The Provisional Government and the Armenian Homeland Project

Abstract

This article examines the impact of the February Revolution of 1917 and the establishment of the Provisional Government in Russia on the Armenian nationalists' idea to construct an Armenian homeland in Transcaucasia and the Russian-occupied Ottoman territories. It explores the Provisional Government's administrative-territorial re-division, or redrawing project in Transcaucasia, as an expression both of the Armenian nationalist aim of constructing an Armenian homeland in the region with predominantly Armenian units, and of Russian imperial ambitions. The paper introduces the history of ideas of Armenian political parties, especially the major Armenian nationalist party Dashnaktsutiun, in relation to the Armenian homeland, the Caucasian Viceroyalty's initiatives on the zemstvo reforms in the region in 1905–16, and Armenian nationalist expectations of these reforms. It focuses on the attempts by the Armenians and Provisional Government to re-divide the predominantly Muslim Elizavetpol province (guberniia) into two new provinces – a Muslim-dominated Elizavetpol and an Armenian-dominated Gandzak province – as a background to the Armenian territorial claims to Garabagh, which continue to the present day. It also discusses the project's intentions to re-divide Erevan province, with its significant Muslim population, and the construction of a new Armenian-dominated Alexandropol province as parts of a bigger project of constructing an Armenian homeland in Transcaucasia.