InternationalA renewed commitment to a strong, stable land
Published: Friday May 29, 2009
May 28 was the 91st anniversary of the first Republic of Armenia.
When the independence of Armenia, Georgia, and Azerbaijan came in 1918, it was a dream come true for many.
At the same time, independence brought enormous challenges. As the South Caucasus split into nation states, hundreds of thousands of people – Armenians living in Georgia and Azerbaijan, Azerbaijanis living in Armenia and Georgia, and so on – became outsiders of sorts in their hometowns. In Tiflis (today's Tbilisi), at that time the cultural and political capital of the region, Armenians had constituted a thriving plurality. In the oil boom city of Baku, too, Armenians had been an important part of the middle class. In Yerevan, then a small town, Azerbaijanis held sway.
But that was not all. It was a horrible time, more horrible than it is comfortable to recall. The whole world was at war. During the same war, only three years previously, the Turkish state had undertaken to eliminate the Armenian people. Over a million Armenians were either killed outright or deported. The Caucasus was overrun with refugees.
And now, the new Armenia had to face the Turkish army alone. That Armenians held their own – in the heroic battles of Sardarabad, Bash-Abaran, and Kara-Kilisa – is nothing short of a miracle.
Besides war, the new state had to face famine and disease. The United States sent wheat. The president, Woodrow Wilson, also made promises to protect Armenia, which he was not able to keep. At the conclusion of the world war, a defeated Turkey signed a peace treaty in which it ceded the Armenian provinces of the Ottoman Empire to the new Armenian republic. President Wilson was to arbitrate the borders.
But before the ink was dry on that treaty, the Treaty of Sèvres, Turkey's Mustafa Kemal made a secret deal with Russia's Lenin and started a new war with Armenia. Unable to resist both powers, the Armenian government ceded power to the Bolsheviks, and over time Armenia became a constituent republic of the Soviet Union. It was seventy years later, on September 21, 1991, that Armenia once again became an independent republic.
Notwithstanding all these challenges and difficulties, the Armenian people found that an Armenian state was a condition for their survival in the world of nations and nation states that was emerging in the wake of the First World War. What emerged out of the first republic was a defined Armenia on the modern world map, an Armenian polity, and a commitment to statehood.
This commitment stayed alive in Armenia and in the diaspora until it became a reality in 1991.
The world has changed in many ways since 1918, and will continue to change. For some groups of states, borders are no longer barriers to travel and trade. With information becoming a most important commodity, neither distance nor borders are barriers to cooperation.
A stable state able to defend its borders – and its people – will remain a condition for the survival of the Armenian people. But, as we have argued before in this space, it will not be enough. Improved relations with other states, especially neighbors, will continue to be necessary. Add to that transnational networking and cooperation – in other words, Armenians across the globe working together and facing challenges together.
May 28 is a time to rededicate ourselves to maintaining a strong and stable Armenia and Karabakh. It is also a time to commit to working for an ever expanding web of economic, financial, cultural, athletic, political, social, and family ties wherever in the world Armenians may live.
