The First Republic of Armenia, officially known at the time of its existence as the Republic of Armenia, was an independent Armenian state that existed from May (28th de jure, 30th de facto) 1918 to 2 December 1920 in the Armenian-populated territories of the former Russian Empire known as Eastern or Russian Armenia. The republic was established in May 1918, with its capital in the city of Yerevan, after the dissolution of the short-lived Transcaucasian Federation. It was the first Armenian state since the Middle Ages.
In its first year of independence, Armenia was confined to a small territory around Lake Sevan after its invasion by the Ottoman Empire during the Caucasus campaign. Following the Armistice of Mudros, Armenia expanded its borders in the wake of the Ottoman withdrawal, leading to a brief border war with neighbouring Georgia. During its first winter, hundreds of thousands of refugees in the country who had fled the Armenian genocide died from starvation or exposure. In the spring of 1919, Armenia, with British support, incorporated the formerly occupied regions of Kars and Nakhchivan, thereby tripling in size since independence; however, Armenian control of these regions collapsed during the Muslim uprisings that erupted in the summer of 1919.
In late 1919, the isolated Armenian region of Zangezur came under attack by neighbouring Azerbaijan. The fighting subsided until an Armenian rebellion was launched in March of the following year in Nagorno-Karabakh (then under provisional Azerbaijani rule), ending in April after Azerbaijan's sovietisation. In August 1920, Armenian representatives at the Paris Peace Conference signed the Treaty of Sèvres, which awarded Armenia an additional of territory in Western Armenia, albeit the treaty was never implemented. In late 1920, Armenia was invaded by Kemalist Turkey, ending with its partition and sovietisation by the Russian SFSR, with the latter founding the superseding Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic. Shortly thereafter, an anti-Bolshevik revolt resisted Soviet authority from February to July 1921.
In the two and a half years of its existence, Armenia formed diplomatic relations with 40 countries, gained de jure recognition, underwent parliamentary elections, and founded its first university. The nation's parliament and government were dominated by the broad Armenian Revolutionary Federation party (commonly referred to as the Dashnaks), however, the cabinet posts were initially shared with the "bourgeois" Armenian Populist Party and later, Social Revolutionaries.
Name Since Armenia's gaining of independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, in Armenia and modern historiography, the state is referred to as the First Republic of Armenia () or the First Republic for short. Other names of the state include the Araratian Republic (), as the republic was largely based around Mount Ararat; Further names include the Republic of Erivan, and the Erivan Republic, as Yerevan was the principal city of the republic. These terms were often used by Ottoman Armenians and the Armenian diaspora who regarded the country as "only a dusty province without Ottoman Armenia whose salvation Armenians had been seeking for 40 years". It has also been known as the Dashnak Republic due to the fact that the Dashnaks were the dominant political force in the country. During the Soviet-era, the Soviet Armenian Encyclopedia referred to the state as the Bourgeois Republic of Armenia ().
Background
Loss of statehood and national awakening
Sources vary on when Armenian statehood was lost. Though the Armenian Kingdom of Cilicia ceased to exist in 1375, other sources suggest that Armenian statehood was lost in 1045 with the fall of Bagratid Armenia as Cilician Armenia was outside of the traditional Armenian homeland, while Bagratid Armenia was the last major independent Armenian state in the Armenian Highlands. In the centuries after losing its independence, Armenia remained mostly under Muslim Turkic or Persian rule until the Russian annexation of the Karabakh Khanate in 1801 and the khanates of Erivan and Nakhichevan in 1828. Due to Russian colonial policies, large numbers of Armenians from Persia and the Ottoman Empire repatriated to Russian Armenia. Armenians had already formed a majority in some regions, such as Nagorno-Karabakh, and this migration bolstered their numbers in the area. In particular, the Erivan Governorate regained an Armenian majority for the first time in several hundred years, and these regions would later "form the nucleus" of an independent Armenia.
Armenian nationalism was rooted in the "long textual tradition" of clerics and scholars. According to historians Edmund Herzig and Marina Kurkchiyan, "in the late eighteenth and through the nineteenth centuries a coherent sense of Armenians as a nation with a distinct and distinguished history was spread by patriots, teachers, writers, and revolutionaries". The Russian offensive during the Caucasus campaign of World War I, the subsequent occupation and creation of a provisional administrative government gave hope for ending Ottoman Turkish rule in Western Armenia. With the help of several battalions of Armenians recruited from the Russian Empire, the Russian Imperial Army advanced as far as the city of Erzurum in 1916, continuing to make considerable advances even after the toppling of Tsar Nicholas II in February 1917.
