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THE CAUCASUS & GLOBALIZATION
Rafik SAFAROV
Ph.D. (Hist.), Leading Research Fellow at the Institute of Archeology and Ethnography, National Academy of Sciences of Azerbaijan (Baku, Azerbaijan).
ETHNOTERRITORIAL CHANGES
IN THE CAUCASUS IN THE 19TH-20TH CENTURIES
Abstract
The author traces the ethnoterritorial changes in the Caucasus caused by migration during the Russian conquest of the region.
The mountainous country has always been a land of isolated ethnicities, the settlement pattern of which took final shape in the early Middle Ages. Squeezed be-
tween Hither Asia and the Great Steppe, the Caucasus has felt the impact of its neighbors from time immemorial. During the two hundred years of Russian domination, radical ethnopolitical and ethnodemographic shifts noticeably altered the ethnoterritorial dynamics and ethnic composition of the Caucasian population.
Introduction
According to traditional geography and history, the Caucasus is situated between Asia and Europe; this is nothing more than a convention invented in Antiquity and preserved by Herodotus. It has nothing to do with dividing the ecumene into ethnogeographic/ethnotopographical cohesive areas/ regions. According to the conception of the local civilizations, the Caucasus, along with Asia Minor
THE CAUCASUS & GLOBALIZATION
and the Balkans, belongs to a single ethnogeographic region conventionally called Byzantine. In the south it borders on Afrasia (North Africa, Syria, and Iran); in the north on Eurasia (the steppe, forest-steppe, and forest zones of Eurasia); and in the west on Europe.
The Caucasus, separating Eurasia from Afrasia, is a mountainous country bound by the Caspian and Black seas. From the historical-geographic viewpoint, the Northern Caucasus stretches north to the Terek, Kuban, the upper reaches of the River Kuma, and the left-bank tributaries of the Terek; the ethnotopographical boundary with the Great Steppe runs along the valleys of the same rivers. Still, it is commonly accepted that the northern border of the Caucasus passes along the Kuma-Manych Depression which, together with the territory that reaches the river valleys of the Terek and Kuban (usually called the Caucasia, or the Fore-Caucasus), is found in the steppe zone of Eurasia. This explains why the common historical-geographic and ethnocultural features of the Fore-Caucasus and the steppe zone are very different from the Caucasus. The southern border of the Caucasus is normally drawn along the former Russian/Soviet borders (today they are the southern borders of Azerbaijan, Armenia, and Georgia with Turkey). In the absence of natural dividing lines between Asia Minor and the Caucasus, the adjacent Turkish provinces can be regarded as belonging to the Caucasus.
From the viewpoint of physical and economic geography and on the strength of cultural and historical specifics, the Caucasian space can be regarded as the Northern Caucasus and the Transcaucasia/Southern Caucasus.1
The topographical border between the two sub-regions runs along the central part of the watershed of the Main Caucasian Range; in the east it starts in Southern Dagestan, where it passes along the Samur basin and reaches the Caspian near Derbent; and in the west it goes along the mountain range of the Psou toward the Black Sea. This means that on the southwestern slope of the northwestern stretch of the Main Mountain Range, the Northern Caucasus traditionally includes the Black Sea coast up to Abkhazia. This historical-geographic division follows the local terrain.
The Ethnopolitical Situation in the Caucasus on the Eve of the Russian Conquest
The Caucasus, home to numerous ethnicities and sub-ethnicities, is rightly described as one of the polyethnic regions of the world. Most of these ethnicities are very old (relict); the ethnic age of others is much less, their ethnogenesis dating back to the not too distant past. The region owes its ethnic diversity to at least two factors: the terrain, which preserved its ethnogeographic isolation and protected the ethnic identity of the autochthonous groups against external pressure, and the inflow of new ethnic groups into the Caucasus.
Before looking into the ethnoterritorial changes we need to gain an idea of the way Russian and Soviet ethnography divided the local peoples into ethnic groups in accordance with the territories they occupied or with their tribal and clan names. For political reasons this was applied to ethnically related peoples (or to peoples using the same name) who refused to accept the Russians in the Caucasus or even opposed them. The Azeris, for example, were divided into Tatars, Karapapakhs, Turk-mens, Persians, Tats, etc.; the Georgians into Imereti Georgians, Megrels, and so on; the Adighe people into Kabardins, Circassians, and Adighes; the Abkhazians into Abazins and Jigets; the Balkars
1 See: E. Ismailov, "Globalizatsia i Kavkaz: istoriko-politikal aspect," IRS-Nasledie, No. 1 (9), 2004. The author expounds a slightly different point of view.
THE CAUCASUS & GLOBALIZATION
into Karachays and Balkars; the Vaynakhs into Chechens, Ingush, Karabulaks, and Akkintsy; the Avars into a multitude of groups scattered around the villages, etc.
