Vanished States: the One-Month Life of the Transcaucasian Democratic Federative Republic (1918)

Transcaucasian Ruble, 1918, with
Armenian, Georgian and Azeri text, 917

A few years back, I started a series on "Vanished States," short-lived entities in the 20th century Middle East; I did posts on the Republic of Hatay (1938-39), the Syrian Arab Kingdom under Faisal (four months in 1920), the Hashemite Kingdom of the Hejaz (1916-1925), and the Rifian Republic (1921-1926) With this post, I'm returning to the theme.

The last two years of World War I and the several years following it were a time of the breaking of empires. The first of the transnational empires was that of Tsarist Russia, beginning March 8, 1917, the "February Revolution" (Russia was on the Julian calendar).

The Provisional Government in Petrograd soon appointed a "Special Transcaucasian Committee," responsible for the areas south of the ridgeline of the Caucasus, comprising the modern states of Armenia, Georgia, Azerbaijan.

At the time of the February Revolution, bear in mind that Russian forces were actively engaged against the Ottomans on the Armenian front, as well as operating in northwestern Persia.With the Revolution, there were widespread desertions on all fronts.

Areas occupied Sept. 1917

The Special Transcaucasian Committee took over administration in Transcaucasia and in Turkish territory that had been occupied during the war, This occupied zone was governed by local Armenian councils and referred to as Western Armenia and other terms.

The representatives on the Transcaucasus Committee were Mensheviks, members of the non-Leninist wing of the Social Democratic Party, who dominated the Provisional Government.

Evgeni Gegechkori

Then came the October Revolution on November 7 of the new calendar, when Lenin and the Bolsheviks seized power in Petrograd. On November 11, 1917, at Tbilisi, a Transcaucasian Commissariat was proclaimed, making the Transccaucasus nominally independent of Petrograd. It was chaired by the Georgian Menshevik Evgeni Gegechkori.

In January 1918, in an attempt to strengthen the tentative union, it was decided to create a Sejm or Parliament. In December, the Armistice of Erzincan with Turkey was endorsed by the Commissariat.

Chkeidze

The Sejm was led by Nikolay Chkeidze, another Georgian.

On March 3, 1918, the Russian Government signed the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. This called for the return to Turkey of its conquered territories. In negotiations in Trabzon, a delegation from the Sejm agreed to accept Brest-Litovsk as a basis for settlement, but this was rejected by the main Sejm in Tbilisi. Instead, on April 22, 1918, they declared the full independence of the Democratic Federative Republic of Transcaucasia, and also declared that it remained in a state of war with the Ottoman Empire.

The Flag

Unfortunately, the Democratic Federative Republic of Transcaucasia's name was longer than its duration as an independent state. With the collapse of the Russian Caucasus Army and Brest-Litovsk, the Transcaucasus cobbled together a Military Council of Nationalities of Armenian volunteers and Georgian and Azerbaijani troops. These untrained levies were no match for the Ottoman Third Army, which retook Kars and Erzurum and continued to advance on the Armenian front.

Anyone who has followed the Caucasus since the fall of the Soviet Union will not be surprised by what happened after the fall of Tsarist Russia. The existence of enclaves of one ethnicity within the boundaries of another (Nagorno-Karabakh, Nakhichevan) was explosive then as now.

Remember, too, that in April-May 1918, World War I was very much still under way, and Germany and the Ottomans were very much still allies.

As the Ottoman Third Army advanced against Armenia and began to demand Tbilisi, Georgia negotiated a treaty with Germany, promising protection. Azerbaijan, meanwhile, chose to ally with its Turkic cousins in the Ottoman Empire.

On May 26, Georgia declared independence as the Democratic Republic of Georgia and proceeded to sign its treaty with Germany. Two days later, Armenia followed suit (the First Armenian Republic) and so did Azerbaijan. The Democratic Federative Republic had lasted from April 22 to May 28, 1918. Except for imposed entities under Soviet rule, the only real attempt at a Transcaucasian federation was virtually stillborn. Soon the three nationalities would be fighting each other, and the Bolsheviks, and Armenia would be fighting the Turks. There would be British intervention as well. But that is another story.

Vanished States: the Mahabad Republic and the Azerbaijan People's Government, 1945-1946

It's time for another post on "Vanished States" in the Middle East in the 20th century. Previous posts dealt with the Republic of Hatay (1938-39), the Syrian Arab Kingdom under Faisal (four months in 1920), the Hashemite Kingdom of the Hejaz (1916-1925), and the Rifian Republic (1921-1926). 

(Wikipedia)

Today let's deal with two Soviet satellite states declared on Iranian territory in 1945, at the end of World War II and in the midst of the opening moves of the Cold War: the Republic of Kurdistan in Mahabad  (usually referred to as the Mahabad Republic) and the Autonomous Republic of Azerbaijan (or Azerbaijan People's Government). By late 1946, both were gone after the withdrawal of Soviet troops.

The two emerged from the occupation of Iran by Britain and the Soviet Union in 1941, when Reza Shah was forced to abdicate in favor of his son Muhammad Reza, in order to facilitate Allied supplies to the USSR. The Allies pledged to evacuate their forces from Iran within six months after the end of the war. These assurances were repeated when Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin met at the Tehran Conference in 1943.

But as World War II ended and the Cold War began, the Soviets encouraged these two states to declare independence, and Soviet forces remained in northwestern Iran. The Azerbaijani state, which had its capital at Tabriz, was rather different from the Kurdish one: it was run by veteran Communists and closely tied to the Soviet Republic of Azerbaijan, while the Mahabad Republic, with its capital at Mahabad, as led by Iranian Kurdish nationalists of the Kurdish Democratic Party of Iran (KDPI), in alliance with a military force led by the Iraqi Kurdish leader Mustafa Barzani, founder of the Iraqi KDP and father of the Kurdish Regional Government's President Mas‘oud Barzani.

