Armenian–Tatar massacres of 1905–1907

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Armenian–Tatar massacres
Part of Revolution of 1905
Neft.jpg
A Cossack military patrol near the Baku oilfields, ca. 1905.
Date1905–1907
Location
Caucasus, Russian Empire
Result Violence quelled by intervention of Cossack regiments
Belligerents

Armenian groups

  • Dashnak[citation needed]
 Caucasian Tatar groups[1]  Russian Empire
Casualties and losses

128 Armenian and 158 Tatar villages destroyed

3,000-10,000 Armenians and Caucasian Tatars killed

The Armenian–Tatar massacres (also known as the Armenian-Tartar war, the Armeno-Tartar war) refers to the bloody inter-ethnic confrontation between Armenians and Azerbaijanis (then known as Caucasian Tatars)[2][3] throughout the Russian Caucasus in 1905–1907.[4][5][6]. The massacres started during the Russian Revolution of 1905. The most violent clashes occurred in 1905 in February in Baku, in May in Nakhchivan, in August in Shusha and in November in Elizabethpol, heavily damaging the cities and the Baku oilfields. Some violence, although of lesser scale, broke out also in Tiflis.

The clashes were not confined to the towns; according to Polish historian Tadeusz Swietochowski 128 Armenian and 158 Caucasian Tatar villages were destroyed or pillaged.[7] While the estimates of casualties vary widely, ranging from 3,000 to 10,000, with Caucasian Tatars suffered more losses[8] as a result of Dashnaks on the Armenian side being more effective and poor organization of Tatars.[9]

In Baku[]

A Tatar victim of the massacres in Baku

Svante Cornell, a Swedish scholar holding senior positions at Stockholm-based Institute for Security and Development Policy, Central Asia-Caucasus Institute & Silk Road Studies Program (CACI) and American Foreign Policy Council, in his "Small nations and great powers: a study of ethnopolitical conflict in the Caucasus" provides various sources that give conflicting accounts on the Baku events.[10]

Sources such as British historian Christopher J. Walker (the author of "Armenia: The Survival of a Nation"[11], Italian historian Luigi Villari[12] and Lebaneese-Armenian historian Hratch Dasnabedian[13], argue that the Azeris provoked the fighting, leading to a strong Armenian response. Villari claimed that Tatars had started the conflict by killing numerous unarmed Armenians in February 1905 which allowed the Armenian community to give a strong response. Dasnabedian claimed that the Azeris, ‘free to massacre with impunity’, ‘unleashed a war against the Armenians, with a clear intention to massacre, pillage, and destroy, killing unarmed Armenians in February 1905 in Baku, and later moving to other cities including Karabakh, which resulted in response by the Dashnaks who managed to ‘stop the original momentum of the armed and destructive Azeri mobs’ and even ‘counterattack and sometimes severely punish’ the Azeris.

On the other hand, Erich Feigl, an Austrian producer of films of Austrian-German-Turkish co-production and a denier of Armenian genocide [14] claimed that the Dashnaks committed terrorist acts (similar to those orchestrated in the Ottoman empire) against the Azeri majority in Shusha, Baku and Ganja, leading to the eruption of violence and elimination of the most of the Azerbaijani leading stratum in Baku.[15] According to Charles van der Leeuw, a Baku-based Dutch correspondent known for stressing the need to obtain insight in “the other side of the story”, claimed that the riots started with the killing of an Azeri schoolboy and a shopkeeper in Baku, followed by Azeri mob's march on the Armenian quarters of Baku; and 126 Azeris and 218 Armenians killed within four days. According to the Baku Statistical Bureau, 205 Armenians and 111 Tatars were killed in the clashes, of which 9 were women, 20 were children, and 13 were elderly, along with 249 wounded.[16]

In Nakhichevan and Shushi[]

The corpses of Armenians after the May massacre in Nakhchivan

After the Baku clashes, Muslim communities in the Nakhchivan district began smuggling consignments of weapons from Persia. By April, murders of Armenians in the district began to assume alarming proportions and the Armenian community applied to the Russian authorities for protection. However, Luigi Villari describes the district's governor as "bitterly anti-Armenian" and the vice-governor in Yerevan as an "Armenophobe".[17]

On 25 May, acting on a previously arranged plan, bands of armed Tatars attacked the market area in the town of Nakhchivan, looting and burning Armenian businesses and killing any Armenians they could find. Approximately 50 Armenians were murdered and some of the Armenian shopkeepers were burnt alive in their shops. On the same day, Tatar villagers from the countryside began attacking their Armenian neighbours. Villari cites official reports mentioning that "out of a total of 52 villages with Armenian or mixed Armenian-Tartar populations, 47 were attacked, and of that 47, 19 were completely destroyed and abandoned by their inhabitants. The total number of dead, including those in Nakchivan town, was 239. Later, in a revenge attack, Armenians attacked a Tartar village, killing 36 people".[18]

The situation in Shusha was different than in Nakhchivan. According to the journalist Thomas de Waal, out of the 300 killed and wounded, about two-thirds were Tatars as the Armenians were better shooters and enjoyed the advantage of position.[19]

In Ganja[]

Prior to the Armenian-Tatar massacres, Ganja, known to Armenians as Gandzak (Գանձակ, [20][21][22] ) had a sizable Armenian population.[23][24]

Responsibility[]

According to the historian Firuz Kazemzadeh, "it is impossible to pin the blame for the massacres on either side. It seems that in some cases (Baku, Elizabethpol) the Tatars fired the first shots, in other cases (Shusha, Tiflis) the Armenians."[25]

