For the past week now, I've been working on part 6 of our great debate, which originally started as a response to Bolsa's long post. Please read his post if you haven't already because he brings a fantastically stereotypical setup to this conversation that I've been wanting to argue against for a long time now.
His setup is about explaining the historical context of Patriarch Varjabedyan's letter to the British Minister of Foreign Affairs, Lord Salisbury on April 13, 1878. At this point, I would also like to point out that I, myself, am also very much in favor of explaining the historical context. So, in search of this I found a lot of comments, references, and quotes, but nothing and no one stuck out more than Hovhannes Katchaznouni. He was the first Prime minister of the Democratic Republic of Armenia, founded in July of 1918 but later swallowed by the Soviets. Katchaznouni was a founder of the Dashnagzoutiun Party and previously also a member of the Armenian National Council. He delivered his report called "Dashnagtzoutiun has nothing to do anymore" to the Dashnatziun Congress in April of 1923. I selected the following exerts but you are welcome to read the whole thing in pdf format here (starting from page 29):
[...] In the Fall of 1914 Armenian volunteer bands organized themselves from organizing and refrain themselves from fighting. This was an inevitable result of a psychology on which the Armenian people had nourished itself during an entire generation [...]
[...] If the formation of the bands was wrong, the root of that error must be sought much further and more deeply. At the present time it is important to register only the evidence that we did participate in that volunteer movement to the largest extent and we did that contrary to the decision and the will of the General Meeting of the Party.
The Winter of 1914 and the Spring of 1915 were the periods of greatest enthusiasm and hope for all the Armenians in the Caucasus, including, of course, the Dashnagtzoutiun. We had no doubt that the war would end with the complete victory of the Allies; Turkey would be defeated and dismembered, and its Armenian population would at last be liberated.
We had embraced Russia whole-heartedly without any compunction. Without any positive basis of fact we believed that the Tzarist government would grant us a more-or-less broad self-government in the Caucasus and in the Armenian vilayets liberated from Turkey as a reward for our loyalty, our efforts and assistants.
We had created a dense atmosphere of illusion in our minds. We had implanted our own desires into the minds of others; we had lost our sense of reality and were carried away with our dreams. [...]
We overestimated the ability of the Armenian people, its political and military power, and overestimated the extent and importance of the services our people rendered to the Russians. And by overestimating our very modest worth and merit we were naturally exaggerating our hopes and expectations.
[...]
And we were unable to save those precious lives. Angered and terrified, we sought the culprits and quickly found them; the deceitful politics of the Russian government. With the politically immature mind peculiar to inconsequential men, we fell from one extreme to another. Just as unfounded was our faith in the Russian government yesterday, our condemnation of them today was equally blind and groundless. [...]
[After giving great detail of how Russia double-crossed the Armenian Revolutionaries, he lists a few possibilities as to how Soviet-Armenians could be freed.]
Are not we capable of doing in the Soviet Armenia what we did in the Turkish Armenia, for tens of years? We certainly are.
We might establish a base in the Iranian Karadag and send people and arms to the other side of Aras (Araxe), (just as we did in Salmas [Azeri city but province of Iran] once). We might establish the necessary secret relations and establish armed 'humb's and Sunik and Derelegez mountains just as we did in the Sasun mountains and the Catak stream. We might provoke the peasants in some regions difficult to access, to rise and then we might expel the communists there or destroy them. Later we might create great commotion even in Yerevan and occupy a state building at least for a few hours just as we occupied the Ottoman Bank or we might explode any building. We could plan assassinations and execute them just as we killed the officials of the Tsar and the Sultan and kill a few Bolsheviks; in the same way, just as we did to Sultan Abdulhamid, we could plant a bomb under Myasnikov's or Lukashin's feet.
We could do all these, I think we could. ... When we created a great hubbub in Turkey, we thought we would attract the attention of the great powers to the Armenian cause and would force them to mediate for us, but now we know what such mediation is worth and do not need to repeat such endeavors. If Europe has not been able to help us in Turkey, Russia will never be able to do it, nor will they wish to do it. As a method of controlling separate individuals, terror might have been of some use on the Kurdish troublemakers or the officials of the Tsar. However, we have to admit that the Bolsheviks are or a different fiber. If there is to be terror on both sides, the Bolsheviks will not be short of it, on the contrary, they will leave us behind in that respect.
[...] Are we capable of turning the tendencies among the people into a civil war? This is very disputable, but possible. [...]
But why? When the Bolsheviks are strongly in power in Russia and when in our back, there is Turkey in alliance with the Bolsheviks, is it possible to expel the Bolsheviks from Armenia?
I think not even one such naive person who might believe this can be found among our ranks. If there is civil war, it is going to result in our defeat. [...] As the Red Banner swings in Russia, it will inevitably swing in Yerevan too. [...]
--- Source: "Dashnagtzoutiun has nothing to do anymore"; The Manifesto of Hovhannes Katchaznouni (Prime minister from 1918 to 1919)
And so it did inevitably. So, here we have some great historical context from someone who has served in the highest Armenian ranks for years, has negotiated and helped push the Armenian cause as far as it got in his day.
Of course, I purposely chose him because it's an original source from the Armenian side admitting to certain facts of our conflict that many many Armenians either deny or dismiss completely. In fact, since Bolsa seems so eager reviewing historical context of the incidents, I would not mind hearing what the context of Katchaznouni's writing "really" is for today's Armenian nationalists.
No matter how much I dig and search, I seem to come up with similar events that I cannot, and no one else should, ignore. Whether being led by religious figures, rebels, or politicians, the Armenian consensus was not to stay as the loyal Millet but rather to become their own independent state at any cost. In the process of this they had to play the fiddle to all sides at pretty much the same time, while trying to mediate their gain, for which the basis really was religion. They played the Europeans and Brits against the Ottomans by victimizing themselves at first and hoping to be rescued into a statehood while still having some loyal elements in position. Then they also pledged unconditional allegiance to the Russians hoping not to be ignored when the time came for sharing the booty. On top of all of it, they then turn around and try to remind us how loyal they were and that Ottoman Turks had no reason for calling them backstabbers. What other name should they have been called?
I truly believe that all of this would come to light if the damn archives could be analyzed, and not just the Turkish ones, but also the Armenian ones. Yes, especially the Dashnak and Hunchak archives in Boston, which are not open to anyone, yet.
Well, I think it's safe to say that despite their historical loyalty, their opposing religious convictions and premature nationalistic aspirations led them into a bigger disaster than anybody could have imagined or planned. Katchaznouni pointed this out very well. So, if historical context is of relevance we should not ignore the true motives of the Armenian minority. On that same token, this also should never justify mass killings, but I just wanted to make sure that certain details are not overlooked. The justification of retaliation is a nationalists credo in any country, which reminds me.
Bolsa, in a previous comment, you implied in your last sentence that retaliation is a justification for genocide. Is this true?
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