Armenian–Azerbaijani War

Not to be confused with Nagorno-Karabakh War.

The Armenian–Azerbaijani War, which started after the Russian Revolution, was a series of brutal and hard-to-classify conflicts in 1918, then from 1920 to 1922 that occurred during the brief independence of Armenia and Azerbaijan and afterwards. Most of the conflicts did not have a principal pattern with a standard armed structure. The Ottoman Empire and British Empire were involved in different capacities: the Ottoman Empire left the region after the Armistice of Mudros but British influence continued until Dunsterforce was pulled back in the 1920s. The conflicts involved civilians in the disputed districts of Kazakh-Shamshadin, Zanghezur, Nakhchivan and Karabakh. The use of guerrilla and semi-guerrilla operations was the main reason for the high civilian casualties, which occurred during the nation-building activities of the newly established states.

The reasons behind the conflict are still far from being resolved after nearly a century. The story of this campaign has very different perceptions between the Armenian and Azerbaijani views. According to Armenian historians, the First Republic of Armenia aimed to include Nakhchivan among the basic (Eastern Armenian) territories of the Erivan Governorate, as well as the eastern and southern parts of the Elisabethpol Governorate.

Background

File:M820 Roll542-0107azeriarmenwa.jpg

American Commission to Negotiate Peace speaking on massacres around Nakhichevan

Main articles: History of Nagorno-Karabakh and Shusha

The first clashes between the Armenians and Azeris took place in Baku in February 1905. Soon, the conflict spilled over to other parts of the Caucasus, and on August 5, 1905 the first conflict between the Armenian and Azeri population of Shusha took place.

American Commission to Negotiate Peace telegram dating 1919 speaking on the conflict,

F. Tredwell Smith of the American Persian Relief Commission passed through here yesterday after varied experiences in Erivan and Nakhichevan and Tabriz and Urumia. When about August 25th he crossed the Tartar lines via Nakhichevan to Tabriz for the second time the atmosphere was completely changed, and a Britisher's life was no longer safe because the British had no troops, and Americans were also in danger. The tartars opened battle on the Armenians in Nakhichevan July 20th and after a three day battle drove out the British along with the American relief workers and began a massacre of Armenian men, women and children, estimates of victims varying between 6,000 to 12,000.

Active stages

See also: March Days

In the March 1918, ethnic and religious tensions grew and the Armenian-Azeri conflict in Baku began. Musavat and Committee of Union and Progress parties were accused of Pan-Turkism by Bolsheviks and their allies. Armenian and Muslim militia engaged in armed confrontation, which resulted in heavy casualties. Many Muslims were expelled from Baku, or went underground.

Meanwhile, the arrest of General Talyshinski, the commander of the Azerbaijani division, and some of its officers all of whom arrived in Baku on March 9, increased the anti-Soviet feelings among the city's Azeri population. On 30 March, the Soviets, based on the unfounded report that the Muslim crew of the ship Evelina was armed and ready to revolt against the Soviets, disarmed the crew which tried to resist. This led to 3-day fighting resulting in the death of up to 12,000 Azeris.

Fight for Baku and Karabakh, 1918–19

Place of British forces after Armstice

See also: Battle of Baku, September Days, and Republic of Mountainous Armenia

File:Bakuroad.jpg

British forces in Baku

Soldiers and officers of the army of Azerbaijan Democratic Republic in 1918

At the same time, the Baku Commune was involved in heavy fighting with the advancing Caucasian Ottoman Army in and around Ganja. Enver Pasha, the Ottoman Empire, began to move forward with the newly established Army of Islam. Major battles occurred in Yevlakh and Agdash.

Dunsterville ordered the evacuation of the city on September 14, after six weeks of occupation, and withdrew to Iran; most of the Armenian population escaped with British forces. The Ottoman Army of Islam and its Azeri allies, led by Nuri Pasha, entered Baku on September 15 and slaughtered between 10,000 - 20,000 Armenians in retaliation for the March massacre of Muslims. The capital of the Azerbaijan was finally moved from Ganja to Baku. However, after the Armistice of Mudros between the United Kingdom and the Ottoman Empire on October 30, Turkish troops were substituted by the Triple Entente. Headed by British general W. Thomson, who had declared himself the military governor of Baku, 1,000 Commonwealth soldiers arrived in Baku on November 17, 1918. By General Thomson's order, martial law was implemented in Baku.

