending “the independence and integrity of the Soviet
Socialist Republic of Ukraine,” ethnic Ukrainians in the party were
appointed to visible positions, and instructions were given for the
implementation of official paperwork in the Ukrainian language.
Ultimately, these steps would find further development in the decisions
taken at the 10th and 12th Party Congresses that led to the implementation
of the concessionary policies of indigenization and the encouragement of
language use and cultural development that were to become central to the
Soviet “nationality policy” of the 1920s.

Conclusion
In studying the complex events that took place on the periphery of the
collapsing Russian Empire in 1917–1918 on an individual country or even a
regional basis, the intricacy of the local details often obscures the larger
picture of the ways in which different actors on opposite ends of that
periphery interacted with one another, and in which ideas and experiences
in one region crossed over and influenced actors’ approaches in other
regions. While the state of the technology, the vicissitudes of war and
revolution, and the huge distances involved created obstacles to
communication and interaction during this period, very often what was
happening in one region were profoundly shaped by similar things taking
place in others. In this article we have sketched out a number of the
parallels and interactions that took place between Ukraine and the
Transcaucasus during 1917–1918 and also the ways in which the
actors’experiences across regions, particularly among the Bolsheviks who
were ultimately victorious, influenced their longer-term perspectives.
In both places the central Provisional Government became quickly
marginalized after the February Revolution, and the Soviets of Workers’,
Soldiers’ and Peasants’ Deputies failed to serve as reliable bases for the
Bolsheviks. In both places as well the Bolsheviks were particularly weak in
the capitals and had significant support only in industrial areas on the
periphery (in Kharkiv in Ukraine, and in Baku in the Transcaucasus). The
actors in both Ukraine and the Transcaucasus were clearly aware of what
was happening in their respective regions, and they looked to each other for
inspiration, practical ideas, and assistance. The Georgian Mensheviks in
particular viewed the Ukrainian Rada leadership as an inspiration and
hoped to see them play a leading role in moving the remnants of the
Russian Empire towards federalism, and also as potential mediators. Both
the Ukrainian and the Transcaucasian leaders, despite their socialist
inclinations, refused to recognize the legitimacy of the new Bolshevik
government in Russia following the October Revolution; in both places the
Bolsheviks tried and failed to stage coups in the capital cities in late 1917
and early 1918 according to the template that had been so successful in
Russia; and in both cases Bolshevik-led Soviet governments in exile were
declared which then served as fore posts for the launch of Bolshevik
military offensives. Ultimately both the Ukrainian and the Transcaucasian
leaders were compelled by the Central Powers to declare independence
from Russia in order to negotiate a security arrangement, from the
Bolsheviks and the Whites in Ukraine, and against the Bolsheviks and the
Ottoman Turks in the Transcaucasus. As a result, both Ukraine and then
independent Georgia became German protectorates in return for guarantees
of provision of raw materials essential for the German war effort, a rational
decision in the conditions as they appeared at the time, yet one that proved
problematic in the longer term.
Yet despite the conscious decisions on the part of the national leadership
in both places to turn to the Germans for security and support, in both
Ukraine and the Transcaucasus there was ambivalence towards the
Bolsheviks; important factions among the leadership in both places were
amenable to cooperation with the Bolsheviks, or at least viewed them as a
lesser threat. This, combined with the perception that Great Russian
Chauvinism and insensitivity towards local concerns and national
sentiments had contributed to Bolshevik failures, lent credence to those
among the Bolshevik elite who argued for a more concessionary approach
towards the “national question.” Lenin in particular had been moving
towards considering tactical concession towards and alliances with local
nationalists, and both the effectiveness of local cultural nationalization
policies implemented by the independent Ukrainian and Transcaucasian
governments, and the unexpectedly tepid responses to Bolshevik calls for
class solidarity among the nationalities, were instructive for the Bolsheviks
and gave additional weight to the arguments of those among the Bolshevik
leadership who favoured a more concessionary policy towards local
nationalism. Ultimately the Bolsheviks’ experience in both of these regions
provided a powerful impetus for them to reconsider their position towards
nationalism and nationality as whole, at precisely the time when they were
beginning to formulate what would constitute bases of their new approach
to the “nationality question.”

Notes
1. The Ukrainian nationalists in particular had been very active following the February
Revolution in seeking out diplomatic opportunities for political-military alliances with the
various national entities surrounding the Black Sea. Cooperation in the region was
influenced mostly by hostility towards and fear of the Bolsheviks. The Provisional
Government itself sought such alliances prior to the October Revolution in negotiations
with the South-Eastern Union and other national-democratic formations established in
1917. The Ukrainian Central Rada came to the fore in attempts to create both political and
military anti-Bolshevists unions in the Black Sea region that might include Georgia, the
Kuban, and the Don Cossacks and others in the fight against Bolshevism. In November
1917, Volodymyr Vynnychenko, the head of the General Secretariat of the Rada, authorized
Oleksandr V. Nemits, the Commander-in-Chief of the Black Sea Fleet, “to organize a Black
Sea government of autonomous countries adjoining to the Black Sea”. Nemits even
suggested establishing a Ukrainian Trade Fleet and reforming the Black Sea Fleet that in
November 1917 declared its loyalty to Central Rada. After January 1918, however, the
Rada changed its strategy and focused its effort on cooperation with the Central Powers,
and particularly with Germany (Petrenko 2016, 200–202).
2. The “Universals” issued by the Ukrainian Central Rada in 1917–1918 were legal acts based
on the model of those issued by the Cossack leaders (“Hetmany”) of the 17–18th centuries.
3. See the separate contribution on Shaumyan in this collection by Timothy Blauvelt.
4. This comment was made during a series of conferences held in Tbilisi in 2018 to mark the
100-year anniversary of the Georgian Democratic Republic, and clarified in personal
correspondence.
5. Following the failure of Skrypnyk’s platform at the First Congress of the Ukrainian
Communist Party in Moscow in July 1918, he was sent to work under Dzerzhinsky as head
 of the Cheka department for Struggle Against Counterrevolution. During the second
Bolshevik invasion of Ukraine in late 1918-early 1919 he returned there has Commissar of
the Workers’ and Peasants’ Inspectorate, and after the Bolsheviks were pushed out again in
June 1919 he was sent to the Caucasian front, which was seen at the time as a kind of
“honorable political exile” (Belinsky 1978, 111).
6. See also Lenin’s “Draft Theses of the Central Committee RKP(b) Concerning Policy in
Ukraine” from the end of 1919 (Pipes 1996, 76–77).

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCHID
Timothy K. Blauvelt http://orcid.org/0000-0003-3023-1195

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Turning towards unity: a North Caucasian

perspective on the Transcaucasian
Democratic Federative Republic
Sarah Slye

ABSTRACT
This article traces the efforts of the Union of Allied Mountaineers (UAM) to
uphold the indigenous North Caucasians’ right to self-determination from March
1917, when the organization hoped for Russia’s restructuring as a federal republic
wherein the Mountaineers (gortsy) would enjoy full political autonomy on their
own territory (national-territorial autonomy), to May 1918, when the Mountaineer
leaders attempted to join the Transcaucasian Federation. After the Bolshevik coup
d’état in October 1917, the Mountain leaders declared the autonomy of the
Provisional Mountain Government on 2 December 1917 and later the
independence of the Mountain Republic on 11 May 1918 – in order to join the
newly independent Transcaucasian Democratic Federative Republic (TDFR).
Since the UAM had been resistant to the idea of administrative unity with
Transcaucasia for most of 1917, this article clarifies the logic behind the Mountain
leadership’s reorientation away from Russia and towards Transcaucasia in early
1918. And considering the Mountain Republic declared independence at the very
moment when the anti-separatist Terek People’s Republic insisted that it
represented the political will of both the settler and native populations of the North
 Caucasus, this article also evaluates these two rival republics’ claims to popular
legitimacy among the autochthonous Mountaineers.

