First Republic of Armenia

Name

Since Armenia's gaining of independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, in Armenia and modern historiography, the state is referred to as the First Republic of Armenia (Հայաստանի Առաջին Հանրապետություն) or the First Republic for short. Other names of the state include the Araratian Republic (Արարատյան հանրապետություն, 'Ararat Republic'), as the republic was largely based around Mount Ararat; Further names include the Republic of Erivan, and the Erivan Republic, as Yerevan was the principal city of the republic. 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". It has also been known as the Dashnak Republic due to the fact that the Dashnaks were the dominant political force in the country. During the Soviet-era, the Soviet Armenian Encyclopedia referred to the state as the Bourgeois Republic of Armenia (Հայաստանի Բուրժուական Հանրապետություն).

Background

Loss of statehood and national awakening

Sources vary on when Armenian statehood was lost. Though the Armenian Kingdom of Cilicia ceased to exist in 1375, other sources suggest that Armenian statehood was lost in 1045 with the fall of Bagratid Armenia as Cilician Armenia was outside of the traditional Armenian homeland, while Bagratid Armenia was the last major independent Armenian state in the Armenian Highlands. In the centuries after losing its independence, Armenia remained mostly under Muslim Turkic or Persian rule until the Russian annexation of the Karabakh Khanate in 1801 and the khanates of Erivan and Nakhichevan in 1828. Due to Russian colonial policies, large numbers of Armenians from Persia and the Ottoman Empire repatriated to Russian Armenia. Armenians had already formed a majority in some regions, such as Nagorno-Karabakh, and this migration bolstered their numbers in the area. In particular, the Erivan Governorate regained an Armenian majority for the first time in several hundred years, and these regions would later "form the nucleus" of an independent Armenia.

Armenian nationalism was rooted in the "long textual tradition" of clerics and scholars. According to historians Edmund Herzig and Marina Kurkchiyan, "in the late eighteenth and through the nineteenth centuries a coherent sense of Armenians as a nation with a distinct and distinguished history was spread by patriots, teachers, writers, and revolutionaries". The Russian offensive during the Caucasus campaign of World War I, the subsequent occupation and creation of a provisional administrative government gave hope for ending Ottoman Turkish rule in Western Armenia. With the help of several battalions of Armenians recruited from the Russian Empire, the Russian Imperial Army advanced as far as the city of Erzurum in 1916, continuing to make considerable advances even after the toppling of Tsar Nicholas II in February 1917.

Transcaucasian Democratic Federative Republic

Following news of the Bolshevik coup in Russia, the Ozakom (a committee formed in February by the Russian Provisional Government to oversee the Caucasus) was superseded by a caretaker government known as the Transcaucasian Commissariat on 28 November 1917, which would later form the nucleus of the Transcaucasian Democratic Federative Republic (TDFR). As Russian and Ottoman armies, despite the revolution, were still engaged in combat, the Transcaucasian Commissariat signed the Armistice of Erzincan with the Ottoman Empire on 18 December.

On 30 January 1918, the Ottoman Empire in violation of the armistice, launched an offensive to recapture Western Armenia. Delegates of the major South Caucasian political parties established the Transcaucasian Seim—the representative and legislative body of the TDFR—on 23 February, with the Dashnaks representing the Armenians, the Musavat the Muslims and Caucasian Tatars, and the Mensheviks the Georgians. On 2 March, a delegation from the Seim was scheduled to depart to participate in the Trebizond Peace Conference with the Ottoman Empire; however, by the time of the conference, Soviet Russia had signed the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk with the Central Powers, ceding Kars and Batum to the Ottomans. From the outset of the Trebizond Peace Conference, the Ottomans demanded that the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk serve as the basis of peace negotiations, which was only accepted by the Trancaucasian delegates weeks later on 5 April. Due to this delay, the Ottomans continued their advance and reached the pre-war 1914 Russo-Turkish frontier by the end of March.