Karabakh Reconciliation commission

The Armenian government tried several times to seize Shusha militarily. Beginning with 1918, a Republic of Mountainous Armenia was declared in the region. However throughout the summer of 1918, Armenians in the mountainous Karabag region, under the leadership of Andranik Ozanian resisted the Ottoman 3rd army. After the Armistice, the Ottoman Empire began to withdraw its forces and Armenian forces under Andranik seized Nagorno-Karabakh. Armstice of Mudros brought General Adriank the chance to create a base for further expansion eastward and form a strategic corridor extending into Nakhchivan. In January 1919, Armenian troops advanced towards Shusha. They captured and destroyed 9 Azeri villages on their way but eventually had to retreat. Just before the Armistice of Mudros was signed, Andranik Ozanian was on the way from Zangezur to Shusha, to control the main city of the Karabakh. The Armenian government tried several times to seize Shusha militarily, before. In January 1919, while Armenian troops advancing, the British military command ordered Andranik back to Zangezur, and gave him the assurances that this conflict could be solved with the Paris Peace Conference. Andranik pulled back his units and British command at Baku gave the control to Khosrov bey Sultanov, a native of Karabakh, who was appointed the general-governor of Karabakh. He had three Armenian and three Azeri aides.

Fight for Nakhchivan, 1919–20

In response to a border proposal by Sir John Oliver Wardrop, British Chief Commissioner in the South Caucasus, that would have assigned Nakhchivan to Armenia, Azeris of Nakhchivan revolted under the leadership of the local landowner Jafargulu Khan Nakhchivanski in December 1918 and declared the independent Republic of Aras, with its capital in Nakhchivan. The republic, which essentially subordinated to Azerbaijan, continued to exist until May 1919, when Armenia advanced its troops led by Drastamat Kanayan into it to gain control over the region. They managed to capture the city of Nakhchivan in June 1919 and establish the Republic of Aras, but immediately clashed with regular Azerbaijani troops, which reinstated Azerbaijan's control over the city in July. Azerbaijani troops led by former Turkish officer Khalil Bey successfully defended the town of Beiuk Vedi, twenty-six miles from the Armenian capital. On 10 August 1919, the Armenians were forced to sign a peace treaty.

Fighting resumed in March 1920 and continued until the Sovietization of Nakhchivan in 1920 when the 11th Red Army, now including former Azerbaijan Democratic Republic troops.

Fight for Karabakh, early 1920

Aftermath of the Shusha massacre of the city's Armenian population: Armenian half of Shusha destroyed by Azerbaijani armed forces in 1920, with the defiled Armenian Cathedral of the Holy Savior on the background.

The largest Armenian-Azeri ethnic clashes in Shusha took place on March–April 1920. On March 22–26, 1920, the Shusha massacre took place, which resulted many Armenian deaths and the destruction of the Armenian quarter of the city.

Sovietization of Azerbaijan, April 1920

In early April 1920, the Republic of Azerbaijan was in a very troubled situation. In the west, the Armenians still controlled large parts of territory claimed by Azerbaijan; in the east, the local Azeri communists were rebelling against the government; and to the north the Russian Red Army was steadily moving southward, having defeated Denikin's White Russian forces.

On April 27, 1920, the government of the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic received notice that the Soviet army was about to cross the northern border and invade the Azerbaijan. Faced with such a difficult situation, the government officially surrendered to the Soviets, but many generals and local Azeri militias kept resisting the advance of Soviet forces and it took a while for the Soviets to stabilize the newly proclaimed Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic, headed by the leading Azeri Bolshevik Nariman Narimanov.

