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Zakhida ALIZADE
Ph.D. (Hist.), Senior research fellow at the A. Bakikhanov Institute of History, National Academy of Sciences of Azerbaijan (Baku, Azerbaijan).
CZARIST NATIONAL-COLONIAL POLICY IN THE CENTRAL CAUCASUS
A b s
The author uses a vast amount of factual material to reveal the essence of czarist Russia’s colonial imperial policy toward the Muslims of the Caucasus, and Northern Azerbaijan in particular, when the area was finally conquered in the early 19th century.
This discriminatory policy was acutely felt in all spheres of life; the Azeris, in particular, were deprived of many politi-
r a c t
cal, civil, and religious rights. Russia’s reforms in the area deprived Northern Azerbaijan of its previous administrative, economic, and political status (a situation that continued until 1917). The Azeri language was no longer used in official spheres, while the Russian Empire consistently supported the Russian language as a means of official and everyday communication.
I n t r o d u c t i o n
After conquering the Central Caucasus early in the 19th century, the Russian Empire created a harsh colonial system of military-political oppression and the economic exploitation of the indigenous population. To make its policy even more effective, Russia relied on national discrimination: the Central Caucasian peoples were subjected to “national-cultural suppression; they were selected as objects of enforced Russification, the policy pursued by the czarist authorities.”1
We should bear in mind that by moving into the Caucasus, and Northern Azerbaijan as its part, the Russian Empire proceeded from the Euro-centrist idea of the world. This means that the East was seen as vacant lands, a void that belonged to no one; the ethnic groups that the colonialists met as they advanced inland were taken for loose communities or even gangs. Imperial consciousness divided the world into “civilized” and “uncivilized.”2
This invited two conclusions: first, the “savage peoples” could not expect civilized treatment according to international standards and, second, cruelty was the only and most effective method of dealing with the savages, while intimidation and oppression were the only language to be used when dealing with the “uncivilized” world. Chancellor Alexander Gorchakov said on this score: “The Asian peoples respect only obvious force; they have not yet learned to be impressed by the moral force of intellect and education.”3
The Central Caucasus became the testing ground where the Russian Empire persistently “implanted the humane idea” with particular cruelty. Russia’s nationalities policy in relation to the Muslim peoples of the Caucasus was becoming increasingly crueler and uglier.
The czarist government demonstrated a lot of imagination and inventiveness to keep the Muslims of the Central Caucasus under pressure: inequality of the non-Russian peoples was legally registered by the Law on Non-Russians,4 together with the hegemony of the Russians in the multi-national empire. The division into two social and legal groups—the metropolitan nations and the “non-Russians”—was a fact of the empire’s legal system and social life.
The former were represented mainly by the Slavic peoples, while the term “non-Russians” in the broad sense was applied to all the non-Slavic subjects.5 Under the pretext of “undeveloped civic awareness,” they were deprived of many rights the other group enjoyed. The Muslims of the Russian Empire (Azeris being no exception in this respect) were included in the latter group.
The Christian non-Slavic peoples (Georgians, Armenians, Finns, and the Baltic ethnic groups) stood between the two major groups: the Armenians enjoyed more privileges than the Azeris in practically all social and public spheres.
The Armenians, in fact, had the same rights as the Russians; in the Central Caucasus they were even preferred to Russians as civil servants, and filled many top civil and military posts.
The Azeris, on the contrary, were deprived of many political, civil, and religious rights; they could not rise high in civil service or the army. Those who received secondary or higher education were limited in professional activities: liberal professions and teaching were practically closed for them; Azeri students could not count on state scholarships, and some of the higher educational establishments kept their doors closed to Azeris.
Excluded from conscription they knew preciously little about military matters and found themselves impotent when relations with the Armenians reached their height. Deprived of adequate military training and having no officers able to command, the Azeris could not effectively protect the civilians against the Armenian armed gangs.