Introduction
In early 19181, native North Caucasian political leaders strove to bring their
region into a confederative union with the Transcaucasian Democratic
Federative Republic (TDFR), a transient state lasting from 9 April through
26 May 1918.2 On 11 May 1918, representatives from the Union of Allied
Mountaineers (UAM)/Mountain Government declared independence from
Russia in the form of the Republic of the Union of Mountaineers of the
North Caucasus and Dagestan (better known as the Mountain Republic),
specifically to join the newly established Transcaucasian Federation – only
to see the latter disintegrate before this could happen. While it may be
tempting to interpret the Mountaineer (gortsy) politicians’ attempt to join
the TDFR simply as an expression of the native North Caucasians’
longstanding desire to rid themselves of Russian domination through the
creation of an independent, united Caucasian state, the reality was more
nuanced and complex. Firstly, in 1917 the UAM was the most influential
political organization among the gortsy, and for most of that year it was
opposed to administrative unity with Transcaucasia, baring its teeth any
time Tiflis tried to extend its jurisdiction northwards. Secondly, at the very
moment when the Mountaineer leaders were declaring the independence of
the Mountain Republic at the Batumi Peace Conference, which opened on
11 May 1918, their legitimacy as the spokesmen for the indigenous North
Caucasians was being challenged by the recently proclaimed Terek People’s
Republic. The latter asserted that it alone represented the will of the gortsy
masses, who allegedly opposed separation from Soviet Russia and
considered the politicians in Batumi to be traitors and swindlers.3 Given
these factors, this article begins by examining why the UAM resisted unity
with Transcaucasia in 1917 and the question of which entity, the pro-Soviet
Terek People’s Republic or the separatist Mountain Republic, better
reflected the political will of the indigenous North Caucasians during the
hazy period of the first stirrings of the Russian Civil War in the Caucasus. It
then concludes with a reconstruction of the Mountaineer politicians’ efforts
to form a regional confederation with Transcaucasia in spring 1918.
March–December 1917: self-assertion
Tsar Nicholas II’s abdication on 2 March 1917 created a power vacuum in
the old Russian Empire. At this time the prevailing view in Russian society
was that political legitimacy rested in the people’s will and this could best
be expressed through the popular election of delegates to a representative
body – the Constituent Assembly – which would gather to vote on the
structure of a new state and government for Russia and resolve other
pressing issues such as land reform. The Provisional Government set up to
replace the tsarist administration was meant to be an interim government
tasked with organizing the Constituent Assembly and managing the country
until it could convene. While generally accepted as Russia’s central
authority, the Provisional Government was simultaneously considered by
many to be a tool of the propertied classes and intelligentsia. Thus, the
Petrograd Soviet and its associated network of local soviets (councils)
emerged as an alternative but fairly cooperative authority structure for the
underprivileged and revolutionary elements.
This pattern of dvoevlastie (dual-power) in Russia’s capital was reflected
throughout the country, including the Caucasus, where the region’s ethnic
and religious diversity added layers of complexity. To replace the Caucasian
Viceroyalty, the Provisional Government appointed commissars to the
region. The Special Transcaucasian Commission (Ozakom) was established
for Transcaucasia and Dagestan, and individual commissars were also
appointed to the Dagestan, Terek and Kuban oblasts (regions) and to the
Black Sea Governorate. However, these commissars lacked clout and had to
work with local forces to accomplish anything. In the Caucasus, the oblast’
ispolkoms (executive committees) and city dumas which appeared in the
wake of the March events reflected coalitions of elite groups, including
socialist representatives. Lacking popular legitimacy in the strict sense, they
were nevertheless viewed as temporarily authoritative and had the approval
of the Provisional Government (Oreshin 2015, 82–87). A network of
soviets also appeared in the region. In Transcaucasia, the Tiflis and regional
soviets tended to dominate the political scene and represented a broad swath
of the population. In the North Caucasus, soviets appealed mainly to the
inogorodnye (non-native, non-Cossack residents, usually settlers from inner
Russia). The soviets were comparatively weak in the Terek and Dagestan
oblasts because there were fewer inogorodnye in those regions than
Cossacks and gortsy.

The Mountaineers organize

The Terek Cossacks and native Mountaineers began organizing their
political life with great enthusiasm (Borisenko 1930, vol. I: 112, 155–156;
vol. II: 31–32; Oreshin 2015, 79–87; Perović 2018, 106–107; Takho-Gody
1927, 1–5). The small Mountaineer intelligentsia was remarkably proactive,
excited about the chance for the gortsy to finally enjoy political
representation in a democratic Russia. On 5–6 March, a group of
professionals and scions met in Vladikavkaz to form the Union of Allied
Mountaineers Provisional Executive Committee. The Vladikavkaz
Committee’s first act was to demand representation on the Terek oblast’
ispolkom. Its members then helped organize elections to the smaller okrug
ispolkomy, which, thanks to the pattern of population distribution, took on
the character of national councils for the different gortsy nationalities. Over
the following months, in the Terek oblast’ the Vladikavkaz Committee
cooperated closely with the Provisional Government’s appointed
commissar, oblast’ ispolkom and elected Terek Cossack Ataman Mikhail
Karaulov. Working with the okrug (district) ispolkoms, the committee also
organized democratic elections to the First Mountain Congress held in May
(Karmov 2014, 7–9, 54; Korenev 1967, 66–67; Muzaev 2012, 10–16, 18–
28, 40–42, 405–408; Sheripov 1990, 125–126).4
It was at the First Mountain Congress (1–7 May 1917) that the Union of
Allied Mountaineers of the North Caucasus and Dagestan (UAM) was
formally established with the adoption of its preliminary constitution. The
UAM was not created as a political party or an administrative authority, but
rather it was envisaged as a decentralized political organization for
defending the collective and individual interests of the mountain peoples
during the confusion of the revolution and process of establishing a new
democratic order in Russia. At the First Mountain Congress, the delegates
elected a permanent Central Committee to handle the management of the
UAM, pursue its declared aims and ensure harmony among its members –
no small task considering the UAM’s highly decentralized structure and the
UAM Central Committee’s lack of coercive power (Muzaev 2012, 92–93,
433–434).
“Decentralists” vs. “centralists”
One of the main responsibilities given to the UAM Central Committee was
implementing the union’s political programme, which called for
cooperation with other parties and organizations in Russia that favoured the
fallen empire’s reconstitution as a federation wherein each sovereign
national group would enjoy maximum political (including judicial and
economic) autonomy on its own lands. Being proponents of national-
territorial autonomy, the UAM leaders were “decentralists” as opposed to
“centralists”, who – broadly speaking – wanted to see Russia as a unitary
state rather than a federation and opposed administrative decentralization
along national-territorial lines. In their effort to cooperate with other
decentralists, at the all-Russia level, the UAM representatives joined the
Petrograd Bureau of Federalists, where they worked alongside Ukrainian
Social Democrats, Polish socialists and Georgian Socialist-Federalists. In
the North Caucasus, the UAM Central Committee worked closely with the
Terek Cossack Ataman Mikhail Karaulov not only because the union’s
leading members believed that doing so would help maintain order and
prevent ethnic conflict between the settler and native populations but also
because Karaulov shared aspects of their political vision and showed a
steady respect for the gortsy right to self-determination.5
In the Caucasus region, the UAM, Azerbaijani Musavat Party and
Georgian National Democrats and Socialist-Federalists constituted an
informal and mutually supportive bloc of “decentralists”. It was the
“centralists”, however, who dominated the political scene in Transcaucasia,
a loose alliance of Social-Democrats (mainly Georgian Mensheviks),
Socialist Revolutionaries (mostly Russian soldiers), the Dashnaktsutyun
(Armenian nationalists with a socialist veneer) and other smaller parties.6
During most of 1917, the Caucasian decentralists wanted full political
autonomy for each nation on its own defined territory within a Russian
federation voluntarily constructed from below to above. They also thought
each nation should have direct ties to a weak federal centre without an
intermediate regional level, in order to concentrate the maximum possible
authority at the national level. By winter 1917, the destabilization of the
political situation in Russia prompted Caucasian decentralists to begin
considering an independent regional confederation without Russia (ertʻoba
1918a; Karmov 2014, 55–56, 79–82, 95–98; Jones 2005, 249–259; Muzaev
2012, 47, 272; sakʻartʻvelo 1917a, 1917b, 1917c, 1917d, 1917e, 1917f,
1917g, 1917h).7 In contrast, centralists in the Caucasus – regardless of their
position on other issues – generally wanted to see Russia as a unitary state
with a relatively strong centre that could implement reforms from the top
down and enforce security. They also favoured regional autonomy, broad
local self-governance – which in certain areas could even correspond to
ethnic settlement patterns – and cultural and linguistic autonomy (ert’oba
1917a, 1917b, 1917c; Kavkazskoe slovo 1917a; Molot 1917a, 1917b, 1917c;
sakʻartʻvelo 1917i; Znami͡a truda 1917a, 1917b, 1917c, 1917d). After the
Bolshevik coup in Russia, it was centralists who took the lead in declaring
regional autonomy for Transcaucasia, but this was considered a practical
measure and not a move towards separatism (Karagëzi͡an 2015, 46).

The Mountain leaders and Transcaucasian authorities in Tiflis

Although in 1917 the Mountain leaders cultivated close and friendly ties
with the South Caucasian decentralists, they had a strained relationship with
the Ozakom and the revolutionary Tiflis and regional soviets effectively
controlling the Ozakom (Karagëzi͡an 2015, 45–46; Kazemzadeh 2008, 37–
38; Jones 2005, 252–254). This tension stemmed at least in part from a
combination of disagreements over the boundaries of Transcaucasia’s
administrative jurisdiction and the gortsy taking offense at what they
perceived to be an imperious and condescending attitude on the part of
Tiflis. There are several incidents that illustrate this claim. In each case,
Tiflis attempted to expand its jurisdiction into the North Caucasus and the
UAM leaders would react by complaining about such mistrustful treatment
or threatening to retaliate. In May 1917, for example, the Ozakom issued a
decree for disarmament that led to a power struggle in Dagestan (where
there were two commissars, one appointed by the Provisional Government
and one by the Ozakom). The UAM Central Committee accused the
Ozakom of adopting the old regime’s distrustful attitude towards Muslims
and declared the gortsy would rather give up their souls than their guns in
such dangerous times when soldiers could assault them at any time. The
committee then announced that after trying very hard to get the Ozakom to
listen to it, it had finally given up on the Ozakom “hearing its voice” and
would have to ask the Russian authorities to look into the matter (Muzaev
2012, 32–33, 107–109, 428–430; sakʻartʻvelo 1917j). As another example,
in reaction to the late-August Kornilov affair, Georgian Social-Democrats
(Mensheviks) spearheaded the creation of the ephemeral Provisional
Caucasian Revolutionary Committee (Revkom), which presumptuously
declared itself the highest authority on both sides of the Caucasus mountain
range (Hovannisian 1967, 83–85; Jones 2005, 273–275; Muzaev 2012,
207–210; sakʻartʻvelo 1917k, 1917l, 1917m, 1917n). The Mountaineers
rejected the Revkom, calling it “a contradiction of the democratic principle
of administrative decentralization” that exceeded the bounds of Georgian
Menshevik authority and ignored the fact that the political life of the gortsy
was managed entirely by the UAM. The UAM Central Committee also
stated that it perceived in the Revkom “an element of distrust towards the
democratic organizations in the North Caucasus” (Mamoulia et al. 2015,
202–206). The UAM’s friends among the Georgian National Democrats
picked up on these tensions, reproaching the Mensheviks for failing to pay
the Mountain leadership due regard and for meddling in the Caucasian
Muslims’ internal affairs (ertʻoba 1918a; sakʻartʻvelo 1917o).8

