Ten Milestones of Russia’s Expansion in the East and the Catastrophe of the “Perished” Civilization

In 1313, Uzbeg Khan became the ruler of the vast Turkic empire—the Golden Horde. He made Islam the dominant religion. During the 45-year reign of Uzbeg Khan and his son and successor, a rich Turkic-Muslim culture was formed. It strengthened the bonds between the Turkic-speaking peoples of Eurasia. The Organization of Turkic States, which was established in 2009, draws on Uzbeg’s legacy. At the same time, the khan’s patronage enabled Moscow to assume a dominant position in the Rus' lands. When Uzbeg’s son died and the Golden Horde began to disintegrate, in the 1370s, Moscow advanced into the Turkic lands. By the end of the 15th century, the foundations had been laid for Moscow’s imperial ideology of expansion into the Muslim East and Eastern Europe, including the territories of present-day Ukraine.

The era of imperialistic conquests began in 1549, with the first tsar of “all Rus'” Ivan the Terrible. He cast the war against the Turkic peoples in religious terms, captured Kazan, and secured Muscovy’s access to the Caspian Sea and the Caucasus. He outlined Russia’s strategy of using Armenians as an instrument of imperial expansion. Peter the Great continued his eastern policy. He made the first attempt to conquer the Caucasus and entered into direct confrontation with Turkey. The “protection” of eastern Christians became the justification for expansion (as was also the case in 2022 with the “protection” of Ukraine’s Russian-speaking population). Peter set out the main principles of using Armenians as a “fifth column” in Russia’s expansionist policy. In 1722–1724, he devised a project to change the ethnodemographic map of the eastern South Caucasus through partial deportation of Muslims and mass resettlement of Armenians from Anatolia. SucceedingRussian monarchs and Soviet leaders, especially Stalin, fulfilled this intention.

In 1783, Russia annexed Crimea. Just like in the territories of present-day Eastern Ukraine, the methods of increasing the pro-Russian population by attracting Armenians from abroad were applied there. At the same time, preparations for the conquest of South Caucasus began. First, the Russians consolidated their authority in Georgia. Using it as their base, they occupied the entire region by the end of 1827. Russia attached special significance to Erivan province. It became its base for expansion into Anatolia and the Middle East. However, more than 80% of the province’s population were Shia Turkic peoples sharing their religion with Persians and ethnically related to the Ottomans. That is why over 45,000 Armenians from Anatolia were resettled there in order to form a large Christian community. Their new “homeland” was transformed into an Armenian province, despite the continued predominance of the Turkic population (analogous to the so-called “Luhansk and Donetsk People’s Republics” in the occupied Donbas). Overall, 93,000–140,000 Armenians were resettled to South Caucasus in 1828–1830.

During the 1877–1878 war, Russia annexed some of the “core” territories of the Ottoman Empire for the first time. Russian agents encouraged Ottoman Armenians to collaborate with the occupying forces. Armenians living in the border areas responded to these appeals and actively assisted the invading army. This sharply deteriorated the attitude of Muslims in the Ottoman Empire toward the Armenians. Russia took advantage of the newly emerged antagonism. In 1879, a colonel of Russian military intelligence was sent to the border regions of the Ottoman Empire populated by Armenians. He would ultimately become the architect of modern Armenian nationalism. His efforts led to the emergence of the first Armenian combat organizations. Their mission was to prepare terrorist attacks, acts of sabotage, and uprisings.

In 1890, as a strategic military alliance between Russia and France was taking shape and the two countries expanded their intelligence operations in the Ottoman Empire, radicals led by a Russian citizen provoked clashes between Armenians and Muslims in Istanbul. This marked the rise in the activity of Armenian nationalists in the Ottoman Empire. A few weeks later, the Dashnaktsutyun party was established in the administrative center of South Caucasus. Another three years later, after the Russian–French alliance was officially established, a wave of Armenian uprisings swept across Turkey, and a large-scale guerrilla movement emerged, in which Dashnaks played a key role. Those who led the revolts chose the localities at the intersection of the Russian and French zones of influence. The activists, weapons, and money came from Russia. Many of the commanders were Russian Armenians. Graduates of military academies and ex-servicemen stood out among them (just like in the Donbas in 2014–2021). The fierce confrontation with the Turkic population and Kurds continued until the spring of 1904.

