THE FIRST REPUBLIC: ON THE EVE OF INDEPENDENCE

In recent years, the history of the ADR has become an object of close attention and research by historians and political experts not just in our country, but also abroad. From this point of view, we should point out the important scientific and political contribution of Azerbaijan's national leader Heydar Aliyev to the comprehensive study of the legacy of the First Republic. The decree "On marking the 80th anniversary of the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic", which he signed on 30 January 1998, was the first step towards serious and truly scientific study of the country's history free from political and ideological bias. The importance of the decree signed by Heydar Aliyev is not just that it granted scientists access to unpublished archive material and systematized the already existing archives, becoming an irreplaceable source of scientific research. This document is also of political importance. This was the first time that the decree considered the periods of Azerbaijan's democratic (1918-1920), Soviet (1920-1991) and modern independent (1991) development as different stages in the difficult and contradictory, but united and inseparable evolution of Azerbaijani statehood.

However, an analysis of the 23-month history of the First Republic would be incomplete without the study of developments that occurred in the South Caucasus from the collapse of the Russian Empire to the proclamation of the independence of the ADR. As is known, after the February revolution, the provisional government issued a decree on 9 March 1917 setting up a special Transcaucasia committee (Ozakom) to run the Transcaucasia. The decree was issued on the initiative of Transcaucasia deputies of the Russian State Duma. The chairman of the committee was V. A. Kharlamov and its members M. Y. Cafarov, M. I. Papadzhanov and A. I. Chkhenkeli. On 15 November, Ozakom was transformed into a special Transcaucasia government (the Transcaucasia commissariat) which became the supreme authority in the region. The Transcaucasia commissariat which was led by Georgian social-democrat Y. Gegechkori included three Azerbaijani representatives - F. Xoyski, M. Cafarov and X. Xasmammadov. The members of the commissariat regarded it as a provisional body that would be in place until the all-Russian Constituent Assembly, which was expected to determine the further fate of the region. Elections to the Constituent Assembly were held on 26-28 November 1917. The leading parties of the main peoples of the Transcaucasia - Russians, Azerbaijanis, Armenians and Georgians - took part in them. 

As a result, 34 deputies were elected to the Constituent Assembly from the Transcaucasia, including 12 Muslims who represented the Azerbaijani population of the region. However, the assembly was dispersed the day it opened. In this regard, the deputies elected from the region decided to set up a body - the Transcaucasia Seim - in order to run the region until the all-Russian Constituent Assembly. The Transcaucasia Seim was formed from deputies elected to the Constituent Assembly during the elections and representatives from other regional parties (the Bolsheviks refused to join the Seim). What is more, it also included more representatives of the aforesaid parties in compliance with the votes they gained in the November elections to the Constituent Assembly. As a result, 125 people were elected to the Seim, including 32 deputies from Georgian Mensheviks, 30 deputies from Musavat and the bloc of non-partisan democrats and 27 Dashnaks. Moreover, seven deputies were elected to the Seim from the Muslim socialist bloc, three from Ittihad and four from the Hummat social-democratic party. These deputies formed a Muslim faction of 44 people in the Transcaucasia Seim. The first session of the Seim was held in Tiflis on 23 February 1918.

Although the Seim was formed on the basis of parties, its work immediately caused tense political rivalry between the three national sectors which represented the biggest ethnic groups of the region - Azerbaijanis, Armenians and Georgians. In this rivalry, the Azerbaijani deputies ended up in a less favourable position because they were split into four parties, while the Georgians and Armenians were united by their leading national parties and took a single position. However, it was exactly this factor - the presence of organized and united factions of Georgians and Armenians - which prompted the Azerbaijani political groups, despite the differences in their programmes and political platforms, to protect the interests of their people jointly on most issues. Only the period after the bloody Baku events of 31 March and early April was an exception because the faction of Bolshevik Hummatists, which was brought into disrepute by Baksovet's role, no longer took part in sessions of the Seim. The Muslim faction of Azerbaijani deputies held its first session in Tiflis on 16 March. The session in which 15 of the 44 deputies participated was chaired by Mammad Amin Rasulzada.