While the Azerbaijani government and army were in chaos, the Armenian army and local Armenian militias used the opportunity to assert their control over parts of Azerbaijani territory, taking Shusha, Khankendi, and other important cities. By the end of April the Armenian forces were in control of most of western Azerbaijan including all of Karabakh with the surrounding areas. Other areas captured included all of Nakhchivan and much of Kazakh-Shamshadin district. In the meantime, the Armenian communists attempted a coup in Armenia, but ultimately failed.

Soviet takeover, May 1920

Main article: Red Army invasion of Azerbaijan

In 1920–21, the only 'solution' of this dispute could come either by military victory – as basically happened in Anatolia, Zangezur and Nakhchivan – or by the imposition from above of a new structure by an imperial power. After the British failed to impose a settlement, the imperial arbiters turned out to be the Bolsheviks, whose 11th Army conquered Karabakh in May 1920. On 5 July 1921 the Bolsheviks' Caucasian committee, the Kavbiuro, under the chairmanship of Stalin ruled that the mountainous part of Karabakh would be part of Azerbaijan. In July 1923 the Nagorny (or Mountainous) Karabakh Autonomous Region (NKAO) was created within Azerbaijan, with borders that gave it an overwhelming Armenian population of 94 per cent of the total inhabitants.

End of hostilities, September–November 1920

In late November, there was yet another Soviet-backed communist uprising in Armenia. On November 28, 1920, blaming Armenia for the invasions of Şərur on November 20, 1920 and Karabakh the following day, the 11th Red Army under the command of Anatoliy Gekker, crossed the demarcation line between First Republic of Armenia and Soviet Azerbaijan. The second Soviet-Armenian war lasted only a week.

Aftermath

The Armenian national liberation movement was exhausted by the 6 years of permanent wars and conflicts; the Armenian army and population were incapable of any further active resistance.

Sovietization of Armenia, December 1920

See also: First Republic of Armenia and Turkish–Armenian War

On December 4, 1920, when the Red Army entered Yerevan, the government of the First Republic of Armenia effectively surrendered. On December 5, the Armenian Revolutionary Committee (Revkom) made up of mostly Armenians from Azerbaijan also entered the city. Finally, on the following day, December 6, Felix Dzerzhinsky's dreaded secret police, the Cheka, entered Yerevan, thus effectively ending all existence of the First Republic of Armenia.

The Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic was then proclaimed, under the leadership of Gevork Atarbekyan. On February 18, 1921, a national revolt against Bolsheviks started. General Garegin Nzhdeh, commander Garo Sasouni and the last PM of independent Armenia Simon Vratsyan took the lead of anti-bolshevik rebellion and forced out the Bolsheviks from Yerevan and other places. By April, the Red Army reconquered most part of Armenia. However, Atarbekyan was dismissed and Aleksandr Miasnikyan, an Armenian high-ranking Red Army commander, replaced him. Garegin Nzhdeh left the Zangezur mountains after the sovietization of Armenia was finalized in July 1921, leaving Azeri-populated villages cleansed of their population. Persuaded by Soviet leadership, Zangezur had already been ceded by Azerbaijan to Armenia in November 1920 as a "symbol of friendship".

Treaty of Kars, 23 October 1921

Main article: Treaty of Kars

The violence in Transcaucasia was finally settled in a friendship treaty between Turkey and the Soviet Union. The peace Treaty of Kars was signed in Kars by representatives of the Russian SFSR, Azerbaijan SSR, Armenian SSR, Georgian SSR, and Turkey. Turkey had another agreement, the "Treaty on Friendship and Brotherhood", also called the Treaty of Moscow, signed on March 16, 1921 with Soviet Russia.

By this treaty, Nakhchivan was granted the status of an autonomous region within Azerbaijan. Turkey and Russia became guarantors of Nakhichevan's status. Turkey agreed to return Alexandropol to Armenia and Batumi to Georgia.

External links

• Armenian- Azerbaijani War of 1919 - 1920 (In Russian)
• Soviet-Armenian War and the Collapse of the First Republic: November-December, 1920
• http://wayback.archive.org/web/20160303172503/https://www.hrw.org/reports/1995/communal/