Caught in the Middle (2024)

Book Review from the January 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

Goodbye Eastern Europe. An Intimate History of a Divided Land. By Jacob Mikanowski. Oneworld. 2023. 375pp.

Jacob Mikanowski’s book tells of how over many centuries, in what we still commonly call Eastern Europe, people and territories mixed, split and merged and empires came and went. Goodbye Eastern Europe is remarkable both for the eloquence and flair with which it is written and for the immensely broad and detailed knowledge it displays of the complex history of so many peoples and so many lands, into which the author also poignantly interweaves the story of his own Polish family. In a wide-ranging and dramatic but dispassionate narrative of shifting frontiers, multi-layered identities and changing nationalities, we view both worlds that have vanished and new cultures and systems of governments that have arisen, from medieval times right up to the present day, with even a perspective on the current war in Ukraine.

In comparing Eastern to Western Europe the author points to major developmental differences. In the West, he writes, ‘rulers worked hard to homogenize their states’, ‘the equation between ethnic and linguistic belonging began very early’, and ‘the machinery of the state worked like a giant steamroller, ironing out differences wherever they could be found’. In Eastern Europe, on the other hand, empires were much more pragmatic, tending to accept and indeed ‘accentuate difference rather than suppress it’. So, for example, Christians of all persuasions and Jews were allowed to manage their own affairs by the Ottomans and the Hapsburgs. A Hungarian king, we are told, ‘lectured his son about the usefulness of immigrants’ on the grounds that ‘a kingdom of one language and one custom is weak and fragile’ and newcomers should be treated ‘with goodwill and honor’, in order that ‘they will prefer to live with you rather than inhabit any other place’. So Eastern Europe became a land of diversity and difference and remained largely so until the wars of the last two centuries tore the old empires apart (the Ottoman Empire, for example, ‘was crumbling like a mouthful of rotten teeth’), and made it begin to take on the homogenized, nationalistic model of the Western nation state. At the end of the First World War, in particular, with these new political formations taking shape, the map of Eastern Europe ‘resembled a sky full of shifting clouds’, as national mythologies (that ‘nemesis of the working class’, as someone has put it) developed.

Part 3, the last main section of this book, deals with how these clouds shifted and eventually came to rest, via a series of illuminating chapters entitled, respectively, ‘Moderns’, ‘Prophets’, ‘War’, ‘Stalinism’, ‘Socialism’ and ‘Thaw’, and ranging over the whole stretch of what could be called Eastern Europe from Poland and the Baltic states in the north to Bulgaria and Albania in the south. The chapter on war – World War 2 – though magisterially and dispassionately told, is hard to read for its unflinching account of the near extermination of the Jewish people in the Holocaust. Then, in the chapter on Stalinism in particular, while not dwelling on the horrors of the Soviet pre-war period when millions of Stalin’s supposed ‘enemies’ were starved, deported or eliminated, the author presents a stark view of the expansion of the Soviet dictatorship from 1939 onwards, as it initially took in eastern Poland and the Baltic states and then, after the end of the Second World War, completed the process of domination, in which ‘every country in the region was a one-party state, dominated by a local version of the Communist Party’, with leaders approved by Stalin who ‘dictated their foreign policies and determined their relationships with the rest of the world’. This was, as the author so eloquently puts it, the ‘dreamworld of High Stalinism’, a revolution ‘imposed not from below but from above, and not from within but from without’. It was, furthermore, he tells us, not just a model of political oppression but also failed to provide anything resembling decent living standards to its working masses and any claim to be establishing socialism was ‘shameless puffery’.

A contradictory and misleading thing, unfortunately, is that, having said this, the title he gives to the chapter that comes next, referring to the Khruschev-Brezhnev era that followed Stalinism, is ‘Socialism’. Misleading both because the reality of this era bore no relation to the classless, stateless, moneyless society of free access that proper socialism is and also because the author himself then goes on to portray that reality as very much the same as before but in a milder version. He characterises it thus: ‘Stalinism eliminated its enemies. The socialist regimes that followed neutralized them instead’. Whatever the case, it carried on being, as he puts it, ‘a realm of deceit, of empty slogans and meaningless exhortations’ as well as ‘status and scarcity’, where queues were one of’ ‘the defining experiences of life’.