Transcaucasian Democratic Federative Republic
Following news of the Bolshevik coup in Russia, the Ozakom (a committee formed in February by the Russian Provisional Government to oversee the Caucasus) was superseded by a caretaker government known as the Transcaucasian Commissariat on 28 November 1917, which would later form the nucleus of the Transcaucasian Democratic Federative Republic (TDFR). As Russian and Ottoman armies, despite the revolution, were still engaged in combat, the Transcaucasian Commissariat signed the Armistice of Erzincan with the Ottoman Empire on 18 December.
On 30 January 1918, the Ottoman Empire in violation of the armistice, launched an offensive to recapture Western Armenia. Delegates of the major South Caucasian political parties established the Transcaucasian Seim—the representative and legislative body of the TDFR—on 23 February, with the Dashnaks representing the Armenians, the Musavat the Muslims and Caucasian Tatars, and the Mensheviks the Georgians. On 2 March, a delegation from the Seim was scheduled to depart to participate in the Trebizond Peace Conference with the Ottoman Empire; however, by the time of the conference, Soviet Russia had signed the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk with the Central Powers, ceding Kars and Batum to the Ottomans. From the outset of the Trebizond Peace Conference, the Ottomans demanded that the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk serve as the basis of peace negotiations, which was only accepted by the Trancaucasian delegates weeks later on 5 April. Due to this delay, the Ottomans continued their advance and reached the pre-war 1914 Russo-Turkish frontier by the end of March.
On 11 May, a new peace conference was convened in Batum; the Ottoman delegation stated that as the Ottoman Empire and TDFR were in a state of war, they would no longer recognise Brest-Litovsk and instead presented an alternative treaty by which the TDFR would be also obligated to cede western sectors of the Erivan and Tiflis governorates. Without awaiting the TDFR's consent to the new terms, the Ottomans resumed their offensive in Armenia on 21 May, leading to the battles of Abaran, Karakilisa, and Sardarabad, whereby local Armenian forces emerged victorious. In retaliation for their losses, the Turkish divisions defeated by Armenians massacred several thousand villagers. On 26 May, after secret negotiations with Germany, the Georgian delegates of the Seim declared the independence of Georgia; Azerbaijan followed suit two days later.
History
May – September 1918
Declaration of independence
With the collapse of the TDFR, the Armenian National Council, based in Tiflis (present-day Tbilisi) and led by Russian Armenian intellectuals representing Armenian interests in the Caucasus, declared Armenia's independence on 28 May 1918. The council dispatched Hovhannes Kajaznuni and Alexander Khatisian, both Dashnaks, to Yerevan to assume power, and issued the following "intentionally vague" statement on 30 May (retroactive to 28 May):
With the success in the May battles in Abaran, Karakilisa, and Sardarabad, Armenian commander Movses Silikian was urged by the Armenian military command to chase out the Turks whilst they were on the run, however, Silikian refused and ordered his forces to halt. This is due to the fact that the Armenian forces' ammunition were nearly exhausted, and the Turks' reinforcements were close. According to the UCLA historian Richard G. Hovannisian, "If peace were not concluded and the tide of victory turned in favor of the Ottomans, the consequences would be disastrous".
Treaty of Batum
Armenian negotiators on 30 May informed the Ottoman delegation at Batum that Armenia would accept Turkish conditions for peace, thereby initiating the Batum Conference between Armenia and the Ottoman Empire. The Ottomans, in refusing to countenance Armenian pretensions to the highland portion of the Elizavetpol Governorate, offered Armenia the entirety of the Nor Bayazet uezd, and parts of the Erivan, Etchmiadzin, and Alexandropol counties, essentially confining it to an area of . When news of the Armenian victories at Abaran, Karakilisa, and Sardarabad reached the conference, the Ottomans agreed to a "minor territorial rectification" whereby an additional in the Alexandropol uezd were relinquished "for the sake of the friendly relations that have begun". The Treaty of Batum was thereafter signed on 4 June.
In June 1918, German officials informed Armenian representatives in Istanbul that Germany would not recognise the Treaty of Batum. Though denying Armenia official recognition, Germany promised a conference whereby the treaties would be "revised". Armenian representatives in the Ottoman capital humbled themselves as to "expressing gratitude" to the unsympathetic Enver Pasha for tolerating the Armenian republic's establishment. Enver rejected any notion of the Armenian republic expanding its borders, observing that he had consented to "a small Armenian state that could never in any way affect the interests of the new Turkish empire".
October 1918 – June 1919
Armistice of Mudros
On 30 October 1918, the Armistice of Mudros was signed, thus ending hostilities between the Ottoman Empire and the Allies. The armistice only stipulated the Ottomans' withdrawal to the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk boundaries, thereby allowing their armies to winter in Kars and Batum. Throughout November, Ottoman forces evacuated the Erivan Governorate, thereby Armenia gained of formerly-occupied territory.