1 Istoria SSSR s drevneyshikh vremen do nashikh dney, Vol. 6, Moscow, 1968, p. 25.
2 E. Anisimov, “Geopolitika,” Rodina, No. 2, 1989, p. 51.
3 Ibidem.
4 See: Svod zakonov Rossiiskoy imperii, Vol. 2, St. Petersburg, 1892.
5 See: Sovremennye etnicheskie protsessy v SSSR, Moscow, 1977, p. 41.
Czarist Russia’s Colonial Conception in the Humanitarian Sphere in Relation to the Central Caucasian Muslims
Czarist Russia’s discriminatory policy was especially felt in education and culture. The Russian authorities effectively kept the Azeri native language, press, literature, theater, and other forms of culture out of circulation.
Late in the 19th century, prominent Azeri publicist writer, Orientalist, teacher, and public figure Magomedaga Shakhtakhtinskiy (1846-1931) applied to Soloviev, the head of the Main Administration of the Press of the Russian Empire, for permission to start the newspaper Tiflis in Azeri. His request was declined; during their personal meeting the czarist official clarified the point: “I cannot allow a newspaper in Azeri. Why do you need it in the first place? The intelligentsia should read in Russian, while the common people would be better looking after their sheep.”6
An official letter from the Main Administration of the Press said: “Speakers of languages other than Russian should be brought closer to the Russians through education in the Russian language. A common Muslim periodical will never bring the Muslims closer to the Russians. It will even alienate them. M. Shakhtakhtinskiy’s intention to publish a newspaper in Azeri might provoke journalism in the native tongue. So far these people have had no publications in Azeri; the appearance of such a publication might provoke separation of the Azeris from Russia.”7
The response was not the private initiative of an ill-informed official: it was what the czarist colonial policy in the language sphere was about. The czarist government was living in constant fear of the national-cultural progress of the Muslim peoples of the Caucasus provided they were granted normal conditions for their linguistic development. Here is what a reactionary bureaucrat of the imperial Ministry of Education wrote at one time: “If you give them a written language, develop it into the semblance of a literary language, write down its grammar, and teach it in schools, you will (God forbid!) develop this nationality and affirm its self-awareness.”8
In the Central Caucasus, the Russian Empire tried to check the development of national secular education in the native language. Russian dominated in the educational system, starting from primary schools up to comprehensive and classical schools. In the 1880s, however, so-called Russian-Tartar secondary schools appeared, in which Azeri was taught as a special discipline.
Late in the 19th century, the most active and the most progressive-minded members of the Azeri intelligentsia overcame the czarist administration’s stubborn resistance and set up schools that used new methods of teaching (usuli-jadid) and offered instruction in the native tongue. There were too few of them though to play an important role in the educational system of Azerbaijan.
The czarist government, on the other hand, did much more to develop the Armenian educational system: early in the 1890s there were about 520 Armenian schools in the Central Caucasus.9
Dozens of periodicals in Armenian played an unseemly role in fanning nationalism among common Armenians. Early in the 20th century, a Russian diplomat had the following to say about the role of the press in the “Armenian question:” “Because of its ill-intended zeal the Armenian people failed to grasp the meaning of what its agitators were driving at. It was thanks to the press that the truth of
6 Tiflisskiy listok, No. 211, 1905.
7 State Historical Archives of the Georgian Republic, rec. gr. 480, inv. 1, f. 1358, sheet 2.
8 T. Musaeva, Revolutsia i narodnoe obrazovanie v Azerbaijane, Baku, 1979, p. 25.
9 See: K. Zalevskiy, Natsional'nye dvizhenia. Obshchestvennoe dvizhenie v Rossii v nachale XX veka, Kniga YH (Vol. 4, Part H), St. Petersburg, 1911, p. 228.
Armenia’s development was concealed under a thick layer of lies, through which the ray of truth could barely be seen.”10
The Azeri language was completely expelled from the official and public spheres. At the early stages of occupation of Northern Azerbaijan (while it was still ruled by the so-called military administration, that is, until 1840), the local administrative and judicial structures still used the Azeri language on a limited scale.
After the 1840 administrative and judicial reforms in the Central Caucasus, the Azeri language was completely banned from the state structures; it was replaced with Russian throughout the entire region. The process was accompanied by replacing Azeri officials with Russians, who knew neither the language nor the local traditions.