The unmatched political interests of the leading national factions became an insurmountable obstacle to its work. This also caused the Transcaucasia government formed by the Seim in March and April to be weak. But there were other reasons as well because of which the Seim did not become a real body of legislative power in early 1918 and turned into something like a conference of representatives of the Transcaucasia peoples. It was impossible to control the situation in the region which was in a permanent condition of civil and ethnic war, domestic anarchy and a food crisis accompanied by famine and epidemics. For this reason, the maximum task that the Seim could solve - a kind of mission - was to secure a smooth and bloodless switch from post-imperial chaos, anarchy and civil war in Soviet Russia to the two-year period of the independent existence of the Transcaucasia republics.

An important factor which stimulated the growth in contradictions between leading national-political forces of the Transcaucasia was the peace agreement signed between Soviet Russia on the one hand and Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria and Turkey on the other in Brest-Litovsk on 3 March. Article 4 of this agreement was directly related to the situation in the Transcaucasia. According to this article, Russia pledged to "do everything in its power in order to secure a swift withdrawal from East Anatolian provinces and return them to Turkey". The districts of Ardahan, Kars and Batumi were to be cleared of Russian troops immediately. This article also said that Russia "will not interfere in the new structure of state and legal and international-legal relations in these districts, but will allow the population of these districts to establish a new system in concord with neighbouring states, especially Turkey". In other words, the Russian-Turkish border of 1877-1878 was being restored in the region and new legal, political and military prerequisites were being established to take the Transcaucasia provinces from Russia with a significant growth in Ottoman Turkey's influence on the regional situation.

Turkey's relations with the Transcaucasia were not easy. Despite the Erzincan truce signed with the Transcaucasia commissariat in early December 1917, the command of the Turkish army decided to take advantage of the collapse of the Caucasus Front and retake the territories lost during the Russian-Turkish war of 1914-1917. In early February 1918, the third Ottoman army under the command of Vehib Pasa launched an offensive in several directions at once - in three strategic (Trabzon-Batumi, Erzincan-Erzurum-Akhaltsikhe, Erzurum-Kars-Alexandropol) and one local (Bayazit-Igdir-Echmiadzin). But the spring campaign of the Turkish army pursued another important goal as well - to save thousands of Muslims living in the Armenian-occupied territories from extermination. The British historian and Turkologist and the author of one of the most popular biographies of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, Andrew Mango, says that "the Ottomans also had another reason to advance on the east: the Armenian nationalists had filled in the gap that appeared after the withdrawal of the Russian troops who had earlier tried to prevent a revanchist policy of killings and ethnic cleansing against Muslims. The tsarist general, Nazarbekov, become commander of the Armenian corps, and the lives of Muslims to the east of the Ottoman Empire in 1914 were in danger".

Indeed, the Russian units had been evacuated (or partly deserted) by that time, and the Erzincan-Van front line was defended by Armenian regular units of about 6,000 people. They were based on detachments of up to 1,000 volunteers each, formed on orders from the commander-in-chief of the Caucasus army in April and May 1915. These units had fighting experience from military operations of the Russian army on the Caucasus Front in 1915-1917.

In this regard, it is worth mentioning that Point 5 of Article 1 of the Russian-Turkish supplementary agreement to the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk stipulated that "the Russian Republic promised to demobilize and dissolve Armenian detachments comprised of Turkish and Russian nationals who are in both Russia and the occupied Turkish provinces and to finally discharge these detachments". However, Soviet Russia was in no hurry to dissolve the Armenian units. According to a decree issued by the people's commissar for affairs of nationalities, Iosif Stalin, in Tsatitsyn on 16 March 1918, all revolutionary committees, headquarters and Soviet institutions were instructed that "the Armenian revolutionary organizations had the right to freely form Armenian volunteer detachments and impose a tax on the Armenian bourgeoisie in order to finance the latter". Soviet institutions were instructed "not to create obstacles to the advance of these detachments, called to defend their homeland from German and Turkish rapists, towards Armenia".

