Armenian national movement
The Armenian national movement[1][2][3] (Armenian: Հայ ազգային-ազատագրական շարժում Hay azgayin-azatagrakan sharzhum)[note 1] included social, cultural, but primarily political and military movements that reached their height during World War I and the following years, initially seeking improved status for Armenians in the Ottoman and Russian Empires but eventually attempting to achieve an Armenian state.
Influenced by the Age of Enlightenment and the rise of nationalism under the Ottoman Empire, the Armenian national movement developed in the early 1860s. Its emergence was similar to that of movements in the Balkan nations, especially the Greek revolutionaries who fought the Greek War of Independence.[21] The Armenian élite and various militant groups sought to defend the mostly rural Christian Armenian population of the eastern Ottoman Empire from banditry and abuses by Muslims, but the ultimate goal was to push for reforms in the six Armenian-populated vilayets of the Ottoman Empire at first, and after this failed, the creation of an Armenian state in the Armenian-populated areas controlled at the time by the Ottoman Empire and the Russian Empire.[1][9]
Starting in the late 1880s, the movement engaged in guerrilla warfare against the Ottoman government and Kurdish irregulars in the eastern regions of the empire, led by the three Armenian political parties named the Social Democrat Hunchakian Party, the Armenakan Party and the Armenian Revolutionary Federation. Armenians generally saw Russia as their natural ally in the fight against Turks, although Russia maintained an oppressive policy in the Caucasus. Only after losing its presence in Europe after the Balkan Wars, the Ottoman government was forced to sign the Armenian reform package in early 1914, however it was disrupted by World War I.
During World War I, the Armenians living in the Ottoman Empire were systematically exterminated by the government in the Armenian genocide. According to some estimates, from 1894 to 1923, about 1,500,000—2,000,000 Armenians were killed by the Ottoman Empire.[22] After the decision to exterminate the Armenians was taken by the Ottoman Ministry of Interior and first implemented with the Directive 8682 on February 25, 1915, tens of thousands of Russian Armenians joined the Russian army as Armenian volunteer units with a Russian promise for autonomy. By 1917, Russia controlled many Armenian-populated areas of the Ottoman Empire. After the October Revolution, however, the Russian troops retreated and left the Armenians irregulars one on one with the Turks. The Armenian National Council proclaimed the Republic of Armenia on May 28, 1918, thus establishing an Armenian state in the Armenian-populated parts of the Southern Caucasus.
By 1920, the Bolshevik Government in Russia and Ankara Government had successfully come to power in their respective countries. Turkish forces had successfully occupied the western half of Armenia, while the Red Army invaded and annexed the Republic of Armenia in December 1920. A friendship treaty was signed between Bolshevik Russia and Kemalist Turkey in 1921. The formerly Russian-controlled parts of Armenia were mostly annexed by the Soviet Union, in parts of which the Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic was established. Hundreds of thousands of genocide refugees found themselves in the Middle East, Greece, France and the US giving start to a new era of the Armenian diaspora. Soviet Armenia existed until 1991, when the Soviet Union disintegrated and the current (Third) Republic of Armenia was established.
