Armenian-Tatar massacre (1905-1906)

As historian Jörg Baberowski points out, one of the prerequisites for the hostile attitude towards Armenians that manifested itself in the Russian Caucasus in the last decades of the 19th century was the unrepresentation of the Muslim population in local authorities. In particular, according to the reform of 1870, non-Christians were supposed to have no more than a third of the seats in city councils (and since 1892 - no more than 20%). These measures, which were originally directed against Jews, primarily affected Muslims in Transcaucasia ^[4] , although, for example, in Baku, being the main owners of property, they accounted for about 80% of the electorate ^[5] .

After the accession of Transcaucasia to Russia, the central government tried to extend the legal and cultural norms to the acquired territory, however, it encountered resistance from the Muslim population. The Russian court considered a crime defined in the then Muslim society, the customs and everyday practices of home building, some of which stemmed from the Islamic Sharia law and the customs of the Muslim society, and some of which were not considered serious crimes, and were considered Muslim traditions by Russian judicial and legislative systems and authorities. : blood feud, carrying arms, marriage with minors, polygamy, livestock theft. Perjury in civil courts has become widespread. Since the accession of Transcaucasia, the tsarist government has striven for the cultural homogeneity of the region’s population. Therefore, measures were taken to discredit Islam and weaken the position of the Muslim aristocracy. For the latter purpose, representatives of the Christian peoples of the region were appointed to the administrative bodies. Unable to rely on a significant Russian population, the tsarist government assigned the role of a conductor of their interests to the Armenians as their co-religionists, hoping to use the dominant position of the Armenians in administrative bodies to contain the “Islamic danger”. However, the result of this was the development of a sense of national exclusivity among Armenians, which was not in line with the government’s assimilation policy. Therefore, since the 1880s, the tsarist government set itself the goal of undermining Armenian rule in the cities of Transcaucasia. Appointed in 1886 by the Chief Executive of the Caucasian Administration, Grigory Golitsyn , supporting Muslims, immediately began to pursue an Armenian-phobic policy ^[4] . In response to the dissatisfaction of Muslims with the disproportionately large representation of Armenians in public service (allegedly holding 50 to 90 percent of the posts), he reduced the number of Armenian officials and filled the vacancies with Muslims ^[6] . Thus, almost all Armenians were dismissed from leading posts, and Muslims were appointed in their place ^[4] . Surrounded by Dondukov-Korsokov and Golitsyn , anti-Armenian sentiments spread, reminiscent of anti-Semitic nonsense. For example, in a memorandum of the secret police, the reporter complained that in the Armenian schools and newspapers they remember the great Armenian kingdom, which he saw a danger, because according to him the Armenians are the same Jews. In 1885, 160 Armenian schools were closed, and in March 1889 a decree was issued to exclude the history and geography of Armenia from school plans ^[7] . At the peak of the ongoing anti-Armenian company, Armenian schools were included in the all-Russian education system, and in 1903 the property of the Armenian Church was confiscated. The result of this policy was that the Armenian national movement began to adopt terrorist methods. As a result, in response to repressive measures against the Armenians, several attempts were made on state officials ^[4] . One of the most resonant was the attempt on Golitsyn, after which in 1903 he left the Caucasus. The reign of Grigory Golitsyn was the only case of tsarism moving away from pro-Armenian positions ^[8]

Attacks by members of the Armenian organization Dashnaktsutyun on tsarist officials gave the authorities the opportunity to test the loyalty of Muslims. The latter, in turn, perceived the aiding of the government as the tacit consent of the Muslim claim for dominance in the cities of Baku and Elizabethpol provinces. In January 1905, a rumor spread in teahouses that Armenians want to attack Muslims during the Shiite festival of Maharram (Muharram). In such circumstances, the funeral of any contracted murder victim, which were then Baku’s arena, turned into a nationwide demonstration. On February 6, after the Armenians shot the Azerbaijani worker in Baku, panic broke out. Armed groups of Muslims who gathered or gathered in the center of Baku killed all the Armenians they met. On the second day of the pogrom, the crowd began to rob Armenian shops and reached the barracks of the Pitoyev oil company, where more than 40 Armenians were killed on February 8 only. The pogroms lasted five days. Local authorities did not take any measures against the instigators. According to Baberowski, although the suspicion that the governor himself provoked the pogroms was not finally confirmed, however, participation in the violence of the authorities is not in doubt ^[4] . According to the British consul in Baku Patrick Stevens, 900 Armenians and 700 Muslims died in the February massacre in Baku ^[9] .

