Two Peoples, One Land
Epochs · Epoch 4 of 9

First Republics & Mutual Cleansing

1918–1921

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.

Version 1 Revised 2026-05-09 Stability actively-curated Archive copy History all versions
Chronology
1920191819211918 · March Days, Baku (atrocity)1918 · Battle of Sardarapat1918 · Battle of Karakilisa1918 · Declaration of three South Caucasian republics1918 · Treaty of Batum1918 · September Days, Baku (atrocity)1918 · Armistice of Mudros1918 · Andranik's Zangezur and Nakhichevan campaigns (atrocity)1918 · Armenian–Georgian war1919 · Destruction of Agulis (atrocity)1920 · Battle and abandonment of Marash (atrocity)1920 · Destruction of Armenian Shusha (atrocity)1920 · Siege of Aintab1920 · Soviet takeover of Azerbaijan1920 · Ganja uprising (atrocity)1920 · Treaty of Sèvres signed1920 · Wilson arbitral award on Armenia1920 · Soviet takeover of Armenia1920 · Treaty of Alexandropol1921 · February uprising in Soviet Armenia1922 · Burning of Smyrna (atrocity)1923 · Treaty of Lausanne
atrocity event

May 1918

The collapse of the Russian Empire and the failure of the Transcaucasian Federation produced three independent republics in the same week of May 1918: Georgia (26 May), Armenia (28 May, declared in Tiflis and ratified at Sardarapat), and Azerbaijan (28 May, the ADR). All three were at war within weeks. The Ottoman armies of Enver Pasha and Halil Pasha advanced into the Caucasus through May-September 1918; the Battle of Sardarapat (21-29 May 1918) and the parallel Karakilisa and Bash-Aparan battles halted the Ottoman advance on Yerevan.

The Caucasian atrocities of 1918-21

The pattern of mutual cleansing the March Days dispute documents at city scale played out at regional scale. The March Days in Baku (30 March - 1 April 1918) killed 3,000-12,000 Azerbaijani Muslims; the September Days (15-19 September 1918), after the Ottoman-Azerbaijani Army of Islam took the city, killed 10,000-30,000 Armenians. The destruction of Armenian Shusha (March 1920) burned the upper Armenian half of the city, the largest Armenian centre of Karabakh, and reduced the Armenian population from approximately 22,000 to zero. The destruction of Agulis (December 1919) emptied the formerly Armenian-majority town in southern Nakhichevan. Andranik Ozanian's 1918-20 Zangezur and Nakhichevan campaigns burned Azerbaijani-Muslim villages along his line of march.

Sèvres, Wilson, and the unrealised Armenia

The post-WWI settlement at the Treaty of Sèvres (10 August 1920) and the Wilson arbitral award (22 November 1920) assigned much of Erzurum, Bitlis, Van and Trabzon vilayets to a future Armenian state. The instrument was never legally rescinded; it was superseded by the Treaty of Lausanne (1923) under Mustafa Kemal's military victories against the Greek and French armies in 1920-22.

Sovietisation, 1920-21

The Red Army arrived in Azerbaijan in April 1920 and Armenia in November-December 1920. The Treaty of Alexandropol (December 1920) was signed by the dying Dashnak First Republic of Armenia under duress; the Treaty of Moscow (March 1921) and Treaty of Kars (October 1921) between Soviet Russia and Kemalist Turkey returned Kars, Ardahan and Surmalu to Turkey, and assigned Nakhichevan to Soviet Azerbaijan as an autonomous protected region. The February 1921 Dashnak uprising in Yerevan was suppressed by April.

The Karabakh decision

The most consequential institutional act of the period was the July 1921 Caucasian Bureau decision on Karabakh. On 4 July the Bureau voted to assign Karabakh to Soviet Armenia. Overnight, under pressure from Nariman Narimanov and the Azerbaijani party leadership, the decision was reversed. On 5 July Karabakh was assigned to Soviet Azerbaijan as the future NKAO (formed 1923). Saparov's archival reconstruction of the two-day plenum is the standard scholarly source. The 1923 administrative shape of NKAO was drawn to maximise Armenian-majority enclosure inside Azerbaijani territory while preserving an Azerbaijani strip (Lachin, later the corridor) between Armenia proper and Karabakh.

What the period set

The borders, populations and institutional arrangements of the next 70 years were locked in by 1923. The 1918-21 atrocities became the deep grievances that would re-emerge in 1988-94 and 2020-23. The 1921 Karabakh decision defined the spatial spine of the entire later conflict. The atlas treats this epoch as the constitutive period: the period the rest of the conflict literally and politically rests on.

