Dashnak terrorism in the history of Turkestan and Azerbaijan

In the 20th century, Turkophobia and Islamophobia of Armenian terrorists manifested itself in an acute form not only against the civilians of Eastern Anatolia and the South Caucasus, but also against the civilian population of the Fergana Valley of Turkestan in 1918. It should be noted that a characteristic feature of the Armenian-Turkic enmity is historical hostility, which carried a pronounced antagonism, accompanied by monstrous and inhuman crimes.

Uzbek scientists and publicists systematically conduct special studies involving a complex of archival materials on the consequences of the Bolshevik policy in Turkestan. As a result of the studies, they objectively evaluate the events associated with the Bolshevik Dashnaks and the consequences of their crimes in Turkestan. According to the reports of the Uzbek historian Sh.A. Shamagdiev from the newspaper "Ulug Turkistan", published by the local intelligentsia of those years, the Dashnaks during 1918-1919 not only exterminated local residents, but also plundered and destroyed almost all the cities in the Fergana Valley and 180 villages. In Kokand alone, they killed 10,000 people in three days, in Margilan - 7,000, in Andijan -6,000, in Namangan - 2,000, in the area between Bazar Kurgan and Kokand - 4,500 civilians [16, p.54-60]. There are also reports of casualties in villages where local residents were completely exterminated. According to Professor K.K. Radzhabov, 2,000 local residents of the old city of Osh were slaughtered and the bodies of children were dismembered. In the city of Chust, 1,500 civilians were slaughtered [12, p.92].

Writers, publicists, independent authors and researchers historians of Uzbekistan, after careful analysis of the events that took place in the history of Turkestan, in their studies related to the period of the Bolsheviks and Dashnaks, convincingly and in detail report on the extermination of tens of thousands of local civilians. Data on the victims of the "Dashnak-Bolshevik terror" in Turkestan, carried out by Armenian punishers on the instructions of the Bolsheviks, are confirmed by archival materials. According to only preliminary estimates published in the National Encyclopedia of Uzbekistan, in three months the Dashnaks in the Fergana Valley killed 35 thousand civilians - women, old people and children [15.]. It should be noted that this figure is the result of three months of terror by the Dashnaks. "Dashnaktsutyun" committed crimes for a year, and then its representatives dissolved into the Bolshevik environment, and they participated in the destruction of the National Liberation Movement of local peoples until the complete establishment of the Soviet regime.

Inhuman and monstrous acts of terror against the civilian population took place not only in the Fergana Valley, but throughout Central Asia, where the Bolsheviks were in power. It is emphasized that the actual ethnic cleansing of the indigenous population took place over many years and systematically. According to archival data and the words of witnesses of those years, the number of victims from hunger and military actions proves the horrific consequences of the establishment of Soviet power in all regions of the former Russian Empire. Based on the facts, which are confirmed by documents and statements of witnesses of the events from archival sources, it can be stated that when establishing Soviet power, the Dashnaks' main attention was directed against the Muslims of the Caucasus and Turkestan. The central object of extermination were the Muslim Turks, namely, the victims, in most cases, were Uzbeks, Azerbaijanis and other Turkic, Muslim peoples of Turkestan and the Caucasus. In this regard, based on the fact of crimes against these Turkic ethnic groups, the actions of the Dashnaks can be characterized as ethnic terrorism, directed, in our case, against the autochthons of Turkestan and the Caucasus.

Main text

However, the terror of the Dashnaks was not only directed against the Turkic population of Eastern Anatolia, the Caucasus and historical Turkestan, but also extended to others who had nothing to do with the historical "woes" of the Armenians. The crimes of the Armenian Dashnaks were initially directed against the Anatolian Turks, then they committed their crimes against the Azerbaijanis of the South Caucasus and the Uzbeks of the Fergana Valley, but later they began to extend to others, and many other peoples suffered at their hands. For example, the Kurds, Persians, Tatars, Kyrgyz, Kazakhs, Kumyks and other Muslim ethnic groups were also exterminated. In addition, Russians, Jews, Georgians and even Armenians who lived next to the Turks but did not support the nationalists were monstrously exterminated along with their families. In connection with this statement of fact based on sources, the crimes committed by the Armenian Dashnaks together with the Bolsheviks in Turkestan, the Caucasus and Eastern Anatolia should be assessed not only as a crime against Turkic Muslims, but should be condemned by historians, politicians and lawyers as mass crimes against humanity, guided by terrorist motives.