Those peoples who accepted Russia's aggressive intentions in the Caucasus enjoyed its complete support. The empire granted special privileges and promoted ethnic consolidation of the Armenians and Ossets who supported the new authorities in the turbulent region and were, therefore, considered reliable. In the case of the Armenians, Russian benevolence took the form of forced Ar-menianization and assimilation of groups of North Azeri Albanians who belonged to Christian Gre-gorianism.
Russia's extremely biased ethnic policy, which was part of its colonialist policy pursued under the "divide-and-rule" slogan, created a hopeless melee and a bulky ethnonimic Caucasian nomenclature that needed to be trimmed and better organized. The following ethnic names can be used to describe the real number of Caucasian ethnicities according to their own self-identity: Adighes, Abkhazians, Balkars, Chechens/Vaynakhs, and Azeris.
The names of countries and regions corresponded, on the whole, to the ethnic composition of the Caucasus and its ethnoterritorial divisions. In the past, the historical-geographic space of the Southern Caucasus was occupied by Azerbaijan and Georgia. In the 15th century, the latter fell apart into Kartli, Kakhetia, Abkhazia, and several small kingdoms and princedoms. The northern slopes of the Caucasian Range (from Derbent to Taman) were occupied by Daghestan, Chechnia, and Circassia (consisting of Larger and Smaller Kabarda and the trans-Kuban area) which stretched along the Black Sea littoral from the mouth of the Kuban to the borders of Abkhazia. The Balkars and Ossets were contingent on Kabarda.
On the whole, by the 16th-17th centuries, the ethnic territories in the Caucasus had assumed their final shape; the settlement pattern corresponded in many respects to the ethnic situation of the previous period. Borders, however, remained more or less flexible and could be changed, albeit insignificantly, under the impact of military-political, economic, and demographic factors.
Azeris occupied the largest ethnic territory in the Caucasus: a large part of the Southern Caucasus within the historical areas of Northern Azerbaijan (Shirvan, Karabakh, and Chukhursaad). The latter consisted of the provinces of Irevan, Shuragel, Kars, and Kagyzman and included the right-hand bank of the Arax.2 This places Northern Azerbaijan between the Caspian and Georgia in the basins of the Alazani, Iori, and Debeda rivers, and the River Arax to Pasinler in the territory of contemporary Turkey.
There were Christians among the Azeri; they were descendants of the Caucasian Albanians who, when the local population embraced Islam en masse, settled on both slopes of the Lesser Caucasus in Karabakh and Chukhursaad where the narrow strips of their enclaves were encircled by Azeri settlements.3 Armenian settlements were scattered in Shuragel and around Ejmiadzin, as well as in eastern Georgia, when the third Armenian Patriarchate was set up in 1441 in the Chukhursaad village of Uchkilsa (future Ejmiadzin).4
The Georgian ethnic territory occupied a large part of the Southern Caucasus; its border stretched from Kakhetia in the east (where it was situated between the Alazan and Iori rivers) to Kartli (from the river Khrami) to the west (the Rioni basin in Imeretia and the Inguri basin in Meg-relia were parts of Georgia). In the 16th-17th centuries, Georgian-speaking Muslims of Ajaria and mainly Turkic-speaking Muslims of Akhaltsikhe (Meskhetia-Javakhetia) lived in the country's south. Beyond the Javakheti Range came Borchali and the southern border of Kakhetia populated by Muslim Azeris.
2 See: R.F. Safarov, Izmenenie etnicheskogo sostava naseleniia Irevanskot gubernii v XIX-XX vekah, Baku, 2009, pp. 27-29, 58-60.
3 See: Ibid., pp. 39, 188-190.
4 See: Ibid., pp. 55, 126-127, 190.
THE CAUCASUS & GLOBALIZATION
The ethnic territory of the Abkhazians was found between the Inguri basin, Circassia, and the Black Sea; it stretched beyond the mountain range to the Northern Caucasus, south of the trans-Kuban Circassia and the Black Sea littoral, the ethnic territories of two kindred peoples—the Ubykhs and the Abkhazians (Abazins).