On 11 May, a new peace conference was convened in Batum; the Ottoman delegation stated that as the Ottoman Empire and TDFR were in a state of war, they would no longer recognise Brest-Litovsk and instead presented an alternative treaty by which the TDFR would be also obligated to cede western sectors of the Erivan and Tiflis governorates. Without awaiting the TDFR's consent to the new terms, the Ottomans resumed their offensive in Armenia on 21 May, leading to the battles of Abaran, Karakilisa, and Sardarabad, whereby local Armenian forces emerged victorious. In retaliation for their losses, the Turkish divisions defeated by Armenians massacred several thousand villagers. On 26 May, after secret negotiations with Germany, the Georgian delegates of the Seim declared the independence of Georgia; Azerbaijan followed suit two days later.

History

May – September 1918

With the collapse of the TDFR, the Armenian National Council, based in Tiflis (present-day Tbilisi) and led by Russian Armenian intellectuals representing Armenian interests in the Caucasus, declared Armenia's independence on 28 May 1918. The council dispatched Hovhannes Kajaznuni and Alexander Khatisian, both Dashnaks, to Yerevan to assume power, and issued the following "intentionally vague" statement on 30 May (retroactive to 28 May):

In view of the dissolution of the political unity of Transcaucasia and the new situation created by the proclamation of the independence of Georgia and Azerbaijan, the Armenian National Council declares itself to be the supreme and only administration for the Armenian provinces. Because of the certain grave circumstances, the national council, deferring until the near future the formation of an Armenian National government, temporarily assumes all governmental functions, in order to take hold the political and administrative helm of the Armenian provinces.

With the success in the May battles in Abaran, Karakilisa, and Sardarabad, Armenian commander Movses Silikian was urged by the Armenian military command to chase out the Turks whilst they were on the run, however, Silikian refused and ordered his forces to halt. This is due to the fact that the Armenian forces' ammunition were nearly exhausted, and the Turks' reinforcements were close. According to the UCLA historian Richard G. Hovannisian, "If peace were not concluded and the tide of victory turned in favor of the Ottomans, the consequences would be disastrous".

Armenian negotiators on 30 May informed the Ottoman delegation at Batum that Armenia would accept Turkish conditions for peace, thereby initiating the Batum Conference between Armenia and the Ottoman Empire. The Ottomans, in refusing to countenance Armenian pretensions to the highland portion of the Elizavetpol Governorate, offered Armenia the entirety of the Nor Bayazet uezd, and parts of the Erivan, Etchmiadzin, and Alexandropol counties, essentially confining it to an area of 4,000 square miles (10,000 square kilometres). When news of the Armenian victories at Abaran, Karakilisa, and Sardarabad reached the conference, the Ottomans agreed to a "minor territorial rectification" whereby an additional 400 square miles (1,000 square kilometres) in the Alexandropol uezd were relinquished "for the sake of the friendly relations that have begun". The Treaty of Batum was thereafter signed on 4 June.

October 1918 – June 1919

On 30 October 1918, the Armistice of Mudros was signed, thus ending hostilities between the Ottoman Empire and the Allies. The armistice only stipulated the Ottomans' withdrawal to the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk boundaries, thereby allowing their armies to winter in Kars and Batum. Throughout November, Ottoman forces evacuated the Erivan Governorate, thereby Armenia gained 6,000 square miles (16,000 square kilometres) of formerly-occupied territory.

An estimated 50,000–100,000 Armenians had been massacred during the Turkish invasion of May–September 1918, including 25,000 in the Kars Oblast. According to Fridtjof Nansen, a Norwegian relief worker who cared for Ottoman Armenian refugees, "[i]t was obviously the intent of the Turkish leaders to exterminate the Armenian people even in Russian Armenia." In the Akhalkalaki uezd, claimed by Armenia, 60,000 of 110,000 inhabitants had survived, over seventy villages were completely destroyed by the Turkish army in 1918. In the six-months of Turkish occupation of Eastern Armenia, particularly in the region of Pambak, Armenians were used as "bayonet practice" by Turkish soldiers. Hovannisian estimates that at least 8,000 young men were taken to Erzurum for slave labour, and 125,000 livestock, 30,000 agricultural equipment, 6,000 carts and 18,000 tons of foodstuffs were confiscated by the retreating Ottoman army. The richest areas were left barren, stripped of crops, animals, tools, and any movable possessions. Little trace remained of the former Armenian villages, with all clothing, furniture, utensils, pottery, and even doors and windows taken. Along the railway, no functioning locomotives or freight cars were left, and each station lay in ruins. In Alexandropol, rubble filled the streets after the Turks set off explosives and ammunition before withdrawing. Hovannisian further adds: "As the Armenian soldiers advanced, the full significance of the saying, 'the Turk has passed here,' was bruisingly demonstrated". As a result of the Turkish invasion, 200 villages were plundered, half the vineyards in the Aras River valley were ruined, 200,000 large-horned animals were chased away in addition to thousands of carts of agricultural implements, and 80 percent of households were deprived of a horse and almost half deprived of a cow or ox.