According to the statements of the Dashnaktsutyun, the motive for these crimes was revenge for the events of 1915 in Eastern Anatolia, but judging by the reports of eyewitnesses known from the surviving archival documents, the purpose of these crimes was the acquisition of material values through robbery and terror. The Azerbaijanis of the South Caucasus and the Uzbeks of Turkestan have no relation to the events of the First World War, which took place in Eastern Anatolia, if you do not count the historical kinship with the Anatolian Turks, who came from Central Asia at least a thousand years ago.

If we look at the problem of the relationship of Armenians with the rest of the world, in the context of the Russian imperial and Soviet-Bolshevik multifaceted realities of the 19th-20th centuries, then the main vector of actions of these same Armenians is the Turkic and Muslim world, which they still consider their enemy No. 1. Therefore, almost all the thoughts of Armenian nationalists were “tied” primarily to Central Asia, the South Caucasus and Asia Minor, where mainly Turkic Muslims live.

The extermination of the civilian population of the Fergana Valley of Turkestan by the Dashnaks, with the assistance of the Bolsheviks, naturally led to a response from the local population. The result of all this was the full-scale National Liberation War that unfolded in the early spring of 1918, first in the Fergana Valley and then in other regions of Turkestan. The inhumane and monstrous terrorist actions of the Dashnaks-Bolsheviks detonated an explosion of popular discontent among the local population, which was reformatted into an ideological and political struggle as a national liberation movement of Turkestan against the Bolsheviks. That is, the response to the liquidation of the Turkestan autonomy and the massacre of the local population by the Armenian Dashnaks was a powerful national liberation partisan movement, known in Soviet historiography as Basmachi, liquidated by the Soviet government only in the mid-30s [1, p.74].

Researchers studying the historical problems of Uzbekistan, when investigating the activities of the National Liberation Movement of Turkestan, encounter numerous facts of ethnic cleansing of the local population of the Fergana Valley, which were carried out by the Armenian Dashnaks, with the assistance and active participation of the Bolsheviks.

Uzbek scientist historian Sh.A. Shamagdiev is the author of the book "Essays on the History of the Civil War in the Fergana Valley". In his book, published in the midst of the Soviet era in Tashkent in 1961, he clearly and specifically revealed the crimes of the Armenian Dashnaks in the Fergana Valley, which were committed during the liquidation of the Turkestan autonomy.

The famous Uzbek scholar M. Khasanov, the author of the book "Kokand Autonomy" and some of its lessons, published before the collapse of the Soviet Empire in 1990 in Uzbekistan, classified in detail and reported in detail on the atrocities of the Armenian Dashnaks and Bolsheviks throughout Turkestan during the establishment of Soviet power. In all the works of this author, the views of a true patriot of his homeland are traced, condemning the monstrous crimes of the Dashnaks in Turkestan.

In 1991, Uzbek publicist Shoniyoz Doniyorov published an article “Mukhtoriyat Qismati” (The Fate of Autonomy) in the 12th issue of the popular magazine “Sharq Yulduzi”, where the crimes of the Armenian Dashnaks during the liquidation of the Turkestan autonomy were revealed in detail, referring to the Turkestan periodicals of 1918. Many Internet resources of Uzbekistan still publish this article. This suggests that this historical problem does not lose its relevance in the 21st century.

In his book “Turkiston Mukhtoriyati” (Turkestan Autonomy), published in 1996 in Tashkent, Uzbek historian S. Agzamkhodjaev also reported on the activities of the Dashnaks and provided a detailed account of the activities of the Bolsheviks in the Fergana Valley.

A group of scientists researching the history of Uzbekistan has developed a new concept for studying the National Liberation Movement of Turkestan. According to this concept, the nature, essence of the leaders of the movement, the reasons for the movement, its driving forces, the history of its origin and development are interpreted in a new way.