The Adighes occupied the largest part of the Northern Caucasus (they lived in the trans-Kuban area and Kabarda). The Balkars and Ossets mainly lived in the mountainous part of Greater Kabarda, squeezed by the Adighe settlements at the ends of gorges and the upper reaches of rivers. In the latter half of the 17th century, some of the Balkars moved to the watershed range between the Terek and Kuban to form a new ethnic area in the trans-Kuban Karachay.5 The Osset ethnic territory was situated between the Digor gorge in the west and the left-hand bank of the Terek. In the 16th-17th centuries, Ossets moved in great numbers to Georgia, thus expanding their ethnic territory to the southern slopes of the South Caucasian Range. They settled in compact groups between the upper reaches of the Rioni and Xaniya and Aragvi rivers.6
Chechens lived in the eastern part of the Northern Caucasus between the left-hand bank of the Terek and the Axai; in the Kumyk lowland and along the Andi Range, they bordered on Daghestan.7 Kumyks lived further on, in their own ethnic territory in the plains and piedmont along the Caspian; their territory stretched to Derbent. The Daghestani-speaking peoples (Avars, Dargins, and Laks) and the Lezghian-speaking groups (Lezghians, Tabasarans, Aguls, Rutuls, and Tsakhurs) occupied the rest of Daghestan and part of Azeri territory along the right-hand bank of the Samur.
Nogays, who were steppe nomads, roamed across the vast territory between the rivers Yaik and Danube (including the areas between the Azov and Caspian seas and the Fore-Caucasus). They constituted a large part of the population of the Crimean Khanate. The places where Nogays roamed and settled can be described as part of their ethnic territory in Piatigorie, the upper reaches of the Kuma, the left-hand bank of the Kuban, and its lower reaches as far as Anapa.
The ethnic diversity of the Caucasus (there were dozens of peoples living there even in Antiquity) was accompanied by confessional diversity. The Caucasian peoples mainly belonged to Islam and Christianity; however, within both confessions there were different patterns of ethnic behavior—the key distinctive feature of each ethnicity. These distinctive features divided the Muslims into Azeris, Kurds, Turks, Ajars, mountain peoples (Adighes, Abkhazians, Ubykhs, Balkars, Ossets, Chechens, and Daghestanis), and Nogays who lived in the steppe. Most of the Azeris and some of the Kurds were Shi'a; others, including the North Caucasian peoples and Nogays, were Sunni.
Georgians who belonged to Orthodox Christianity and Georgian Ossets who embraced Christianity under Georgian influence constituted the larger part of the Caucasian Christians. The Georgian and Azeri Armenians and the majority of the North Azeri Albans (including the Sheka Udins and the Shirvan tatophones) belonged to the Gregorian persuasion; a smaller number of them were Orthodox Christians.
Ethnoterritorial Changes in the Caucasus in the 19th Century
After defeating the Turks and Azeris in the 18th and early 19th centuries, Russia moved into the Crimea and the Caucasus, where there was a predominantly Muslim population. The Northern Cauca-
5 See: N.G. Volkova, Etnicheskiy sostav naselenia Severnogo Kavkaza v XVIII-nachale XX veka, Moscow, 1974,
p. 96.
1 See: Ibid., pp. 111-112, 131.
6 «
7 See: Ibid., pp. 142-143, 187-188.
THE CAUCASUS & GLOBALIZATION
sus was the home to Islamic peoples; in the Southern Caucasus 45% of the total population were Christians. Sixty percent of the Muslims of the Transcaucasus were Shi'a. On the whole, the MuslimChristian ratio in the Caucasus was 3 to 1.
Russia's conquest of the Caucasus caused gigantic ethnic and demographic shifts; in fact, demographic changes were part of Russia's colonial policy: Muslims were replaced with Christians; they were energetically squeezed out of their territories during and after the war.
For over a century, Orthodox missionaries (who came to the Caucasus in the mid-18th century) increased the number of Christians by peaceful means, albeit on a modest scale: only a few thousand Ingeloys of Jara, Georgian Muslims in Akhaltsikhe, and Abkhazians were converted to Christianity, while the missionaries were able to convert over half of the North Ossetian population.
The demographic balance was tipped by military and political means; the outflow of Muslims was intensified by the Azeri, Turkic, and Caucasian wars. Each of the peace treaties the Russian Empire signed with the defeated side contained a clause under which Russians could move Muslims to Iran and the Ottoman Empire and bring in Christians.
After establishing itself in the Crimea and the Steppe, Russia moved into the Caucasus. The first wave of evictions of Muslims to Iran and Turkey took place during the first third of the 19th century when Russia captured Azerbaijan. On the whole, between 1801 and 1831 about 147 thousand left Northern Azerbaijan; Chukhursaad lost the largest number of people, from 85 to 90 thousand (some of them being killed during the hostilities); and Karabakh came second with a slightly lower number of human losses.
