During that period of time steps were undertaken for the Armenian refugees to return back to Western Armenia. By the end of the number of refugees was about thousand.
In its turn the Soviet Government announced a Decree on Turkish Armenia, recognizing the right of Armenians from Western Armenia to the Self Determination, including even the creation of an independent state. However, Turkish troops restarted military actions, disrupting the Reconciliation Regime. Despite heroic resistance, the Armenian irregular troops and volunteer detachments began retreating to the borders of Eastern Armenia.
As a result of that retrograde not only Western Armenia, but the regions of Kars, Ardahan and Batumi became parts of Ottoman Empire as well. As a consequence of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk the peace negotiations that had been conducting with Ottoman Empire in Trapizon since March by the authorities of the Transcaucasian Democratic Federative Republic former Commissariat and then Sejm were deadlocked and suspended.
On their way Turks were demolishing Armenian towns and villages, slaughtering population. The situation was fatal: Eastern Armenia was under the threat of genocide then.
Day by day growing danger united Armenians and Armenian troops along with militias and led by General Moses Silikyan, Colonels Daniel Bek-Pirumov, Drastamat Kanayan and others made a decisive counterattack to the Turkish conquerors near Sardarapat that were moving forward Yerevan, then after - near Gharakilisa and Bash-Aparan.
During those days of Heroic Battles of May , the discrepancies within the Transcaucasian Democratic Federative Republic composed of three main nationalities of the South Caucasus, were deepening.
On March 26, the Transcaucasian Sejm Parliament was dissolved leading to the dissolution of Transcaucasian Republic. In those conditions, on May 28, the Armenian National Council declared itself as the only and supreme authority of Armenian provinces.
The Republic of Armenia was established. The power of the First Republic was applied to the following areas: major part of former Kars Region, the Province of Erevan, western parts of Province of Elizavetpol and southern parts of the Province of Tbilisi. Kharabakh was neither included in the territory of the Republic nor subjected to Musavat Azerbaijan, it was governed by the Congresses of the National Council of local Armenians.
In April, during a regular Congress the people of Nagorno-Karabakh made a decision on unification with the Republic of Armenia. On August 10, the victorious states of the World War I, including Armenia, signed a peace agreement with defeated Turkey in the city of Sevres France.
It was Avetis Aharonyan, the head of the Armenian delegation to the Paris Peace Conference, who signed the agreement on behalf of the Republic of Armenia. By this treaty Sultan Turkish Government recognized Armenia as a free and independent state. Armenia and Turkey agreed to provide America with an opportunity to decide the demarcation line between the two states in Erzrum, Van and Bitlis provinces as well as to accept the offers concerning the access of Armenia to the Black Sea and the disarmament of all Ottoman territories, adjacent to above-mentioned boundary.
The nationalist government of Turkey, headed by Mustafa Kemal, who assumed the authority, did not accept the Treaty of Sevres. In the Soviet Government, seeking to direct the Kemalist movement in Turkey against the Entente, provided Turkey with palpable military and financial aid which was used against Greece in the West and against Armenia in the East. At the end of September, Turkish army started attacking. Conquering more and more lands, the Government of Ankara was aimed at depriving Armenians of an opportunity to recreate its own state.
Turkish troops occupied the Region of Kars, Surmalu and Alexandrapol. The Soviet government pursued a deliberate policy of Sovietization of the Transcaucasian republics, with an aim to restore the borders of the Russian Empire. Further in August an agreement was signed between the representatives of Armenia and Russia. Via this agreement Soviet Russia forced Armenia to recognize those territories as disputed, provided that their further fate would be determined as a result of an expression of population will, i.
According to November 20 decision of the Revolutionary Committee of Azerbaijan headed by Narimanov, Nagorno-Karabakh, Nakhichevan and Zangezur were no longer considered to be disputed territories but integral parts of the Soviet Armenia. On December 2 Armenian government agreed upon the Sovietization of Armenia and relinquished its power in favor of the Bolshevik Revolutionary Committee.