In 2015, Professor K.K. Radjabov's book "The Independence Movement in the Fergana Valley: Essence and Main Stages of Development" was published in the Uzbek language. When writing the book, the author used archival documents from the Central State Archive of the Republic of Uzbekistan, from the Archive of the Office of the President of the Republic of Uzbekistan, from the regional archives of Fergana, Andijan and Namangan. In the book, based on the reports of witnesses that were preserved in archival documents, he described in detail the inhuman crimes of the Dashnaks and Bolsheviks on the territory of Uzbekistan. The book also contains valuable information about the kurbashis-leaders who were field commanders in the National Liberation War against the Bolsheviks. Based on the results of the study of archival documents, Professor K.K. Rad-jabov reports: the Armenian Dashnaks, speaking about the motives and reasons that prompted them to commit barbaric and monstrous crimes against the civilian population of the Fergana Valley in February 1918, claimed: “We waited for this day like a precious diamond for twenty months” [12, p. 92]. In Fergana, the Armenian Dashnaks mercilessly killed civilians, as if they were taking revenge on the local population for some of their obligations to the Armenians, according to whose statements, the expectation of this day in their minds allegedly turned into “a dream of a precious diamond”. This is not even a hint, but a direct statement of blood feud-vendetta.

Still, what happened twenty months ago from the moment when the bloody events of February 1918 took place in Fergana? It is interesting to study and analyze this statement of the Armenian Dashnaks. According to calculations, if you subtract twenty months from February 1918, then this is June-July 1916. That year, tragic events and uprisings of local peoples against the Russian Empire took place in Turkestan. It is known from history that due to the complexity of the situation on the fronts of the First World War, on June 25, 1916, the tsar's decree of Nicholas II was published on the recruitment of "foreigners" to work in the rear of the local - "non-Russian" and "non-Christian" population of Turkestan. As a result, there were uprisings and numerous human casualties throughout Central Asia.

The question inevitably arises, what did the peaceful people of the Fergana Valley do against the Armenians in the summer of 1916 that the thirst for revenge in the minds of the Armenian Dashnaks turned into a dream, which the Dashnaks were waiting for with impatience? What do the Armenian Dashnaks from the Dashnaktsutyun party, who arrived in Turkestan from the Caucasus in 1918, have to do with it? It is known that the Dashnaktsutyun party did not exist in Turkestan before 1918, and before the appearance of Dashnaktsutyun in Turkestan, the Armenians were successful traders, the local population of Turkestan had no disagreements with the Armenian moneylenders, grocers, traders, shoemakers and hairdressers who arrived with the Russian colonizers, there was not a single case of confrontation. Still, why did the Armenians "thank" the local residents of Turkestan in this way? At the same time, strangely enough, the answers to these questions are both easy and difficult, but unambiguous. The answers to these questions will allow us to trace the dirty and bloody trail of the Armenian Dashnaks, nationalists and terrorists in the historical fate of the local civilian population of Turkestan, the South Caucasus and Eastern Anatolia.

The Dashnaks Bolsheviks in February 1918 in Turkestan, a month later in the South Caucasus in March 1918, massacred peaceful Uzbeks and Azerbaijanis, all these madnesses were carried out under the leadership of the Bolsheviks S.G. Shaumyan and A. Mikoyan, who were patronized by I.V. Stalin. Having familiarized themselves with the results of the monstrous crimes of the members of the Armenian Dashnaktsutyun party, which began in February 1918 in the Fergana Valley of Turkestan, one can trace parallel traces of the Dashnaks' crimes in the South Caucasus and in Eastern Anatolia of the Ottoman Empire. From the reports of Armenian and other authors, one can trace a certain parallel in the events from the history of Eastern Anatolia, the South Caucasus and the Fergana Valley. In these regions, judging by the facts, similar mass crimes against the peace- ful Turkic-Muslim population took place, which was carried out by the Dashnaks [18, p.282-294].