In 1828-1829, Russia captured Turkic Akhaltsikhe, which lost 80 thousand Muslims from its population. After each of the consecutive Turkish wars, Abkhazians were driven to Turkey: 5 thousand in 1810; 10 thousand in 1829-1830; and 20 thousand in 1855-1856.8
Russian sources normally quote an approximate figure of half a million people evicted from the Caucasus in 1858-1865; it related to part of the population of trans-Kuban Circassia.9 The total number of losses among the Caucasian mountain peoples is 850 thousand; this figure included the Adighes, who were not counted in the official statistics, and migrants from Kabarda, Ossetia, and Daghestan, including those killed in the war or who died on the Black Sea coast while waiting for ships to take them to Turkey (most of them were Adighes). At that time 740 thousand from transKuban Circassia, 60 thousand from the Terek region, 30 thousand from the Stavropol Gubernia, and 10 thousand each from Daghestan and Abkhazia died in the Caucasus or were evicted from it. According to Turkish sources, in 1855-1866 740 thousand Caucasian mountain dwellers arrived in Turkey.10
According to the 1873 population census, the share of Muslims in the Caucasus dropped to 40.46% (2,171,889 people); the mountain people together with the Nogays (minus Christian Ossets) accounted for 19.88% (1,067,906 people).11
The Russo-Turkish War of 1877-1878 and the riots in Chechnia, Daghestan, and Abkhazia it incited started another round of Muslim emigration to Turkey. After winning the war, Russia acquired Turkish territories: Kars, Ardahan, and Batum. Between 1878-1882, 98 thousand Muslims emigrated to Turkey of their own free will.12 The 1880 population census conducted by Russia discovered 94,112 Muslims among the 114,282 people who lived in the Kars region.13 According to the census,
; See: Z. Chichinadze, The Great Resettlement of Georgian Muslims to Turkey, Tiflis, 1912, p. 169 (in Georgian).
8 <
9 See: A. Berge, "Vyselenie gortsev s Kavkaza v 1858-1865 godakh," Russkaia starina, Vol. XXXIII, January-March 1882, p. 167.
10 See: A. Ubicini, P. de Courteille, Sovremennoe sostoianie Otomanskoy Imperii, St. Petersburg, 1877, pp. 32, 61 (A. Ubicini, P. de Courteille, Etat présent de l'empire ottoman, Paris, 1876).
11 See: Sbornik svedeniy o Kavkaze, Vol. VII, Tiflis, 1880, pp. I-XXIX (further SSK).
12 See: V.I. Masalskiy, "Ocherk pogranichnoy chasti Karskoy oblasti," Izvestia of the Russian Geographic Society (IRGO), Vol. XXIII, Issue I, 1887, St. Petersburg, p. 21.
13 See: SSK, Vol. VII, pp. XXVIII-XXIX.
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30-32 thousand moved out of Batum.14 During 1877-1882, 162,847 people were driven from the Caucasus after the Russo-Turkish War.
Between 1801 and 1914, the Caucasus lost over 1.3 million Muslims (not counting those who came back); some of them died, others emigrated to Iran and the Ottoman Empire. The Northern Caucasus lost the largest number: over 900 thousand, among whom 781 thousand were from transKuban Circassia; 74 thousand from the Terek region; 30 thousand from the Stavropol Gubernia; and 20 thousand from Daghestan. The Southern Caucasus lost 456 thousand, 213 thousand left the former Turkic domains (Akhaltsikhe, Kars, and Batum); Azerbaijan lost 147 thousand; and Abkhazia 96 thousand. Nearly all the Caucasian peoples (the Adighes, Abkhazians, Chechens, Ubykhs, Daghestanis, Balkars, Ossets, Nogays, Turks, Muslim Georgians, Azeris, and Kurds) sustained losses.
The repercussions of the Russo-Turkic and Russo-Iranian armed opposition in the Steppe and the Caucasus were catastrophic. The Steppe, Circassia, Abkhazia, Akhaltsikhe, Kars, part of Azerbaijan (Pambak-Shuragel, Irevan, and part of Nakhchivan and Karabakh) were depopulated; ethnicities disappeared from the ethnic map of the Caucasus. The Ubykhs disappeared altogether, while the numerical strength of the Nogays, Adighes, and Abkhazians dropped dramatically. The ethnic territory of the Adighes shrank several times; the area of their compact settlement disappeared and they found themselves dispersed among small scattered enclaves in the valleys along the Kuban. The same thing happened to the Abkhazians' ethnic territory. The Nogays preserved their steppe roaming space on the Caspian coast between the Kuma and the deltas of Terek and Sulak. The northern borders of the ethnic territories of the Kabarda Adighes and Chechens were shifted to the south; the Azeris lost their ethnic territories in Pambak-Shuragel, Lori (the southern part of Borchali), and the northern and central part of Irevan. The Turks were squeezed out of Akhalkalaki and from parts of Akhaltsikhe, Kars, and Kagyzman.