Events of the period

Grouped into year-bands so the period reads as a sequence rather than a wall.

1918–1919 10 events
1918
March Days, Baku
Five days of intercommunal civil war in Baku, 30 March – 1 April 1918 (with violence continuing through 5 April), in which Armenian Dashnak forces under Bolshevik command killed thousands of Azerbaijani civilians. Casualty estimates range from ~3,000 (academic) to ~12,000 (Azerbaijani state historiography). Foundational atrocity in modern Azerbaijani memory.
massacre critical casualties 3,000–12,000
1918
Battle of Sardarapat
Decisive Armenian defensive victory over the Ottoman Army of the Caucasus, 21–29 May 1918. Together with the parallel battles at Bash-Aparan and Karakilisa, the Sardarapat engagement halted the Ottoman advance on Yerevan and created the conditions for the declaration of Armenian independence on 28 May 1918.
battle critical
1918
Battle of Karakilisa
Battle of Karakilisa in May 1918, one of the three Armenian defensive battles that halted the Ottoman advance toward the Armenian core. Alongside Sardarapat and Bash Abaran, it made the declaration and survival of the First Republic possible.
battle
1918
Declaration of three South Caucasian republics
Breakup of the Transcaucasian federation and declaration of the Georgian, Azerbaijani and Armenian republics, 26–28 May 1918. The event created the first modern Armenian and Azerbaijani states, but under conditions of Ottoman military pressure, famine, refugee crisis and unresolved borders in Karabakh, Zangezur, Nakhichevan and Lori.
declaration critical
1918
Treaty of Batum
Punitive Ottoman treaty with the newly declared South Caucasian republics in June 1918. For Armenia it reduced the state to a small Yerevan-Sevan core, making independence legally recognised but nearly unviable.
treaty critical
1918
September Days, Baku
Three-day massacre of the Armenian population of Baku, 15–17 September 1918, following the city's capture by the Ottoman Army of Islam under [[figure:nuri-pasha|Nuri Pasha]]. Casualty estimates of 10,000–30,000 Armenian dead. Direct retaliation for the [[event:march-days-baku-1918|March Days]] six months earlier.
massacre critical casualties 10,000–30,000
1918
Armistice of Mudros
Armistice of Mudros, signed on 30 October 1918, ending Ottoman participation in the First World War. It required Ottoman withdrawal from the Caucasus and opened the legal and political space for Armenian recovery, Allied occupation and the Constantinople tribunals.
treaty critical
1918–1920
Andranik's Zangezur and Nakhichevan campaigns
Armed campaigns by General Andranik Ozanian and Armenian forces in Zangezur and Nakhichevan, 1918–1920. The operations destroyed or emptied many Muslim Azerbaijani villages and helped determine why Zangezur remained with Armenia while Nakhichevan was later placed under Azerbaijani autonomy.
displacement critical displaced 100,000–130,000
1918–1919
Armenian–Georgian war
Two-week Armenian-Georgian war in December 1918 over Lori and adjacent border districts after Ottoman withdrawal. British mediation created a neutral zone, illustrating how quickly the new South Caucasian republics turned from shared imperial collapse to territorial rivalry.
war
1919
Destruction of Agulis
Christmas-Eve attack on the formerly Armenian-majority town of [[place:agulis|Agulis]] (Aylis) in southern [[place:nakhichevan|Nakhichevan]] by Azerbaijani irregulars and local Muslim villagers. Most of the surviving Armenian inhabitants were killed; the [[heritage:agulis-st-thomas|St Thomas Monastery]] was damaged. The Armenian novelist [[figure:aylisli|Akram Aylisli]]'s 2012 novella *Stone Dreams* centred on this event and was banned and burned in Azerbaijan.
massacre casualties 400–1,500
1920–1921 10 events
1920
Battle and abandonment of Marash
Three-week battle between Turkish nationalist forces and the French Cilicia mandate garrison around the Armenian-populated city of [[place:maras|Marash]]. The French withdrew on 11 February without warning the Armenian civilians; thousands were killed in the city or in the subsequent winter march. Marked the end of the post-1918 Armenian return to Cilicia and presaged the Lausanne settlement.
battle critical casualties 5,000–15,000 displaced 8,000–12,000
1920
Destruction of Armenian Shusha
Destruction of the Armenian half of Shusha by Azerbaijani forces, 22 March 1920. The Armenian quarter was systematically burned; hundreds to several thousand Armenians killed and the survivors expelled. The first ethnic cleansing of a Karabakh urban centre and the foundational atrocity in Armenian memory of the early conflict.
pogrom critical casualties 500–5,000
1920–1921
Siege of Aintab
Eleven-month siege of [[place:aintab|Aintab]] by Turkish nationalist forces against the French garrison and the Armenian self-defence units. The eventual French withdrawal under the 1921 [[event:franco-turkish-treaty-ankara-1921|Franklin-Bouillon agreement]] left the surviving Armenian community of approximately 20,000 to flee south into French-mandate Syria.
battle casualties 2,000–6,000
1920
Soviet takeover of Azerbaijan
Entry of the 11th Red Army into Baku on 28 April 1920 and proclamation of the Azerbaijan SSR. The takeover ended the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic, secured Baku oil for Soviet Russia, and repositioned Karabakh, Zangezur and Nakhichevan as Bolshevik territorial problems rather than Allied-era diplomatic disputes.
military_operation critical
1920
Ganja uprising
Armed uprising of [[party:musavat|Musavat]] forces and Azerbaijani officers against the recently installed Soviet Azerbaijani regime in [[place:ganja|Ganja]] (then Yelisavetpol). Suppressed by the 11th Red Army with significant civilian casualties in the Armenian and Azerbaijani quarters of the city. Marked the end of organised resistance to Sovietisation in Azerbaijan.
battle casualties 1,000–3,000
1920
Treaty of Sèvres signed
Signing of the Treaty of Sèvres on 10 August 1920. The treaty recognised an enlarged Armenian state and submitted the Armenia-Turkey boundary to US President Woodrow Wilson’s arbitration. It was never implemented and was replaced by Lausanne after the Turkish nationalist victory.
treaty critical
1920
Wilson arbitral award on Armenia
Woodrow Wilson’s 22 November 1920 arbitral award under Article 89 of Sèvres, delimiting an Armenia-Turkey frontier that granted Armenia large parts of Van, Bitlis, Erzurum and Trabzon vilayets. It was never enforced but remains central to Armenian legal memory.
declaration
1920
Soviet takeover of Armenia
Sovietisation of Armenia on 2 December 1920, as the defeated Dashnak government faced Turkish military pressure and signed the Treaty of Alexandropol. The takeover ended the First Republic and moved Armenia’s survival, borders and institutions into the Soviet system.
military_operation critical
1920
Treaty of Alexandropol
Treaty signed by the defeated Dashnak government and Kemalist Turkey on the night of 2–3 December 1920. It reduced Armenia to a Yerevan-centred rump and was signed just as Soviet power took over, so it was never ratified but remains the starkest symbol of Armenia’s military collapse.
treaty critical
1921
February uprising in Soviet Armenia
Dashnak-led revolt against Soviet rule in Armenia in February 1921, sparked by Cheka arrests, requisitions and repression. Rebels briefly retook Yerevan before Red Army forces returned; defeated insurgents retreated to Zangezur.
declaration