The Provisional Mountain Government and TerDag

Attempts by Tiflis to impose control over the North Caucasus were
arguably motivated by valid concerns about the incremental deterioration of
the security situation there. But the Transcaucasian politicians were
misguided in their aim to supplant rather than reinforce the UAM’s own
persistent efforts to maintain peace and order during the summer and early
fall of 1917. After the so-called October Revolution, the UAM formalised
its membership in the Southeastern Union of Cossack Hosts, Caucasian
Mountaineers and Free Peoples of the Steppes. The Southeastern Union was
a federative union whose raison d’être was to fend off “anarchy”, i.e.
disturbances incited by the radical left, and fight for the creation of a
Russian federation. In a move similar to the formation of the
Transcaucasian Commissariat (Zavkom) and its assumption of
governmental authority within the bounds of Transcaucasia in mid-
November 1917 as a response to the Bolshevik coup, the UAM declared
autonomy in the form of the Provisional Mountain Government in early
December, at once uniting with the Terek Cossack Krug in the federative
Provisional Terek-Dagestani Government, or TerDag (Kosok 1955;
Osmanov 2013, 39–40, 42–45, 57; sakʻartʻvelo 1917o, 1917p, 1917q,
1917r, 1917s, 1917t, 1917u, 1917v, 1917w, 1917x, 1917y).9
Like Russia’s Provisional Government, the TerDag was envisaged as a
temporary government tasked with organizing an oblast’ constituent
assembly. Unfortunately, the alliance the UAM leaders made with the
Cossack ruling circles backfired. Many rank-and-file Terek Cossacks
accused Ataman Karaulov and his circle of betraying their property
interests in favour of the supposedly counter-revolutionary gortsy, and, so
this thinking went, these rebellious Cossacks started teaming up with the
Bolsheviks – whose ranks were swelling with deserters from the Caucasus
Front – in a plan to eliminate Chechen and Ingush “banditry” forever.
Moreover, the once excellent relations enjoyed in the spring and summer of
1917 between the inogorodnye and gortsy had soured by December, so
frightened settlers and workers started joining the Cossacks and Bolsheviks
in military-revolutionary committees (Muzaev 2012, 306–316; sakʻartʻvelo
1917w, 1917z; Vol’nyĭ goret͡s” 1919a, 1919b; Wade 2017, 75). Despite these
developments, and growing dissent inside the UAM and Mountain
Government, the TerDag continued to resist Transcaucasian interference. In
mid-December, the Kumyk Rashid-khan Kaplanov, TerDag “foreign
minister” and head of the Mountain Government, informed the newly
created Transcaucasian Commissariat that
The Terek-Dagestani Government thinks both governments [Zavkom and TerDag] must work
together and that neither should try to subjugate the other. One government must not intervene
in the other’s internal affairs as this will only make it impossible to achieve the intended goals.
Any sort of disharmony will make it impossible to send bread to Transcaucasia and delay
demobilization (sakʻartʻvelo 1917aa).

The record shows that throughout 1917 the Mountaineer leadership

demonstrated a consistent willingness to cooperate with its neighbours to
the north and south (Reynolds 2008). But at the same time it repudiated the
imposition of any kind of subordinate relationship and was disconcerted by
the centralist tendencies and perceived imperiousness of the Transcaucasian
authorities. Indeed, Karaulov’s sensitivity to the UAM’s insistence on the
gortsy right to self-determination goes a long way towards explaining why
the union’s Central Committee preferred working with him (and the
Southeastern Union) over the Ozakom or the soviet authorities in
Transcaucasia (Karmov 2014, 55–56). As Haidar Bammate, who served as
the UAM representative in Tiflis, later recalled, Karaulov was the driving
force behind the Mountaineers’ inclusion in the Southeastern Union, “the
most remarkable member of the Union”, and the heart of the TerDag
(Bammate 1919, 23). Karaulov’s disgraceful murder by a gang of soldiers
on 13 December deprived the Mountaineers of their greatest Cossack ally
and prompted a strategic reorientation towards the south (Muzaev 2012,
311).10 Within days, the Provisional Mountain Government authorized
Haidar Bammate to enter into contact and discussion with the Georgian and
Armenian National Councils (Mamoulia et al. 2015, 206).

December 1917–April 1918: seeking unity

The turn towards Transcaucasia and Mozdok Congress
Although Karaulov’s death precipitated the Mountain leadership’s turn
towards Transcaucasia, this about-face was facilitated by the so-called
“nationalizing” of the revolution in Transcaucasia. After the October coup,
the Transcaucasian Commissariat (Zavkom) was formed at the initiative of
the Georgian Menshevik leader Noe Zhordania to function as a body of
state authority until order could be restored in Russia. The Zavkom replaced
the Ozakom and the Public Safety Committee (which had replaced the
Revkom) and was more inclusive of the Azerbaijani Musavatists, who were
sympathetic to the UAM (Kazemzadeh 2008, 57; sakʻartʻvelo 1917bb).
Meanwhile, national councils were gaining prominence in Transcaucasia.
Armenians had chosen their national council in October 1917 (Hovannisian
1967, 86–93; sakʻartʻvelo 1917cc, 1917dd). And in November, Georgian
Menshevik leaders entered into a Georgian National Council alongside
representatives from the Georgian parties demanding national-territorial
autonomy (“Alionists”, a subset of Georgian Mensheviks wanting national-
territorial autonomy for Georgia; Socialist-Federalists and National
Democrats).11 Crucially, the Georgian National Council’s deputy chairman,
the prominent Menshevik Akaki Chkhenkeli, also had a history of
favouring national-territorial self-governance (alioni 1917a, 1917b;
Kazemzadeh 2008, 57; Jones 2005, 230–232, 260–262, 274, 279; Rayfield
2012, 325; sakʻartʻvelo 1917ee, 1917ff, 1917gg, 1917hh).
 The Georgian National Council proved sympathetic to the Provisional
Mountain Government, greeting the news of its inception with applause and
a congratulatory telegram (sakʻartʻvelo 1917ii, 1917jj), and Bammate’s
efforts there appear to have produced some favourable results. On 15
January 1918, the Zavkom met to discuss whom to invite as negotiating
partners to the imminent peace talks with the Ottomans. The majority
present wanted to ask the Southeastern Union and Ukrainian Rada. But
Chkhenkeli adopted a regional stance and proposed the Kuban and Terek-
Dagestani Governments be invited instead. Chkhenkeli argued that the
Southeastern Union was a fiction and Ukraine too distant to have a stake.
He said that
the Caucasus can answer only for itself … Our own Caucasian nationalities are responsible on
the Caucasus Front. And if all of the nationalities here united, things would already not be so
bad. The misfortune is that we are not unified.

His proposal was unanimously rejected because the Zavkom as a whole still
clung to the idea of Russia (Dokumenty 1919, 29–35; Karagëzi͡an 2015, 46–
47).
But Akaki Chkhenkeli was right. The Southeastern Union simply passed
the invitation along to the Kuban and Terek-Dagestani governments.
Meanwhile, as the Zavkom waited in vain for a response from Ukraine, the
First Congress of the Peoples of the Terek Oblast’ gathered in Mozdok on
25–31 January 1918 (Dokumenty 1919, 40, 71). This congress reflected the
shift leftward that had occurred throughout Russia after October and the
fears and needs of the oblast’s settler and disadvantaged populations.
Considering the Mozdok Congress was convened by an alliance of
disgruntled Terek Cossacks and Bolshevik agitators in order to obtain a
“mandate” for a “war of annihilation” against the Chechens and Ingush, the
congress could not possibly represent gortsy interests (Marshall 2009, 207).
The presence of some pro-Bolshevik Ossetians and a contingent of
unelected Kabardians and Balkars hoping for support in their struggle
against the Nalchik okrug ispolkom fails to alter this fact.
The Mozdok Congress did, however, strengthen the position of leftists in
the oblast’. The Socialist Bloc, an alliance between moderate socialists and
a small contingent of Bolsheviks (most notably Sergey Kirov), sought to
use the Congress as a springboard for replacing the “counter-revolutionary”
TerDag with its own “revolutionary” government. To accomplish this, the
bloc needed to redirect rising aggressions away from “toilers” of any
ethnicity and towards the propertied elements and intelligentsia theretofore
monopolizing local power (in the Terek Cossack Krug, UAM/Mountain
Government and TerDag). It also had to solve the main source of ethnic
tensions in the oblast’: unfair land distribution. At Mozdok, the Socialist
Bloc achieved its first goal when it pushed a proposal through to dispatch
peace delegations to the Ingush and Chechens to invite them to a follow-up
congress in Pyatigorsk to discuss land redistribution (King 1987, 240–263;
Vol’nyĭ goret͡s” 1919c, 1919d, 1919e).