It could not last and, from 1989 onwards, what the author – again misleadingly – calls ‘real socialism’ began to break up, both in the satellite states and the Soviet Union itself, leading to what he refers to as ‘thaw’. He sees this shift as a process of moving from socialism to capitalism, whereas in reality capitalism already existed in the East. It was not the private or ‘mixed economy’ capitalism of the West but capitalism nonetheless, state capitalism, a system with all the characteristic features of that system – money and wages, buying and selling, an elite class controlling (if not formally owning) the means of production and living off the benefits of this. Something that is still largely the case in countries such as China and Cuba.

The following overview in the book’s epilogue provides a fitting epitaph: ‘For Eastern Europe, the twentieth century was a century of barely interrupted cataclysms. The old ties that bound people together dissolved, only to be replaced with murderous aggression. As rival armies flooded into the region from east and west, neighbour killed neighbour. When the wars ended, mass expulsions and population transfers unravelled what was left of the old Eastern European tapestry’.

Howard Moss

The March From Rome - Part 2 (1943)

From the March 1943 issue of the Socialist Standard

Link to Part 1

Italy's war on Turkey was not looked upon with favour by other powers. German capitalism was slowly penetrating the Turkish Empire, where German financial groups were obtaining concessions and had made of Tripoli a port of call for her steamship lines. The Turks tried concessions and compromise, but Italian capitalism was desperate and declared war on Turkey on September 29th, 1911. She emerged victorious, acquiring Tripoli, Cyrenaica and the Dodecanese Islands. British and French capitalism did not like this and offered open bitter criticism. Such wanton aggression should have been left to older established firms. This created bitterness in Italy, and played into the hands of Germany, who were able to bring about, as a result, a renewal of the Triple Alliance long before its end was due. Italy and Austria now co-operated in the Balkan "problems" and asserted the inviolability of Albania, a direct challenge to the Russo-Slav dreams of a march to the Adriatic.

In 1913 Italy now begins to talk of her "Asiatic policy," and a group of Italian financiers "obtain" a concession to build a railway to link up with the Bagdad Railway. The stronger Italy became the louder the clamour for the provinces still held by her Austrian ally. These cross-currents of economic conflict made it no easier for Italian expansion, as "peaceful" progress is but periodic within the framework of capitalism. The manoeuvres, bargainings and concession-hunting during the first decade of the present century were just moves on the chessboard for the grand slam. It came in 1914. Italy was a member of the Triple Alliance and therefore bound to Germany, but she decided to "wait and see." Capitalism has no room for " loyalty " unless it has a cash basis. In May, 1915, Italian capitalism had checked up its chances and plumped against its ally. Not for nothing was this done. Virtue is its own reward, but it is just as well to "help" nature and Providence, and Italy's virtue was reinforced by the "secret" agreement into which she entered with her new allies. By this she was to obtain the return of Trentino and Istria, a gift of Dalmatia, Valona, and a few islands off that coast. Thus she would become the one and only Adriatic power. In addition, after the carving up of Turkey was arranged, she would receive her share as a "sphere of influence." She was to receive a proportion of the indemnity and the treaty was "to be kept secret."

This "secret" treaty, April 26th, 1915, was signed by that pillar of Liberalism and the League of Nations, Sir Edward Grey, and published in the Manchester Guardian, January 18th, 1918. On that same day Mr. Lloyd George addressed the Trade Union Congress and said, "The British Empire is finding its purpose in the great design of Providence on earth, finding it in this great war for liberty and right throughout the world." Poor Congress! Happy Lloyd George! The settlement of the world war double-crossed Italian capitalism, and after the seizure of Fiume by the freebooter D'Annunzio this city was made into a "Free" city. For her "sphere of influence" resulting from the Turkish carve-up, Italy inherited a desert—Libya.

