First Republics & Mutual Cleansing

Three short-lived republics, mutual cleansings in the Caucasus, and the Sovietisation that ended them all.

May 1918 produces three Caucasian republics simultaneously, all at war with each other within weeks. Sardarapat saves Eastern Armenia from Ottoman conquest; the September 1918 Baku massacre kills 10-30,000 Armenians; the 1920 destruction of Armenian Shusha and the 1919 destruction of Agulis are the central Karabakh and Nakhichevan atrocities. By 1921 all three republics are Soviet; the borders Stalin and Narimanov set in July 1921 will define the next century.