Democratic Republic of Armenia - Background

Background

See also: Partitioning of the Ottoman Empire and Russian Armenia

The Russian offensive during the Caucasus Campaign of World War I and subsequent occupation and the creation of a provisional administrative government gave hope for the liberation of Western Armenia from Ottoman Turkish rule. With the help of a several battalions of Armenians recruited from the Russian Empire, the Russian army had made progress on the Caucasus Front, advancing as far as the city of Erzerum in 1916. The Russians continued to make considerable advances even after the toppling of Tsar Nicholas II in February 1917.

In March 1917, the spontaneous revolution that toppled Tsar Nicholas and the Romanov dynasty established a caretaker administration, known as the Provisional Government. Shortly after, the Provisional Government replaced Grand Duke Nicholas' administration in the Caucasus with the five-member Special Transcaucasian Committee, known by the acronym Ozakom. The Ozakom included Armenian Democrat Mikayel Papadjanian, and was set to heal wounds inflicted by the old regime. In doing so, Western Armenia was to have a general commissar and was to be subdivided into the districts of Trebizond, Erzerum, Bitlis, and Van. The decree was a major concession to the Armenians: Western Armenia was placed under the central government and through it under immediate Armenian jurisdiction. Dr. Hakob Zavriev would serve as the assistant for civil affairs and he in turn would see to it that most civil officials were Armenian.

In October 1917, the Bolsheviks seized power from the Provisional Government and announced that they would be withdrawing troops from both the Western and Caucasus fronts. The Georgians, Armenians and Muslims of the Caucasus all rejected the Bolsheviks' legitimacy.