On 18 October 1918, as the Ottoman Empire was preparing itself to capitulate to the Allies, Armenian forces entered southern Lori and came into contact with German–Georgian forces. In response, the Georgian army bolstered its presence in the region. These manoeuvres set the scene for an Armeno-Georgian military confrontation. The territorial conflict with Georgia was rooted in the contention over the counties of Akhalkalaki and Borchaly, particularly, the Lori subdistrict of the latter—both sectors possessed an Armenian ethnic majority. Under Georgian control, the Armenians of Lori were discontent due to their treatment by the soldiers—using this pretext, Armenia fomented insurrection, thereby elevating tensions.

July 1919 – January 1920

Beginning in July 1919, a series of insurgencies against Armenian rule erupted in the Kars and Nakhchivan regions, fostered by Azerbaijani and Turkish envoys who instructed local Muslims to resist. The insurgencies were motivated by the British military withdrawal from Armenia which took place in mid-June. The town of Böyük Vedi and the village cluster around it served as a symbol of defiance for Muslims in Armenia. As the insurgencies raged, the Azerbaijani diplomatic envoy to Armenia, Mahammad khan Takinski, transferred funds to the insurgents and apprised the Azerbaijani government of developments—earlier, he had worked to forestall the Armenian annexation of Nakhchivan.

Investigations by American relief workers confirmed the reports of large-scale massacres of the local Armenians in the Nakhchivan region, amounting to 10,000 dead and 45 villages destroyed. During the insurgencies, only the Volunteer Army of Anton Denikin sent ammunition to replenish the Armenian army. By late 1919, Armenia lost control of the peripheries of the Kars and Surmalu regions, as well as the entirety of Nakhchivan.

In 1918, after attaining independence from Russia, the newly established Armenian and Azerbaijani republics engaged in a two-year war over their territorial ambitions. The disputed regions were principally Nakhchivan, Zangezur, and Nagorno-Karabakh. In the 18,000 km2 (6,900 mi2) of mountainous highlands of the Elizavetpol Governorate which were mostly controlled by Azerbaijan yet claimed by Armenia, Armenians formed "nearly 70 percent of the population"; the claimed boundaries were designed to incorporate a maximum number of Armenians, 300,000, also incorporating "a minimum number of Muslims", 90,000. If Armenia successfully incorporated the highlands of Elizavetpol, its population, "according to pre-war statistics", would rise to 1.797 million, including 1.169 million Armenians. According to Hovannisian, a population exchange whilst practical was deemed "preposterous" for the Karabakh Armenians because the region's cession "to the Pan-Turanian fanatics will open the door to endless invasions, endanger the peace of the Orient, and shake the political equilibrium off its foundations".

Nagorno-Karabakh, despite initially being self-governed, capitulated to British–Azerbaijani pressure and became an autonomous part of Azerbaijan through an agreement signed on 22 August 1919, pending the Paris Peace Conference's decision on the inter-Caucasian borders. Before Nagorno-Karabakh's capitulation, Azerbaijani forces carried out a massacre of 600 Armenians in villages nearby Shusha to pressure the region's inhabitants into submission.