The Pyatigorsk Congress and growing Soviet power

The Socialist Bloc was aware that for the Pyatigorsk Congress (16
February–15 March 1918) to be perceived as authoritative, each of the
oblast’s national groups must send a delegation. And as it was widely
understood that the Mozdok Congress had not been representative, the
actions of the Socialist Bloc sparked a struggle for political legitimacy in
the oblast’. The TerDag declared the Mozdok Congress illegitimate,
scheduling 15 March as the date for elections to the oblast’ constituent
assembly promised earlier. Although the Terek Cossack Krug leaders
formally backed the TerDag, a contingent of rebellious Cossacks went to
Pyatigorsk. Meanwhile, the gortsy held national assemblies to decide
whether or not to participate. The Ossetians’ Fifth Congress repudiated the
TerDag and agreed to accept the Pyatigorsk Congress – but only until the
oblast’ constituent assembly could convene. Representing a besieged
population, the Chechen National Council agreed to send a delegation to
Pyatigorsk under certain conditions. However, these conditions were not
met since negotiations soon broke down due to Cossack intransigence, the
council leadership’s distrust of Cossack peace overtures, and the opposition
of Uzun Haji, who decided to attack Khasav-yurt and apparently expected
reinforcements from Turkey. A group of dissenters calling themselves the
“Party of Peace” then unilaterally dispatched Aslanbek Sheripov to
Pyatigorsk. The presence of one Chechen at Pyatigorsk could hardly signify
the agreement of the entire nation, but it did mark a new split in Chechen
society. The Ingush too were besieged, facing hunger and bracing for
attacks from their Cossack and Ossetian neighbours. Therefore, they held a
national assembly and made the prudent decision to send a delegation to
Pyatigorsk. A large delegation of Kabardians and Balkars also attended the
congress, but there was no representation from Dagestan (King 1987, 277–
301; Korenev 1967, 117–134; Muzaev 2012, 384–394; sakʻartʻvelo
1917kk; Vol’nyĭ goret͡s” 1920c).
The Pyatigorsk Congress opened on 16 February 1918, the same day that
the Zavkom and Transcaucasian Seim (parliament) voted to negotiate with
the Ottomans and conclude peace on the basis of restoring the Russia-
Turkey frontier to its pre-war status and securing autonomy for the
Armenians in Turkey.12 On 17 February, the Seim chose Akaki Chkhenkeli
to lead the planned peace delegation to Trabzon, only to discover that the
Bolsheviks had already ceded Ardahan, Kars and Batumi to the Ottomans at
Brest-Litovsk (Avalishvili 1940, 27; Dokumenty 1919, 83–85, 107;
Kazemzadeh 2008, 90). Meanwhile, as the Pyatigorsk Congress continued
its work, on 28 February Vasan Girey Dzhabagi, in the capacity of
Mountain Government vice-chairman, authorized Tapa Chermoev
(Chechen), Haidar Bammate, Zubair Temirkhanov and Magomet-Kadi
Dibirov (Dagestanis) to do everything possible to forge closer ties with the
Transcaucasian government and determine if the Ottomans would support
an independent Caucasian state, authorizing them to go so far as to separate
from Russia and join Transcaucasia in the name of the Mountain
Government (Mamoulia et al. 2015, 206–207; Reynolds 2008, 237).13
Back in Pyatigorsk, the land-starved gortsy and inogorodnye factions
started teaming up against the Cossack contingent in favour of land and
resource redistribution at the Cossacks’ expense. This reconfiguration
contributed to a victory for the radical leftists at the Congress (Bolsheviks,
left-SRs and Menshevik-Internationalists), who overcame the moderate
socialists’ objections to recognizing Soviet Russia’s government, the
Council of People’s Commissars (Sovnarkom), and demands for an oblast’
constituent assembly. The left extremists were opposed to popular elections
(four-tail franchise) in the localities, but they seem to have conceded to
gortsy demands to permit this “where desired”. The Congress then declared
the Terek oblast’ to be an inseparable part of Soviet Russia and elected an
oblast’ soviet which, in turn, chose commissars (none of whom were
moderate socialists, and from among the gortsy one Ossetian and one
Ingush) for an oblast’ council of people’s commissars. The Terek People’s
Republic was then proclaimed on 9 March 1918 in Vladikavkaz (King
1987, 310–372, 386; Korenev 1967, 135–168; Vol’nyĭ goret͡s” 1919f).
 The self-selected radical gortsy delegations then returned to their
communities to organize Soviet power. The Kabardian and Balkar delegates
organized a people’s congress which elected a soviet headed by a Russian
Bolshevik, a move triggering conflict with the Nalchik okrug ispolkom and
more inter-ethnic conflict over land claims (Vol’nyĭ goret͡s” 1920a, 1920b).
In Chechnya, the national council split over whether to send delegates to the
Third Terek Peoples’ Congress scheduled for May in Grozny. The majority
faction rejected Soviet power, casting its hopes on Turkey and the Terek
Cossack Krug, which had regained some clout after the Cossack dissidents’
debacle at Pyatigorsk. The Sixth Ossetian Congress did formally recognize
the new Soviet power on the Terek, but Ossetian society was rapidly
fracturing and a split between supporters of the pro-Bolshevik Kermen
Party and a powerful pro-Cossack faction soon led to a summer of joint
Ossetian-Cossack warfare against the Terek People’s Republic (Korenev
1967, 169–179). As for the Ingush National Council, it outwardly
recognized the new Soviet government in the oblast’ while its head, Vasan
Girey Dzhabagi, doggedly pursued the goals of the Mountain Government.

Promoting unity at the Trabzon Peace Conference

With the Kabardians, Balkars, Ossetians and Chechens internally divided,
the Ingush ambivalent and the Dagestanis unrepresented, the Terek People’s
Republic reflected at best the aspirations of a fraction of the gortsy
population incited by Bolshevik promises of land and self-rule to oppose
the indigenous authorities, who – however unpopular they may have
become – had at least initially obtained their status through democratic
elections and were acting in the best interests of their people as they
understood them rather than in a cynical bid to preserve their privileges, as
the Bolsheviks and other radicals persistently alleged. It was against this
backdrop of looming civil war that the Mountaineer delegation arrived at
the Trabzon Peace Conference (Kazharov 2018). Here the native politicians
won the favour of the Ottomans, who saw the gortsy as a useful buffer
against Bolshevik Russia. In a gesture of goodwill towards Georgia, the
North Caucasians and Transcaucasian Muslims tried to convince the
Ottomans to let Georgians keep Batumi, but the Ottoman War Minister
Enver Pasha refused, and Chkhenkeli, having tried his best to convince the
Seim that Transcaucasia could not possibly withstand Ottoman forces,
finally took the independent decision on 28 March 1918 to accept the terms
of the Brest-Litovsk treaty (Dokumenty 1919, 151, 159–160; Reynolds
2008, 237–238; Reynolds 2011, 201–203).
On one hand, the decentralists – North Caucasian Mountaineers, some
Transcaucasian Muslims, and Georgian Socialist-Federalists and National
Democrats – welcomed Chkhenkeli’s decision (Bammate 1991, 12;
Kazemzadeh 2008, 103; Vashakidze 2019). As Aleksandre Asatiani argued
in the Georgian nationalist paper sakʻartvelo (April 4, 1918), Georgia was
too weak to defend its territory alone and therefore should make peace with
the Ottomans and form an independent political union with the Caucasian
Muslims. The Seim, on the other hand, was dominated by parties that
imagined separation from Russia to be a great misfortune, and prominent
Mensheviks starting screaming it would be better to die in battle than
relinquish any territory or betray the revolution. Reflecting this quixotism,
on 1 April 1918 the Seim reversed Chkhenkeli’s decision, recalling his
delegation to Tiflis and declaring war on the Ottomans (Bammate 1919, 28;
Bammate 1991, 10–13; Dokumenty 1919, 163–166, 184; Kazemzadeh
2008, 101–103; Reynolds 2008, 238; Reynolds 2009, 159; sakʻartʻvelo
1918a).
Upon receiving this news, Bammate expressed the Mountain
Government’s “profound satisfaction” with Chkhenkeli’s stance and
admitted that the Seim had placed the gortsy in a difficult position. He then
underscored the Mountain Government’s view that Transcaucasia was
unviable as an independent state without the North Caucasus and reaffirmed
its commitment to “reuniting” the region (Mamoulia et al. 2015, 208–209).
After a stopover in Batumi, Mountaineer and Muslim representatives,
accompanied by a Georgian nationalist, sailed to Constantinople for an
audience with the Sultan. Meanwhile, the Turks seized Batumi and Kars
before again proposing peace. On 9 April 1918 the Seim finally saw reason
and declared independence from Russia in the form of the Transcaucasian
Democratic Federative Republic (TDFR). Chkhenkeli became the new head
of government (Avalishvili 1940, 24, 28; Chesnais 1921, 47; Dokumenty
1919, 199–203; Kazemzadeh 2008, 102–105; Reynolds 2008, 238;
sakʻartʻvelo 1918b).

April-May 1918: still seeking unity

The Batumi Peace Conference and declaration of independence
from Russia
Hostilities ceased by 12 April 1918 (Avalishvili 1940, 28–29). On 14
April, Vehib Pasha, the Chief Commander of the Turkish Front, reportedly
informed Chkhenkeli that the Mountain Government had declared
independence in Constantinople and its representatives were coming with
the Ottoman delegation to Batumi, where they planned to take steps to unite
with the TDFR (Terskiı˘ Kraı˘ 1918a). On 15 April, the Ottomans
recognized the new Transcaucasian republic (Kazemzadeh 2008, 108;
Hovannisian 1967, 172). In response, on 16 April, E. Bogdanov, the
chairman of the Terek People’s Soviet, sent a telegram to the new
Transcaucasian government in which he characterized Chermoev and
company as imposters, adventurers and swindlers lacking popular support
and also criticized the TDFR for “dragging” the North Caucasus into its
separatist act. The next day, Chkhenkeli’s government met to discuss this
telegram and then declared it had no intention of taking over any part of the
North Caucasus although it would welcome the desire of the authorized
representatives of the Dagestan and Terek Oblasts to unite on a federative
basis (author’s emphasis; Mamoulia et al. 2015, 215–216).
This exchange highlights the fact that Chkhenkeli’s government
considered the Mountain Government, not the Terek People’s Republic, as
authorized to represent the native North Caucasians. Perhaps alluding to the
Bolshevik-leaning Terek Republic’s essentially inogorodnye character, on 8
May 1918 Bammate asked permission for himself and three other
representatives of the “indigenous peoples’ government” to be admitted to
the Batumi Peace Conference (AUPChR 1918, 1). When the
Transcaucasian delegation met on 9 May to discuss this request, the major
questions were:

1. Whether the Mountain Government had actually declared

independence in Istanbul;
2. Whether it must do so to join the peace negotiations; and
3. If the delegation would participate separately or together with the
Transcaucasians.
It was clarified at this meeting that the Mountain leaders had not yet
declared independence but would need to do so in order to petition to join
the TDFR; in the meantime, though, they would be allowed to participate in
the peace conference as a separate delegation (Mamoulia et al. 2015, 213–
224).
The Mountain and Transcaucasian governments both wanted guarantees
of external support before taking the risk of political unification. Bammate
made this clear when he asserted that “the moment of the unification of two
independent states is, unconditionally, a moment demanding international
sanction”. The Georgian nationalist Niko Nikoladze, accompanying the
Transcaucasian delegation as an advisor, agreed, saying,
Unification is not only an internal matter. It is so important and dangerous that we need an
external guarantee. We should not unite without outside help. And not one Georgian can place
on his Motherland the responsibility for unification with the North Caucasus without the
certainty of a guarantee that no one will attack us.