By imposing Russian laws, administration, financial system, and officialdom on Azerbaijan, the czarist government was pursuing its own aims: the Azeris should be deprived of the elements of their own statehood; their culture should be crippled beyond recognition, their native languages should be kept out of circulation, while the nation should be steeped in ignorance and Russified.
Infringement on the Civil Rights of the Central Caucasian Muslim Population
The administrative system was one of the main and mightiest weapons of the czarist colonial policy. In the mid-19th century, czarist Russia, which rearranged the Central Caucasus in the course of its administrative-territorial reform, deprived the local nations of the right to preserve even the remnants of their own statehood; the reform ignored the principle of ethnical unity and territorial integrity of the Azeris.
The administrative-territorial reform divided the historical Azeri lands between the Baku, Elizavetpol (Ganja), Tiflis, and Irvan gubernias, the Daghestanian region, and the Zagataly okrug. This division survived until 1917; it meant that under czarism Azerbaijan, as a single administrative, economic, and political unit, did not exist.
This, and resettlement of the Armenians in Northern Azerbaijan, deprived the Azeris of their territorial integrity; dispersed over vast territories, the compact Azeri groups lost their ethnic context. Separated from the main ethnic group, smaller groups found themselves in an alien (Armenian, in our case) ethnic milieu. In fact, Azeris were pushed away from their own lands.
Consolidation of the Azeris into a nation slowed down: they were deprived of their territorial integrity as one of the nation-forming elements that creates the natural environment for the political, cultural, and economic cohesion of any people.
The Russian Empire ignored not only the rights of the Azeris as an ethnic community, but also the civil rights of each of its members. The urban reform of the 1870s carried out in Azerbaijan on a limited scale serves as one of the best examples. The official conception of urban reform in Northern Azerbaijan was rooted in the idea that the local communities were ill-prepared to administer themselves.
It was under this pretext that the Russian government made the principle of national inequality part of the reform’s entire conception. Under the “Urban Regulations,” the non-Christians (Azeris) could not count on more than half of the deputies in urban self-administration. This explains why, in 1877, 2,900 voters, who belonged to the autochthonous ethnic groups and were Muslims, elected the
10Armiano-tatarskaia smuta na Kavkaze, kak odin iz fazisov armianskogo voprosa, Baku, 1993, p. 36.
same number of deputies to the Baku City Duma as 499 Christians.11 In the elections to the 1886-1889 Baku Duma, 3,541 Azeris and only 732 Russians and Armenians were represented by the same number of deputies.
This shameful cheating was described as a privilege the Russian colonial authorities granted to the Azeris. It is no wonder that between 1877 and 1917, that is, throughout the entire period of functioning of the Baku City Duma, not one Azeri was elected as the city head. The Russian and Armenian deputies of the Baku City Duma easily outnumbered the Azeri deputies.
Differentiated Approach to the Central Caucasian Peoples in the Political and Economic Spheres
The imperial economic policy was the ugliest phenomenon designed to make Northern Azerbaijan an agrarian and raw-material appendage; the empire went even further: the national Azeri bourgeoisie was deliberately kept away from the leading industries, particularly oil production. Russians and Armenians, however, were free to operate in all the economic spheres of Azerbaijan.
The Azeri bourgeoisie had to close ranks in the face of the onslaught of strong Russian and Armenian business circles: Azeris demanded the right to set up joint stock companies, partnerships, trade and industrial companies, and to be involved in all the other business spheres closed to the Azeris and other Muslims by Russian laws.12
There were places closed to Muslims (Azeris among them) where they could not settle, buy real estate, or start businesses, privileges limited to Russian nobles and merchants.13
Foreign capital successfully used the official limitations and bans to flow into the key economic branches of Northern Azerbaijan—oil production and oil refining, as well as mining. In fact, in these branches too, Armenian capital was much deeper rooted than Azeri capital.