The Russo–Turkish war of 1877–1878 and the Armenian–Turkish armed clashes of 1893–1904 once again caused an influx of tens of thousands of Armenians from Anatolia to the Caucasus. Most of them settled in the Erivan Governorate, a region near the border. At the same time, the local Turkic population was subjected to systemic discrimination. Against this background, the first mass Armenian-Turkic clashes began in South Caucasus in February 1905 and lasted until July 1906. The Erivan Governorate was one of the epicenters. Dashnak guerrilla detachments transferred from Turkey became the main assault force. They brought ruthless tactics of armed confrontation to the Caucasus. Their purpose was to “cleanse” the territories of the Turkic population and create mono-ethnic Armenian enclaves.

Just a year after the end of the Armenian–Turkic clashes, tensions between Russia and the Ottoman Empire began to escalate again. In 1912, the Russian leadership pinned its hopes on Dashnaktsutyun. With the outbreak of World War I, Dashnaks began forming Armenian units in the Russian Army. During its advance in eastern Turkey in 1915, a local Armenian uprising broke out. It was organized by Dashnaktsutyun, which coordinated its actions with and received support from the Russian command. The Ottoman authorities responded by expelling Armenians from the regions bordering on Russia. This forced hundreds of thousands of Ottoman Armenians to flee to the Erivan Governorate—the region closest to the border.

Following the collapse of the Russian Empire in 1917, the Caucasus plunged into chaos. The leadership of Dashnaktsutyun took advantage of the situation. It relied on Armenian troops that consisted of former servicemen of the Russian Army and guerilla units made up of Ottoman Armenians, totaling 50,000. With this force, Dashnaks tried to secure a dominant position in the region in 1918. They established dictatorship in Erivan, launching a campaign for extermination and expulsion of Muslims. Then, in alliance with Armenian Bolsheviks, they consolidated their authority in Baku and massacred the Turkic population there. From there, Dashnak troops marched on the capital of Georgia. However, they were defeated by the Turkish army that had crossed the recent front line. Dashnaktsutyun had to settle for Erivan, even though it held little appeal to the Armenian political elite. This is how the first Republic of Armenia emerged. It was the only new state in the region that staked its future on Russia’s recovery. Meanwhile, inside the country, the Dashnaks pursued a policy of “cleansing” the territories of Muslims. Within two and a half years, 60% of the Turkic population — over 253,000 people — were exterminated. More than 150,000 became refugees. After the establishment of Soviet Armenia in 1920, Turkic residents accounted for only 8.8% of the population of those territories, compared to more than 80% one hundred years earlier.

The communist regime renewed the migration of Armenians from abroad. Between 1926 and 1932, 75,000 of them arrived in Soviet Armenia. In 1935, replacement of Turkic names of towns, villages, and natural sites with Armenian ones began (60% of all toponyms had been renamed by 1988). At the same time, the Turkic-Muslim character of Erivan was destroyed. In 1946–1948, by Stalin’s decision, 100,000 Armenians from Europe and the Middle East moved to Soviet Armenia. In order to make room for them, the Soviet authorities deported 150,000 Azerbaijanis. Many died due to the appalling conditions of transport and accommodation. Deportation was escalating into extermination. Meanwhile, obliteration of all material traces of the centuries-old presence of the Turkic civilization began in Soviet Armenia.

A total of 100,000 Armenians arrived in the republic from other countries through Stalin’s efforts and, unlike their local peers, they had a much more pronounced nationalist mentality. Before resettlement, many participated in the activities of the Dashnaktsutyun party. After resettlement, they exerted ideological influence on the local Armenians. This set the stage for a resurgence of nationalist sentiments in Armenia in the 1960s, which, in turn, laid the foundation for the nationalist movement of the second half of the 1980s. Following the first demonstrations by its activists in Yerevan, clashes between Armenians and Azerbaijanis erupted in Zangezur in November 1987. Azerbaijani refugees from the region fled to Baku. In February 1988, the expulsion of Azerbaijani population from other regions of Armenia began. In September, the clashes escalated. Most of those killed were Azerbaijanis. Survivors fled en masse to Georgia and Azerbaijan. By early 1989, there were no Azerbaijanis left in Armenia, although just a year earlier their number had ranged from 200,000 to 250,000. More than 200 villages were abandoned. The centuries-old Turkic civilization of Erivan and Zangezur had “disappeared” completely.