On the same day in Alexandrapol, quite inexplicably, the representatives of the relinquished Armenian government signed a peace agreement with Turkey and considered the war ended, thus conceding almost half of their territory.
Later the Soviet authorities never recognized the conditions of Alexandrapol treaty. According to its first article, the Soviet Russian government agreed not to recognize any international treaty related to Turkey, which was not ratified by the Great National Assembly. This provision was directed primarily against the Peace Treaty of Sevres, which Turkey at any cost tried to declare null and void. Finally, the new border was recognized according to the Treaty of Kars October 3, that was signed between Turkey and the Transcaucasian states and is in force up to date.
As for the international conference of Lausanne held in , it ended up with the signing of several documents, the most important of which is probably the Lausanne Peace Treaty, according to which the current Turkish borders were established, replacing the Treaty of Sevres. According to the same Moscow Treaty, Nakhichevan became an autonomous territory under the patronage of Azerbaijan, and under the decision of the Caucasian Bureau of the RCWP from July 5, Nagorno-Karabakh was declared an autonomous region within the territory of Azerbaijan.
Soviet Armenia was not a sovereign state, but it played a very important role in the preservation of the Armenian statehood and development of the national identity.
Despite the wide-spread repressions, particularly those of and , Armenia made great progress in its economic, industrial, scientific and cultural life. Soviet Armenia became a leading industrial-agrarian country; it was a land of universal literacy, highly developed education and science, culture, literature and art. The system of higher education was successfully developing in Yerevan State University, founded as early as in , and in other specialized universities.
In the Academy of Sciences was established. The Armenian people took an active participation in the Second World War. About , Armenian soldiers and officers fought in the ranks of Soviet Army. The Armenian National 89th Division took part in the battle for Berlin. During the s and 80's the national issues such as the Armenian Genocide, Diaspora, unification of Nagorno Karabakh with Armenia, Nakhichevan, etc. The first multi-thousand demonstrations in the Soviet reality were taking place in Yerevan.
In March of , changes occurred within the Soviet political leadership. Following years of stagnation, younger and more progressive figures came to power. As a result of the depression experienced by the Soviet society, the ideological bankruptcy of the Communist Party, the variety of unsolved issues and especially national problems forced different national groups within the Soviet Union to react.
Subsequently, the implementation of the Soviet Perestroika policy resulted in the establishment of the various national liberation movements of the time. Armenians of Artsakh Nagorno-Karabakh were the first to react; they never accepted the annexation of their historical territories by Azerbaijan, and resented the anti-Armenian policy pursued by Azerbaijan during the Soviet era.
Consequently, a new wave of mass demonstrations broke out in both Armenia and the Diaspora, as a sign of solidarity with the Armenians of Artsakh. Thousand of people participated in the various rallies organized in Yerevan, other parts of Armenia, as well as in Nagorno Karabkh. However, from the outset, the political leadership of the USSR adopted a negative stance toward the Karabakh Movement.
They consider it to be provocative, extremist, a demand of a group of nationalists. Nonetheless, at the same time, prominent political activists and intellectuals of the various Soviet republics provided moral support to Armenia and Artsakh. As a result of Azeri brutality a few dozens of Armenians perished and over were severely injured. Subsequently, these developments forced the 18 thousand Armenian population of Sumgait to migrate from the city.
According to various credible sources, it was the local Azeri authorities, who perpetrated the massacres of Sumgait. In the meantime, the central Soviet authority delayed the intervention and deployed troops in the city only after three days. Moreover, when the intervention process began, the soviet troops faced many difficulties in restraining the Azeri killers and in rescuing the Armenian population out from the city.
Even after the Sumgait massacres, the Central authority of the USSR continued to label the Nagorno-Karabakh problem as a social-economic issue rather than a political one.
Anyway, the Movement was expanding. Along with the rallies and demonstrations, mass strikes commenced in both Armenia and Nagorno Karabakh. The Armenians demanded from the USSR government to justly solve the Karabakh issue, while providing a firm and conclusive political and legal response to the Sumgait atrocities.