The czarist government was firmly resolved to keep the Azeris away from the oil industry as a strategically important field. The Iltizam leasing system that existed in certain industrial branches until 1872 ensured Armenian domination of the oil business. Between 1850 and 1872, the Baku oilfields remained under Armenian control: Ter-Gukasov, the central figure for the first 13 years, and then Mirzoev. The obsolete system was abolished in 1872, but the situation remained practically the same even though at the first stage, when no foreign capital was present, the oil industry was obviously underfunded.
On 31 December, 1872, after the first tenders, the oil fields in Balakhany, Surakhany, and Bibi-Eybat went to 13 new owners, just 2 of them being Azeris. They acquired 21 wells out of 163. The others were bought by Russian and Armenian businessmen: 50 percent of the money paid for the oil wells came from the Russians; 44.5 percent from the Armenians; and a meager 5 percent from the Azeris.14
The Azeri national bourgeoisie spent the next several decades trying to gain a stronger position in the Baku oil industry, but failed: the czarist administration proved stronger.
By the early 20th century, the national Azeri bourgeoisie owned 49 (29.3 percent) of the total 167 oil enterprises of Northern Azerbaijan, its capital being invested mainly in small and partly in
11 See: Z.B. Muradalieva, Iz istorii obshchestvennoi zhizni goroda Baku v kontse XIX stoletia, Gurtulush, Baku, 1992 (No. 23-24), p. 23.
12 See: A. Arsharuni, Kh. Gabidullin, Ocherki panislamizma i pantiurkizma v Rossii, Moscow, 1931, p. 8.
13 See: D.B. Seidzade, Azerbaidzhanskie deputaty v Gosudarstvennoi dume Rossii, Baku, 1991, p. 13.
14 See: T. Swietochowski, “Russkiy Azerbaidzhan (1905-1920),” Khazar, No. 21, 1990, p. 92.
medium enterprises; there was no Azeri money in the largest oil enterprises (which produced about 1 million barrels of oil a year).15
Fifty-five firms, or 32.9 percent of the oil industry of Northern Azerbaijan, belonged to Armenians; the Russians came second with 21 firms, or 12.8 percent; they were followed by the Jews (17 firms, or 10.2 percent); 6 firms belonged to the Georgians; and 19 to foreign businessmen.16 Armenian and Russian capitalists owned medium and large enterprises, which means that the bulk of the Apsheron oil produced and the money it earned went to the Russian and Armenian firms.
Russian and Armenian capital was officially encouraged at the expense of the Azeri businessmen who were kept away from the oil industry. It is no wonder that, starting in 1872 when the Iltizam system was abolished and until 1917, the Russians, Armenians, and later foreigners dominated in the oil industry of Northern Azerbaijan.
The shortsighted Russian policy in the Central Caucasus made the Armenians the “masters of the region;”17 by the end of the 19th century the Russian political and intellectual elite had become concerned with the Armenians’ more strong position in the Central Caucasus, which interfered with the Russification policy.
V. Velichko, a Russian political figure, historian, and expert in Caucasian studies, wrote at one time: “Armenian big shots have seized all the vital sources, such as markets and banks, and have a firm grip on the fates of the officials. Their influence is subtle and therefore highly dangerous. They enjoy immunity in all situations in which any other Caucasian individual would suffer.” The Russian author concluded, not without sadness: “Something should be done to prevent the spread of Armenian influence in the Caucasus: this calls for urgent measures.”18
After recognizing the danger, the czarist government somewhat readjusted its ethnic policy in the region; by the late 19th century the Armenians had lost some of their former privileges.
In 1881, Prince A. Dondukov-Korsakov, head of the Caucasian administration, instructed the local administrations to replace Armenians with Russians on some of the Armenian lands. This was done to promote Russification,19 but it never developed into a consistent policy.
By the mid-1890s, the situation in the Central Caucasus became even more disquieting: the Russian authorities were forced to take urgent measures to tame the Armenian nationalist forces. After becoming entrenched in the region, they deemed it possible to ignore the Russians and their interests.
