First Republic of Armenia

In its first year of independence, Armenia was confined to a small territory around Lake Sevan after its invasion by the Ottoman Empire during the Caucasus campaign. Following the Armistice of Mudros, Armenia expanded its borders in the wake of the Ottoman withdrawal, leading to a short border war with neighbouring Georgia. During its first winter, hundreds of thousands of refugees in the country who had fled the Armenian genocide died from starvation or exposure. In the spring of 1919, Armenia, with British support, incorporated the formerly occupied regions of Kars and Nakhchivan, thus more than tripling in size since independence; however, Armenian control of these regions collapsed during the Muslim uprisings that erupted in the summer of 1919.


In late 1919, the isolated Armenian region of Zangezur came under attack by neighbouring Azerbaijan. However, the fighting subsided until an Armenian uprising was launched in March of the following year in the Azerbaijani-controlled region of Nagorno-Karabakh, ending with the latter's sovietisation in April. In August 1920, Armenian representatives signed the Treaty of Sèvres, which awarded the country an additional 40,000 square miles (100,000 square kilometres) of territory in Western Armenia, although the treaty was never implemented. In late 1920, the republic was invaded by Turkish forces, ending with its partition and sovietisation by the Russian SFSR, with the latter founding the superseding Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic. Shortly thereafter, an anti-Bolshevik revolt resisted Soviet authority from February–July 1921.


In the two and a half years of its existence, Armenia formed diplomatic relations with 40 countries, gained de jure recognition, underwent parliamentary elections, and founded its first university. The nation's parliament and government were dominated by the broad Dashnak party (ARF), however, the cabinet posts were initially shared with the "bourgeois" Armenian Populist Party and later Social Revolutionaries.

Name

Since Armenia's gaining of independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, the most commonly used term in Armenia and modern historiography for the state is the First Republic of Armenia (Հայաստանի Առաջին Հանրապետություն)^{[9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16]} or the First Republic for short.^[17] Other names of the state include the Araratian Republic^[18] (Արարատյան հանրապետություն, 'Ararat Republic'),^[19][20] Republic of Erivan,^[21] or Erivan Republic.^[3][22] These terms were often used by Ottoman Armenians and the Armenian diaspora who regarded the country as "only a dusty province without Ottoman Armenia whose salvation Armenians had been seeking for 40 years".^[23] It has also been known as the Dashnak Republic due to the fact that the Dashnaks were the dominant political force in the country.^[24] During the Soviet-era, the communist-influenced Armenian academic circles, namely the Soviet Armenian Encyclopedia, referred to the state as the Bourgeois Republic of Armenia (Հայաստանի Բուրժուական Հանրապետություն).^[25]

Legacy

The Sardarapat Memorial at the site of the Battle of Sardarabad is the symbol of the First Republic. Every year on May 28, Armenia's political leadership and thousands of ordinary people visit the memorial to celebrate the restoration of Armenian statehood.^[238]


In his short story Antranik of Armenia, Armenian-American writer William Saroyan writes about the First Republic of Armenia: "It was a small nation of course, a very unimportant nation, surrounded on all sides by enemies, but for two years Armenia was Armenia, and the capital was Yerevan. For the first time in thousands of years Armenia was Armenia".^[239]