February – July 1920

As the Paris Peace Conference was inconclusive on the status of Nagorno-Karabakh, the governor-general, Khosrov bey Sultanov, dissolved the Armenians' autonomy and issued an ultimatum on 19 February 1920; thereby the Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh were being coerced into permanently becoming part of Azerbaijan. The ultimatum was accepted by 45 Armenian representatives in Shusha, but was rejected by representatives who had gathered in Shosh who "categorically rejected any possibility of union with Azerbaijan". Receiving news that Azerbaijan intended to "move against Zangezur" again on 25 March, agents from the Armenian republic organised an "abortive" rebellion in Karabakh that led to the massacre and displacement of Shusha's Armenian population. Even though the Armenian rebels failed to oust Azerbaijani garrisons in Khankend and Shusha, the countryside of Nagorno-Karabakh was under local control. The Azerbaijani army, despite the Red Army being stationed on its frontiers, moved towards Karabakh to put down the rebellion. As the Armenian army was dispatched by Armenia to assist the rebels, the Red Army put an end to the Azerbaijani republic through an unabated invasion. An ultimatum by the Red Army—which supplanted the Azerbaijani army following the latter's sovietisation—prompted the army's withdrawal from Nagorno-Karabakh. The region's Armenian inhabitants blamed the Armenian republic's agents and the Dashnaks for "dislocation and ruin" that came as a result of the uprising.

As a result of "Turkish–Azerbaijani aggression", Nagorno-Karabakh's population had declined by 20 percent in 1918–1920. Since 1920, Azerbaijani forces carried out massacres against Armenians in Khankend on 22 February 1920 leaving 400 dead, and Shusha from 22 to 26 March 1920 leaving 500 dead. By 11 April 1920, 30 villages in Nagorno-Karabakh had been "devastated" by Azerbaijani forces as a result of the uprising, leaving 25,000 homeless (including nearly 6,000 refugees from Shusha).

On 5 April 1920, to relieve pressure in Karabakh, Azerbaijani forces in Qazax initiated border clashes with Armenia. During the following two weeks, they occupied strategic heights and occupied and burned Armenian villages. On 9 April, a short-lived ceasefire was reached, however, it was broken by Azerbaijani forces occupied several other villages – this was justified through a note from the Azerbaijani government to Armenia, accusing it of attacking nine Azerbaijani settlements. On 18 April, officials from Dilijan and Qazax agreed on a ceasefire agreement that included the repatriation of all displaced residents and the restoration of the former boundary, thereby ending the clashes.

August – December 1920

As no country was willing to assume the mandate over Armenia, the peace conference decided to only assign it the vilayets of Erzurum, Van, Bitlis, and Trebizond, with the precise boundary to be arbitrated by American president Woodrow Wilson. Although the Pontic Greeks were unhappy with the decision to assign Pontus to Armenia, "Greek and Armenian officials were confident that the issue could be resolved through adequate guarantees for an autonomous administration in the Pontus". On 10 August 1920, Armenian representatives in Paris signed the Treaty of Sèvres, thereby granting it de jure recognition and assigning it 103,599 square kilometres (40,000 square miles), thus expanding Armenia's borders to "60,000 square miles or 155,000 square kilometers, roughly equivalent to the country of Czecho-Slovakia or the state of Illinois". During the League of Nations's discussions regarding Armenia's application to join the organisation, it was stated that "Wilson's award might expand the territory from the existing 70,551 square kilometers, or 26,305 (actually 27,232) square miles, to as much as 214,000 square kilometers, or 80,000 (actually 82,604) square miles". According to Hewsen and Walker, the Ottoman territory awarded to Armenian totalled 16,216 square miles (42,000 square kilometres). According to reporter Tatul Hakobyan, a total of 87,000 square kilometres (34,000 square miles) were awarded. For the Armenia–Azerbaijan–Georgia territorial disputes, Article 92 of the treaty provided for the arbitration of frontiers by the "Principal Allied Powers" if the states couldn't determine it themselves through "direct agreement" by the time of the delineation of Armenia's western frontier.