The styles and methods of the Dashnaks in Turkestan are repeated in the same way in the Caucasus. The similarity of styles and methods can be traced mainly in such crimes as the murder of children, women and the elderly. Cutting off women's breasts, raping young girls, gouging out eyes, desecrating corpses, dismembering living people, cutting off the arms and legs of victims. These inhumane actions of the Dashnaks provoked the war of local peoples against the Bolsheviks. Moreover, a characteristic feature of the National Liberation Movements of local peoples was that both in Turkestan and in the Caucasus, the struggle of the local population was aimed against the Soviet power and against the Bolsheviks of the Armenians from "Dashnaktsutyun", who terrorized, namely killing, the peaceful Turkic-Muslim population of these regions. The activities of "Dashnaktsutyun" were rightly noted by the prominent Armenian historian A.A. Lalayan: “Dashnaktsutyun, which defended the interests of the counter-revolutionary Armenian bourgeoisie, deceived the Armenian people with national and social empty talk for over 40 years” [8, p. 79].

As a result of the long-term war provoked by the national chauvinist party "Dashnaktsutyun", millions of local residents died in Turkestan. Mostly, these were innocent civilians. A sensible person has elementary questions: what was the fault of the ordinary local residents of Turkestan and the Caucasus, who were exterminated in two different regions at the same time, in February and March 1918, using similar methods? What relationship does the Caucasians, and especially the Turkesta-nis, have to the events that took place during the First World War in the distant Eastern Anatolia of the Ottoman Empire? What do the Uzbeks of Turkestan and the Azerbaijanis of the Caucasus have to do with it, against whom the Armenian Dashnaks were so fiercely disposed in 1918? Were these two Turkic-speaking peoples in Eastern Anatolia during the First World War, when the Armenians there, against their own state, of which they were subjects, acted on the side of the enemies of the Ottoman Empire?

The use of Armenian Dashnaks by the Bolsheviks to carry out terror against the civilian population of Turkestan and the Caucasus in 1918 is directly related to both the policy and activities of the Russian Empire and the Bolsheviks, and to the fact that Armenian nationalists became their satellite factor in Turkestan and the Caucasus. The point is that the Russian Empire had its own well-oiled apparatus for suppressing and eliminating any danger and did not need anyone's help, but the Bolsheviks initially did not have such an apparatus. Therefore, they relied on a ready-made terrorist structure - the Dashnaktsutyun party. Subsequently, when the USSR had its own powerful punitive apparatus designed to suppress the masses that contradicted the Soviet power, the need for Dashnaks disappeared, and Dashnaktsutyun was banned on Soviet territory.

After the collapse of the USSR in 1991, Dashnaktsutyun returned to the Caucasus, to the Republic of Armenia, and became one of the influential political forces there [14]. Today, Dashnaktsutyun remains the main "militant" of Armenian national chauvinism, and its permanent basic goal is the same: the implementation of the "idée fixe" ("obsessive idea") of "Greater Armenia from sea to sea" at the expense of the lands of Azerbaijan, Georgia, Turkey and Russia (in the North Caucasus). Therefore, its program today states: "The Armenian lands designated by the Treaty of Sevres, as well as the Nakhichevan, Akhalkalaki and Karabakh regions, must be included in the composition of the united Armenia" [11].

The commonality of views between Dashnaktsutyun and the Bolsheviks played an important role in the cooperation between the Dashnaks and the Bolsheviks. The Bolsheviks sponsored the Dashnaks and collaborated with them because the Bolsheviks, like the Dashnaks, used terrorism to achieve their ideological goals. This was traditional for both the Bolsheviks and the Dashnaks. According to the authoritative American historian, author of the book "Thou Shalt Kill: Revolutionary Terrorism in Russia, 1894-1917. Princeton University Press. 1995" Professor A. Geifman, the Russian revolutionaries represented "a kind of symbiosis of a radical and a criminal, unburdened by moral considerations." Analyzing the terrorist activities of the Bolsheviks, Professor Anna Geif-man comes to the conclusion that for the Bolsheviks, terror turned out to be an effective tool, often used at different levels of the revolutionary hierarchy, and sets the goal of “demythologizing and deromanticizing” the traditional assessment of the

Russian revolutionary movement of the early 20th century [4].

