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Persian Shah, were masters of the south-east, while a few Armenian meliks, remnant of the medieval aristocracy of Ani, held sway round Lake Gokcha. The half-century following Peter's campaign saw an attempt to revivify the Georgian kingdom. But unfortunately Georgians do not possess the administrative instinct in the same degree as the patriotic; and Petersburg betrayed them to Turk and Persian. Do nothing to strengthen Georgia,' was Catherine the Second's order. Finally, in 1795, a PersoAfghan horde razed Tiflis; and three years later a ruined Georgia sought union with Russia-union which was soon converted into annexation (1802). During the following half-century the whole of the Caucasus passed to Russia. Persian Shirvan (Azerbaijan) as far as the Aras, with Erivan, Elizabetpol, and Baku, was acquired in 1827; the Turks ceded Akhaltsikh and Poti in 1828, Batum, Ardahan, and Kars in 1878; during the 'sixties the mountain-tribes of Daghestan were crushed.

Of all the Trans-Caucasian peoples the Armenians throve most under Russian rule. They soon established themselves as the commercial and professional element in the country; they made Tiflis almost an Armenian town; they controlled all the shops and businesses in those places, which from Tatar aouls were fast becoming flourishing commercial centres; they were the pioneers in the Baku oil-fields. This increased prosperity of the Armenians, in conjunction with their occasionally devious business methods, offended the Georgian and Tatar petty aristocracy, many of whom, in the process of aping the extravagances of the Russian military, had become heavily in debt to Armenian money-lenders; and the large influx of Armenian peasants and labourers from Turkey caused grave discontent among the Georgian and Tatar working classes. In addition to this race-antagonism, the political and social movement against Tsarism had infected the Caucasus. But, while the Armenian bourgeoisie, only anxious for favourable conditions for commerce, were not so extreme in their opinions as the more emotional and strongly nationalist Georgians, the Armenian workers, particularly at Baku, were deeply impregnated with advanced Socialist doctrines. To a certain degree, too, the Armenian revolutionary in Turkey affected

movement

the

Armenians of Trans-Caucasia and intensified their differences with the Russian Government.

After the Japanese War the revolutionary outbreaks, which occurred all over Russia, quickly spread to TransCaucasia. The Governor-General, Golitzin, regarded the Armenians as the principal element of disorder; and his energetic agent, the Georgian Nakashidze, GovernorGeneral of Baku, gave almost open encouragement to the Tatars in the pogroms' which took place during 1905 at Baku, Elizabetpol, Nakhitchevan, and elsewhere. The new Viceroy, Vorontzov-Dashkov, was inclined to reverse the policy of his predecessor, but his concessions came too late. The outbreak of 1905 had greatly accentuated all the social and racial hatreds of the Caucasus, and all parties prepared for a coming trial of strength. On the one hand, the activities of the anti-Turkish revolutionary organisation of the Armenians were extended to the Caucasus, and the Armenian Dashnaksution Club adopted a policy of extreme nationalism and sporadic terrorism. On the other hand, the Tatars of Baku were inclined to separate themselves from those of Astrakhan, Kazan, and the Crimea, who aspired vaguely to autonomy within the Russian Empire; and the Mussavet' Club, the political organisation of Mussulman landowners and industrial magnates, began to whisper of Tatar independence. They were, no doubt, influenced by the Young Turks and by the Persian Constitutionalists, many of whom were Tatars from Persian Azerbaijan; and the movement was but a further manifestation of the hostility towards Europeans and European rule, which was rising throughout the Middle East, and which had gained impetus from the Italian checks, first in Abyssinia and later in Tripoli, from the Greek defeat in Thessaly, and, more definitely, from the Russian failure in Manchuria.

