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Azeri intelligentsia also became involved. A clandestine group in Ganja named Difai (Defense) was created, and they sponsored Muslim fighting squads, including a 400-man unit in Shusha. Difai was not aimed at Armenians, however, but at Russia whom they blamed for the intercommunal fighting.16

Short-Lived Independence of Armenia and Azerbaijan Followed by Soviet Domination

During and after World War I, Germans, British, White Russians, Mensheviks, and Bolsheviks all took their turn as the dominant power in the region. Between 31 March and 2 April 1918, Dashnaks in Baku, many of them refugees from Anatolia, took advantage of the political turmoil and staged an unprovoked massacre of the city’s Muslims—resulting in at least 3000 fatalities.17 The New York Times reported the number of dead as high as 12,000.18 The Bolsheviks took advantage of the unrest to seize power and create the Baku commune.

The Democratic Republic of Armenia (DRA) and the Democratic Republic of Azerbaijan were seven days old when they signed their first treaty, the Treaty of Batumi (4 June 1918). The formal name of the treaty, which was never ratified, was “The Treaty of Peace and Friendship between the Republic of Armenia and the Ottoman Empire.”19 Modern Armenian historians claim this treaty was imposed upon the new Armenian Republic by the Ottoman Empire. Given the relative youth of the state and the fact the Ottoman Third Army was only seven kilometers from Yerevan, this is probably true. Regardless, the treaty was signed by the Chairman of the Armenian National Council and the DRA’s Minister of Foreign Affairs. The treaty recognized the independence of the DRA.

16Swietochowski, ibid., 39–41.

17Swietochowski, ibid., 66–67.

18“Land of Eternal Fires,” New York Times, 19 October 1919.

19Sahakyan, Vahe. Between Host Countries and Homeland: Institutions, Politics and Identities in the post-Genocide Armenian Diaspora. Dissertation (University of Michigan, 2015), 56.

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Article two outlined the DRA’s territory as the 12,000 square kilometers of Erivan and Echmiadzin districts. Karabakh and its surrounding territory were not included in the new Republic.

The Baku Commune was overthrown by non-Communist parties, and the new government invited the British army to protect them from assault by the Ottomans. The British remained about 40 days, after which the Ottomans seized the city. On 15 September 1918 following the retreat of the British, Baku was occupied by the Turkish-led Caucasus Islamic army. In the next three days, the troops engaged in massive looting and massacred many of the local mostly non-Muslim population. Nobody knows exactly how many people died in Baku (according to various sources some 9000 Armenians died).20

The British returned two months later, in November 1918. The commander of the British North Persian Force, General W. M. Thomson, in mid-January 1919 put Nagorno-Karabakh under Azerbaijani administration. They confirmed a Muslim (i.e., Azerbaijani) governor in Shusha, Khosrow Sultanov. For his part, Sultanov succeeded in getting the Armenian Assembly in Nagorno-Karabakh to accept Azerbaijani rule.21 With the exception of Dashnaks (Armenian Revolutionaries) who engaged in guerilla warfare in the mountains, the inhabitants acceded to the arrangement in February 1920.22 The Nagorno-Karabakh Peoples Congress signed an agreement making Karabakh an autonomous region within Azerbaijan. The Paris Peace Conference then concurred that the area should stay within Azerbaijan. When the Dashnaks tried to seize the area, they were repulsed by forces of the Azerbaijani regional governor. Thus, by 1920 Karabakh’s status as a part of Azerbaijan was confirmed by Armenia in an international treaty signed by the Chairman of the Armenian National Council, by locals through the actions of the NagornoKarabakh Peoples Congress, and by the international community in the Paris Peace Conference.

The Red Army seized Baku in April 1920, ending the first iteration of an independent Azerbaijan. Armenia fell some months later. As the Soviets

20Akhmedov, Afgan. British Foreign Policy in Azerbaijan 1918–1920. Dissertation (University of Lancaster, 2018), 78.

21Swietochowski, ibid., 76.

22Cornell, ibid., 7.