This conflict quickly got out of control and, by the summer of 1905, encompassed entire districts of Transcaucasia with a mixed Armenian-Azerbaijani population. Consul Stevens in his letter to the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs Lansdowne on June 20, 1905 ^[10] wrote:

Some cases of violence continued in October ^[9] . They managed to suppress the unrest only in 1906, sending an expedition to the Caucasus under the command of General Maksud Alikhanov-Avarsky (later killed by the Dashnak revolutionaries). Appointed in April 1905 as Viceroy of the Caucasus, Prince Vorontsov-Dashkov achieved a softening of the anti-Armenian position of power and the return of property of the Armenian church. After foreign policy conflicts with the Ottoman Empire, the position of power again becomes pro-Armenian, while avoiding open discrimination against Muslims ^[4] .

On September 2, 1905, Armenian-Azerbaijani clashes broke out in Baku again. However, as American historian Justin McCarthy points out, Russian divide and rule politics did not work this time, and although the clashes began on the basis of Armenian-Azerbaijani hatred, they soon escalated into a general uprising, where Russian workers played a major role. The British vice consul in Baku, MacDonell, pointed out that "the [Muslim] people as a whole played the role of passive observers" and noted that if Muslims were to enter the conflict without exception, not a single Armenian would be left alive. Consul Stevens estimated the number of people killed at 275 Tatars (Azerbaijanis), 150 Russians, 95 Armenians and about 100 soldiers, but, according to Justin McCarthy , these figures make up only a small fraction of the real number of people killed. The Russian soldiers who arrived to establish order resorted to extreme forms of violence. Justin McCarthy points out, with reference to Consul Stevens, that Muslim villages were hit the hardest ^[12] .

According to Svanta Cornell , 126 Azerbaijanis and 218 Armenians died in four days of fighting in Baku ^[13] .

According to the Baku Statistical Bureau and the Tatar-Russian-Armenian Committee for Assistance to the Victims, 205 Armenians died, including 7 women, 20 children, 13 elderly people and 121 wounded. Among Azerbaijanis, there were 111 killed, including 2 women, not a single child or an elderly person, as well as 128 wounded ^[14]

Luigi Villari , referring to the May 25 clash in Nakhichevan , cites official reports stating that “out of 52 villages with an Armenian or mixed Armenian-Tatar population, 47 were attacked, and 19 of them were completely destroyed and left by their inhabitants. The total number of deaths, including in the city of Nachichevan , amounted to 239 people. Later, in revenge, the Armenians attacked the Tatar village, killing 36 people ” ^[15] .

Viktor Makarenko, a doctor of political sciences from the Southern Federal University , writes that the Armenian-Tatar massacre was the result of the complex manipulative divide and rule policy that the tsarist government had been pursuing for decades between nationalities in the region, the massacre itself began on February 6, 1905, after “Armenians in the center of Baku shot and killed a Muslim oil worker. After that, a five-day mutual massacre began in the city . ” Makarenko also notes that the police openly sided with the Muslims: “The police behaved passively, the police chief, accompanied by 50 Cossacks, rode on horseback through the fire-ridden city, without interfering in what was happening. Cossacks handed over Armenians for reprisal against Muslim persecutors. At the same time, in the police station, Turkic workers were given rifles and revolvers on the security of passports ” ^[16] .

Other sources, such as Dasnabedyan or Walker, claim that the Azerbaijani side started the conflict, which gave the Armenians a reason to give an incomparably stronger answer. Walker also points out the authorities' connivance to the actions of the Tatars, because of which the latter remained unpunished ^[13] .