According to French writer Claude Anet who in April 1905 crossed the Caucasus region with automobile in the decline of the Russian Empire, "the many minorities - and, in particular , Azeris (Tatars) and Armenians - resumed ancestral clashes". Anet wrote that the [Russian] government accused the Armenians of being the instigators but he believed the government was wrong. He explained that the Armenians, who formed the trading and active class, were not liked by the government, Muslim population and Georgians for being non-Orthodox (they formed a separate Church whose Catholicos resided in Etchmiadzin, near Yerevan), anti-government (the Armenians wanted a fair and strong political power that would protect them and therefore wanted the downfall of the autocratic and bureaucratic regime), "getting rich quickly at the expense of the populations in the midst of which they live and excelling in the money business like the Jews", "using bombs for defence instead of hand-to-hand combat". He wrote that "for a long time Russian policy was made in the Caucasus against the Armenians" and that "Russian policy aroused the Tatars against the Armenians, who themselves were not suspected of intellectualism". [26]

See also[]

References[]

  1. ^ BUTCHERY IN THE CAUCASUS.; A State of Civil War -- 30,000 Combatants of Various Races The New York Times
  2. ^ Suha Bolukbasi. Nation-building in Azerbaijan. Willem van Schendel (ed.), Erik Jan Zürcher (ed.). Identity politics in Central Asia and the Muslim world. I.B.Tauris, 2001. "Until the 1905—6 Armeno-Tatar (the Azeris were called Tatars by Russia) war, localism was the main tenet of cultural identity among Azeri intellectuals."
  3. ^ Joseph Russell Rudolph. Hot spot: North America and Europe. ABC-CLIO, 2008. "To these larger moments can be added dozens of lesser ones, such as the 1905-06 Armenian-Tartar wars that gave Azeris and Armenians an opportunity to kill one another in the areas of Armenia and Azerbaijan that were then controlled by Russia..."
  4. ^ Britannica Online Encyclopedia. Azerbaijan. History.
  5. ^ Brockhaus and Efron Encyclopedic Dictionary. Turks
  6. ^ Willem van Schendel, Erik Jan Zürcher. Identity Politics in Central Asia and the Muslim World: Nationalism, Ethnicity and Labour in the Twentieth Century. I.B.Tauris, 2001. ISBN 1-86064-261-6, ISBN 978-1-86064-261-6, p. 43
  7. ^ Cornell, Svante. Small Nations and Great Powers: A Study of Ethnopolitical Conflict in the Caucasus, p. 69.
  8. ^ Tadeusz Swietochowski. Russia and Azerbaijan: A Borderland in Transition. Columbia University Press, 1995. ISBN 0-231-07068-3, ISBN 978-0-231-07068-3
  9. ^ Cornell, Svante. Small Nations and Great Powers: A Study of Ethnopolitical Conflict in the Caucasus, p. 56.
  10. ^ Svante E. Cornell. Small nations and great powers. page 55
  11. ^ Walker, Christopher, Armenia and Karabagh: The Struggle for Unity, London, Minority Rights Group, 1991.
  12. ^ Villari, Luigi. Fire and Sword in the Caucasus. London: T. F. Unwin, 1906 ISBN 0-7007-1624-6 p. 270.
  13. ^ Hratch Dasnabedian, History of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation Dashnaktsutiun 1890/1924, Milano: Oemme, 1990, p81.
  14. ^ Feigl, Erich. A Myth of Terror : Armenian Extremism, Its Causes and Its Historical Context, page 7.
  15. ^ Erich Feigl, Un Mythe de la Terreur: Le Terrorisme Arménien, ses Origines et ses Causes, Salzburg: Druckhaus Nonntal, 1991, p214–15
  16. ^ Saint-Peterburg Vedomosti, 25 May 1905
  17. ^ Villari, Luigi. Fire and Sword in the Caucasus. London: T. F. Unwin, 1906 ISBN 0-7007-1624-6 p. 270.
  18. ^ Villari, Luigi. Fire and Sword in the Caucasus. London: T. F. Unwin, 1906 ISBN 0-7007-1624-6 p. 270-274.
  19. ^ de Waal, Thomas (2003). Black Garden: Armenia and Azerbaijan Through Peace and War. New York: New York University Press. p. 190. ISBN 978-0-8147-1945-9.
  20. ^ "the union of Georgian and Armenian armies near Gandzak", Армянская Советская Социалистическая Республика, Great Soviet Encyclopedia
  21. ^ "Mkhitar Gosh was born in Gandzak", Мхитар Гош, Great Soviet Encyclopedia
  22. ^ "Gandzak (Ganja)" [jss.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/reprint/6/2/145.pdf The death of the last 'Abbasid Caliph': a contemporary Muslim account, by Boyle J. // Semitic Studies.1961; 6: 145-161
  23. ^ Soviet Census in 1926-1979, Newspaper Pravda Press, Moscow, 1983
  24. ^ According to the 1892 official data, "10524 of 25758 inhabitants of the city were Armenians, there were 6 Armenian Apostolic (Gregorian) churches", Elizavetpol article, Brockauz and Efron Encyclopedia (in Russian)
  25. ^ Firuz Kazemzadeh. Struggle For Transcaucasia (1917—1921), New York Philosophical Library, 1951
  26. ^ Anet, Claude (1 February 1990). ""Who are we killing ? The Armenians" - A French witness in Baku 1905". Le Monde diplomatiqueLe Monde diplomatique. Paris: Le Monde. p. 11. Retrieved 12 September 2021.

Bibliography[]

  • Luigi Villari (1906), Fire and Sword in the Caucasus [1], London, T. F. Unwin, ISBN 0-7007-1624-6
  • Thomas De Waal (2004), Black Garden: Armenia and Azerbaijan Through Peace and War, NYU Press, ISBN 978-0-8147-1945-9
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