Economic depression became rampant in Italian cities and unemployment the order of the day. Large Communist parties, Anarchist groups and Syndicalist organisations bewildered the masses by their wild slogans. Ex-officers, now jobless, gathered the slum elements and formed themselves in gangs of desperadoes, robbing and pillaging at wilL These gangs took the name of Fascia, and Mussolini placed himself at their head, organising them into a disciplined body. Groups of workers, trained in Anarchist and Syndicalist beliefs, seized a number of factories, which they evacuated on the advice of the Liberal, Giolitti. The industrial capitalists, the Monarchy, the landowners began to look round for a weapon to crush the workers. They found it ready to hand in Mussolini and his Fascia, thugs and criminals and the dregs of Italian society.

During the early post-war years a wave of "Labourism" swept Europe, and Labour governments, national and municipal, were returned to power throughout the Continent, masquerading under the name of "Socialism." In Italy the Labour Party obtained 156 seats, three times their previous number. but being Non-Socialist votes the fever soon passed. Fascism, born in Milan, now spread over Northern Italy, with the willing assistance of landowners and industrial capitalists. In 1921 Mussolini entered Parliament, and Fascism took on its legal character. The government of Facta appealed to the King to sign a decree declaring a state of siege against the now armed Fascists. The King refused, but sent a telegram inviting Mussolini to come to Rome and form a new ministry. Mussolini "marched to Rome" in a sleeping car, with the list of new ministers in his pocket. Here he was met by the King and the job settled.

Lew Jones

Spoiling Egyptians: British Capitalism and Egyptian Nationalism. (1929)

Book Review from the March 1929 issue of the Socialist Standard

British Imperialism in Egypt. By Elinor Burns.
 No. 5, Colonial Series. Published by the Labour Research Department. 72 pp. Price 6d.

This book is a very succinct and useful account of British control in Egypt from about 1850 to the present day.

From 1517 to 1914, Egypt was nominally under Turkish rule, and was required to pay an annual tribute, fixed in 1873 at £675,000, but during the 19th century a new overlord entered Egypt—the foreign financier—who demanded tribute on an immensely larger and ever-increasing scale.

Foreign capital was given its first opportunity by the construction of the Suez Canal during the reign of the Khedive Ismail, who was the first Egyptian ruler to foresee prospects of wealth and power by developing the country’s resources on West European lines. The first twelve years of Ismail’s reign call to mind the famous tribute to the “ bourgeoisie ” in the Communist Manifesto for, during this period, the following, among many other works, were completed: The construction of the Suez Canal and 8,400 miles of irrigation canals; over 900 miles of railways and 5,000 miles of telegraph ; the building of 430 bridges and numerous houses in Cairo; the Alexandria harbour and the Suez Docks; the construction of roads, including a special road to the Pyramids; and the completion of 15 lighthouses and 64 sugar mills. Irrigation increased the area of arable land from four million to nearly five-and-a-half million acres. Most of these works were carried out by British capitalists who lent the money at immense interest and obtained enormous profits on their contracts. In a short space of time these capitalists were owed by the Egyptian State more than a half of the money lent, and the bulk of revenue was required for debt redemption. More and more loans were contracted to pay off other loans, and the finances of the country became in such a hopeless condition that excuse was afforded for the British Government to “step in” in the interest of its “nationals”—the bondholders and financiers. The Khedive in 1875 was compelled by the creditors to sell his shares in the Suez Canal to the British Government for £4,000,000, and a financial mission was sent to Egypt “to assist in remedying the confusion.’’ Following this decision, Goschen, the representative of the bondholders, and the financial mission, forced upon the Khedive a scheme which included the appointment of two Controllers-General (one British, one French), and the consolidation of the debt at 7 per cent. interest (except on the loans of Goschen’s firm on which the old rates of 10 and 12 per cent. were to be paid!) Ruthless pressure was put upon the peasants to keep the State finances solvent. Crops were forestalled, and customs dues and railway rates were increased. Despite the occurrence of a cattle plague and a failure of crops, which led to a holocaust of deaths from starvation and disease, the British Government would not allow even postponement of interest payments. Repercussions followed elsewhere; salaries of soldiers and Civil Servants were unpaid and their numbers seriously reduced. The Egyptian Finance Minister who protested against foreign control, was “put out of the way.” At last, in 1879, a revolt in the Army and widespread discontent, compelled the Khedive to dismiss the foreign ministers and to institute, through an elected assembly of Sheiks and others, a native government. This gave birth to a National Party, whose slogan was “Egypt for the Egyptians.”