The czarist authorities were unpleasantly surprised to discover that the economic and social privileges had encouraged revolutionary and nationalist sentiments among the Armenians; this was amply confirmed by the Dashnaktsutiun and Gnchak parties, which were rapidly gaining popularity across the Central Caucasus.20
V. Velichko was right to hold that “the Armenian economic conquest of the region that developed into industrial-political terror would inevitably lead to political complications.”21
At the early stage, the Dashnaktsutiun’s activities were limited by Turkey: early in the 1890s it sent its activists there to kindle riots. The czarist government, wishing to weaken the Ottoman Empire, its eternal enemy, encouraged the Armenians and even supported them.
By the mid-1890s the situation had radically changed.
15 See: Istoria Azerbaidzhana, Vol. 3, Part 1, Baku, 1963, p. 255.
16 Ibidem.
17 N. Shavrov, Novaia ugroza russkomu delu v Zakavkaz’e: predstoiashchaia rasprodazha zemel na Mugani inor-odtsam, St. Petersburg, 1911, pp. 65-66.
18 V.L. Velichko, Kavkaz: Russkoe delo i mezhdunarodnye voprosy, Baku, 1990, p. 59.
19 See: K. Zalevskiy, op. cit., p. 227.
20 See: L.A. Khurshudian, K.S. Khudaverdian, “Armianskie politichsekie partii. Nekotorye voprosy istorii i ide-ologii,” in: Neproletarskie partii i organizatsii natsional'nykh rayonov Rossii, Moscow, 1980, p. 100.
21 V.L. Velichko, op. cit., p. 130.
Having failed in Turkey, the party moved to the Central Caucasus to demand freedom for the Caucasian Armenians. This was the last straw: the czarist administration’s patience was exhausted.
By that time the Russians were already concerned with the Armenian Gregorian Church: Etch-miadzin, the seat of the Catholicos, had developed into the Armenian religious, cultural, and political center. The Armenian Church was in fact “a semi-latent statehood of sorts;” on many occasions it “placed secret political activities above its religious calling.” This encouraged nationalism of the most ambitious part of Armenian society.22
The Armenian Church was enormously rich: it flourished on voluntary donations of the local Armenians and on the money that poured in from all corners of the world (from the Armenian diaspo-ras in Italy, America, and France). Its real estate and other possessions were estimated at 113 million rubles.23 This complicated the local situation, because the money was used to fund political and nationalist organizations and church schools in the Central Caucasus.
These schools, which had long ago developed into centers of Armenian nationalist propaganda, were closed down in 1897 on a decision of Prince Golitsyn, head of the civilian administration, because they “developed the spirit of national exclusiveness.” Their property was confiscated in favor of the Ministry of Education.24
While the Armenian Gregorian Church retained its 113 million rubles, the czarist administration in the Caucasus could not be sure of its power. On 12 June, 1903, the national Armenian fund of the Armenian Gregorian Church was secularized under a czarist decree, and the money was transferred to the Russian administration.25
The relations between the Armenians and the administration rapidly worsened to the extent that the Armenian Catholicos anathematized the Russian royal family.26 The Armenian political parties, Dashnaktsutiun in particular, plunged into frenzied activities in the Central Caucasus; terror against the Russian administration became one of their weapons. In 1903, Prince Golitsyn survived a failed terrorist act organized by Gnchak.27
The revolution of 1905-1907 encouraged Armenian terrorists to the extent that in August 1905 Etchmiadzin retrieved the sequestered property of the Armenian Gregorian Church.28
Other concessions followed: in 1909-1910 the Holy Synod allowed the Armenian Gregorian Church to destroy the archives of its eparchies (including the archives of the Albanian Orthodox Church annulled in 1836 by the Russian government and the Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church).29 This destroyed the remnants of the Albanian Church and its followers in the Central Caucasus.
Count I. Vorontsov-Dashkov, who early in 1905 was appointed Viceroy of the Caucasus, had a soft spot for the Armenians. Due to his repeated requests to the czar to restore the sequestered property to the Armenian Gregorian Church, the Church did indeed reacquire it.30 It was during the count’s service in the Caucasus that the relations between the czarist administration and the Armenians returned to normal; later the Armenians received their privileges back.