On 10 August 1920, the same day that Armenia signed the Treaty of Sèvres which set their western frontier, a treaty with Soviet Russia was signed which set their "preliminary" eastern frontier; the agreement provided for an end to Soviet–Armenian clashes in Zangezur and Qazax, for Armenia to "occupy" the Şahtaxtı–Xok–Aznabyurt–Bardzruni–Kükü–Gorayk line and in Qazax, "the line they held on 30 July" of 1920. The treaty also recognised Karabakh, Nakhchivan, and Zangezur as disputed districts that Russia was to occupy without prejudicing the permanent border settlement. Armenia, in reaction to the "furor" among Allied circles caused by the treaty, stated that "In view of the extraordinary pressure exerted from all sides and the fact that the Armenian army was alone and heavily outnumbered, the government had accepted the temporary arrangement in order to win some time. Armenia would nonetheless maintain its firm anti-Bolshevik policies".

After the provisional Ottoman government failed to win support for ratification of the Treaty of Sèvres, remnants of the Ottoman Army's XV Corps under the command of Kâzım Karabekir, who had orders from the Ankara Government to "eliminate Armenia physically and politically", invaded Armenia on 28 September 1920. After unsuccessful Turkish manoeuvres in Sarıkamış, Armenian military command, not believing its 2.5 thousand and 1.5 thousand man garrisons in Sarıkamış and Olti-Merdenek, respectively, were enough to hold those positions, evacuated the former, falling back to Selim where they believed the Turks would strike. Accompanying the civilian population, Armenian forces retreated eastwards to more defensible positions. After Karabekir announced his successes to Kemal, the latter ordered a temporary halt to the invasion, fearful of Allied or Russian intervention.

Demographics

Population

In 1918, by virtue of the Treaty of Batum, Armenia was confined to a territory of 5,000 square miles (13,000 square kilometres) containing 679 thousand inhabitants, in addition to 600 thousand refugees.

Although no census was taken in Armenia during its brief independence, its population in 1918 was reliably estimated to be 900 thousand—500 thousand were native Russian Armenians, 300 thousand were Ottoman Armenian refugees, and 100 thousand were Muslims (predominantly Azerbaijanis, Turks, and Kurds). According to historian George Bournoutian, the official figures for the ethnic composition of the Armenian republic in 1918 were the following: Armenians – 669,871; Tatars – 365,841; Turks – 8,000; Kurds – 36,508; Yazidis – 12,624; Russians, Georgians, Greeks, and Roma – 21,854.

In 1919, the projected population of Armenia in the 67,350 square kilometres (26,000 square miles) of territory it claimed was 2,158,351–2,160,000. By the time of its collapse, Armenia had a population of 1.5 million in the territory of most of present-day Armenia, the Kars and Iğdır provinces, and the Çıldır and Göle districts of the Ardahan Province of Turkey, and "disputed control" of Nakhchivan, Nagorno-Karabakh, Zangezur, Qazax, Oltu, and Lori. According to the 1922 publication of the Encyclopædia Britannica, Armenia in 1919 (consisting of parts of the Erivan and Kars provinces) had a population of 1.51 million. Further, there were almost 10,000 Russians living in Armenia, half of which were peasants resettled by the Tsarist government and the other half were officials or civil servants working mainly in the military, judiciary and communications. Both of these groups of Russians largely had a negative view of Armenian statehood, not believing that "yesterday's subject of the Russian had become the master in their country". Armenia also had a large number of Muslims, constituting 30% of its population, who constantly posed a threat to the republic due to their armed uprisings. According to Hovhannes Kajaznuni, "the Muslim population of Armenia, encouraged by Turkey and Azerbaijan, held an anti-Armenian position".

As a result of "wars and civil clashes, hunger and diseases" of 1918–1920, 432 thousand people or 36 percent of the population were "exterminated". By the time of Armenia's sovietisation, it had a population of 720 thousand, little more than 10 thousand of whom were Turks. Before the autumn of 1922, 60 thousand Turks were repatriated to Armenia—"no less than 200 thousand" Turks and Kurds had been driven from Armenia due to the Dashnaks' policy of "cleansing".

Government

In May 1920, the First Republic of Armenia was administratively divided into the following provinces (նահանգներ, nahangner):

Ararat (Արարատ) – composed of the districts of Erivan, Surmalu, Etchmiadzin (without the Talin subdistrict), Sharur-Daralayaz, and Nakhichevan. Its governors in chronological order were Paruir Levonyan, Sahak Torosyan, and Levon Bek Amirkhanyan.

