The First Republic of Armenia (1918–1920)

Collapse, genocide and war

The First World War devastated the Armenians of the Ottoman Empire. From 1915, deportations and massacres destroyed communities across Anatolia, and hundreds of thousands of survivors fled east into the Russian Caucasus. The region was already strained by war, disease and food shortages. Camps grew up around Yerevan and Etchmiadzin, and relief organisations struggled to feed them.

The Russian Revolution of 1917 swept away the imperial administration, and the Caucasus front went with it. Through the winter Russian troops left their positions, and by early 1918 the region's defence rested on locally raised Armenian units. In April the Transcaucasian Democratic Federative Republic briefly united Armenians, Georgians and Azerbaijanis. But the three national councils wanted different things, and the federation broke up within weeks.

The May Battles and Sardarapat

In May 1918 Ottoman forces were advancing towards Yerevan and the Ararat plain. Armenian regular units, militia, volunteers and villagers fought them at Sardarapat, Bash Aparan and Karakilisa. The fighting near Sardarapat from 21 to 29 May stopped the advance on Yerevan. Resistance on the other two fronts kept Ottoman forces from quickly outflanking the Armenian defence.

These battles did not end the military danger, and the victory they won was not unconditional: in June the new state had to sign the harsh Treaty of Batum. But they saved Yerevan and part of the Armenian population. That gave just enough political room to declare an independent republic on 28 May.

Founding the republic

The Armenian National Council declared independence on 28 May 1918. The Armenian Revolutionary Federation largely governed the new state. Hovhannes Kajaznuni was its first prime minister, and Aram Manukian, who had organised the defence of Yerevan, was a central figure until he died of typhus in 1919. The Treaty of Batum, signed in June under Ottoman pressure, left the republic only a small territory around Yerevan and Lake Sevan.

Conditions were desperate. Roughly a third of the population were refugees, harvests had failed, and typhus and cholera spread through overcrowded settlements. In the winter of 1918 to 1919, famine and disease killed on the order of a hundred and fifty thousand people, close to a fifth of the population. American and other international relief, including the organisation later known as Near East Relief, kept large numbers of people alive, especially orphans.

Even so, the government built institutions quickly. It organised ministries and introduced a national currency and postal service. In June 1919 a parliament was elected, with women both voting and standing as candidates. A decree of May 1919 founded a state university, which opened in Alexandropol at the start of 1920 before moving to Yerevan. The red, blue and orange tricolour became the national flag.

• Independence declared on 28 May 1918
• First prime minister: Hovhannes Kajaznuni
• Parliamentary elections held in June 1919 with women voting and serving as deputies
• State university founded in 1919, the ancestor of Yerevan State University

Borders and diplomacy

The republic sent delegations to the Paris Peace Conference to press for recognition and a viable territory. In 1920 the Treaty of Sevres awarded Armenia extensive lands in eastern Anatolia, with the boundary to be drawn by United States President Woodrow Wilson. Wilson delivered his arbitration award in November 1920. By then, though, the treaty had no force on the ground: the Turkish national movement rejected it, and the United States Senate declined to accept a mandate over Armenia.

Relations with the neighbours were tense. Disputes with Georgia over the Lori district led to brief fighting in December 1918, and conflict with Azerbaijan over Karabakh, Zangezur and Nakhichevan went on through 1919 and 1920. These wars used up resources the republic could not spare, and they left it isolated when a serious threat arrived.

The war with Turkey ended in a dictated peace. Turkish nationalist forces under Kazim Karabekir crossed the border in late September 1920, took Kars at the end of October and Alexandropol in early November, and Armenia was forced to accept a ceasefire. The Treaty of Alexandropol, with its severe terms, was signed at almost the same moment as the government handed power to a Soviet administration on 2 December 1920, by a government that had already given up its authority. That is why the treaty's legal standing has been disputed ever since.

Why the First Republic fell

No single cause brought the republic down. The mass arrival of genocide survivors, famine, epidemics and economic blockade had drained the state's limited resources. Border conflicts with Georgia and Azerbaijan split the army's attention, and the great powers' promises brought no practical military protection.

In autumn 1920 the Turkish nationalist army attacked from the west and captured Kars and Alexandropol, while the Red Army and Soviet authorities pressed from the east. The government could not fight on two fronts, and on 2 December it handed power to Soviet bodies. As with the fall of the Bagratid kingdom, foreign invasion combined with the internal weakness of a state worn down by war. So the collapse cannot be put down to one treaty or one political decision.

Sovietisation and the February uprising

Armenia became a Soviet republic, and the new authorities quickly turned on former officials and officers. Arrests and requisitions set off a revolt in February 1921. The insurgents held Yerevan for several weeks until Red Army units retook the city in April. Many of the leaders retreated to Zangezur, where Garegin Nzhdeh had organised a mountain resistance that held out until July 1921.

That resistance is widely credited with one lasting result. Nzhdeh withdrew to Persia only after receiving Soviet assurances that Zangezur would remain part of Soviet Armenia and not pass to Azerbaijan. The region, today the province of Syunik, has been Armenian territory ever since. Under the treaties of Moscow and Kars in 1921, Kars and Ardahan were confirmed as Turkish, and Nakhichevan was placed under Azerbaijani jurisdiction.

Soviet Armenia brought stability, industrialisation and mass literacy. It also brought political repression, which fell heavily on writers and intellectuals in the 1930s, among them Yeghishe Charents. Independence returned only in 1991. Armenians voted overwhelmingly for it, and the Republic of Armenia declared itself the successor to the state founded in 1918.

The republic in Armenian memory

The First Republic lasted two and a half years, but its achievements were real. It kept a population alive through famine, set up a working administration in the worst possible conditions, held a democratic election and founded a university that still operates. It also showed that Armenians could organise a modern state, which mattered enormously to a generation that had just survived the genocide.

Its symbols lived on. The tricolour flag was readopted in August 1990, a year before independence. The republic that followed made 28 May its Republic Day and treated the First Republic as its legal and moral predecessor. The Sardarapat memorial, built in 1968, is one of the country's main national monuments, and its bell is rung at commemorations each May.

For students the period is demanding but rewarding. It means weighing decisions made under extreme pressure and understanding how great-power diplomacy affected small states after the First World War. It also shows that a short-lived government can still shape a nation's future.