The origins of terror and acts of intimidation, purposefully destroying people on the basis of class in Russia, began before the White Terror and differed from classical left-wing terrorism, which fought against certain officials and specific individuals from the state apparatus of Tsarist Russia. Bolshevik terrorism was inevitable, since Bolshevik violence was directed not against active resistance or specific individuals, but against entire strata of society. The Bolsheviks, based on their ideological considerations, believed that nobles, landowners, officers, priests, kulaks, Cossacks, scientists, industrialists, etc. were class enemies of communism. Representatives of these strata of society were declared outlaws by the Bolsheviks. Terror against them was used on a legal basis. In the ideology of class struggle, terrorism existed from the very beginning of the emergence of Bolshevism. At the dawn of their activity, the Bolsheviks officially legalized terrorism at the state level under the title "On the Red Terror", approved by the decree of the Council of People's Commissars of the RSFSR of September 5, 1918. "Red Terror" [10] included the entire repressive policy of the Soviet government, starting with the lynchings of October 1917. According to the definition of the Bolsheviks, the "Red Terror" is a logical continuation of the October Revolution. Based on this, one can really evaluate the Bolsheviks as the first creators of a terrorist state in the history of mankind, which in its political program officially proclaimed terrorism as a legitimate act. Initially, almost all the party leaders of the Bolsheviks were supporters of terror and many of them were officially recognized terrorists who fought against the tsarist autocracy by means of terror [9].

It is known that the Russian Empire tried to use Armenians on its territory mainly for "peaceful purposes" (shoemakers, traders, moneylenders, winemakers, etc.), and in the Ottoman Empire in anti-government actions as a "fifth column". The Russian Empire mainly supported Armenian terrorist organizations operating in Eastern Anatolia on the territory of the Ottoman Empire and in the Caucasus. Their experience was adopted by the Soviet Empire, which also relied on the "convenient in all respects" Armenian satellite factor. Even today, almost two centuries later, the consequences of these geopolitical games negatively affect the local military-political, socio-economic, ethnodemographic, territorial, informational, cultural, religious and moral situation in the South Caucasus. However, the Bolsheviks, who seized power in Russia by force of arms, needed Armenians from among the members of the Dashnaktsutyun party, from whom it was easy to train terrorists and punishers. And they were set against, first of all, the Turkic-speaking Muslim population, both in Turkestan and in the Caucasus. Armenian nationalists easily responded and continue to respond to the call of the next master, following the proverb "He who pays the piper calls the tune." In turn, the Armenian Dashnaks, in whose party program terror was written in red line, easily went to serve the Bolsheviks, and in their usual role. As a result, both in Turkestan and in the Caucasus there were three pairs of related antagonists: Armenian-Turkestan, Armenian-Azerbaijani and Armenian-Georgian. In this regard, it should be specially emphasized that, both in the Caucasus and in Turkestan, local political forces and the population had to fight the powerful triumvirate of "Sovi-ets-Bolsheviks-Dashnaks." The emergence and existence of conjugate pairs of antagonists is the "merit" of both the Russian Empire and its successor and continuer - the USSR. They were, first and foremost, the actors of impressive geopolitical, ethno-demographic, ethno-territorial and confessional changes in these regions. By comparing parallel and similar events from the history of the peoples of historical Turkestan and the South Caucasus, one can understand the current goals of modern geopolitical players.

The direction of the Dashnak Armenians to the Caucasus and Turkestan for the physical destruction of the civilian population became clear at the end of the First World War. The patron of the Armenian terrorist organizations on the territory of the Ottoman Empire, the Russian Empire, ceded its role to the Bolsheviks, that is, the new government. At the same time, the empire lost the Kars region in Eastern Anatolia, where the majority of Armenians of the Ottoman Empire lived [7, p.85]. In connection with this event, during the First World War of 1914-1918, about half a million Ottoman Armenians fled to the Caucasus, Turkestan and other regions of the Russian Empire. In June 1916 alone, 160,000 Armenians found themselves in the South Caucasus through Igdir-Nakhchivan. Later, in 1917, more than 300,000 more went there along with the Russian army retreating from Asia Minor. At the beginning of the 20th century, there were more than 3 million Armenians in Russia [2, p. 140].