Chkhenkeli likewise stated,

The question of the recognition of the independence of the North Caucasus must be submitted
at the conference. There is also the question of unification in the future, but before expressing
this it is necessary to first obtain assurances at the conference about questions surrounding
guarantees. (Mamoulia et al. 2015, 213–224)

Chkhenkeli straightaway informed the Ottomans that the Transcaucasians

found no obstacle to the representatives of the “indigenous peoples of the
North Caucasus and Dagestan” taking part in the conference, and on 10
May Bammate formally asked Chkhenkeli for the answer to his previous
letter regarding the UAM representatives’ admission. That same day,
General von Lossow, the chairman of the German delegation, informed
Chkhenkeli that the Germans had no objection to the Mountaineers’
participation, as long as they first separated from Russia. Thus pushed by
the Germans, and having received similar advice from the Turks, Chermoev
and Bammate declared the independence of the Republic of the Union of
Mountaineers of the North Caucasus and Dagestan on 11 May 1918.
Chkhenkeli now notified Bammate that the Transcaucasian delegation
agreed to the Mountaineers’ joining the conference, a fact formalised in the
opening session that afternoon (AUPChR 1918, 1 & 2; Dokumenty 1919,
312–316; Mamoulia et al. 2015, 225–230; Vachagaev 2018, 65).
Proposal for unification with the TDFR
Meanwhile, the Ottomans began demanding additional territory around the
Kars-Alexandropol-Culfa Railroad and threatening to advance towards
Tiflis. They claimed the Transcaucasians had, by declaring war, forfeited
the opportunity to limit their losses (Kazemzadeh 2008, 110; Reynolds
2009, 163–164; Reynolds 2011, 206–208). It was in these conditions that
Bammate and Chermoev sent Chkhenkeli an official telegram on 13 May
1918 informing him that the Mountaineers had declared independence. On
13 May, Bammate sent another note to Chkhenkeli inquiring about the
possibility of unification with Transcaucasia (AUPChR 1918, 1). The note
informing the RSFSR authorities of the Mountaineers’ independence
declaration was sent via the head of the German mission to Moscow, Count
Wilhelm von Mirbach (soon thereafter assassinated by extremist SRs)
(Pipes 1996, 179–185; Mamoulia et al. 2015, 231). On 17 May, von Lossow
notified Bammate that he had informed the German government of the
Mountaineers’ political aspirations. On the same day, he told Bammate and
Chkhenkeli that Germany’s government could not recognize the TDFR’s
independence until Russia did but that it was willing to mediate between
Russia and the TDFR towards obtaining this recognition and would
undoubtedly take the same view towards the Mountain Republic as towards
Transcaucasia (AUPChR 1918, 3).
If unification was a matter of time, time was running out. On 18 May
1918, von Lossow offered to mediate between the Transcaucasian and
Ottoman delegations since negotiations had stalled thanks to the Turks’
advancement deeper into Transcaucasia (Kazemzadeh 2008, 113). On 19
May, the Transcaucasian delegation accepted the General’s offer for
mediation and Bammate appealed to the Ottomans for the military
assistance promised earlier (Mamoulia et al. 2015, 233–234). Apparently
receiving a positive response, on 20 May Bammate asked Chkhenkeli for
permission to transport weapons, military equipment and a cadre of
instructors from Batumi to Tiflis by rail, and from there to Vladikavkaz by
road (Mamoulia et al. 2015, 235–236). Chkhenkeli did not respond to this
question right away, but he did finally give Bammate a formal reply
regarding the possibility of creating a united Caucasian state. It read:
 In response to your telegram of 13 May of this year, I have the honor of informing you that the
government of the Transcaucasian Republic fully shares in principle the opinion of Your
government regarding the necessity, in view of the common political and economic interests of
Transcaucasia and the North Caucasus, of establishing between the Transcaucasian Republic
and the Union of the Peoples of the North Caucasus the necessary alliances through the
creation of a single and confederated whole [emphasis added] (AUPChR, 1).

That same day, von Lossow also informed Bammate that the German
government had expressed willingness to urge Moscow to recognize the
Mountain Republic’s declaration of independence. Regarding territory, the
Germans agreed that while the republic should include the Terek and
Dagestan Oblasts, the Kuban Oblast’ would have to remain an open
question (AUP ChR, 1).
Meanwhile, the Turks were advancing in the direction of Tiflis, and on
24 May 1918 von Lossow informed the Transcaucasian delegation that they
had rejected his offer to mediate (Kazemzadeh 2008, 114–117; Reynolds
2011, 209–210). That same day, German and Georgian representatives
reached an agreement regarding the opportunity for Georgia to obtain
German support against Ottoman incursions if Georgia would declare
independence from the TDFR (Kazemzadeh 2008, 119). On 25 May, before
setting sail for Poti, von Lossow let Bammate know that Chkhenkeli had
said that once the situation was clarified he planned to meet with Bammate
to make an agreement on arms transport through Georgia to the North
Caucasus and that any such agreement would “have the full sympathy” of
the German government (Mamoulia et al. 2015, 238).
On 26 May 1918, Khalil Bey issued an ultimatum demanding that the
TDFR accept all previous territorial demands and relinquish the
Nakhichevan district. Chkhenkeli had seventy-two hours to acquiesce.
Having been encouraged by the Germans, Georgia responded by declaring
independence in defiance of the Ottomans, forcing Azerbaijan and Armenia
to follow suit on 28 May. Although the UAM politicians had dexterously
managed to win the Transcaucasian, Ottoman and German representatives
over to their point of view, they now lost their bid to safeguard the
Mountaineers’ right to national self-determination against the growing
Soviet menace by way of forming a regional confederation with
Transcaucasia.
Conclusion
After the February Revolution, the primary concern of the Mountaineer
political leadership was to defend the native North Caucasians’ right to self-
determination within the new Russian democracy. Committed to the
principle of administrative decentralization, the Union of Allied
Mountaineers and its offshoot the Provisional Mountain Government
staunchly opposed attempts by authorities in Tiflis to extend their
jurisdiction over Transcaucasia into the North Caucasus. However, when
Soviet power began encroaching into Mountain territory, the gortsy leaders
turned to pursue unification with Transcaucasia. This policy shift was
encouraged by the fact that the UAM’s allies among the Transcaucasian
Muslim and Georgian decentralists (nationalists and federalists) now had a
stronger say in politics south of the range and these too welcomed the idea
of a regional confederation that would serve mainly as a military alliance
while still allowing individual nations to retain full internal autonomy.
On 11 May 1918, UAM representatives declared the independence of the
Mountain Republic specifically to pave the way towards confederation with
the TDFR and to participate in the Batumi Peace Conference, where they
hoped to obtain the external guarantees necessary for national independence
and Caucasian confederation. This act provoked condemnation from the
rising Soviet power in the Terek Oblast’, which catered mainly to the
inogorodnye population but also radicalized Cossacks and gortsy.
Considering the Terek People’s Republic was not established through
universal, equal, secret and direct elections and its appearance caused
fractures within different national groups, it could not represent the
collective will of the gortsy. Nor did it represent the gortsy majority since
Dagestan and most of Chechnya rejected it alongside the head of the Ingush
National Council and the Nalchik okrug ispolkom. Even so, the Terek
People’s Republic was a powerful rival which served as the harbinger of
civil war in the North Caucasus. If in the chaos of revolution and civil war
neither republic could be considered strictly legitimate, the Mountain
Republic was still more than a “fantasy state” concocted by a few
adventurers (Marshall 2010, 71). It was a project initiated by democratically
elected indigenous politicians with a record of defending the native North
Caucasians’ right to political self-determination. Whereas in 1917 the
defence of the right to national self-determination meant preparing for the
Constituent Assembly and cooperating with other organizations favouring
national-territorial autonomy in a democratic federative Russia, in spring
1918 it required declaring independence from Bolshevik Russia and trying
to form a regional confederation with the help of outside powers.

Note on literature and sources

In the English-language literature, Michael Reynold’s article “Native Sons”
(2008) is the sole existing study of the Union of Allied Mountaineers. The
UAM and Mountain Republic are also discussed in chapters in histories of
the North Caucasus by Jeronim Perović (2018) and Alex Marshall (2010).
The Mountaineers receive barely a mention in Firuz Kazemzadeh’s Struggle
for Transcaucasia (2008) or in national histories of Armenia, Azerbaijan or
Georgia. In Russian, Timur Muzaev’s Soi͡uz gort͡sev (2012) is the definitive
work on the UAM, and Mairbek Vachagaev (2018) recently published a
book on the UAM and Mountain Republic that covers the Trabzon and
Batumi conferences in some detail. This article presents an original analysis
based on material from memoirs, documents and period newspapers. Some
of the documents were found in the digital collection of the Archival
Administration of the Government of the Chechen Republic and are copies
of materials physically located in the Central State Archive of the Republic
of Dagestan. However, most are accessible in Muzaev’s book and published
collections of materials and documents, notably Gaidar Bammat by
Georges Mamoulia et al. Information from the period press, particularly the
Georgian nationalist paper sakʻartvelo, adds a fresh dimension to existing
research on the native North Caucasians and their relationship with
Transcaucasia during 1917 and early 1918.

