Sardarapat and the First Republic of Armenia
After stopping an Ottoman advance at Sardarapat, Armenians declare an independent republic on 28 May 1918; overwhelmed by refugees, famine and war with Turkey, it falls to the Bolsheviks at the end of 1920.
- The Armenian People from Ancient to Modern Times (2 vols.) — Richard G. Hovannisian (ed.), St. Martin's Press (1997)
- Looking Toward Ararat: Armenia in Modern History — Ronald Grigor Suny, Indiana University Press (1993)
- The History of Armenia: From the Origins to the Present — Simon Payaslian, Palgrave Macmillan (2007)
- Black Garden: Armenia and Azerbaijan through Peace and War — Thomas de Waal, NYU Press (2003)
When the Russian Empire collapsed in 1917, the Russian army abandoned the Caucasus front and the Ottoman army advanced east. In late May 1918 Armenian soldiers, volunteers and villagers, many of them genocide survivors, stopped the Ottoman forces at Sardarapat, Bash-Abaran and Karakilisa, near Yerevan. On 28 May the Armenian National Council in Tbilisi declared independence, at almost the same moment as Georgia and Azerbaijan.
- The Armenian People from Ancient to Modern Times (2 vols.) — Richard G. Hovannisian (ed.), St. Martin's Press (1997)
- The History of Armenia: From the Origins to the Present — Simon Payaslian, Palgrave Macmillan (2007)
The new state, led by the Dashnaktsutyun party, was a small, landlocked territory crowded with refugees. In the winter of 1918–19 famine and typhus killed huge numbers; the historian Richard Hovannisian estimates that close to a fifth of the population died. It fought border wars with Georgia and Azerbaijan, especially over Karabakh, Zangezur and Nakhichevan, where Armenians and Muslims both suffered massacres.
- The Armenian People from Ancient to Modern Times (2 vols.) — Richard G. Hovannisian (ed.), St. Martin's Press (1997)
- Black Garden: Armenia and Azerbaijan through Peace and War — Thomas de Waal, NYU Press (2003)
The Treaty of Sèvres (1920), and President Woodrow Wilson’s proposed borders, promised Armenia a large part of eastern Anatolia, but no one was willing to enforce it. In the autumn of 1920 the Turkish nationalist army took Kars and Alexandropol (Gyumri), and in early December, squeezed between Turkey and the Red Army, Armenia’s government handed power to the Bolsheviks. The treaties of Moscow and Kars in 1921 fixed the border that still exists, leaving Ararat in Turkey; in July 1921 Soviet leaders decided that Nagorno-Karabakh, with its Armenian majority, should stay in Azerbaijan, as an autonomous region.
- Looking Toward Ararat: Armenia in Modern History — Ronald Grigor Suny, Indiana University Press (1993)
- Black Garden: Armenia and Azerbaijan through Peace and War — Thomas de Waal, NYU Press (2003)
- The Armenian People from Ancient to Modern Times (2 vols.) — Richard G. Hovannisian (ed.), St. Martin's Press (1997)
Why it matters today
28 May is Armenia's Republic Day, and Sardarapat is remembered as the battle that saved the nation from extinction just three years after the genocide. The red, blue and orange tricolour of 1918 is today's flag. The republic's collapse, and the treaties of 1920–21 that left Mount Ararat, Kars and Nakhichevan outside Armenia and Karabakh inside Azerbaijan, set the stage for conflicts that still hurt.