However, High Finance was not prepared to take this blow “lying down.” The British Government induced the Sultan of Turkey to depose the Khedive Ismail and to appoint Tewfik, a tool of the foreign interests, as his successor. A few weeks later the foreign Controllers General were re-installed in office, and agitation for Egyptian Independence received a further stimulus.

The Army, now the only native institution within the State machine, was the leading force in this movement, and an officer named Arabi, a former “ranker” of peasant origin, became its storm centre. The movement received support also from |he landlords, who objected to foreign exploitation of Egypt’s new resources, and the peasants, who were being bled white by taxes for debt service. A programme was drawn up, which included the dismissal of all ministers, the granting of a constitution, and an increase in the strength of the Army. To stifle the agitation, the Khedive ordered Arabi and his regiment to the provinces, but Arabi refused to go, and instead marched his troops to the Palace and compelled the Khedive to appoint a new Anti-Imperialist Ministry.

Shortly after the events recorded above a massacre of Christians by a hired band of Bedouins took place at Alexandria. Whether the massacre was instigated by the British or the Turks is obscure, but the effect was harmful from a British point of view, for the European residents demanded the recognition of Arabi and the setting up of a joint conference of the six Powers having interests in Egypt—France, England, Italy, Germany, Austria and Russia.

The conference met at Constantinople in June, 1882, and a protocol was signed on behalf of the respective governments renouncing exclusive territorial and commercial privileges, and agreeing that none of the Powers should take isolated action in Egypt except in case of special emergency. As exclusive British control was impossible under this arrangement, it was imperative that a “special emergency," should arise and a pretext was soon found to justify a British occupation of Egypt. The repairing of some forts at Alexandria by the Egyptians was seized upon by the British Government as an excuse to bombard Alexandria by warships on July 11th, 1882, troops were landed to “restore order" on the Nile, and Arabi and his followers, who showed resistance, were finally routed at Tel-el-Kebir. Thus the British occupation became an accomplished fact, and the other Powers were not at the time in a position to assert their own “rights" under the protocol. The dual control was abolished, and the Egyptian constitution and Assembly were replaced by councils whose powers were merely advisory. Egypt for the next 25 years was treated to the “humane" administration of the British Consul-General, Sir Evelyn Baring, a London financier, who was afterwards made Lord Cromer for “services rendered."

The Baring regime introduced a new era of economic development. It was seen that the continued impoverishment of the peasants would lead to loss of revenue through land going out of cultivation. Accordingly the production of cotton on a greater scale for export was encouraged. This, in turn, created a demand for products of British heavy industry, for vast irrigation works and light railways, and, strangely enough, for foodstuffs, which were not now a paying proposition for the Egyptian peasant. In 1907 the exports of cotton were worth £30,000,000 as against £8,000,000 in 1892; and in 1908 foodstuffs to the value of £5,000,000 were imported, though a few years previously Egypt was a self-supporting country. It would be impossible in this article to trace the rapid industrialisation of Egypt to the present day, but some idea may be obtained from the estimate of the amount of British capital invested in Egypt, which is stated in this book to be about £200,000,000, on which the sum taken by British capitalists in interest and profits is given as £20,000,000.