The 1873 population census supplied a graphic picture: about 100 thousand of the autochthonous population still clung to their homeland in trans-Kuban Circassia and 78 thousand Nogays in the Stavropol Gubernia.15 In 1882, that is, after the war in Abkhazia, only 56 thousand Abkhazians were left.16 Since that time, no one has been living in the mountains of Circassia and Abkhazia. In 1826, the Muslim population of the Irevan Gubernia was 240 thousand strong (80.3% of the total population); in the next fifty years the number remained the same to reach 234 thousand (42.8%) Azeris and Kurds in 1873.
How New Ethnic Territories Appeared in the Caucasus
To consolidate its position in the Caucasus, Russian colonialism moved Christians to the Steppe and the Caucasus; a Slavic population appeared in the Northern Caucasus; Armenians were invited to the Southern Caucasus; and Christian colonists settled in the lands vacated by the Muslims (who either died or emigrated).
After annexing the Crimea in 1783 and winning another Russo-Turkish War, the Russians were able to remove 100 thousand Nogays from the Kuban area, after which they moved the Azov-Mozdok fortified line and started a Black Sea line of outposts along the Kuban in 1792. Slavs were
14 See: Sh.V. Megrelidze, Zakavkazie v Russko-turetskoy voyne 1877-1878, Tbilisi, 1972, p. 273.
15 See: SSK, Vol. VII, pp. I-XXIX.
16 See: Izvestia of the Caucasian Division of the Russian Geographic Society, Vol. VIII, No. 1, Tiflis, 1883, pp. 91-92.
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put next to the Caucasian borders, along the Terek and Kuban; as soon as the Caucasian War began, the fortified lines were moved further into the Northern Caucasus, to Chechnia and Circassia, thus widening the area of the future Russian ethnic territory in the Northern Caucasus. These were Cossack settlements that advanced into the lands of the mountain people; "they alone could fortify Russia's borders."17
By the early 19th century, 92% of Armenians lived in Turkey; there were about 100 thousand Armenians in Iran; in the Caucasus, most of the 133 thousand Gregorian Christians were Albanians. Throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, the ethnic map of Armenian settlement changed a lot: there was a continuous inflow of Armenian migrants into Russia.18
Armenian migrants were distributed in accordance with the military-strategic interests of Russia; thousands of Armenians were sent to the Muslim lands along the border and in the key operational sectors (Akhaltsikhe, Shuragel, Irevan, Nakhchivan, and Karabakh).
Armenians started arriving in great numbers under the Turkmanchai Treaty of 1828; in the next two years, 200 thousand Iranian and Turkish Armenians arrived in the Southern Caucasus.19 Between 1801 and 1831, up to 220 thousand Armenians (including a small share of Greeks, Assyrians, and Yezidi Kurds) arrived from Iran (about 80 thousand) and Turkey (140 thousand) to settle in the former Muslim territories of Azerbaijan, as well as Akhaltsikhe and other East Georgian provinces. Between 147 and 150 thousand of them were moved to Chukhursaad (the future Irevan Gubernia). This meant that most of the new migrants were accommodated in the north and center of the Irevan province and in Pambak-Shuragel.
Russia did not limit itself to administrative and political concessions to the Armenians in the form of an Armenian region set up in 1828 instead of the Irevan and Nakhchivan khanates; it resolutely moved into the religious sphere.
Early in the 19th century, there were about 73 thousand followers of the Albanian church among the nearly half-a-million-strong population of Northern Azerbaijan. Starting in 1461, Turkish Armenians had their own patriarch in Istanbul; in the absence of their own statehood, the national church was the only vehicle through which the Albanians could express their national identity and political aspirations. They continued to regard themselves as Caucasian Albanians until the Russian authorities liquidated the Albanian church. By a law of 11 March, 1836, it was transferred to the Ejmiadzin Patriarchate in order to impose Armenianization on the Albanians and consolidate the Armenian outpost in Hither Asia. By the early 20th century, the Gregorian Armenians had been completely Arme-nianized; the area of compact settlement of Armenians in the northern and central part of the Irevan Gubernia and the places of Albanian settlement in Kazakh and Borchali became one vast area.
There is a commonly accepted opinion that mass Armenian migration to the Transcaucasus began after the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-1878. This coincides with the time when the Great Powers actively interfered in the affairs of the Ottoman Empire, when the Armenian question appeared on the agenda, and when the Armenians started setting up clandestine organizations, which ended in bloodshed. The mass Armenian riots during 1890-1905 in Turkey were stirred up by the revolutionary and terrorist activities of Armenian organizations (the most radical or even extremist among them being Dashnaktsutyun and Gnchak).20 Russia repeatedly closed its Turkish border to keep Armenian rioters and fighters away; for this reason many of the Armenian immigrants from Turkey arrived in Russia via Iran.
