Azerbaijan
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Nariman Narimanov, who was born 150 years ago this April, was a patriotic, humanistic Bolshevik. He was also the major figure who facilitated the Bolshevization of the Republic of Azerbaijan, which began around this time in the same month 100 ago. It may seem strange to some readers to commemorate these two events. After all,…
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This is the 28th Anniversary of the massacre at Khojaly, when Armenian forces destroyed an Azerbaijani town in Nagorno-Karabakh and killed over 600 people in cold blood. The following is the text of an interview I gave to Eurasia Diary/Eurasia Media Network with my thoughts on the event: ED: 28 years have now passed since…
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The Young Turk government in Istanbul (aside from Enver Pasha anyway), the Sultan/Caliph, and even the leader of the Turkish resurgence in Eastern Anatolia, Mustapha Kemal, were all favourably disposed to Britain and the West. The Turkish leadership would have been very open to a reasonable and honourable peace settlement with the Allies, either negotiated…
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Aside from the policy of the British Prime Minister, Lloyd George, there were two other factors that led to the loss of the Caucasus to the Bolsheviks. The first of these was that special and discordant element in the region, the Armenians – who immensely complicated matters. The second was Britain’s continuing and purposeless hostile…
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Lloyd George gave the coup de grace to the Russian Whites in his infamous Guildhall speech of 8 November 1919. He made the speech without consulting his Cabinet colleagues and it had the effect of a bombshell. As Harold Nicolson wrote the diplomacy of Lloyd George was most of all characterised by its privacy –…
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As early as the end of January 1919 Lloyd George indicated to the Allied Supreme Council that, despite the influx of troops over the previous mouths, he saw the British occupation of the Caucasus as a temporary phenomenon. On 6 March the Inter-Departmental Conference on Middle Eastern Affairs under Lord Curzon, to which the Cabinet…
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British policy with regard to Russia and the Caucasus was formed in the Imperial War Cabinet. This was founded in 1916 after Lloyd George replaced Asquith as Prime Minister. Its function was to concentrate power in the hands of the few (rather than the 22 of the normal Cabinet) so that the War could be…
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In January 1919 General George Milne, who led the British military in the Caucasus, wrote the following letter to his superior, Sir Henry Wilson, Chief of the Imperial General Staff, telling him just what the British military thought of the various peoples of the Caucasus: “I am fully aware that the withdrawal of the British…
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Did the Armenian Dashnaks make a terrible mistake in 1914? Was there an alternative course open to the Armenians in which they would have gained far more than they ended up with, between 1918 and 1924? Would they have secured the safety and continued existence of the Armenian people in their traditional homelands by acting…
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The struggle for the Caucasus began after the collapse of the Tsarist state in 1917 and the defeat of the Ottoman Empire the following year, opening up a large vacuum for someone to fill. Britain found itself in an unanticipated situation of gaining a large region it had not thought possible of taking. It was,…