Under the Baring administration the “key” positions in the Civil Service, Local Administration and the Army were held by Britishers, but as time went on it was found necessary to placate the class of rising Egyptian capitalists and large landowners which capitalist development had brought into being, and concessions had to be made continually to these sections. Saad Zaghlul Pasha, for example, was made Minister of Public Instruction in 1906. Nevertheless, control of the Egyptian State machine has never been relaxed by the British capitalist interests, and a persistent struggle between the Egyptian native capitalists and the British capitalists has been going on up to the present day. The political history of Egypt since 1906 has been a record of demonstrations, strikes, assassinations, riots and armed revolts on the one hand and of bloody repression, judicial atrocities, bombings, imprisonments, martial law, deportations; interspersed with attempts at compromise, on the other. Prior to the European War, Mustapha Kernel had been largely instrumental in organising the students, and by street demonstrations and the publication of newspapers, which had large circulations, the question of Egyptian "independence” was kept to the fore. By 1914 the movement had become so menacing that in November of that year Egypt was put under martial law. A rigorous press censorship was instituted; in December a British Protectorate was declared, and the pro-Turkish Khedive Abbas was deposed in favour of Hussein, who was given the title of Sultan. Although the British Government declared publicly that Egyptians would not be required for war service, yet within a year tens of thousands of peasants and workers were “rounded up" and compelled to join the Labour Corps and the Camel Transport Corps. The total number computed to have been enlisted in this manner in the various forces was about 1,000,000. Such measures as these induced violent hatred of British rule and popular support of the Nationalist movement. Further, the hypocritical talk in Allied journals about “self-determination” and the rights of “small nationalities” was seized upon by the Nationalists as imflammable propaganda and in order to harass the Government. Soon after the Armistice an Egyptian delegation (Wafd) was formed under Zaghlul Pasha to proceed to London in order to discuss the question of Egyptian “independence” with the British Government, but passports were refused and Zaghlul and three members of the Wafd were subsequently arrested and deported to Malta on March 8th, 1919. Open revolt followed this act, but was crushed with barbarous severity by brand, bomb and bullet. Attempts to break up the Wafd organisation failed, and as the country continued to be in a state of unrest and turmoil, the British Government at last conceded a constitution to the Egyptians. The first elections (January, 1924) gave an overwhelming majority to the Zaghlulists.

In recent years the dominating question at issue between the Egyptian native capitalists and the British Government is the control of the Sudan. This huge area of over a million square miles lying south of Egypt, bordering Uganda on the south and Abyssinia on the east, was annexed by the British Government in 1898. Since that date a similar story of capitalistic penetration to that of Egypt has to be recorded. Now Egypt is entirely dependent upon the Nile, and the Sudan controls the Upper Nile. A hostile power in the Sudan, therefore, could easily render Egypt impotent by changing the course of the Nile. Further, the sheep and cattle of the Sudan supply Egypt with much of its food, and the development of cotton production must inevitably react on Egyptian conditions. In addition, future Egyptian industrial progress is dependent upon electricity supplied from Sudanese water power, for Egypt has no coal, and poor oil resources. It will be seen, therefore, that, economically, Egypt and the Sudan are inseparable, and Egyptian capitalist interests are endangered by British control of the Sudan. But the Sudan is of equal importance to British capitalist interests apart from internal economic exploitation, for its coastline along the Red Sea forms an important link in Empire communication.

When Zaghlul took office in 1924 he thought that the British Labour Government, then in office, would help the movement for Egyptian Independence, but he was soon to learn that lip opposition to imperialist principles did not imply action along those lines. MacDonald, in fact, told the British High Commissioner in Egypt in a despatch that they (the British Government) “regard their responsibilities as a trust for the Sudan people; there can be no question of their abandoning the Sudan until their work is done”; and in the interview with Zaghlul in London he was very sympathetic with the “sufferings ” of the holders of the Turkish Government’s bonds, payment on which had been stopped since the War by the Turkish Government. The first British Labour Government also showed its “Labour” principles by condoning domestic slavery in the Sudan. So much for Labour professions!