17 V. Potto, Kavkazskaia voyna v otdelnykh ocherkakh, epizodakh, legendakh i biografiiakh, Vol. 2, St. Petersburg, 1888, p. 80.
18 See: V.M. Kabuzan, Dinamika chislennosti i rasseleniia (1719-1989). Formirovanie etnicheskikh i po-liticheskikh granits russkogo naroda, St. Petersburg, 1996, pp. 104-105. The author cited the figure 80%, yet his figures suggest 88%; if the number of Armenians in Turkey is specified and the Caucasian Albanians are not counted, we arrive at a figure of 92%.
19 See: Ibid., p. 105.
20 See: K. Gürün, Armianskoe dosye, Baku, 1993, pp. 156-209 (K. Gürün, Ermeni Dosyasi, Ankara, 1988).
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The ethnodemographic situation in the other former Turkish lands was more or less similar: the Armenians living in Akhaltsikhe formed a compact ethnic territory that shared a short section of its border with the Armenian settlements of Chukhursaad. This meant that a small Armenian ethnic area was wedged between the lands of Akhaltsikhe Turks and Borchali Azeris. The mass Christian inflow into Kars did not cause ethnic delimitation, although it squeezed the local Azeris and Turks into smaller ethnic territories. There were more Armenians among the population in these regions, including in the Kars and Kagyzman districts, although they lived in fewer settlements.
The Armenian ethnic territory cut across the hitherto continuous Muslim territory. Sergey Glinka was succinct and to the point: ".. .greater numbers of kindred Christian people will fortify the borders of Russia against the unfriendly actions of neighbors, especially Turks, Persians, and mountain dwellers."21
The war ended and the vacated lands of the mountain dwellers created favorable conditions for launching mass Russian-Slavic colonization of the western and central parts of the Northern Caucasus. The huge flows of Russian and foreign migrants that went to the Northern Caucasus in the wake of the Caucasian War pushed the region into first place among other colonized regions within the Russian Empire. Between 1782 and 1915, 2.7 million internal colonists arrived in the Northern Caucasus22; later about 0.4 million moved to the Southern Caucasus. Between 1801 and 1914, 110 thousand Armenians from Iran, 675 thousand Armenians, Greeks, and Yezidi Kurds from Turkey, and about 45 thousand Germans from Germany and Austria-Hungary arrived in the Caucasus.23
Between 1801 and 1914, the share of Slavs in the Caucasian Vicegerency (together with the Stavropol Gubernia which had been its part) increased from 5 to 40%; the share of Muslims dropped to 30% (22% in the Northern Caucasus and 39% in the Southern Caucasus). In the regions, the share of Muslims dropped to 49.7% in Kars; 39% in the Irevan Gubernia; 31% in Akhaltsikhe; and 37% in Abkhazia. While the share of Muslims shrank, the share of Armenians in the Southern Caucasus rose from 7-8% early in the 19th century to 25% in 1914.24 The results exceeded the boldest expectations: by 1914, there were 1,685,100 Armenians in Russia. Whereas previously Russia had been home to only 7.3% of all Armenians, more than a hundred years later 47.5% of the world's Armenians lived there.
As a result of 130 years of persistent efforts to replace the Muslims with Christians, Russia finally tipped the demographic balance between them. The Steppe became completely Slavic; the Caucasus became two-thirds Christian: there were Slavs in the north and Armenians in the south. Russians, Armenians, Greeks, and members of other Christian and non-Christian peoples who settled in the abandoned Muslim lands in the Southern Caucasus created ethno-confessional strips in Karabakh, Chukhursaad, Kars, Akhaltsikhe, and Abkhazia.
Ethnopolitical Changes in the Caucasus in the 20th Century
In the first quarter of the 20th century, once the mountain peoples had been finally pacified, the settlement pattern of Slavs-Russians in the Northern Caucasus became more or less stabilized in
21 S. Glinka, Opisanie pereseleniia armian adzerbijanskikh v predely Rossii, Moscow, 1831, p. 93.
22 See: L.G. Beskrovny, Ya.E. Vodarsky, V.M. Kabuzan, "Migratsiia naseleniia Rossii v XVII-nachale XX veka," in: Problemy istoricheskoy demografii SSSR, Tomsk, 1980, pp. 26-32.
23 See: S.I. Bruk, V.M. Kabuzan, "Migratsii naseleniia. Rossiiskoe zarubezhie," in: Narody Rossii. Entsiklopedia, Moscow, 1994, pp. 54-56.
24 See: Kavkazskiy calendar na 1915 god, Tiflis, 1914, "Otdel statisticheskiy," pp. 218-269.
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Circassia and the Terek regions. In the 20th century, the Armenian ethnoterritorial core in Northern Azerbaijan became the main factor of the ethnoterritorial dynamics in the Caucasus needed to set up a national Armenian state at the expense of the territories of neighboring peoples.
