“Special Kind of Refugees”: Assisting Armenians in Erzincan, Bayburt, and Erzurum

Abstract

AbstractOver 200,000 Armenians became displaced persons during the First World War as a result of the war on the Caucasus battlefront and the genocide in the Ottoman Empire. Drawing upon previously untapped material from Armenian, Georgian, and Russian archives and libraries, this chapter reflects on that mass population movement, examines the resulting humanitarian crisis, and analyzes Armenian refugee relief work. It shows that because of the complex structure of the empire, the nature of humanitarianism in imperial Russia was multilayered and heterogeneous. To control and coordinate the large population movements in the eastern occupied regions of the Ottoman Empire and in Transcaucasia, imperial Russian authorities needed to organize and facilitate proper registration of refugees: a challenging task in times of war, epidemics, and humanitarian crises. They also had to define who was and who wasn’t a refugee.This chapter reflects on Russian military and civil authorities’ responses to the refugee movements in newly occupied areas of the Ottoman Empire—Erzincan, Bayburt, Erzurum— in summer 1916 and emphasizes the new directions and challenges of relief work. It shows how the relief committees and agencies adjusted to the changing dynamics on the warfront and in the occupied regions and shaped their relief strategies and methods according to the emerging needs of various categories of refugees. Hence, it contributes to key discussions in interdisciplinary research on refugees and to the emerging literature on relations between humanitarianism and imperialism. Finally, it offers a more nuanced understanding of Armenian-Russian relations in this period.