Notes
1. The Bolsheviks switched to New Style (NS) dates in February 1918, but the Old Style (OS)
was still used in the Caucasus through late spring 1918. I thus provide OS and NS dates
through April 1918, placing the NS date in parentheses, and then switch to NS from May
1918 onward.
2. The term “Mountaineer(s)”, a translation of the Russian gorets (gortsy) or Georgian mtieli
(mtielebi), was used with capitalization in the English-language newspapers published in
Georgia in 1919–1920: The Georgian Mail and The Georgian Messenger.
 3. The Congress of Soviets claimed power and approved the Council of People’s Commissars,
the Sovnarkom, on 26 October 1917 (Wade 2017, 240–243).
4. Its sister organization in Petrograd was The Committee of Mountaineers of the North
Caucasus.
5. This was demonstrated by his actions over the course of 1917 but he also remarked upon the
similarity of their views at the First Mountain Congress in May 1917.
6. At the Baku Congress, a Georgian Socialist-Federalist representative expressed the hope
that the Muslims and the Georgians could build a federal republic together (sakʻartʻvelo,
April 26, 1917). So the Socialist-Federalists were closer to the decentralist bloc, but they
criticized the Georgian National Democrats and Social Democrats (Vashakidze 2019).
Islamist parties like the Ittihad were centralist.
7. This was not a new idea. Nor was it forgotten in 1917. But for most of 1917 decentralists
did not think it was realistic as long as Russia was a factor.
8. There were other instances where the Transcaucasian authorities tried to impose control in
the North Caucasus such as in July after violent clashes in Vladikavkaz (sakʻartʻvelo, July
23, 1917).
9. It may be more accurate to describe the “Bolshevik Revolution” as a “maximalist coup”, a
forceful seizure of power by a Bolshevik-led radical left bloc which included left-SRs
Menshevik-Internationalists and anarchists (Wade 2017, 208–211, 228–229).
10. The important Chechen sheikh Deni Arsanov was murdered shortly thereafter by Cossacks
during a peacemaking attempt (Dukhaev 2016, 290–291).
11. In Georgian, the word alioni means “first light of day”.
12. The Seim was a representative body comprised of the delegates originally elected to
represent Transcaucasia’s population at Russia’s Constituent Assembly.
13. This appears to be the OS date.

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

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Archival Administration of the Government of the Chechen

Republic (AUPChR):
Fond 243 – Collection of copies of documents from the fonds of the Central State Historical
Archive of the Republic of Dagestan (T͡SGARD) on the history of the Chechen people (as
originals) [Коллекция копий документов из фондов Центрального государственного
исторического архива Республики Дагестан (ЦгаРД) по истории чеченского народа
(на правах подлинников)] http://www.cgard.ru/.
1. F 243 оp. 1 ėl.ed.uch. 131 ed.хr. 270 [T͡SGA RD, f. P-8, op. 3, d. 234, scans 261, 262, 263,
266].
2. F 243 op. 1 ėl.ed.uch. 131 ed.xr. 271 [T͡SGA RD, f. P-8, op. 3, d. 235, scan 247].
3. F 243 op. 1 ėl.ed.uch. 131 ed.xr. 272 [T͡SGA RD, f. P-8, op. 3, d. 236, scan 223].

Period press:
alioni. 1917a. “revolucʻia da erovnuli sakitʻxi čʻvenši III. erovnuli sakitʻxi da socʻializmi”
(Revolution and the national question here III. The national question and socialism), 11
May 1917, is. 4, p. 2.
alioni. 1917b. “revolucʻia da erovnuli sakitʻxi čʻvenši III. sami mtʻavari mimdinareoba”
(Revolution and the national question here III. The three main currents”), 14 May 1917, is.
5, p. 2 (P. Saqvareliże).
ertʻoba. 1917a. “rezolucʻia erovnul sakitʻxis šesaxeb” (Resolution on the national question), 2
June 1917, is. 61, no. 3.
ertʻoba. 1917b. “erovnuli sakitʻxi (National question), 13 June 1917, is. 70, p. 2.
ertʻoba. 1917c. “nacʻionaluri sakitʻxi saolkʻo qrilobaze” (National question at the district
congress), 15 June 1917, is. 72, p. 2.
ertʻoba. 1918a. “nacʻionalistebis tʻvitʻgamorkveva” (The self-determination of the
nationalists), 3 January 1918, is. 1, p. 1.
Kavkazskoe slovo. 1917a. “Po zhurnalamʺ Nat͡sīonalʹnyĭ voprosʺ na Kavkaze” (The National
question in the Caucasus in Journals), 1 March 1917, is. 48, p. 3.
Molot. 1917a. “Tiflisʺ, 30-go senti͡abri͡a” (Tiflis, 30 September), 30 September 1917, is. 3, p.
1.
͡ ͡
Molot. 1917b. “Tiflisʺ, 27-go okti͡abri͡a” (Tiflis, 27 September), 27 October 1917, is. 21, p. 1.
Molot. 1917c. “Tiflisʺ, 29-go okti͡abri͡a” (Tiflis, 29 September), 29 October 1917, is. 23, p. 1.
sakʻartʻvelo. 1917a. “a.i. xatisovi” (A.I. Khatisov), 16 March 1917, is. 60 p. 1.
sakʻartʻvelo. 1917b. “xatisovi da napʻicʻi vekʻili čiabrišvili” (Khatisov and barrister
Chiabrishvili), 28 March 1917, is. 69, p. 3.
sakʻartʻvelo. 1917c. “sruliad kavkasiis mahmadiantʻa qriloba,” (All-Caucasus Muslims’
Congress), 21 April 1917, is. 85, p. 3.
sakʻartʻvelo. 1917d. “kavkasiis mahmadiantʻa qriloba,” (Caucasian Muslims’ Congress), 26
April 1917, is. 89, p. 3.
sakʻartʻvelo. 1917e. “amier-kavkasiis mmart’velobis proekʻti” (Project for Transcaucasia’s
administration), 28 April 1917, is. 91, p. 3.
sakʻartʻvelo. 1917f. “kavkasiis mtʻieltʻa qriloba” (Caucasian Mountaineers’ Congress) in
“presa” (Press), 5 May 1917, is. 96, p. 1.
sakʻartʻvelo. 1917g. “mtʻieltʻa kavširis konstitucʻia” (Constitution of the Mountain Union), 26
May 1917, is. 111, p. 3.
sakʻartʻvelo. 1917h. “sruliad rusetʻis mahmadiantʻa qriloba” (All-Russia Muslims’ Congress),
7 June 1917, is. 121, p. 1.
sakʻartʻvelo. 1917i. “’dašnakcʻutunis’ politikuri programa” (Dashnaktsutiun’s political
program), 29 April 1917, is. 92, p. 4.
sakʻartʻvelo. 1917j. “čʻrdilo kavkasiisa da daġestnis mtʻieltʻa kavširis deklaracʻia iaraġis
tarebis šesaxeb” (The North Caucasus and Dagestan Mountain Union’s declaration on
bearing arms), 3 August 1917, is. 168, p. 4.
sakʻartʻvelo. 1917k. “kavkasiis sarevolucʻio cʻentrali komiteti” (Caucasian Revolutionary
Central Committee), 2 September 1917, is, 193, p. 3.
sakʻartʻvelo. 1917l. “kontr-revolucia da axali mtʻavroba” (Counter-revolution and the new
government), 3 September 1917, is. 194, p. (R. Ingilo).
sakʻartʻvelo. 1917m. “kontr-revolucʻionuri możraoba kavkavši” (Counter-revolutionary
movement in Vladikavkaz), 4 September 1917, is. 195, p. 3.
sakʻartʻvelo. 1917n. “reorganizacʻia amier kavkasiis sagangebo komitetisa” (Reorganization
of the Transcaucasian Special Committee), 7 September 1917, is. 197, p. 3.
sakʻartʻvelo. 1917o. “mtʻieltʻa kavširi da ap’xazetʻi” (Mountain Union and Abkhazia), 12
November 1917, is. 251, p. 4.
sakʻartʻvelo. 1917p. “čʻačʻnebis milicʻia” (Chechens’ militia) in “kavkasia” (Caucasus), is.
163, p. 2.
sakʻartʻvelo. 1917q. “mtʻieltʻa qriloba” (Mountaineers’ Congress), 3 August 1917, is. 168, p.
2.
sakʻartʻvelo. 1917r. “čʻrdilo da amier kavkasia” (North and Trans-Caucasia) 1 October 1917,
is. 214 (says 235), p. 4.
sakʻartʻvelo. 1917s. “mtʻieltʻa qriloba” (Mountaineers’ Congress) 8 October 1917, is. 221, p.
3.
sakʻartʻvelo. 1917t. “qazaxtʻa da mtʻieltʻa kavširi” 25 October 1917, is. 235, p. 3.
sakʻartʻvelo. 1917u. “čʻrdilo kavkasiis ambebis gamo” (Because of the news of the North
Caucasus), 2 December 1917, is. 266, p. 1.
sakʻartʻvelo. 1917v. “mtʻieltʻa milicʻia” (Mountaineers’ militia), 10 December 1917, is. 269,
p. 3.
sakʻartʻvelo. 1917w. “terg-daġestnis droebitʻ mtʻavrobis deklaracʻia” (Terek-Dagestan’s
Provitional Government’s declaration), 15 December 1917, is. 273, p. 3.
sakʻartʻvelo. 1917x. “mdgomareoba čʻrdilo-kavkasiaši” (Situation in the North Caucasus) 22
December 1917, is. 279, p. 3.
sakʻartʻvelo. 1917y. “darialis xeobis dačera” (Seizure of Darial Gorge), 29 December 1917, is.
282, p. 3.
sakʻartʻvelo. 1917z. “mtʻieltʻa da qazaxtʻa-samxretʻ_aġmosavletʻis kavširis debulebani”
(Provisions of the Mountaineers’ and Cossacks’ Southeastern Union) 24 November 1917,
is. 242, p. 4.
sakʻartʻvelo. 1917aa. “amier da imier kavkasiis urtʻiertoba” (Trans- and Cis-Caucasia’s
relations) 12 December 1917, is. 270, p. 3.
sakʻartʻvelo. 1917bb. “amier kavkasiis axali mtʻavroba” (Transcaucasia’s new government) 16
November 1917, is. 254, p. 3.
sakʻartʻvelo. 1917cc. “somextʻa erovnuli sabčo,” (Armenians’ National Council) 21 October
1917, is. 232, p. 3.
sakʻartʻvelo. 1917dd. “somextʻa erovnuli sabčos mocodeba” (Appeal of the Armenians’
National Council), 3 November 1917, is. 243, p. 3.
sakʻartʻvelo. 1917ee. “erovnuli sabčos aġmasrulebeli komiteti” (National Council’s Executive
Committee), 28 November 1917, is. 262, p. 3.
sakʻartʻvelo. 1917ff. “revolucʻiis nacʻionalizacʻia” (Nationalization of the revolution), 3
December 1917, is. 267, p. 1.
sakʻartʻvelo. 1917gg. “Noe jordania da socʻializmis nacʻionalizacʻia” (Noe Zhordania and the
nationalization of socialism), 9 December 1917, is. 268, p. 2 (Geronti K’ok’oże).
sakʻartʻvelo. 1917hh. “sakʻartʻvelos erovnuli sabčo” (Georgia’s National Council), 21
December 1917, is. 278, p. 3.
sakʻartʻvelo. 1917ii. “daġestan-čʻečʻnetʻi” (Dagestan and Chechnya), 12 December 1917, is.
270, p.1 (Sh. Amirejibi).
sakʻartʻvelo. 1917jj. “misasalmebeli depeša mtʻieltʻa qrilobas” (Salutatory telegram to the
Mountaineers’ Congress), 20 December 1917, is. 277, p. 3.
sakʻartʻvelo. 1917kk. “tʻerg-daġestnis droebitʻ mtʻavrobis deklaracʻia” (Terek-Dagestan’s
Provisional Government’s declaration), 15 December 1917, is. 273, p. 3.
sakʻartʻvelo. 1918a. “erovnuli t’avdac’va”, 4 April 1918, is. 72, p. 1 (A. Asatiani).
sakʻartʻvelo. 1918b. “sazavo delegac’iis dabruneba” 5 April 1918, is. 73, p. 3.
Terskiı˘ Kraı˘. 1918a. “Telegrammy” (Telegrams), 17 April 1918, is. 14, p. 1.
Vol’nyĭ goret͡s”. 1919a. “Rabochee dvizhenīe na Tereke I” (Workers’ movement on the Terek
I), 8 September 1919, is. 1, p. 4.
Vol’nyĭ goret͡s”. 1919b. “Rabochee dvizhenīe na Tereke II” (Workers’ movement on the Terek
II), 22 September 1919, is. 2, p. 4.
Vol’nyĭ goret͡s”. 1919c. “Rabochee dvizhenīe na Tereke IV” (Workers’ movement on the
Terek IV), 6 October 1919, is. 4, p. 4.
Vol’nyĭ goret͡s”. 1919d. “Rabochee dvizhenīe na Tereke V” (Workers’ movement on the Terek
IV), 13 October 1919, is. 5, p. 4.
Vol’nyĭ goret͡s”. 1919e. “Rabochee dvizhenīe na Tereke VI” (Workers’ movement on the
Terek IV), 20 October 1919, is. 6, p. 4.
Vol’nyĭ goret͡s”. 1919f. “Rabochee dvizhenīe na Tereke” (Workers’ movement on the Terek),
10 November 1919, is. 9, p. 3.
͡ ͡
 Vol’nyĭ goret͡s”. 1920a. “Sovetskai͡a vlastʹna Tereke III Borʹba obshchestvennyxʺ silʹ vʺ
Kabarde” (Soviet power on the Terek III, Struggle of social forces in Kabarda), 21 June
1920, is. 41, p. 2.
Vol’nyĭ goret͡s”. 1920b. Sovetskai͡a vlastʹna Tereke IV Borʹba obshchestvennyxʺ silʹ vʺ
Kabarde” (Soviet power on the Terek IV, Struggle of social forces in Kabarda), 28 June
1920, is. 42, p. 2.
Vol’nyĭ goret͡s”. 1920c. “Sovetskai͡a vlastʹ na Tereke, Revoli͡ut͡sīi͡a i ingushi II” (Soviet power
on the Terek, Revolution and the Ingush II), 6 December 1920, is. 65, p. 2.
Znami͡a truda. 1917a. “Federativnai͡a respublika” (Federal republic), 7 April 1917, is. 3, p. 2.
Znami͡a truda. 1917b. “Izʺ zhizni partīi c.-r.” (From the life of the S.R party) 8 April 1917, is.
4, p. 4.
Znami͡a truda. 1917c. “Kʺ postanovke nat͡sionalʹnago voprosa” (Setting the national question),
9 April 1917, is. 5, p. 2 (N. Berezovʺ).
Znami͡a truda. 1917d. “Rezoli͡ut͡sīi konferent͡sīi (Resolutions of the conference), 11 April 1917,
is. 6, p. 3.