Shirak (Շիրակ) – composed of the districts of Alexandropol, Talin, Dilijan, Akhalkalaki (controlled by Georgia), and the Aghbaba subdistrict of the Kars Oblast. Its governor was Garo Sassouni.

Vanand (Վանանդ) – composed of the Kars Oblast (without the Aghbaba subdistrict and northern Ardahan). Its governor was Stepan Ghorghanyan.

Syunik (Սյունիք) – composed of the highland districts of the Elizavetpol Governorate (without the Dilijan district), including Zangezur and Nagorno-Karabakh. Its governors in chronological order were Sergey Melik-Yolchyan and Zakar Yolyan.

Parties

The dominant party in Armenian politics was the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (or Dashnaks)—their monopoly in this sphere was confirmed through the 1919 Armenian parliamentary election. The Dashnaks held almost all posts in every cabinet of the Armenian republic, however, the organisation was not only "not a monolithic organization but had served as a broad umbrella in the cause of national emancipation", but also, was originally "created as a revolutionary society to emancipate the Turkish Armenians, it was neither structured as nor intended to evolve into a legal ruling organism". The party also suffered from "contradictions between nationalism and socialism" and "a widening rift between intellectuals and partisan chief"—despite these factors, the Dashnaks placed "great importance on showing a solid front".

The liberal Constitutional Democrats or Ramgavar opposed class-warfare in the face of suffering due to foreign oppression—the party had a "militant tradition" due to absorbing the Armenakan Party and a faction of the Reformed Hunchak Party. The Armenian Populist Party, formed in 1917 from the Russian Kadets were "purely bourgeois and antirevolutionary", and shared the posts of the second cabinet with the Dashnaks and "advanced a program of liberal, evolutionary reforms and drew its adherents primarily from among the professional-commercial classes of Tiflis and Baku".

Bolsheviks in Armenia boycotted the Armenian parliamentary elections, branding Armenian democracy "bourgeois parliamentarianism", thereby it was evident that "radicals" were in control of the Armenian branch. In the latter half of 1919, Bolsheviks expelled from Georgia gathered in Armenia; in all, there were some 500 Bolsheviks in Armenia with little coordination with one-another. Akin to their colleagues throughout the former Russian Empire, they opposed Armenia's independence and sought the country's reunion with Russia.

The Social Democrat Hunchakian Party was the only Marxist party that had significant Eastern and Western Armenian membership. However, following the events of World War I, Eastern Armenian Hunchaks became Mensheviks or Bolsheviks—by this time, the party in the Caucasus was held together by a "small circle of old loyalists and a few refugee members from Van". The Western Armenians "found repugnant the 'Russianism' of the Erevan republic and its native inhabitants", also believing that "the government and capital of liberated Armenia should be located in Karin (Erzerum), Van, or even a major center in Cilicia, but certainly not in Erevan".

Act of United Armenia

On 28 May 1919, on the first anniversary of the Republic of Armenia, the government of the newly founded country symbolically declared the union of Eastern and Western Armenia, the latter of which was still under the full control of the Turks. The declaration, read by Alexander Khatisian, is as follows:

To restore the integrality of Armenia and to secure the complete freedom and prosperity of her people, the Government of Armenia, abiding by the solid will and desire of the entire Armenian people, declares that from this day forward the divided parts of Armenia are everlastingly combined as an independent political entity.

... Now, in promulgating this act of unification and independence of the ancestral Armenian lands located in Transcaucasia and the Ottoman Empire, the Government of Armenia declares that the political system of United Armenia is a democratic republic and that it has become the Government of this United Republic of Armenia.

Thus, the people of Armenia are henceforth the supreme lord and master of their consolidated fatherland, and the Parliament and Government of Armenia stand as the supreme legislative and executive authority conjoining the free people of united Armenia.