From the outset of the Karabakh Movement, massacres and pillages were perpetrated in Azerbaijani regions resided by Armenians: Azerbaijani authorities were consistently committing ethnic cleansings. Thus, from the outset of the Karabakh Movement, the Azerbaijani authorities approved the massacre, annihilation and ethnic cleansing of the Armenians who were root residents of the various regions of Azerbaijan.
For example, by subjecting Armenians to pillage and brutality, the Azeris forcibly drove them out of Kirovabad, Shamkhor, Khanlar cities, Dashkesan, Mingechaur and other regions. As a result the persecution and violence against Armenians became more severe in the Azerbaijani SSR. An economic blockade was imposed against both the Republic of Armenia and NKAO; the supply of natural gas, economic, industrial and other necessary goods were banned from being sent to Armenia.
On December 7th, , the severe situation in Armenia worsened as a result of the catastrophic earthquake, which struck the Northern and North-Eastern regions of the country. In the span of a few minutes entire villages and parts of cities were wiped out. More than 25 thousand of people perished and nearly thousand remained without shelter.
At this point the period of third republic of the Armenian history started. Moreover, the Declaration affirmed the fact that the laws of the republic took precedent over the laws of the USSR. Independent Armenian voices readily acknowledge the changes that have taken place in Turkey, where liberal intellectuals, civil society and Kurdish groups accept that genocide occurred. Memorial ceremonies will be held in Istanbul and elsewhere, and Turkish delegations will be in Yerevan on 24 April.
The cultivation of memory is presented as a national duty. New interactive exhibits are being installed so that an Armenian child of today can connect to one of his or her own age in those times of savagery and terror.
Individual memories do not need to be curated by the state. It is common to hear stories of a grandmother fleeing to the screams of men burning alive; of orphans blinded and girls abducted. But it is not only the atrocities that are remembered. Handfuls of earth from Sasun are thrown into graves and at one recent baptism the proud parents gave the priest consecrated oil brought from there. Arayan Hendrik, a leathery-faced year-old sitting back after a festive lunch of kebab, lavash bread and vodka toasts, sang movingly of the beauty of Sasun in the dialect spoken there in They are a connection between us and the lands we left.
Many have travelled to Turkey to seek their roots but say they find it an unsettling, emotionally wrenching experience. Others refuse to visit their homeland as tourists.
If the border were open, it would be just a minute drive from Yerevan to Ararat. As it is, the journey there, via Georgia, takes 14 hours. Armenian government policy does not include demands for territory or reparations, as organisations in the more militantly nationalist diaspora would like. Yerevan seeks normalisation of relations with Ankara, starting with the crucial reopening of the border, to promote reconciliation that it hopes will eventually bring genocide recognition — even if that takes decades.
The drawings on these stones and walls tell of everyday life and traditions of the ancient citizens of the mountainous highlands. Known as the "Armenian Stonehenge," Zorats Karer, or Karahunj is a famous megalithic structure consists of hundreds of vertically arranged two-meter stones or menhirs that are stretched from the south to the north.
With more than 10, caves in the country, there's a cave for every history enthusiast or adventure seeker in Armenia. Learn about ancient civilizations and experience the thrill of exploring natural formations. The symbol of pre-Christian Armenia — Garni is a pagan temple that sits on a cliff overlooking a ravine surroun The church was commissioned by the same Bishop Hovhannes. It was designed by the architect, sculptor and min Armenia: The Cradle of Civilization.
The Ancient Armenia Armenia is a country with ancient history and rich culture. Serzh Sargsyan duly became prime minister on the expiry of his second term as president in April , but sparked the largest street protests Armenia has seen for years. He resigned after several days of unrest. The political changes in had a profound effect on the media, with the main TV stations becoming largely free of state control. But the media remain prone to political polarisation and a lack of financial independence.
TV is the leading medium, although less so among younger audiences. The internet is a forum for political debate. Facebook is the top social platform. Some key events in Armenia's history:. Armenia considers the killings genocide, a charge Turkey does not accept.
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