Ja'far Pishevari

The Azerbaijanis declared their state first. A group of longtime Communists led by Ja‘far Pishevari declared the formation of the Azerbaijan Democratic Party on September 3, 1945, the day after the surrender of Japan. The Tudeh Party, the official Communist Party of Iran, ordered its Azerbaijani branch to join the new movement. The group formed a "peasant's militia" and on November 18, 1945, staged an de facto coup, declaring an "autonomous republic." (Since Iran was a monarchy, how could a republic be autonomous within it?") Pishevari served as President and Ahmad Kordari as Prime Minister.

Azerbaijan Republic Flag

During the approximately one year before its dissolution, there were clearly close links between the Soviet Republic and the "Autonomous Republic" in Iran and Azeri Turkish was made official and Persian banned.  A Soviet-style judicial code was enforced.

To the West, the Kurdish region of Iran also sought to declare itself a Kurdish Republic. The USSR does not seem to have been as enthusiastic there since the Kurdish leadership were more traditional Kurdish nationalists rather than veteran Communists. The Soviets sought to encourage the Kurdish leadership in Mahabad, which during the period of Soviet occupation had been formed of traditional tribal and religious elements, to join the Azerbaijani Republic, but instead they declared thgeir own autonomous state on December 15, 1945 and on January 22, 1946, announced the formation of the Kurdish Rrpublic in Mahabad.

Qazi Muhammad

Its President was Qazi Muhammad, from a family of religious judges, and its Prime Minister Hajji Baba Sheikh, both members of the KDPI rather than traditional Communist Party (Komala) cadres. The Defense Minister was Mulla Mustafa Barzani, the Iraqi Kurdish leader. Historians claim that there was considerable resentment of the Barzani clan's presence in Iranian Kurdistan, where they had fled after fleeing Iraq. But Barzani's forces clearly were a mainstay of the Mahabad Republic's defense forces. Though the Kurdish Communist Party (Komala) supported the Mahabad Republic, the republic's leadership was officially KDPI.

Mustafa Barzani in 1946

Mahabad's more traditional leadership, though it included elements from Komala, resisted merger with the Communist government in Tabriz, and while the Soviets supported it in their efforts to remain in Iran, they seem to have been less trustful of the independent-minded Kurdish state than of the more Moscow-lining regime in Tabriz.But Mahabad was small, since significant parts of Iranian Kurdistan were in the Anglo-American rather than the Soviet-occupied zone, and were thus easily held by the government in Tehran.

The United Nations 

Mahabad Republic Flag

The West saw the Soviet efforts to remain in northwestern Iran in terms of the Cold War and viewed both mini-states as Soviet satellites. The newly formed United Nations was soon wrestling with what came to be called the Iran Crisis, and in fact, three of the first five resolutions adopted by the UN Security Council (UNSC Resolutions 2, 3, and 5) dealt with Iran; the Soviets were absent for the later resolutions.

Qazi Muhammad (l.) and Mustafa Barzani

In March of 1946, the USSR promised to withdraw its troops from Iran. (Eastern European domination took precedence over Iran, and the US had a nuclear monopoly until the first Soviet test in 1949.) While they sought as many delays as possible, they did indeed withdraw. By June the Pishevari government in Tabriz negotiated an agreement with the Shah's government to replace the "Autonomous Republic" with a Provincial Council. Although Iranian troops did not move into Azerbaijan until November and December 1946, the withdrawal of the Red Army meant the Azerbaijan Communists had no real source of support. Once the Iranian Army returned, Pishevari fled to Soviet Azerbaijan and Kordari was jailed.  In 1947, Pishevari was killed in an automobile accident, which many have found suspect. (We are talking about the Stalin era, after all.)

The end of Mahabad was messier and bloodier. Even as the withdrawal of Soviet support undercut his government, and many traditional tribal shaykhs and aghas were deserting the republic, Qazi Muhammad and his war council pledged armed resistance on December 5, 1946. With the Soviets leaving and Azerbaijan falling back under Tehran's control, this was a futile and rather puzzling gesture, especially given the fact that Qazi Muhammad agreed to the occupation of Mahabad by Iranian troops. During this period, Qazi Muhammad's brother, Sadr Qazi, had been serving as a Deputy in the Iranian Majlis in Tehran and serving as a go-between in negotiations. Nonetheless, after the fall of Mahabad, the Iranian government hanged Qazi Muhammad, Sadr Qazi, and their cousin Seif Qazi. This seems particularly unjust in the case of Sadr Qazi, who had been the go-between negotiator.

Mustafa Barzani and his Iraqi Kurdish forces tried but failed to cut a deal with Tehran and then conducted a fighting retreat toward the Iraqi and Soviet borders, bloodying the Iranian forces. To his credit, Stalin [as much as it pains me to write those four words about Stalin] allowed the Barzani forces into exile in Soviet Azerbaijan. In the 1950s, after the fall of the Iraqi monarchy, they would be allowed to re-enter Iraq.

The Azerbaijan Soviet satellite is largely forgotten, but Kurdish nationalists sill remember the Mahabad Republic as an evanescent moment of Kurdish independence. Unfortunately, they were dependent on Stalin to make that independence last, and Uncle Joe was not a man to depend upon. A YouTube video of the declaration of the republic: