Reconquest Ë 89
entity in the Caucasus,” which was “imperative in view of all the strategic, economic
and political considerations.”⁶⁶But it bore little fruit. It was only in April–June 1919
that the four republics held a conference in Ti is. The threat of Anton Denikin’s White
Army drew the Georgians, Azeris, and Mountaineers closer. Georgia and Azerbaijan
agreed to render military assistance to each other, regional unity being their goal.⁶⁷
Yet the conference failed to reach an agreement: the Azeris were absorbed in terri-
torial issues with the Armenians, while Armenia, wishing for a Great Armenia and
supporting Denikin’s forces, showed no interest in forming a single federative state.⁶⁸
Meanwhile, the Northern Caucasus was being destroyed by Denikin’s Volunteer Army.
Ultimately, internal discord and international politics combined to cause the
eventual demise of the newly independent republics of the Caucasus. Bammat’s com-
plaint about Germany’s breach of promise owed largely to the fact that at the time
Germany was seeking a supplementary agreement to the Brest-Litovsk Treaty with
Bolshevik Russia, to be concluded in August 1918. In exchange for receiving oil from
Baku and the recognition of Georgia as an independent state, Germany promised
not to support any third-party military operations beyond Georgia’s borders and the
areas of Ardakhan, Kars, and Batumi.⁶⁹In August 1918 Germany and Russia also
agreed to the eventual return of Baku to the Soviet government.⁷⁰These agreements
in turn prompted the Turks and Azeris to occupy Baku the following month (see p. 87),
seriously complicating German-Soviet-Turkish relations.⁷¹
Subsequently, the end of World War I in November 1918, with the defeat of the
Central Powers, presented both opportunity and danger for the Caucasian republics.
The Ottoman defeat aorded Armenia an unprecedented opportunity for survival and
uni cation with Ottoman Armenia in Eastern Anatolia. But to Azerbaijan and Georgia,
the Central Powers’ defeat meant the loss of their respective patrons.
For now each country went its own way, despite the fact that Bammat and other
federalists continued advocating for the unity of the Caucasus as a whole.⁷²In Georgia,
the most stable of all the new states in the Caucasus, the Georgian language replaced
Russian, while the Red banner gave way to the black-white-red tricolor national ag.
66 Bammat, “The Caucasus and the Russian Revolution,” 16.
67 See Dzhamil’ Gasanly,Russkaia revoliutsia i Azerbaidzhan. Trudnyi put’ k nezavisimosti 1917–1920
(Moscow: Flinta, 2011), 398–399.
68 See Bammat, “The Caucasus and the Russian Revolution,” 17; and Hovannisian,The Republic of
Armenia, 355–60; and Mamoulia,Les combats indépendandistes des Caucasiens, 20–21.
69 SeeDokumenty vneshnei politiki SSSR, vol. 1 (Moscow: Politizdat, 1959), 436–444 and Winfried
Baumgart,Deutsche Ostpolitik 1918. Von Brest-Litowsk bis zum Ende des Ersten Weltkrieges(Vienna-
Munich: Oldenbourg, 1966), 201–202.
70 See Baumgart,Deutsche Ostpolitik 1918, 203–204.
71 Kazemzadeh,The Struggle for Transcaucasia (1917–1921), 143.
72 Bammat’s indefatigable eorts to secure independence and international recognition is detailed
in G. Mamoulia, Vatchagaev Mairbek, and Donogo Khadzhi Murad, eds,Gaidar Bammat – izevestnyi i
neizvestnyi. Sbornik dokumentov i materialov(Baku: Azerbaijanskoe istoricheskoe obshchestvo, 2015).