Further reading

  1. Thomas de Waal, Black Garden: Armenia and Azerbaijan Through Peace and War, 2003
  2. Firuz Kazemzadeh, The Struggle for Transcaucasia (1917–1921), 1951
  3. Tadeusz Swietochowski, Russia and Azerbaijan: A Borderland in Transition, 1995
  4. Audrey L. Altstadt, The Azerbaijani Turks: Power and Identity Under Russian Rule, 1992
  5. Richard G. Hovannisian, The Republic of Armenia (4 vols.), 1996
  6. Michael A. Reynolds, Shattering Empires: The Clash and Collapse of the Ottoman and Russian Empires, 1908–1918, 2011
  7. Razmik Panossian, The Armenians: From Kings and Priests to Merchants and Commissars, 2006
  8. Robert H. Hewsen, Armenia: A Historical Atlas, 2001
  9. Allied Powers; Ottoman Empire, Treaty of Sèvres, 1920
  10. Woodrow Wilson, Decision of the President of the United States of America respecting the Frontier between Turkey and Armenia, 1920
  11. Christopher J. Walker, Armenia: The Survival of a Nation, 1980
  12. Vahakn N. Dadrian & Taner Akçam, Judgment at Istanbul: The Armenian Genocide Trials, 2011
  13. Gerard J. Libaridian, Modern Armenia: People, Nation, State, 2004
  14. Raymond Kévorkian, The Armenian Genocide: A Complete History, 2011
  15. Richard G. Hovannisian, Simon Payaslian (eds.), Armenian Cilicia, 2008