No, they did not see it that way.

Vahe H Apelian

 

The title of my blog is a posthumous response to a question my late uncle Dr. Antranig Chalabian had raised wondering whether, “the present-day Soviet rulers of glasnost and perestroika (openness and restructuring) be able to see the important role a greater and stronger Armenia can play in the political network of religious minded peoples on the southern borders of their empire? (read Russian Empire)"  «It remains to be seen», he had concluded.

Obviously Russia did not see it that way.

The quote is from his booklet titled «Emperors, Tsars, and Commissars», he had written in 1988.  (See the linke below). It was the era of Gorbachev's glasnost and perestroika (openness and restructuring). The booklet had dealt with the disastrous politicies of the Byzantine Emperors who instead of supporting their co-religionist Orthodox Armenians, the keepers of the Byzantine Empire's Eastern gate, they waged a fierce theological war against it, whose reprecussions were obviously political, to the detriment of both.

 Then came the Russian Tsars who pursued a policy of Armenia without Armenians, which also proved to be disastrous for their southern border.

 And finally «came Russia’s commissars, following the Bolshevik Revolution of October 1917, and a portion of the short-lived independent Armenian state in Transcaucasi came under Soviet rule, in November 1920.»

Dr. Chalabian supported Soviet Armenia from get go. He wrote that “As long as Turks are Turks and they are living in Turkey, Armenians inhabiting the southern boarders of the Soviet Union have no choice but to seek Russian protection, irrespective of the kind of government which rules that country. This is a political affinity and has nothing to do with ideologies. Only deranged Armenian politicos  and pollical adventurers can think otherwise.»

But lately, apparaently he remained concered and wrote:  «Has the attitude of the Soviets (read Russians ) towards Armenia and the Armenians changed during the past sixty-eight years? Do they see a role for a greater and stronger Armenia in an area which is inhabited by fanatically religious and basically anti-atheist Muslims? I am not so sure. The Soviets do not seem to be moving -or inclined to move – in that direction and are obviously heading  towards the same pitfalls as their predecessors. They have kept Armenia small and weak, thus strengthening their potential enemies in the south. Even the Armenian district of Mountainous Karabagh, once inhabited 93 percent by Armenians, is under Azerbaijan’s rule.»

«As a student of history», he wrote, «it is my deep conviction that the creation of a greater and stronger Armenia by the Soviet Union (other world powers have no access in its borders), with the acquisition of at least some of our lands, will serve the best interests of that country (read Russia)». Because he wrote that Soviet Union ( read Russia ) is vulnerable on two fronts: from within because of demographic shift in favor of Muslims and from the south because of increasing Muslims' demography and their political and military prowess. 

It may be that it may not have even been in the wildest imagination of the political Russian mindset that a day would could come and they would concede their southern border in Caucasus to Turkish Azerbaijan front and thus strengthen the Turkic world way more than it ever was. Surely, let alone Dr. Chalabian to have imagined that a day would come when the Russians would sacrifice  the Soviet Nagorno Karabakh Oblast on the political altar. 

But they did, and in my view they laid the historical ground work that will alter the very character of what Russia was, as white, Orthodox Russians' fiefdom and treating its southern frontier as such. «The journey of of 1000 miles, starts with a single step» says a Chinese saying. The Russians took that very first step by giving up and leaving the Soviet Nagorno-Karabagh Oblast and overseeing it depopulated of its native Armenian inhabitants almost to the last Armenian man and woman, for immediate expedient gains but long term loss. 

And in the process, Russia necessitated Armenia diversity its politics and state relations. 

Link: The Commisars

https://vhapelian.blogspot.com/2022/01/emperors-tsars-and-commissars.html