The migration of hundreds of thousands of Armenians became the main factor that tipped the ethnic balance in favor of the Armenians and strengthened the Armenian ethnoterritorial core, which became slightly larger after the Armenian-Muslim slaughter of 1905-1906. These events echoed in the Southern Caucasus and invigorated national delimitation there. It was then that a new term, Armenia, came into use. By the early 20th century, the Armenians regarded Turkish Armenia and Russian Armenia as their homeland, even though they remained in the majority in only a few fairly small areas within both Armenias. Those who nurtured plans of their unification were fully aware that the Muslims of Eastern Anatolia and Azerbaijan should be driven away or exterminated.
During World War I, the Muslims of the Caucasus lost lives, territory, and property. They were not conscripted into the Russian army and, therefore, did not fight in the war. The Russian punitive expedition in 1915 cost the Muslims of the Batum and Kars regions, which supported the Turkish onslaught, 88 thousand Muslim lives.25 In 1915-1918, the Armenians who fought in the Russian army (there were 200 thousands of them) and fighters of Armenian armed bands26 (there were 100 thousands of them) who operated in the vilayets of Trabzon, Erzurum, Bitlis, and Van captured by the Russians exterminated 1.19 million Muslims of Eastern Anatolia.27 The Turkish government had to start moving Armenians out of Eastern Anatolia to the south; the Armenian counteroffensive raised another high wave of Armenian migration to the Southern Caucasus. During the war, 420 thousand Armenians moved from Turkey to Russia. By the time of the Bolshevik revolution in October 1917, there were 2 million Armenians in Russia28; numerically they became equal to the Azeris of the Caucasus. As ninety years earlier, on the eve of Russia's disintegration, another round of concentration of Armenian migrants greatly complicated the situation of the Muslims of Azerbaijan.
In January 1918, when there was no power and the Russian army had left, the Armenians launched monstrous pogroms of the Russian Muslims in Kars and Irevan.29 In March-July 1918, detachments of Dashnaks and Bolsheviks exterminated from 30 to 50 thousand Muslims in the Baku Gubernia.
With the Russian Empire no longer on the political stage, the Caucasian peoples organized a Republic of Mountain Peoples of Daghestan and the mountain areas of the Terek region; the Tran-scaucasian Federation was replaced with the republics of Georgia, Azerbaijan, and Armenia. The latter covered an area of 9 to 11 thousand sq km and was situated in the Armenian ethnoterritorial core in the north of the Irevan Gubernia.
As a new ethnopolitical unit in the Caucasus, Armenians claimed neighboring territories, especially in the Azerbaijan Republic, in an aggressive and determined way. The new Armenian state (set up on Azeri land), a result of the purposeful activities of Russian and Western imperialism, treated extermination of the Muslims as its domestic and foreign policy priorities. Between 1918 and 1921, the Armenians captured the larger part of the gubernia (except Nakhchivan which remained Azeri). Among the ministers of the Armenian Cabinet there was a minister for pogroms (!!!).30 In this way, vast areas became depopulated, in which Armenians promptly took up residence.
25 See: Ibidem; Kavkazskiy kalendar na 1917 god, Tiflis, 1916, pp. 177-237 (see also: T. Swietochowski, Russian Azerbaijan. 1905-1920: The Sparing of National Identity in a Muslim Community, Cambridge, 1985, pp. 78-79).
26 See: Tverdokhlebov, "Memuary Russkogo ofitsera," in: Istoria Azerbaidzhana po dokumentam i publikatsiiam, Baku, 1990, pp. 121-148.
27 See: J. McCarthy, Death and Exile: The Ethnic Cleansing of Ottoman Muslims. 1821-1922, Princeton, New Jersey, 1995, pp. 229, 338-339.
28 See: S.I. Bruk, V.M. Kabuzan, "Etnicheskiy sostav naseleniya Rossii (1719-1917)," Sovetskaia etnografía, No. 6, 1980, pp. 6, 24-25.
1 See: Bakinskiy rabochiy, 28 (15) May, 1918.
29 !
30 See: B.A. Borian, Armenia, mezhdunarodnaia diplomatia i SSSR, Vol. II, Moscow, Leningrad, 1928, pp. 81-82, 195.
THE CAUCASUS & GLOBALIZATION
Only 10 thousand Azeris and not a single Kurd out of the total number of 290 thousand who lived in the territory of contemporary Armenia in 1918 survived the three years of Armenia's determined extermination efforts.31 This policy was pursued in Kars, Irevan, Nakhchivan, Zange-zur, Karabakh, and other provinces, as well as in Iranian Azerbaijan. This unprecedented and persistent cruelty, which cost 0.6 million Muslims of the Southern Caucasus (mainly Azeris) their lives, allowed the Armenians to finally unite their scattered ethnoterritorial enclaves into a single whole.