Military

Owing to the efforts of Armenian National Council of Tiflis, the Armenian National Corps was established to fight against the Ottoman offensive of late 1917 and early 1918. On 13 December 1917, the Armenian National Corps was established, with General Tovmas Nazarbekian was appointed commander and Drastamat Kanayan became the defence minister. Nazarbekian used his experience in the Russian Caucasus Army to aid in the creation of the regular army. Units of this corps formed the basis of the Armenian army. Armenian conscripts and volunteers from the Russian Army later established the core of the armed forces of the First Republic. In accordance with the harsh terms of the Treaty of Batum, the Ottoman Empire demobilised most of the Armenian army, only allowing a limited force, also severely restricting where Armenian troops could operate.

In 1920, Armenian representatives abroad sought arms, aeroplanes, and military advisors to reorganise and increase the size of the Armenian army to 40 thousand men. The British government eventually agreed to supply Armenia with arms in order to relieve themselves of the responsibility of enforcing the terms of the Treaty of Sèvres for Armenia. The arms shipped to Armenia valued at £829,634.90 (equivalent to £32,060,085 in 2025) included 40 thousand uniforms, 25 thousand Ross rifles, 440 Vickers machine guns, 57,500,000 small arms ammunition, and 1,077 "packages of medical supplies". However, as Armenia was landlocked, it depended on Georgian rail to receive supplies, therefore, it was negotiated to share 27 percent of the supplies with Georgia. The arms were received in Armenia six months after the Allied Supreme Council had decided to furnish Armenia with arms, yielding a "great moral boost". Though unsuccessful in obtaining military advisors, it was planned that the Armenian army would be reorganised into 3 divisions consisting of 30 thousand infantrymen consisting of 3 brigades made up of 3 battalions; moreover, 2 thousand cavalrymen would be made up of "5 regiments of 400 sabres each"; the artillery would consist of 3 thousand men, and the remaining 5 thousand into "other services". Though Armenians abroad had financed the purchase of two French fighter planes, the British in Batum impounded the fighters in March 1920 until they were released weeks later.

Achievements

The government organised an agricultural cooperation agency known as the HayCop or Hai-Koop (Հայաստանի սպառողական կոոպերատիվների միություն, 'Union of Consumer Cooperatives of Armenia') on 1 July 1919. According to Hovannisian, "the union's executive was instructed to stress the working-class nature of the movement by excluding rich peasants (kulaks) and developing facets of the rural economy which benefited the toilers". The Hai-Koop, which came as an "amalgamation" of consumer cooperative groups, strove to serve as "local agencies of production and distribution, as intermediaries between the government and primary producers, and as mainstays of communal self-improvement and popular democracy". The organisation was headed by intellectuals of Marxist and other backgrounds. Notable members of the cooperative published a biweekly journal called Hayastani Kooperatsiia (Հայաստանի Կոոպերացիա, 'The Cooperative of Armenia') By the end of 1919, the cooperative represented 60 thousand households and included 200 member associations.

In 1920, 1,400 versts (1,500 kilometres) of telegraph lines were repaired throughout the country, and new lines were planned to interconnect Kars, Karakilisa, and Zangezur. The telegraph line expansion was so expansive that the government authorised the creation of a separate ministry to oversee it in January 1920. Roads were repaired to become fit for car-usage. By November 1919, daily passenger service via train was available between Armenia and Georgia.

In late 1918, Armenia adopted a structure of a national judiciary whereby there would be "elected tribunals of conciliation to handle small claims and minor disputes", and a legal hierarchy consisting of a circuit court of the first instance (Շրջանային դատարան, Shrjanayin dataran), as the appellate court – the Palace of Justice (Դատաստանական պալատ, Datastanakan palat), and the supreme court of cassation – the Senate (Ծերակույտ, Tserakuyt). The requirement of the adoption of the Armenian language in all government institutions "presented a more serious challenge" for jurists trained in the Russian language.

In May 1919, the government adopted a plan to establish the country's first university with faculties of history and philology, law, medicine, and physical sciences—it was opened on 31 January 1920 and classes began on 1 February with 8 professors and 200 students. The university was temporarily located in the Alexandropol "school of commerce" until the next academic year. The minister of education and culture, Nikol Aghbalian, declared that "with the opening of the historico-philological branch of the state university, Armenia was taking a major step toward restoring the old, traditional bonds with the great civilizations of the West".

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.

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".