But if the British Labour Government proved an “eye-opener” to the Egyptian Nationalists, the actions of the latter when in power proved their utter worthlessness so far as the peasants and workers in Egypt were concerned. The whole of the legislation put through by the Zaghlul ministry was favourable to the Egyptian capitalists, and one of its first actions was the replacement of the Militant Trade Unions, which had grown up after the 1919 rising, by organisations controlled by the Wafd, whose members held all the important positions. Strikes were frequent, but these were suppressed by the usual capitalist methods of imprisonment and deportation. It is deserving of notice that at the present time more than one-half of the persons engaged in agriculture are wage workers, and tobacco, silk, railway, constructional and transport workers are organised in Trade Unions.

Recent events in Egypt will doubtless be familiar to our readers. The struggle between the native and British capitalist interests becomes ever more acute. “Crisis” has succeeded “crisis,” and on July 19th, 1928, the Egyptian Parliament was suspended for three years and a complete dictatorship has been established, which has prohibited meetings of the Wafd, and exercises a rigid censorship over their press.

Apart from some little glorification of  Communist “leaders," the book is free from the expression of personal opinions. There is much statistical data, and the diction is clear and devoid of literary “frillings.” It concludes with the following passage:—

  It is evident that no solution of the Egyptian problem has been reached. For imperialism there can be no solution, because the satisfaction of its own needs inevitably fosters the growth of native capitalism, brings into being the working class, robs the Egyptian peasantry of the very means of existence, and thus strengthens the forces which are drawn into the anti-imperialist struggle.

If, after their previous experiences, the Egyptian workers and peasants are again drawn into this struggle between two sections of their exploiters, they will have themselves to blame, and it should be clear that the workers here have nothing to gain by lending their support to capitalist national movements in any land.

W. J.

Armenia: the Background to Events (1988)

From the August 1988 issue of the Socialist Standard

The following is an abridged text of a contribution from a supporter to a recent Socialist Party meeting on the theme of “Ethnic Unrest in the Russian State Capitalist Empire”. It provides a background for understanding the current territorial dispute in the Caucasus.

Who are the Armenians?

As a major crossroads, a land rich in natural resources, and an excellent base for military operations against rival powers in the surrounding lowlands, Armenia has been coveted by powerful empires. Often its possession was the key to supremacy over much of Western Asia. From the West came the armies of the Macedonian, Roman and Byzantine empires; from the East, the armies of the Persian, Turkic and Mongol empires; from the South those of the Seleucid, Arab and Mameluk empires, and from the North the Russian empire. All the wars were similar in that they brought people suffering, destruction and death; what changed were the names of the foreign and “native” rulers.

The resulting insecurity of life ruined the country economically and culturally and prompted thousands of Armenians to flee. Colonies were established in Poland, Crimea, India, Constantinople, as well as commercial and cultural centres in Venice, Genoa, Amsterdam, Moscow and elsewhere. It was in these colonies that, centuries later, the first stirrings of the Armenian emancipatory notion took form, such as the demand for Armenian independence on the principle of constitutional rule.

In historical Armenia itself, Moslem settlements rose on the sites of former Armenian cities or adjacent to still existing Armenian villages. The process of ethnic transmutation gradually led to Turkic Moslem dominance. Of those Armenians who remained, most eventually lost their lands to the military feudal states that embraced the region. Accompanying loss of government, ethnic alteration and economic regression was intellectual, cultural and moral decline. Karl Marx mentions “the invasion of the Turks into Asia Minor as one of the direst calamities of the Middle Ages”.

The Eastern Question

Russian expansion into the Caucasus occurred when Modem Western capitalism was becoming the most pervasive force in international relations, and when technologically-backward states such as the Ottoman and Persian realms were being integrated into the world market system. What once were issues of local significance acquired implications for major power relations, and decisions taken in Europe affected the lives of peoples in remote areas of the globe.

The gradual decline of Turkish rule in the Balkans was to offer a vast field for Russian expansionism. The ultimate fate of these territories constituted the Eastern Question and particularly concerned two of the major powers, Great Britain and Austria.

For British capitalism the principal aim was to ensure that the Russian Black Sea fleet could not enter the eastern Mediterranean. So, Britain supported Turkey against Russian advancement. But when the emergence of the German Empire in 1871 was followed by the gradual succumbing of Turkey to German influence, Britain was to swing round to friendship and eventually wartime alliance with Russia, to whom by 1915 she was even ready to offer the control of the straits of Dardanelle.

