Mount Ararat, somewhere on the slopes of which, according to legend, the remains of Noah's Ark lie, is considered one of the symbols of Armenia, but in fact it is located on the territory of neighboring Turkey. The borders of Soviet Armenia in 1921 were approved by Vladimir Lenin, who had his own views on the Turkish Republic.
On both sides of Mount Ararat
After the October Revolution, the situation in Transcaucasia developed for some time in isolation from Russian events. On the territory of the Erivan province and the Kara region in May 1918 an independent state appeared - the Republic of Armenia (or the Ararat Republic), which was ruled by the Social Democratic Party "Dashnaktsutyun".
In August 1920, the Ottoman government agreed to sign the Sevres Peace Treaty. Thanks to US President Woodrow Wilson, Armenia has a historic chance to annex vast lands in eastern Anatolia with Trebizond, Erzurum and Lake Van. However, this was prevented by the Turkish liberation movement, raised by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. The Turks repulsed the invading Armenian troops and went on the offensive themselves. At the same time, the RSFSR and the Azerbaijan SSR started the war with the Dashnak Armenia. In December 1920, the independence of Armenia came to an end - in its place the Armenian SSR was formed. The winners - Bolsheviks and Kemalists - faced the problem of establishing mutual boundaries.
Deal with Ataturk
In order to "build bridges", Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars Lenin entered into a personal correspondence with the leader of the Turkish liberation movement Mustafa Kemal. The latter was considered by the Moscow government to be a beneficial ally. In the opinion of the Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko, Lenin "recognized in Ataturk a great personality who stood above the narrow interests of the bourgeois-landlord elite in Turkey."
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Simply put, the leader of the world proletariat hoped that over time Turkey would join the number of socialist republics. Ataturk's promises did give cause for optimism.
"We commit ourselves to link all our work and all our military operations with the Russian Bolsheviks, who aim to fight the imperialist governments and free all the oppressed from their rule," Mustafa Kemal wrote to Lenin in April 1920 as President of the Great National collection of Turkey. Note that Sultan Mehmed VI remained the official head of state at that time, with whose will neither Lenin nor Kemal reckoned.
To fight Greece, the RSFSR sent Mustafa Kemal substantial assistance - weapons and 10 million rubles in gold. Atatürk, for his part, contributed to the creation of the Communist Party in Turkey. On March 16, 1921, a "treaty of friendship and brotherhood" was signed in Moscow, which established the modern border between Turkey and the Transcaucasian republics. The treaty confirmed Turkish sovereignty over the entire former Russian Kara region. According to historian Pavel Shlykov, the Bolsheviks had a choice - to give the Turks the Armenian lands or the Georgian Batum. It was decided to keep the latter - as the port city of Batum was of greater importance than the legendary Ararat. In addition to territorial concessions, Soviet Russia wrote off the debts of the Turks to the tsarist government.
Lenin's mistake
For the ardent nationalist Ataturk, the "left field" turned out to be nothing more than a tactical move. The leaders of the Turkish communists were soon stabbed to death on the orders of the "father of the Turks", and the president of Turkey banned the communist party itself in 1923.
In the 1930s, Ataturk and his successors finally broke off friendly relations with the Soviet Union - by this time the strengthened Turkish Republic could already afford to pursue a more independent policy. This led to the fact that at the Potsdam Conference in 1945, Stalin put forward territorial claims to Turkey under the pretext of "reunification of the Armenian people." However, it did not come to an armed conflict then.
The temporary Soviet-Turkish "friendship" swept away negative consequences not only for the Armenians, but for the Russian Molokans living in the Kara region. The Turks began to actively assimilate them, which is why later all Molokans preferred to leave the republic.
Timur Sagdiev