The dissolution of Russian authority in the Caucasus towards the end of 1917 at last gave liberty, that is to say, freedom from all moral restraint or political control, to this conglomeration of races and tribes, only raised from semi-barbarism by a hundred years of alien administration, and ill-fitted both by their traditions and education to undertake suddenly the responsibilities of self-government. A few native politicians and officials,

trained in the larger school of Russian political life, proclaiming the popular watchwords of Nationalism and Social Democracy, established themselves in precarious power. The threat of a Turko-German invasion, and a common aversion from whatever Russian party happened to be in the ascendant north of the Caucasus, united, for a few short weeks, the rival races in the Federated Social Democratic Republic of Trans-Caucasia. But the Republic, whose one raison d'être was that it constituted a geographical, strategic, and economic unit, had not in it any of the human elements of durability. The hillmen of Ossetia and Adjaria were the mortal enemies of the Georgian farmers, as were the Tatar herdsmen of the Armenian peasants. The land-hunger which had been fostered by the late Imperial Government brought neighbouring villages of Armenians, Tatars, and Georgians to blows. The Russian and Armenian merchants and business-men of Tiflis, as an alien bourgeoisie, endured the brunt of all the blind prejudice of the Georgian proletariat; while in Baku the large working-class element of Russians, Tatars, and Armenians, centred round the oilwells, inaugurated a reign of anarchy far more sanguinary than that which had swept the city in 1905. And, in the country districts, roaming bands of peasants and soldiers not only obstructed communication between the towns, but burned the mansions and robbed and murdered the families of the local Georgian Princes and Tatar Khans.

Eventually, amid mutual accusations of treachery, the component parts of the Federated Social Democratic Republic of Trans-Caucasia dissolved into the Democratic Republics of Georgia, Ararat (Erivan), and Azerbaijan. Meanwhile, 3000 German troops landed at Batum, and General von Lossow marched to Tiflis, while Nuri Pasha, following on the withdrawal of General Dunsterville, occupied Baku. Here the half-Jewish Pasha was greeted with enthusiasm by the Tatar intellectuals, who had imbibed the latest Pan-Turanian and Pan-Islamic doctrines of the Young Turks. Considerable friction was engendered between the Turkish staff at Baku and the Tatars on the one hand, and von Lossow, supporting his puppet republics of Georgia and Ararat, on the other. Thus matters stood, until in November 1918, in accordance with the armistice terms, both Germans and Turks withdrew.

During the following twelve months two factors influenced political developments in Trans-Caucasia-a wholesome respect for the representatives of Great Britain at Tiflis, Baku, and Batum, whose only real strength lay in their prestige, and a dread of aggression on the part of the White' Russian armies in the Kuban. Between the three Republics there were reciprocal outbursts of vindictive nationalism, such as the Armeno-Georgian fighting round Akhaltsikh, the massacres of Armenians by Tatars and of Tatars by Armenians in Kara Bagh and at Shusha, the persecution of Russians and Armenians in Tiflis, and the punitive tariffs imposed by one Republic upon another. Only the necessity of seeking help in food and manufactured goods from Great Britain and America imposed some degree of moderation on all parties.

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Various causes gradually now tended to draw together Georgia and Azerbaijan, to the exclusion of Armenia. The northern frontiers of Georgia and Azerbaijan were exposed to attack from the White' armies, to a degree which caused them to view the Russian situation with an anxiety not shared in the same degree by Armenia. And, in this respect, Denikin's occupation of TemirKhan-Shura, the capital of the ephemeral NorthCaucasian Republic, into which the ambitious Mussulman Colonel Chermoiev had endeavoured to weld all the mountain-tribes of Daghestan, did not alleviate their fears. Further, both Georgian and Tatar patriots were offended by the fact that Armenia, during the last months of 1918, was (mistakenly) thought to be the spoilt child' of the United States. Again, both Georgia and Azerbaijan had differences with Armenia, the one in respect of Akhalkalaki, the other of Kara Bagh. Lastly, while the Georgians objected to their exclusion by the British from Batum, the Tatars, though reluctant to forgo British protection, resented surveillance in such matters as the Kara Bagh disputes.

The hostility of the Georgians was to a great extent negative, but that of the Tatars was positive and, in a degree, dangerous. The position of Georgia was precarious, menaced as it was from the north by Russian invasion, and imperilled internally by discontented

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