IN HINDSIGHT: I reproduced Excerpts from Dr. Antranig Chalabian’s booklet “Emperors, Tsars, and Commissars”. Second Edition, Michigan, 1988.
The Greek emperors had been unable to assess the importance of a strong Armenian kingdom for the defense of their eastern borders and had paid the price ! Russian tsars followed the same footsteps of the Byzantine emperors by trying to convert Armenia into a Russian province, even if need be without Armenians ! Their majesties were forgetting that the southern border of their empire was inhabited by potentially dangerous Moslem peoples who aspired to unite under the banner of the Turkish sultan -The Pan Turanian movement – and that a greater and stronger Armenia would divide and separate those peoples, instead of uniting and strengthening them.
The Armenian for centuries looked upon the Russian court as the only power in the area capable of liberating them from the unbearable Turkish yoke and granting them autonomy, but to no avail. “Rus kerin piti ga” (Uncle Russia will come) was uttered by the Armenian peasants and intellectual alike, generation after generation with the devout hope and sincere expectation.
Peter the Great (1672-1725) was inclined to help the Armenians but was pre-occupied with the “Northern Question” (conflict with the Swedes). During the Russo-Persian war of 1827, the Armenian bishop (later catholicos) Nerses Ashtaraketsi led a group of over a thousand volunteers to fight on the side of tsar’s armies against the Persians. During the aftermath of victory, when the bishop raised the question of autonomy for Armenia to General Paskevich, commander of the Russian armies, he was banished to Bessarabia !
One of the most notorious advocates of an Armenia without Armenians was Tsar Nicholas II and his viceroys in Tiblisi, Varantzov-Dashkov and the Grand Duke Nicholas Nicholaevich Romanov. According to the renown Armenian historian Leo (Arakel Babakhandian), it was Tsar Nicholas II’s ambassador in Istanbul, Nelidov, who had allegedly toll Sultan Abdul Hamid II, “Massacrez, Votre Majeste, massacrez !” (Massacre, Your Majesty, massacre [the Armenians].) And Sultan Abdul Hamid, one of the most bloodthirsty tyrants in history, gave the order, in the fall of 1895, to his faithful subjects in the name of God, to break into Armenian homes with their swords and hatchets, and kill any Armenian on sight. The death toll was 300,000 innocent victims.
Sultan Abdul Hamid II would not have dared take such a step without the connivance of Tsar Nicholas II and the Christian powers of Europe.
During World War I (1914-1918), the Russian armies attached Turkey and occupied historic Armenia up to Erzincan. The Armenian Genocide meanwhile was in full swing. Tsar Nicholas II personally visited Tbilisi in 1916. Catholicos Gevorg Y of Etchmiadzin paid a courtesy visit to Tsar Nicholas II and pleaded for an autonomous Armenian state under Russia’s protection. The answer was negative. Russia;s tsars were not only reluctant to creat an autonomous Armenian state that would break the chain of Turkic peoples inhabiting the southern boarders of their empire, but they also vehemently opposed all attempts of Armenian liberation by General Antranik and his freedom fighters, between 1890 and 1920.
Links for the previous sections
The booklet: (No. 1/4)
https://vhapelian.blogspot.com/2021/09/in-hindsight-emperors-tzars-and.html
The Emperors: (No. 2/4)
http://vhapelian.blogspot.com/2021/09/in-hindsight-emperors-no-2.html
The Comissars: (No. 4/4)
https://vhapelian.blogspot.com/2022/01/emperors-tsars-and-commissars.html
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