Armenian Congress of Eastern Armenians

The Armenian Congress of Eastern Armenians was established in October 1917. It united the Armenian National Councils all around the Russian Armenia, (Karabakh, Baku and Tiflis).

The Council worked like a provisional government, with ministries of military, refugees, health and education. It was based in Yerevan. Its decisions were accepted as Armenian decisions; given the conditions it was the best "plenipotentiary" representative parlementery system of the eastern Armenians. It was a member of the Special Transcaucasian Committee.

It had the power to negotiate with the Ottoman Empire and the Central Powers and later the permanent executive committee selected by the congress declared the Democratic Republic of Armenia.

Famous quotes containing the words armenian, congress and/or eastern:

    The exile is a singular, whereas refugees tend to be thought of in the mass. Armenian refugees, Jewish refugees, refugees from Franco Spain. But a political leader or artistic figure is an exile. Thomas Mann yesterday, Theodorakis today. Exile is the noble and dignified term, while a refugee is more hapless.... What is implied in these nuances of social standing is the respect we pay to choice. The exile appears to have made a decision, while the refugee is the very image of helplessness.
    Mary McCarthy (1912–1989)

    What have Massachusetts and the North sent a few sane representatives to Congress for, of late years?... All their speeches put together and boiled down ... do not match for manly directness and force, and for simple truth, the few casual remarks of crazy John Brown on the floor of the Harper’s Ferry engine-house,—that man whom you are about to hang, to send to the other world, though not to represent you there.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

    I need not tell you of the inadequacy of the American shipping marine on the Pacific Coast.... For this reason it seems to me that there is no subject to which Congress can better devote its attention in the coming session than the passage of a bill which shall encourage our merchant marine in such a way as to establish American lines directly between New York and the eastern ports and South American ports, and both our Pacific Coast ports and the Orient and the Philippines.
    William Howard Taft (1857–1930)