22 V.L. Velichko, op. cit., p. 142.
23 See: K. Zalevskiy, op. cit., p. 228.
24 See: V.S. Diakin, Natsional'ny vopros vo vnutrenneypolitike czarizma, Moscow, 1986, p. 29.
25 See: B. Nadzhafov, Istoria armianskogo natsionalizma v Zakavkazie v kontse XIX-nachale XX vv., Book 1,
Baku, 1993, p. 131.
26 See: Dashnaki, Baku, 1990, p. 7.
27 See: Vsepoddaneyshiy otchet o proizvedennoy v 1905 godu po Vysochayshemu poveleniu Senatorom Kuzmin-skim revizii g. Baku i Bakinskoy gubernii, St. Petersburg, 1905, pp. 29-30.
28 See: Kavkazkiy kalendar na 1906 god, Tiflis, 1905, pp. 220-221.
29 The Russian State Historical Archives, rec. gr. 821, inv. 139, f. 96; inv. 1, f. 97.
30 See: I.I. Voronstov-Dashkov, Vsepoddaneyshaia zapiska po upravleniu Kavkazskim kraem general-ad'iutanta grafa Vorontsova-Dashkova, St. Petersburg, 1907, pp. 14-15.
During World War I, the Armenians and their political organizations sided with the czarist government. On 5 August, 1914, when Russia had not yet declared war on Turkey, the Catholicos wrote to the Viceroy of the Caucasus to remind him about the “Armenian question” in Turkey and encourage Russia to take advantage of this opportune moment to resolve it. The Catholicos insisted that all the Armenian vilayets of Turkey be united into one province under a Russia-appointed Christian governor-general completely independent of Istanbul; the province itself should become an autonomy.31 The Catholicos practically instigated Russia to attack Turkey.
A similar letter went to Nicholas II who answered: “Please let your flock know, Holy Father, that the Armenians have a spectacular future in front of them.”32
The Armenians obviously counted on the czar’s support to set up an Armenian state on Turkish territory.33 In the fall of 1914, as soon as Russia declared war on Turkey, an Armenian National Bureau headed by the Mayor of Tiflis Alexander Khatisian was set up. Among other things, the Bureau organized Armenian armed units for the Russian army.34
This went on with the czarist government’s financial support while the process itself was carried out by Dashnaktsutiun functionaries. In February 1915, at the All-Armenian National Congress held in Tiflis, it turned out that the Russian government had allocated over 200,000 rubles to Dashnaktsu-tiun as payment for mobilization of the Turkish Armenians and their riot in the Turkish rear at the opportune moment.35
Apprehensive of the Turks’ cruel retaliation, the Turkish Armenians and Dashnaktsutiun were dead set against the plan. This means that the rulers of the Russian Empire, who for the sake of their expansionist plans set the Turkish Armenians against the Turks, were also responsible for the so-called Armenian genocide.
C o n c l u s i o n
The above has convincingly demonstrated that, with the exception of a short interval at the turn of the 20th century, the Russian Empire encouraged the Armenians in the Central Caucasus, a policy that contrasted with the czarist discriminatory policy toward the Azeris.
It should be said that this was a deliberate policy designed to fan antagonism between the two nations. Mutual alienation and antagonism were the products of the two peoples’ unequal legal and social statuses leading to national and political contradictions and even serious problems between them.
In this way, the Russian colonial authorities felt free to manipulate and exploit the contradictions to promote their interests. The Armenian-Azeri bloody clashes of 1905-1906 were the direct result of the imperial policy.
This enmity made it easier to fight against the national-liberation movement of the Caucasian peoples, since the Azeris had to fight on two fronts: against the czarist national discriminatory policy and Armenian expansionism.
31 See: V.B. Stankevich, Sud’by narodov Rossii, Berlin, 1921, p. 238.
32 F. Kazemzadeh, The Struggle for Transcaucasia (1917-1921), New York, 1951, p. 25.
33 See: L.A. Khurshudian, K.S. Khudaverdian, op. cit., p. 100.
34 See: V.B. Stankevich, op. cit., p. 239.
35 See: F. Kazemzadeh, op. cit., p. 26.