For Austria, any kind of change in the Balkans was bound to be for the worse. The Hapsburgs naturally objected to further Russian expansion, and the carving of independent states out of Turkey-in-Europe would become a focal point for the Slav nationalist groups within the Hapsburg dominions.

Russian policy, in fact, did not aim at immediate acquisition. Given the imperialist rivalries, Russia’s plans were based rather on a gradual extension of influence under the guise of a protectorate over all orthodox Christians.

The emergence of Armenian national consciousness lagged behind that of the Balkan peoples, so that by the time the Armenians had formulated their programme for reform, self-rule and even political autonomy, the Ottoman Empire was entrenched in a period of reaction. To the Turkish government, threatened with the final partition of their dominions. Armenian demands were separatist, disloyal and dangerous.

But neither the British proposals for reform, nor the increase in the number of European consuls on the plateau, nor the subsequent notes of protest and warning from the six European powers against the deteriorating situation there improved things in Turkish Armenia. In fact, Abdul Hamid the ruler of the Ottoman Empire’s response to European meddling was the massacre of more than 200,000 Armenians during 1895-6.

The Armenian nationalist movement

The Ottoman constitutional reform movement and Armenian liberalism had both failed. Revolutionary political parties then emerged, organised primarily by elements from the peasants, artisans and radicalised segments of the intelligentsia.

The first Armenian political party, the Hunchak party, was founded in Geneva in 1887 by Eastern (or Russian) Armenians. The founders had all been born in the Russian Empire and had been members of Narodnik groups. They had a conceptual framework which related the particular Armenian experience to larger, universal historical forces and were committed to the cause of the common people. The Hunchak party claimed in fact to be socialist but wanted to keep the two struggles, national and class, apart. Thus national independence was seen as the first priority and the establishment of a socialist order the ultimate goal, to be established after the achievement of national independence.

The second Armenian political party was the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (ARF) founded in 1890 in Tbilisi, in Russian Georgia.

Until 1900 Russian Armenians generally filled the role of suppliers and supporters of the struggle in Ottoman Armenia. But the Tsarist government’s edict ordering the expropriation of Armenian church properties and the Armano-Tartar conflict at the time of the 1905 Russian revolution brought to the surface the question of political and economic oppression in Russian Armenia.

The fourth General Congress of the ARF, in Vienna in 1907, drew the conclusion from this new development that in essence Armenians on both sides of the border were engaged in a single revolution since in both sectors the struggle was against political despotism, national oppression and economic exploitation; the differences in the levels of economic and political development between the two empires required a different emphasis of activities rather than a different struggle or organisation in each.

The programme adopted further stated that socialism strives toward the elimination of an barriers and discrimination among nations and toward the creation of a single harmonious humanity that would replace today’s divided and antagonistic contradictory world; but that socialism does not require the total assimilation of national entities which, through the inherited peculiarities of their history will enrich the future socialist humanity.

However, events beyond the control of the political parties of the Armenian people during and after the first world war overtook the theories, thwarting the national programme and pre-empting the socialist ideal.

”Who recalls the Armenian massacres nowadays?”

The Sultan’s rule had become unbearable for some Turkish patriotic groups who saw clearly the decline and destruction of their empire. Turkish leaders like Ahmed Riza believed that only the institution of efficient just government could save the Ottoman Empire from dissolution.

The Armenian parties, especially the ARF, found cause here to renew their hopes for reforms in the Ottoman Empire and its eastern provinces. They consulted, negotiated and co-operated with prominent Young Turks and in 1908 when the Young Turks took control of the Ottoman government and proclaimed a Constitution, jubilant Armenians welcomed the dawn of a new era; Armenian guerrillas laid down their arms.