As a result of short fighting, the Turks took Erzincan on 13 February and Erzurum on 12 March. The advance of the Turkish army on the Transcaucasia forced the Seim to accept peace talks with Turkey which began in Trabzon on 14 March. On the first day of the talks, the Turkish delegation demanded that the delegation of the Seim recognize the conditions of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk and proclaim their independence from Russia. The last condition was of special importance to Turkey because an independent Transcaucasia was a suitable neighbour for it, for further events showed that the Turks were intending to enforce a broader programme of territorial acquisition on the "independent" Transcaucasia than stipulated by the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. However, the Trabzon conference yielded no results as the Armenian and Georgian deputies of the Seim could not put up with territorial concessions to Turkey stipulated by the agreement. For example, Georgian politicians regarded the loss of Batum as "national and party suicide". The Azerbaijani deputies had a different position. In their address to the ninth session of the Seim on 22 February, which discussed the issue of the independence of the Transcaucasia, Fatalixan Xoyski said that previously, "we were greatly cautious about the formal proclamation of the independence of the Transcaucasia, we felt that we needed to maintain some link with central Russia. But now we have to conclude peace with Turkey," the orator admitted. "The Seim should recognize the need to declare the Transcaucasia sovereign, otherwise further existence in the current conditions is unthinkable and impossible," Xoyski said. Although Xoyski made a proposal to confirm the borders of 1914 in the peace talks with Turkey, which was beneficial to the Georgian and Armenian factions, his appeal to declare the independence of the region was not supported.

An important factor of regional instability, and as a consequence, the crisis in the work of the Seim, was the growing Armenian-Azerbaijani confrontation. The basis of this confrontation was that in that period, Armenian armed formations started oppressing Muslims in various regions of the Transcaucasia - the Kars region, Erivan region and districts, which turned into mass carnage in some places. The events in the Erivan region which started in February were especially serious as about 200 Azerbaijani villages with a population of 135,000 people were devastated in four districts there. As a result of these criminal actions, about 80,000 Muslims became refugees. At a session of the Seim held on 10 April, Saidov made a fair conclusion, saying that the massacre of Muslims by the Armenians and Armenian military units "pursued a certain goal - to cleanse the territory for Armenian refugees and create a compact entity for the Armenian autonomy". During discussions on this issue on 13 May, the deputies said that "the growth in anarchy inside the region, distrust from neighbouring nationalities and delays in assistance from Turkey have already put the country on the verge of death, and this situation necessitates radical and real measures". Among these measures were the dispatch of delegations to Batum to speed up aid from Turkey, the appointment of an Azerbaijani general commissar with broad authorities and the acceleration of the delineation of the territories of the three main peoples of the Transcaucasia.

An even stronger blow to the unity of the Seim was dealt by the ethnic cleansing in villages of the Baku district in late March and early April when Armenian armed formations killed about 30,000 civilians. These events led to an uncompromising political confrontation between the Azerbaijani and Armenian political forces in the Seim on the one hand, and a split in the Muslim faction between Musavat members and Bolsheviks on the other. It was exactly the March massacre of the civilian Muslim population in Baku which served as an important impetus that prompted the Azerbaijani deputies to raise the issue of the independence of the Transcaucasia and its eastern part which was united under the name of Azerbaijan on 28 May. The Muslim deputies were unhappy with the indifferent and passive attitude of the Seim leadership and the Transcaucasia government to these events (which was quite understandable as real power in the Transcaucasia government was controlled by a triumvirate of the chairman and defence minister Gegechkori, interior minister Ramishvili and finance minister Karchikyan) and threatened that Muslim ministers would withdraw from the government. At a joint session of all the Muslim factions of the Seim which was held on 7 April, Xoyski suggested "informing all responsible parties about the firm desire of all the Muslim factions of the Seim to declare the independence of the Transcaucasia", saying that "if there other parties do not support us on this issue, we will be forced to start discussions on the possible proclamation of the independence of the Eastern Caucasus". This was the first time that Azerbaijani politicians mentioned the possible proclamation of Azerbaijan's independence.