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seized control of the DRA, the government of Soviet Azerbaijan sent an olive branch to the new Armenian government in the form of a telegram stating boundaries had no meaning between Soviet peoples. Once the Red Army had full control over Armenia, however, the Bolshevik leader of Azerbaijan Nariman Narimanov repudiated the telegram. In response to this turn of events, Joseph Stalin wrote, “It is essential to take sides firmly with one of the two parties, in the present case, of course, Azerbaijan.”23

In 1921, the Caucasian Bureau of the Communist Party stated that Karabakh belonged to Armenia. Outraged, party delegate Narimanov warned the decision would lead to anti-Communist activity in Azerbaijan. The threat had its desired effect. At first, the Bureau reaffirmed Karabakh went to Armenia. The day after a meeting attended by Stalin, however, without a formal vote the Bureau reversed itself (possibly at Stalin’s request). The Bureau declared that Karabakh remained a part of Azerbaijan and would receive the status of autonomous region.24

As for Nakhichevan, an area that has a 14-mile border with Turkey but is otherwise surrounded on three sides by Armenia and the fourth side by Iran, its status as a part of Azerbaijan was decided in the March 1921 Azerbaijani Friendship Treaty with Moscow. It received a guarantee from the government of Turkey in the October 1921 treaty of Kars. When the Soviet Union was officially announced in 1922, Nakhichevan became an Autonomous Socialist Republic under the Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic.25

While the situation appeared to be resolved from the viewpoint of national law (within the USSR) and international law, Armenian nationalists remained dissatisfied. In 1926–1927, Armenian immigrants to Karabakh circulated petitions demanding that Armenian authorities reopen the question of the region’s status. In 1936, the first secretary of the Armenian Communist Party raised the question shortly before being executed.

In the period 1948–1953, Soviet authorities attempted to clear Armenia of Azerbaijanis. There were two reasons given: the need for workers to grow cotton in the Azerbaijani lowlands, and the need to make room for Armenians arriving from the diaspora. Both reasons were not

23Croissant, ibid., 18–19.

24Croissant, ibid., 19.

25Swietochowski, ibid., 105–106.

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true: the lowlands were not prepared by the Ministry of Agriculture to grow cotton (the canals had not been built), and the attempt to remove Azerbaijanis continued until 1953 despite the fact the Armenian repatriation effort was canceled in 1948. It appears that Moscow bowed to pressure from Armenian elites.

On 6 June 1945, the First Secretary of the Armenian Communist Party, Grigory Arutunov, approached Stalin to discuss the incorporation of Nagorno-Karabakh and Nakhichevan into the Armenian SSR. Stalin rebuffed Artunov, noting it was no easier to change borders within the Soviet Union than outside of the USSR.

Later that year, in the fall, Azerbaijan Communist Party First Secretary Mir Jafar Baghirov met with two influential members of the Soviet Politburo: Anastas Mikoyan, an Armenian, and Lavrenti Beria, a Georgian. They told him that the size of the Azerbaijan SSR would soon double after the USSR absorbed Iranian Azerbaijan. They then proposed jokingly that Baghirov could transfer Nagorno-Karabakh to Armenia and other northern regions of Azerbaijan to Georgia. When Baghirov replied it was too early to be discussing such ideas, Arutunov sent a letter to Stalin in November requesting the transfer of Nagorno-Karabakh. Stalin turned the matter over to the secretary-general of the Communist Party, who asked Baghirov his opinion. Baghirov’s response was a sarcastic proposal that parts of Armenia and Georgia be transferred to Azerbaijan, using many of the ethnic arguments that Arutunov used in his letter to Stalin.

Baghirov’s opposition had little effect. In the end, according to the Ministry of Agriculture of Azerbaijan, in 1948–1953, 11,914 households or 53,000 people were resettled from Armenia. The number of returnees by the end of 1954 was about 1500 households, or approximately 7500 people—only 14% of all settlers from Armenia.26

There were additional petitions and demonstrations in Armenia demanding unification throughout the 1960s, in 1977, and in 1983.27

26Shafiyev, Farid. “The Forced Resettlements of Azerbaijanis from Armenia, 1948– 1953,” Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs, 13 June 2019, pp. 178, 185–186. https:// www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13602004.2019.1620002.

27Kaufman, Stuart J. Modern Hatreds: The Symbolic Politics of Ethnic Wars (New York: Cornell University Press, 2001), 51.