Sovietization brought even worse suffering to the Muslims of the Caucasus, as well as cruelties reminiscent of the imperial period. Part of the Azeri ethnic territory in Borchali and Derbent was joined to Georgia and Daghestan; during its independence, Azerbaijan lost part of its ethnic territory around Tiflis and Gardabani; in 1921, the Azeri territory of the Surmala uezd (Igdira) was transferred to Turkey.
Armenians acquired their ethnic territory in the Caucasus with the help of Soviet Russia, which spared no efforts to make them its own outpost in the region, their loyalty being rewarded with Azeri lands. The Armenian S.S.R., an outpost of the Caucasus, was comprised of Azeri lands from which Armenians had diligently driven away all the Azeris to remain the sole masters in this land and create the Armenian state; in this way it captured 30 thousand sq km of Azeri ethnic territories.
Armenia's claims did not stop here; it was determined to build up a Greater Armenia at the expense of its neighbors. In the first three years of its existence, it realized part of its territorial claims to the Azeri lands. Armenian politicians wanted to capture Karabakh and sent Armenian agitators there. In 1923, Stalin approved setting up the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Region inside Azerbaijan to give autonomy to the Karabakh Armenians. This was when the city of Shusha and its Azeri-populated environs (contrary to what these people wanted) were included in the newly established unit.
In its approaches the Kremlin demonstrated that it was prepared to reward reliable Caucasian peoples with administrative-national units: Armenians acquired the Armenian S.S.R. and the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Region in Azerbaijan, while the Ossets were rewarded with the North Ossetian A.S.S.R in Russia and the South Ossetian Autonomous Region in Georgia.
The Soviet Union continued the imperial policy of evicting Muslims from the Caucasus and moving Christians into the region. Armenians started flocking to the Soviet Union in great numbers: between 1921 and 1975 about 290 thousand came from abroad; 250 thousands of them settled in Armenia.32 Significantly, the new arrivals and their ancestors were not born in Armenia, the Caucasus, or the Soviet Union: the territory on which they settled throughout the 19th and 20th centuries had never been their homeland.
During World War II, the Soviet Union, despite the Great Patriotic War it was waging, never let the Middle East out of its sight. To bolster its rear, the Soviet government deported part of the Muslim population of the Crimea and the Caucasus (Vaynakhs, Karachay-Balkars, Crimean Tatars, Turks of Akhaltsikhe, Kurds, and some of the Georgian Azeris) to Kazakhstan and Central Asia in 1944.
The Soviet Union regarded Soviet Armenia as the best foothold from which Turkish territories could be annexed. The Muslim Kurds (3 to 4 thousand people) who survived the Armenian atrocities and returned to Armenia were deported to Kazakhstan in 1937. The foothold had to be cleansed of Azeris; under a decision of 1947 signed by Stalin, 53 thousand Azeris were moved from Armenia to Azerbaijan in 1948-1953.
The lands these people vacated remained unpopulated; deportation of the Azeris contracted their ethnic territory around Tiflis. The ethnic territory of the Vaynakhs was deformed to an even
31 See: Z. Korkotian, Population of Soviet Armenia in the Last 100 Years (1831-1931), Erivan, 1932, p. 184 (in Armenian).
32 See: V.E. Khodjabekian, "Armenian S.S.R.," in: Naselenie soiuznykh respublik, Moscow, 1977, p. 274.
THE CAUCASUS & GLOBALIZATION
greater extent: Ossets moved into the Prigorodny District previously populated by the Ingush; and in Daghestan, Laks settled in the Khasaviurt District vacated by the deported Chechens. The rehabilitated Vaynakhs and Karachay-Balkars came back in the 1950s to enter into opposition with neighbors who had been living on their lands since the time of their deportation. The partly rehabilitated Akhaltsikhe Turks were allowed to remain in Azerbaijan but were not allowed to return to their homeland.
Conclusion
In the past there was a demographic and ecological balance in the Caucasus. Russia did a lot to tip the demographic and ethnoterritorial balance between the Muslims and the Christians. Its policy spelled death or emigration for many members of the Caucasian peoples; as a result the region acquired new ethnic territories—the Slavic-Russian and Armenian.
The Soviet regime, like imperial power before it, assigned the Armenians an important strategic role in the Caucasus and set up an Armenian outpost in Azeri territory. The Ossets were another force that supported Russia.
In this way, during the last 200 years Russian power in the Caucasus became a factor of ethnic tension that created new conflicts between the local and alien ethnicities. From time to time, when the czarist and communist regimes weakened and the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union fell apart, these conflicts developed into open clashes and local wars.