The new masters of Russia, the Bolsheviks, at the dawn of their dictatorship followed the policy of the Russian Empire, which used the Armenian satellite factor both in its domestic and foreign policy. Based on the principles of this policy, both in Turkestan and in the Caucasus, the main goal of the Bolsheviks was to secure the rebellious part of Turkestan and the Caucasus for the Armenians, that is, to make the Armenian Dashnaks "masters" here. The Soviets knew that the Armenian Dashnaks would be reliable and merciless "watchdogs" who would never and under no circumstances go for rapprochement with the local Muslims, and especially with the Turks.

The Bolsheviks, having seized power in Russia illegally by means of terror, adopted the "Decree on Peace" at the Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets in Petrograd on November 8, 1917, in which the Soviets proposed that all warring nations and their governments begin peace negotiations. On November 23, the heads of foreign military missions, on behalf of their governments, protested against the violation of the treaty signed by Tsarist Russia between Russia, England and France on September 5, 1914, by virtue of which the allies were obliged not to conclude separate armistices. Britain, France, Japan, Italy, Romania and the United States joined this protest. Armistice negotiations opened on December 3, 1917 in Brest-Litovsk and on December 15, an armistice treaty was signed for 28 days, but after the expiration of the term, Germany began military actions against the Soviets. Lenin was forced to sign the treaty on Germany's terms. The Brest-Litovsk Peace Treaty was signed between Soviet Russia and the countries of the Quadruple Alliance, ratified on March 14, 1918 by the Bolsheviks and on March 17 of the same year by the German side. After which this treaty entered into force [3, p.2728].

Conclusion

When the Bolsheviks established their power in Russia, they stirred up the "Armenian question". True, in different variations, depending on which one "plays".

• 1.    The RSFSR, like the Russian Empire before it, also intended to create a “Turkish Armenia” on the territory of the former Kars region of the Ottoman Empire. Therefore, as early as 1917, official claims of the RSFSR to the Ottoman Empire regarding “Turkish Armenia” were made public. To implement them, the Council of People’s Commissars (SNK) of the RSFSR adopted the Decree “On Turkish Armenia” on December 29, 1917 (January 11, 1918 according to the new calendar) [5].

• 2.    Moscow was interested in regaining the former Kars region. At that time, independent local authorities still existed in the South Caucasus. Nevertheless, the RSFSR, which continued the imperial goals of the Russian Empire, and not the “concern” for the Ottoman Armenians, intended to return to Eastern Anatolia. Although the Decree declared the rights of local Armenians to “free self-determination,” something else was more important: to return the Kars region to the “Russian bosom.” It is characteristic that the implementation of the Decree “On Turkish Armenia” was entrusted to the Armenian S.G. Shaumyan, who was appointed extraordinary commissioner for Caucasian affairs [3, p.37-28].

• 3.    In development of the Decree "On Turkish Armenia", in 1918, that is, still in the absence of Soviet power in the South Caucasus, in the RSFSR, under the People's Commissariat for Nationalities, headed by I.V. Stalin, the "Commissariat for Armenian Affairs" was established. Its object was Eastern Anatolia. Thus, the RSFSR once again confirmed its claims to the former Kars region. Armenians were also appointed to head the Commissariat - former member of "Dashnaktsutyun" V. Avanesov, and his deputy - V. Teryan. The Commissariat's sphere of activity included regions of the former Russian Empire where there were Armenians, including the Caucasus and Turkestan [17]. Armenian schools, libraries, theaters, museums were opened locally, and newspapers were published. This Commissariat existed until the beginning of 1921, but did not produce any positive results for the RSFSR, as did the Decree "On Turkish Armenia". Despite the pressure of the Armenian lobby on Moscow, none of these projects produced the expected result. As in the old days, in the 21st century, many organizations lobbying the interests of great powers and large regional states, allegedly for the purpose of resolv-

• ing the "Armenian question", use the pliable Armenian national chauvinism in their geopolitical and geostrategic games.