Kars Okrug

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Kars Okrug
Карсский округ
Okrug
Coat of arms of Kars Okrug
Location of Kars Okrug
CountryRussian Empire
OblastKars
ViceroyaltyCaucasus
Established1878
Abolished1918
SeatKars
UchastoksAgbaba, Zarushad, Kars, Soganlug, and Shuragel
Area
 • Total5,786 km2 (2,234 sq mi)
Population
 (1916)
 • Total191,970
 • Density33/km2 (86/sq mi)

The Kars Okrug (Russian: Карсский округ; Armenian: Կարսի գավառ) was one of the okrugs of the Kars Oblast of the Russian Empire between 1878 and 1918. Its capital was the city of Kars, presently part of the Kars Province of the Republic of Turkey and the Amasia district of Armenia. The okrug bordered with the Ardahan Okrug in the north, the Kagizman Okrug in the south, the Olti Okrug in the west, and the Erivan Governorate to its east.

History[]

The Kars Okrug was one of the four territorial administrative subunits (counties) of the Kars Oblast created after its annexation into the Russian Empire in 1878 through the Treaty of San Stefano, following the defeat of the Ottoman Empire.[1]

During the First World War, the Kars Oblast became the site of intense battles between the Russian Caucasus Army supplemented by Armenian volunteers and the Ottoman Third Army, the latter of whom was successful in briefly occupying Ardahan on 25 December 1914 before they were dislodged in early January 1915.

On 3 March 1918, in the aftermath of the October Revolution the Russian SFSR ceded the entire Kars Oblast including the Kars Okrug through the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk to the Ottoman Empire, who had been unreconciled with its loss of the territory since 1878. Despite the ineffectual resistance of the Transcaucasian Democratic Federative Republic which had initially rejected the aforementioned treaty, the Ottoman Third Army was successful in occupying the Kars Oblast and expelling its 100,000 panic-stricken Armenian inhabitants.[2]

The Ottoman Ninth Army under the command of Yakub Shevki Pasha, the occupying force of the district by the time of the Mudros Armistice, were permitted to winter in Kars until early 1919, after which on 7 January 1919 Major General G.T. Forestier-Walker ordered their complete withdrawal to the pre-1914 Ottoman-frontier. Intended to hinder the westward expansion of the fledgling Armenian and Georgian republics into the Kars Oblast, Yukub Shevki backed the emergence of the short-lived South-West Caucasus Republic with moral support, also furnishing it with weapons, ammunition and instructors.[3]

The South-West Caucasus Republic administered the Kars Okrug and neighboring formerly occupied districts for three months before provoking British intervention by order of General G.F. Milne, leading to its capitulation by Armenian and British forces on 10 April 1919.[4][5] Consequently, the Kars Oblast largely came under the Armenian civil governorship of Stepan Korganian who wasted no time in facilitating the repatriation of the region's exiled refugees.[6]

Despite the apparent defeat of the Ottoman Empire, Turkish agitators were reported by Armenian intelligence to have been freely roaming the countryside of Kars encouraging sedition among the Muslim villages, culminating in a series of anti-Armenian uprisings on 1 July 1919.[7]

The Kars Oblast for the third time in six years saw invading Turkish troops, this time under the command of General Kâzım Karabekir in September 1920 during the Turkish-Armenian War. The disastrous war for Armenia resulted in the permanent expulsion of the region's ethnic Armenian population, many who inexorably remained befalling massacre, resulting in the region joining the Republic of Turkey through the Treaty of Alexandropol on 3 December 1920. Turkey's annexation of Kars and the adjacent Surmalu Uyezd was confirmed in the treaties of Kars and Moscow in 1921, by virtue of the new Soviet regime in Armenia.[8]

Administrative divisions[]

The uchastoks (sub-counties) of the Kars Okrug were:

  • Agbaba (Агбабинский участок)
  • Zarushad (Зарушадский участок)
  • Kars (Карсский участок)
  • Soganlug (Соганлугский участок)
  • Shuragel (Шурагельский участок)

Demographics[]

Russian Imperial Census of 1897[]

According to the Russian Imperial Census of 1897, there were 134,142 inhabitants in the okrug, also reflecting a highly diversified ethnic composition, indicative of its colonisation following the exodus of the Muslim population who lived in the area while it was a part of the Ottoman Empire. The ethnic composition of the okrug was:[9]