Afterword
Adrian Brisku

The case of the gortsy mountaineers of the North Caucasus, who came to
view the Transcaucasian Federative Democratic Republic (TDFR) as a
viable state structure for Transcaucasia and sought to join it, represents one
of the clearest examples of support for the TDFR. All of the contributions
to this collection have dealt in one way or another with the question of who
wanted the TDFR, examining the positions at different points in time of the
influential political forces in the constituent nationalities, the small regional
entities, and the key policy-makers of the Great Powers, who had all in
some way – in some cases decades before the onset of the First World War
and for decades after it – conceptualized of a federative or confederative
framework of co-existence and cooperation for the nationalities of the
North and South Caucasus. Many viewed such elements of interaction and
interdependence as appealing and progressive, both in historical and
cultural terms, and also as a modern path toward economic and political
development. Insightfully, many viewed such a framework as more
attractive than that of the nation-state for the region’s nationalities.
And while the appeal for a federative arrangement had grassroot support,
a key issue that came to the fore as the result of the First World War, the
collapse of the Russian Empire, and the subsequent establishment of de
facto federative structures such as the Transcaucasian Commissariat and the
Seim, was whether the constituent elements in these structures could or
should declare independence from their former metropole, the Russian
state, which was undergoing an existential crisis and revolutionary
transformation that many found frightening. In this context the range of
actors who viewed the independence of the TDFR as viable was more
limited. In the Georgian case, the most powerful political party, the Social-
Democratic Party, was split on this issue: Akaki Chkhenkeli and Noe
Ramishvili became the most ardent promoters of independence, while the
rest of the party merely acquiesced, as did other parties during the five
weeks of the TDFR’s existence. In the Azerbaijani case, even though most
of the political parties were sympathetic to Ottoman Turkey, they wanted
the independence of the TDFR and rejected the idea of its incorporation
into the Ottoman Empire. The Armenian political parties, too, especially the
Dashnaks, opposed the TDFR, but were reluctant to part with it when faced
with the option of taking on the Ottoman army all on their own, which,
ultimately, they had to do.
Although the three main nationalities of the Transcaucasus were divided
among themselves and also vis-à-vis one another in their views towards the
independence of the TDFR, the Ottoman Empire was the most explicit
among the Great Powers in its support for such independence while it
existed. The Ottomans had their reasons and motivations for doing this,
even though their own political experience with federalism compelled them
to oppose such an alternative for their own state. Imperial Germany was in
favour of an independent TDFR if its existence could be negotiated and
agreed upon with the Ottomans and the Soviets, while the Allied Powers,
especially Britain and the USA, showed interest only after the TDFR had
already collapsed and the new nation-states of Georgia, Armenia and
Azerbaijan had emerged. Their increased attention to the alternative of a
federative or confederative arrangement for the region (which would have
meant the inclusion of Dagestan) coincided with a renewed interest among
the leaders of the three nation-states in this alternative, though this came to
an end when the Red Army occupied Azerbaijan in 1920. The Bolsheviks in
the Caucasus and in Moscow rejected the TDFR during its brief existence,
but like the other Great Powers they later found its federative arrangement
and its nationalizing policies appealing, and ultimately they imitated them
in practice with the creation of the Transcaucasian Socialist Federative
Soviet Republic (TSFSR, although it is often referred to by its Russian
acronym, ZSFSR) in 1922, one year after they took over the three republics
(with independent Georgia being the last to fall in February 1921).
To be sure, the wider historiographical scholarship on the Caucasus
during the First World War and the onset of the Soviet rule, including that
from within the respective national historiographies of Armenia, Azerbaijan
and Georgia, have underscored the profound impact that these two world
events had on the region. Yet little attention has been paid until now on to
the triggering role that these events played in creating the political opening,
even if only briefly so and never to be repeated, for a federative entity that
called itself the Transcaucasian Democratic Federative Republic. Indeed,
the TDFR represented a fleeting triumph of the idea of multi-layered
interdependence and interactions among the nationalities of the Caucasus,
an idea that had been on the minds of people both inside and outside of the
region. This idea preceded the TDFR’s emergence and lingered on after it
collapsed – but did not seem to appeal to all of the contemporaries of the
region or to have been viable for a longer duration given the specific
challenges of the period.

