The Eurasian Triangle. Russia, the Caucasus and Japan, 1904-1945

Reconquest Ë 87

the Republic’s independence.⁵³Although the Allied countries, including Japan, sup-

ported the Republic with “Platonic sympathy,” they failed to recognize it ocially.⁵⁴

4.3 Reconquest

In the end, all these republics and the entire Caucasus itself were reconquered by the

Bolsheviks. One might fault in part the new republics with failures in internal reforms.

The question of land reform, for instance, was certainly a vexed question. In the Cau-

casus the land question was not merely a class issue; it was deeply connected to the

national question and the matter of Cossack privileges as well in the Northern Cauca-

sus. In Georgia, although the Menshevik government did enact land reform by taking

land from large landowners and redistributing (selling) it to the poorer peasants, it

also saved the landowners from wholesale conscation of their land. In western Geor-

gia in particular, where agricultural land was scarce and most nobles tilled their lands

themselves, little land was available for the peasants. The reform satised neither the

poor nor the rich.⁵⁵

Many other factors undermined the new independent states. In the spring of 1918,

for instance, a power struggle in Baku between the Bolsheviks and the Dashnaktsu-

tiun on the one hand and the Musavat on the other led to the mutual massacre of

Muslims and Armenians (the former suering larger losses estimated at twelve thou-

sand).⁵⁶This incident (March Events) ushered in the Bolshevik-led Baku Commune,⁵⁷

which in turn was quickly overthrown by the Centro-Caspian Dictatorship (an alliance

of Socialist Revolutionaries, Mensheviks, and Dashnaks) with the assistance of British

forces. In September 1918, when the British forces left, Ottoman and Azeri forces oc-

cupied Baku and overthrew the Centro-Caspian Dictatorship, while Baku’s Armeni-

ans were massacred by the Azeri population (the September Events). Death estimates

ranged from ten thousand to thirty thousand.⁵⁸Shortly afterward, the Democratic Re-

public of Azerbaijan moved its capital from Ganja to Baku.

53 Haidar Bammate,The Caucasus Problem: Questions concerning Circassia and Daghestan(Berne:
Staempi & Cie, 1919), 32.
54 On “Platonic sympathy,” seeSoiuz ob”edinennykh gortsev, 174.
55 For a Menshevik view emphasizing “absolutely no problem” in implementing the land reform in
Georgia, see G.I. Uratadze,Obrazovanie i konsolidatsiia Gruzinskoi Demokraticheskoi Respubliki(Mu-
nich: Institut zur Erforschung der UdSSR e. V., 1956), 93.
56 See Jean Loris-Melicof,La Révolution Russe et les nouvelles républiques transcaucasiennes(Paris:
Librairie Félix Alca, 1920), 115–117.
57 Ronald Grigor Suny,The Baku Commune 1917–1918: Class and Nationality in the Russian Revolution
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1972), ch. 7.
58 Richard G. Hovannisian,Armenia on the Road to Independence, 1918(Berkeley-Los Angeles, CA:
University of California Press, 1967), 227.