Ethnicities of the Kars Okrug in 1897
Armenians 46,715 34.83%
Karapapaks 22,002 16.40%
Slavs 20,376 15.19%
Greeks 14,805 11.04%
Turks 10,609 7.91%
Kurds (incl. Yezidis) 9,165 6.83%
Turkmens 2,456 1.83%
Poles 2,093 1.56%
Tatars (Shia Turks) 1,439 1.07%
Jews 755 0.56%
Lithuanians 611 0.46%
Assyrians 585 0.44%
Estonians 424 0.32%
Ossetians 401 0.30%
Avars and Dargins 371 0.28%
Persians 317 0.24%
Georgians 308 0.23%
Germans 294 0.22%
Bashkirs 206 0.15%
Others 210 0.16%
Total 134,142 100.00%

Caucasian Calendar of 1917[]

The 1917 Caucasian Calendar which produced statistics of 1916 indicates 191,970 residents in the Kars Okrug, including 97,919 men and 94,051 women, 153,102 of whom were the permanent population, and 38,868 were temporary residents. The statistics indicated an overwhelmingly ethnic Armenian population in the city of Kars, with sizeable Greek, Turkish and Russian minorities, however, in the rest of the okrug ethnic Armenians only formed the plurality of the population, being closely followed by Turkish, Gypsy, Azerbaijani, Russian, Kurdish and Yezidi minorities:[10]

Area Russians Other Europeans Georgians Armenians North Caucasians Kurds Other Asian Nationalities Gypsies Jews TOTAL
Orthodox Sectarian Muslim Yezidi Christian[a] Shia Muslim Sunni Muslim[b]
Kars 745 742 49 1 25,665 ... 38 ... 1,779 260 1,210 ... 25 30,514
Rural 3,635 10,858 733 104 55,087 869 10,873 5,123 1,350 17,965 31,355 23,504 ... 161,456
TOTAL 4,380 11,600 782 105 80,752 869 10,911 5,123 3,129 18,225 32,565 23,504 25 191,970
2.3% 6.0% 0.4% 0.1% 42.1% 0.5% 5.7% 2.7% 1.6% 9.5% 17.0% 12.2% 0.0% 100.0%

Notes[]

  1. ^ Many Assyrians were also included in the number of Christians, in addition to Caucasus Greeks.
  2. ^ Many Karapapakhs were also included in the number of Sunni Muslims, in addition to Anatolian Turks.

References[]

  1. ^ "КАРССКАЯ ОБЛАСТЬ — информация на портале Энциклопедия Всемирная история". w.histrf.ru. Retrieved 2021-12-05.
  2. ^ Hovannisian, Richard G. (1971–1996). The Republic of Armenia. Berkeley: University of California Press. p. 27. ISBN 0-520-01805-2. OCLC 238471.
  3. ^ Hovannisian, Richard G. (1971–1996). The Republic of Armenia. Berkeley: University of California Press. p. 201. ISBN 0-520-01805-2. OCLC 238471.
  4. ^ Andersen, Andrew. "Armenia in the Aftermath of Mudros: Conflicting claims and Strife with the Neighbors".{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  5. ^ Hovannisian, Richard G. (1971–1996). The Republic of Armenia. Berkeley: University of California Press. p. 220. ISBN 0-520-01805-2. OCLC 238471.
  6. ^ Hovannisian, Richard G. (1971–1996). The Republic of Armenia. Berkeley: University of California Press. p. 204. ISBN 0-520-01805-2. OCLC 238471.
  7. ^ Hovannisian, Richard G. (1971–1996). The Republic of Armenia. Berkeley: University of California Press. p. 66. ISBN 0-520-01805-2. OCLC 238471.
  8. ^ De Waal, Thomas (2015). Great catastrophe : Armenians and Turks in the shadow of genocide. Oxford. p. 86. ISBN 978-0-19-935070-4. OCLC 897378977.
  9. ^ "Демоскоп Weekly - Приложение. Справочник статистических показателей". www.demoscope.ru. Retrieved 2021-10-25.
  10. ^ Кавказский календарь .... на 1917 год (in Russian). pp. 359–360.

Further reading[]

Coordinates: 40°36′25″N 43°05′35″E / 40.6069°N 43.0931°E / 40.6069; 43.0931

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