ORCHID
Adrian Brisku http://orcid.org/0000-0002-5691-1220
Index

Note: Italic page numbers refer to figures and page numbers followed by
“n” denote endnotes.

Akın, Yiğit 55
Ali and Nino (Said) 91n5
Ardahan 47–48
Armenian-Tatar Cantons 62
Armenia on the Road to Independence (Hovannisian) 4
armenophile sentiments, US 75–77
Arzamakov, Uzden 63
Asatiani, Aleksandre 115
Azerbaijani: advent of Germany 26–28, 29
Baku events 24–25
Brest-Litovsk 24
collapse of the TDFR 26–28, 29
creation of TDFR 21–22
independence of Transcaucasia, declaration of 25–26
Ottomans’ initiatives, Transcaucasia 22–24
Trabzon peace conference 24

Bakradze, Lasha 6
Baku Commune 82
Baku guberniya 24–25
Bammate, H. 111
Baratashvili, Iosip 94
Batumi Peace Conference 47–48, 51–52, 59, 107, 115–116
Bey, Colonel Rauf 49
Bey, Halil 46, 47, 51–52
Bey, Khalil 118
Blauvelt, Timothy 6
Bolsheviks 96–97, 125
Muslim conspiracy, Baku 89
Transcaucasus 81–82
Borotbystsy 101
Brest-Litovsk Treaty 13, 24, 48, 59, 71, 99, 113
Brisku, Adrian 5
British Orient 70, 79n2

Caucasus: absence of French 75

armenophile sentiments, US 75–77
aspirations 77–78
Crowe, Sir Eyre 73–74
Curzon, Lord Nathaniel 73–74
DMI 71–75
Italian mandate 77
March Days 88–89
meeting ideology at Baku 87–89
Milne, General George 75
nationality question 85–87
regional approach 69–70, 83–85
Wardrop, Oliver 74–75
The Caucasus 63
centralists 108–109
Chermoev, Tapa 113
Chkheidze, Nikoloz 60
Chkhenkeli, Akaki 26–27, 33, 35, 50, 59, 66, 72, 112, 115–116, 124
Clemenceau, Georges 75
Committee for Georgia’s Independence 60
Committee of Union and Progress (CUP) 54, 55, 56
Crowe, Sir Eyre 73–74
cultural-national autonomies 85
Curzon, Lord Nathaniel 73–74

Dashnaktsutyun 11–12
decentralists 108–109
Denikin, General Anton 74, 78
Department for Military Intelligence (DMI) 71–75
Diakonenko, V. 96
“Diet” 72

Efendiev, Medzhid 87
El Jihad 63
Elviye-i Selase 47–48, 49, 51
Enver Pasha 19, 23, 53

February Revolution (1917) 93–95

First Mountain Congress 108, 119n5

Gabba, Colonel Melchiade 77, 79n4

Gegechkori, Evgeni 3, 60, 70, 94, 97
Georgian émigrés: Caucasians’ travel 65
Committee 63–64
German encounters 60–61
German relationship, after independence 65–66, 67
meetings 62–63
POWs 63
visions and plans 61–62
Georgian National Council 18
Georgian Social Democratic Party 3
Germany and Georgian émigrés: Caucasians’ travel 65
Committee 63–64
encounters 60–61
meetings 62–63
POWs 63
relationship, after independence 65–66, 67
visions and plans 61–62
Gevorg V 17
gortsy 107, 113–114, 119n2, 124
grassroot support 124

Hakkı Paşa, İbrahim 48

Haskell, Colonel William 76
Hetmanate, Skoropadsky 101
Hindostan 63
Hovannisian, Richard G. 4, 70

inogorodnye 107–108, 111

intelligentsia 107, 108

“Jenkali” 72
Jones, Stephen F. 3
Jugeli, M. 99

Kars 13–16, 47–48

kartuli gazeti 62, 65
Kautsky, K. 86
Kazemzadeh, Firuz 89
Kereselidze, Leo 62
Khatissian, Alexander 12, 17, 18
Khoisky, F. Kh. 24
The Kingdom of Georgia (Wardrop) 74
Kobakhidze, Beka 6

Lenin 85–87
Liga der Fremdvölker Russlands 64
local autonomy 93–95
Lordkipanidze, Ivan 95

Machabeli, Giorgi 48, 61–62, 66

Machabeli, Ivane 65
Mamoulia, Georges 5
March Days 88, 91n5
Melikaslanov, Kh. 25
Melik-Gharagyozyan, Gevorg 14–15, 17
Mikoyan, A. 83
Milne, General George 75
Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact 79
Mozdok Congress 112
Mukhanov, Vadim 4
Nachrichtenstelle für den Orient 63
nationality policy 103
nationalization policies 102
The National Question and Social Democracy 86, 90
The New York Times 71

oblast’ ispolkoms 107, 108

October 1917 Revolution 60, 95–96, 110
okrug ispolkom 114, 118
Orakhelashvili, M. 83–84
Orlando, Vittorio Emmanuel 77
Ottomans’ support: Batum conference 51–52
Brest-Litovsk peace negotiations 3
creation of TDFR 45–46
delegation in Trabzon 49–51
Elviye-i Selase 47–48
federal options 56
geopolitical perspective 48–49
initiatives in Transcaucasia 22–24
pan-Islamism and pan-Turkism 46–47
reasoning and calculations 52–55

package policy 69
pan-Islamism 46–47
pan-Turkism 46–47, 55
Party of Peace 113
Pasha, Vehib 72
Petrograd Soviet 107
Political Intelligence Department (PID) 72
pragmatism 46–47
“pro-Turkish” party 72
Provisional Caucasian Revolutionary Committee (Revkom) 110
provisional mountain government 110–111
Pyatigorsk Congress 113–114

Rakovsky, K. 101
Ramishvili, Noe 59, 72, 124
Ramishvili, R. 59
regional autonomy 101
Regional Centre of the Soviets of Workers’, Soldiers’ and Peasants’
Deputies 2
Republic of Armenia: military defeat, spring 1918 12–16
participation of political leaders 11–12
political leaders 10
reluctant independence 16–18
trauma of Kars 13
Republic of the Union of Mountaineers of the North Caucasus and
Dagestan 106
Reynolds, Michael 3, 52
right to federation 85
right to secession 85
Russia Constituent Assembly 60
Russian Revolution 11

Said, Kurban 91n5

Shaumyan, Stepan 6–7, 81–91
territorial autonomy 83–85
Simpson, James 72
Skrypnyk, Mikola 102
Smith, F. W. 71
Social-Democrats 36–38, 66
Social-Federalists 66
Soviet of Peoples’ Commissars (Sovnarkom) 95, 97, 119n3
Special Transcaucasian Commission (Ozakom) 60, 94, 107, 108–109
Struggle for Transcaucasia (Kazemzadeh) 3
Sultan Abdülhamid II 54
Suny, R. G. 100

Tabaghua, Ilia 79n5

Talaat Pasha 19, 53
Tanin 52
Terek-Dagestani government (TerDag) 110–111
Terek People’s Republic 107, 114
territorial autonomy 83–85
Toniev-Toniyants, A. 95, 98
Trabzon 49–51
Trabzon Peace Conference 24, 114–115
Transcaucasian Commissariat (Zavkom) 1, 2, 60, 70, 122
seeking patron support 70–71
turbulent times 70
Transcaucasian Democratic Federative Republic (TDFR): Armenian
historiography 4–5
Bolsheviks 6–7, 81–82, 90
Bolsheviks attempts to seize power 96–97
boundaries 2
democratic revolutionary Russia 33–35
exercise of foreign policy 39–41
federation to a confederation 41–42
Georgian political elites 31–33
Great Powers 5–6
historians and specialists 1–2
Imperial German perspective 6
independence 97–100
independence from Russia 115–116
independent republics, establishment of 4
local autonomy, after February Revolution 93–95, 104n1
locating Georgian nationality 33–35
mountain leaders in Tiflis 109–110
nationality policy 100–103
October Revolution 95–96
Seim 1, 2, 37–39, 60, 82, 91n4, 99, 113, 120n12
social-democrat dominance 35–37
views in Western scholarship 3–4
Trans-Caucasian Republic 73
Treaty of Küçük Kaynarca 47, 52
Tsar Nicholas II 107
Tsereteli, Mikheil 61–62, 64
Turkish Armenia 83
Turkish Sanitary Mission 64
Turk Yurdu 54
Ukraine: Bolsheviks attempts to seize power 96–97
intermediary 97–100
local autonomy, after February Revolution 93–95, 104n1
nationality policy 100–103
October Revolution 95–96
“Universals” 104n2
Ukrainification 101
Union of Allied Mountaineers (UAM)/Mountain Government:
“decentralists” vs. “centralists” 108–109
establishment 108
gortsy 106–107
Mozdok Congress 111–112
Pyatigorsk Congress 113–114
self-assertion 107–108
TerDag 110–111
Trabzon Peace Conference 114–115
Transcaucasian authorities, Tiflis 109–110
US Peace Delegation (Paris) 75–76

Vacheishvili, David 95–96, 98

Vakit 48
Vehib Pasha 24, 46, 53, 115
Vekilov, Mustafa 94
Vittorio Emmanuel III 77
von Kühlmann, Richard 27
Vynnychenko, V. 101

de Waal, Thomas 3
Wangenheim, Baron von 60
Wardrop, Oliver 74–75
Western Borderlands 97
Wilson, Sir Henry 75
Wilson, Woodrow 64, 76

Zhordania, Noe 1, 3, 32–38

Zolyan, Mikayel 5
Zürrer, V. 28