The era of Armeno-Turkish co-operation did not last long. The more liberal-democratic elements in the Young Turk Committee of Union and Progress lost control and a new ruling clique gravitated towards extreme nationalism. The Committee of Union and Progress embraced the policy of Pan-Turkism and Pan-Islamism and began to entertain ideas of expansion towards the East. The first setback of the constitutional movement in 1909 was accompanied by the massacre of 30,000 Armenians.

In 1914 the European powers began their war for a re-division of the world market. An agreement had already been concluded between Germany and Turkey. The Turkish government sought to give the war a religious aspect and one pamphlet prepared with German help urged Moslems to slaughter Christians (except Germans and Austrians). The extermination of the Armenians was agreed upon and the means of carrying it out were devised.

The genocide started as early as January 1915. Three-and-a-half million Armenians lived in Western Armenia before the genocide and over two million were massacred, while those who miraculously remained alive fled abroad. The Turkish authorities hoped that, after the inevitable initial wave of international indignation, the massacres would soon be forgotten. They weren’t mistaken: twenty-five years later another assassin by the name of Adolf Hitler relied on the same “forgetfulness” when sending his SS butchers to invade Poland, urging them to be brutal and merciless with the remark “who recalls the Armenian massacres nowadays?”

The Armenian republic and Soviet rule

The collapse of Tsarism in 1917 led to the disintegration of its Empire in the Caucasus as elsewhere. In May 1918 following a brief and unsuccessful attempt at federation, the three major groups, the Georgians, the Azeris (Turkish-speaking Moslems) and the Armenians all declared their independence.

The Armenian Republic began its existence on about 12,000 square kilometres of bleak, rugged terrain, crammed with refugees, devoid of the bare essentials of life and surrounded by hostile forces. Famine and epidemics killed more than 200,000.

The defeat of the Central Powers in the war transformed Armenia’s disadvantages into seeming advantages. From the Allied point of view Georgia and Azerbaijan had collaborated with the defeated enemy powers whereas battered Armenia stood as the loyal martyred nation.

While the Allied Powers drew up plans to partition the Ottoman Empire without facing up to the fact that the terms would have to be enforced by military means in Turkish Armenia, Mustafa Kemal and other Turkish resistance leaders sought Soviet support in the struggle against their common enemies. The Soviet leaders, in their turn, recognised the potential aid that Turkish influence could play in stirring up the Muslim colonial world against the Western powers, thereby saving the Bolshevik government and the Soviet state.

On 2 December 1920 Armenia became a “Soviet Socialist Republic” and Soviet Russia acknowledged as indisputable parts of that state all lands that had been under the jurisdiction of the Armenian Independent Republic. But on the international level Soviet Russia sacrificed the Armenian question to cement the Turkish alliance. In 1921 it ceded Karabagh and Nakhidgevan to Soviet Azerbaidjani rule while the provinces of Kara and Ardahan, which were a part of Russian Armenia from 1878 to 1917, were ceded to Turkey. The European Powers too closed the Armenian question. It was bitterly ironic for the Armenians that of the several defeated Central Powers Turkey alone expanded beyond its pre-1914 boundaries and this only on the Armenian border.

Sovietisation has been acclaimed as the salvation of the Armenian people and the best defence available against Turkish expansion, which in 1920 could have resulted in the uprooting of the Russian Armenian population as had happened in Turkey. But Sovietisation has not prevented Armenian nationalist agitation. In 1965 the official commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the Genocide was interrupted by violent outbursts by young demonstrators in Yerevan demanding action “to recover lost lands”, in particular Karabagh. In the early 1970s Soviet courts tried, convicted and imprisoned a number of activists who had joined together as a “National Union Party”.

Consistent charges have been made against Soviet Azerbaidjan of a continued policy of cultural oppression, economic discrimination and ethnic disadvantages against the Armenians of Karabagh. In 1975 many Armenians were ousted from the Communist Party in Karabagh or imprisoned and charged with nationalist agitation. Since the coming to power of Gorbachev the demand for the transfer of Karabagh from Azerbaidjan to Armenia has been renewed with even more force, culminating in mass demonstrations in the streets of Yerevan of recent months.

Vahe Stephanian