According to Professor Firuz Kazemzade : “It is impossible to lay the blame for the massacre on either side. Apparently, in some cases, Azerbaijanis ( Baku , Elizavetpol ) fired their first shots, in others ( Shusha , Tiflis ) - Armenians. ” He notes that the Dashnaktsutyun party bears the main share of responsibility for the fact that it was often the main driving force in the commission of mass killings. The Dashnaks organized groups similar to those that operated in Turkey and consisted mainly of Armenian refugees from this country. Such groups were supposed to attack Muslims and exterminate the population of entire villages. Azerbaijanis did not have any organization comparable to the Dashnaktsutyun party. They fought without agreed plans ^[17] .

British diplomats considered the reason for the inability and unwillingness of the Russian authorities to maintain international balance, and in particular their anti-Armenian attitude, which replaced the pro-Armenian mood. In their opinion, “the Russian authorities, instead of improving relations between the two races through impartial administration, went by the principle of“ divide and conquer. ”For some time they expressed favoritism to the Armenians at the expense of the Tatars. All the small posts were given to the first, which gave them an advantage against the Tatars, and whom they annoyed with corruption and penalties. Later, the Russian authorities changed their policies, believing that the Armenians are becoming dominant due to the growing activity of the Armenian revolutionary societies. " ^[18]

Y. Sarkisbekov wrote that M. Azizbekov said:

“The masses, both Armenian and Turkic, are innocent of what happened. The regime that sets one part of the population against another is to blame . ”

Until recently, these events were not and could not be the subject of scientific research in Russian-language literature. In the West, this issue was raised in the writings of a number of researchers, but there were no special studies either.

Public opinion, and especially the revolutionaries, accused the tsarist authorities not only of intentional inaction and connivance, but also of actively provoking the massacre. It was argued that the government set the loyal (due to low politicization) Muslim population against the Armenians imbued with the revolutionary spirit, trying to intimidate them. The same opinion was shared abroad.

The book Baku: A History Full of Events, published in London in 1905, cites excerpts from a Times journalist reporting that Russians, Georgians, and foreigners claimed in conversations with him that they were responsible for starting and continuing the violence in Baku and Shusha Armenian Committees ^[19] .

The Armenian publicist I. Alibegov saw "the main reason for all the horrors of the Armenian-Tatar clashes" in the "general police and bureaucratic regime of" autocratic "power" , under whose canopy, according to Alibegov, they found refuge "pan-Islamists, provocateurs, lovers of" someone else’s good, ruining Muslim feudal lords, bloodthirsty agents "samoderzhavnago" the government and other dregs of society "," provocative propaganda "which he attributes to the massacre ^[20] in addition, the Armenians, the events in question in Russia against the background of the massacre of Armenians in Turkey, counting and part of pan-Islamic plot to extermination Christians and attributed agitation agents Turkish Sultan Abdul-Hamid ^[21] . In this regard, the Russian writer and publicist A. V. Amfiteatrov pointed out the specific facts of the “Muslim conspiracy” of the supporters of Abdul-Hamid , revealed, in his words, in Elisavetpol ( Ganja ) in the late nineties ^[22] .
Luigi Villari noted that “the Tatar intelligentsia is passionately anti-Armenian” and enjoys the support of the government, which sees it as a counterbalance to the national and socialist aspirations of the Armenians ^[23] .

For their part, supporters of the government and the Tatars blamed the massacre of the Armenian revolutionary nationalist party Dashnaktsutyun . So the Azerbaijani publicist Mammad Said Ordubadi has four reasons for the massacre ^[24] :

1. “The Armenian Committee of Dashnaktsutyun established such a despotic style of government that it caused a number of bloody events in the Caucasus”;
2. “Government officials have shown complete powerlessness during the period of hostilities” (intimidated by the Armenian terror);
3. “Ignorance and backwardness of Azerbaijanis”, which did not allow them to give an adequate response to the Armenian provocations ^[25] ;
4. "The dream of Armenians about autonomy."

• Pavel Shekhtman . Flames of old fires
• I. Alibegov. Elizabethpol bloody days before the court of society
• About the riots in Baku in 1905
• V. Mayevsky. The Armenian-Tatar turmoil in the Caucasus, as one of the phases of the Armenian issue
• Luigi Villari. Fire and sword in the Caucasus. London, TF Unwin, 1906. (English)

• Justin McCarthy . Death and Exile: The Ethnic Cleansing of Ottoman Muslims 1821-1922. - Princeton, New Jersey: The Darwin Press, 1995.