William L. Langer
The Diplomacy of Imperialism
New York (Alfred A. Knopf), 1968, pp. 157-160.
“The Hentchakian Revolutionary Party was, in
1890, invited to join the Armenian Revolutionary Federation, and did so, but
the association of the two did not last long. Nazarbek was evidently not an
easy person to get on with, and preferred to work on his own. At first he had
trouble in finding followers, but his new collaborators worked hard. Khan-Azad,
for example, went to Constantinople in July 1889 and began to spread
propaganda. He consulted with Khrimian, but found the old man doubtful: “You
are crazy," said the old patriot. “The Armenians are a very small
nation, and how much blood will have to be shed.” He could not see how
anything substantial could be done without European help. But Khan-Azad was
not discouraged. He went on to Tiflis, where he had no better luck. It was
only in Trebizond that he found any real enthusiasm. There he established the
central committee of the party, and from that centre agents were sent out who
organized revolutionary cells in Erzerum, Kharput, Smyrna, Aleppo and many
other places. Nazarbek himself stayed discreetly in Geneva, but in a volume of
stories published later he has given us vivid pictures of the agitators
visiting the peasants, “talking the night through with them, speaking with
them of their sufferings, unceasingly, impatiently, preaching the gospel of an
eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, rousing their crushed spirits with high
resolves and mighty aspirations.”
The ambassadors at Constantinople were not slow in following the development
of this agitation. From 1888 onward the English representative reported the
presence of revolutionaries and the seizure of seditious literature.
Revolutionary placards were being posted in the cities and there were not a
few cases of the blackmailing of wealthy Armenians, who were forced to
contribute to the cause. Europeans in Turkey were agreed that the immediate
aim of the agitators was to incite disorder, bring about inhuman reprisals,
and so provoke the intervention of the powers. For that reason, it was said,
they operated by preference in areas where the Armenians were in a hopeless
minority, so that reprisals would be certain. One of the revolutionaries told Dr. Hamlin,
the founder of Robert College, that the Henchak bands would
“watch their opportunity to kill Turks and Kurds, set fire to their
villages, and then make their escape into the mountains. The enraged Moslems
will then rise, and fall upon the defenseless Armenians and slaughter them
with such barbarity that Russia will enter in the name of humanity and
Christian civilization and take possession.”
When the horrified missionary denounced the scheme as atrocious and infernal
beyond anything ever known, he received this reply:
“It appears so to you, no doubt; but we
Armenians have determined to be free. Europe listened to the Bulgarian horrors
and made Bulgaria free. She will listen to our cry when it goes up in the
shrieks and blood of millions of women and children... We are desperate. We
shall do it.”
Serious trouble began in 1890, when there were disturbances and some bloodshed
at Erzerum. The outbreak had not been premeditated or planned, but the
Hentchak hoped to capitalize it. To encourage interest it arranged to stage a
great demonstration in Constantinople to impress both the Turkish and the
European governments. The affair was carefully planned and the minimum demands
of the revolutionaries (civil liberties) were sent in advance to the foreign
ambassadors. A proclamation was read in the Armenian Church at Kum-Kapu, in
which the Armenians were told in so many words: “You must be your own
self-governing master.”
Even this demonstration had no favorable results. During the following months
the efforts of the leaders seem to have gone into negotiations for an
agreement with other revolutionary groups. There were long conferences at
Athens, and in December 1891 the Hentchak officially joined the Oriental
Federation of Macedonian, Albanian, Cretan and Greek revolutionists. The
newspaper was transferred to Athens, where it remained until the end of 1894,
at which time the Armenian organization moved to London. In the interval
propaganda was being carried on in Armenia and efforts were being made to
induce the Kurds to join forces with the insurgents. Agents were sent also to
America, where branches were established in Boston, Worcester and other
cities. Khan-Azad reports that he raised in America no less than $10,000 to
support the cause.
When the Gladstone cabinet came into power in the summer of 1892 the hopes of
the Armenians ran high, for was not the Grand Old Man the saviour of the
oppressed? As a matter of fact the Liberal Government began almost at once to
send sharp notes to the Porte. The Anglo-Armenian Committee and the
Evangelical Alliance made the most of the situation and raised the hue and cry
of religious persecution. But English influence had sunk so low at
Constantinople that no attention was paid to the protests from London. The
Turkish government probably realized even then that the Russian government,
just as hostile to the Hentchakian aspirations as the Turkish, would stand
behind it. In 1890 the Russian officials had co-operated with the Turkish in
breaking up an Armenian raiding party organized in the Caucasus. Many writers
have taken the stand that English intervention only made matters worse. “The
Turk begins to repress because we sympathize,” wrote David Hogarth, “and
we sympathize the more because he represses, and so the vicious circle
revolves.” England “is more responsible for the cold-blooded murders which
have come near exterminating the Armenians than all other nations put
together,” remarked an American traveller.
It requires no very vivid imagination to picture the reaction of the Turks to
the agitation of the revolutionists. They had constantly in mind, if not the
revolt of the Greeks, at least the insurrection in Bulgaria and the disastrous
intervention of Russia and the powers. Whether Abdul Hamid deserves the black
reputation that has been pinned to him is a matter for debate. If he was “the
bloody assassin” and the “red Sultan” to most people, he was the
hard-working, conscientious, much harassed but personally charming ruler to
others. Those who have spoken for him have pointed out that the Sultan felt
his Empire threatened by the Armenians, who, he knew or at least believed,
were in league with the Young Turks, the Greeks, Macedonians, etc. They
believe that Abdul Hamid was the victim of what we moderns call a persecution
complex. He was terrified, and for that reason surrounded himself not only
with high walls, but with all sorts of dubious characters, especially spies
and delators who justified their existence by bringing ever more alarming
reports.
So much at least cannot be denied: that the revolutionists planned a great
conflagration and that they gave the Sultan and his ministers ample fright.
One of their proclamation read:
“The times are most critical and pregnant with ominous events. The cup is
full. Prepare for the inevitable. Organize, arm, —arm with anything. If one
place revolts or shows resistance, do the same in your locality. Spread the
fight for liberation. Yes, in truth, it is better to live as a free man for a
day, for an hour, and to die fighting, than to live a life of slavery for
generations, nay for centuries.”
In the summer of 1894 the Revolutionary Committee wrote a letter to the Grand
Vizier warning him that there would be a general rising in the Empire if the
“very just demands of the Armenian people” were not met. No one could
blame the government for anticipating a tremendous upheaval and for taking
precautions. Probably to counteract the efforts made to bring the Kurds into
the movement, the Sultan had, in 1891, organized the tribesmen in the famous
Hamidie regiments, which were modeled on the Russian cossack brigades and were
supposedly meant to act as a frontier defense force. In 1877 and 1878,
however, the Kurd troops had been more trouble than they were worth; it may
therefore be assumed that the purpose of the new organizations was to satisfy
the chiefs and keep them from joining forces with the Armenian
revolutionaries. In fact they could and were, under the new system, used
against the Armenians. Beginning in 1892, the Hamidie regiments, sometimes
supported by regular troops, began to raid the Armenian settlements, burning
the houses, destroying the crops and cutting down the inhabitants.
And so the revolutionaries began to get what they wanted — reprisals. It
mattered not to them that perfectly innocent people were being made to suffer
for the realization of a program drawn up by a group in Geneva or Athens, a
group which had never been given any mandate whatever by the Armenian
community. So far as one can make out the Hentchak agitators were ardently
supported by the lower-class Armenians in Constantinople, with whose help they
forced the election of the patriot Ismirlian as patriarch in 1894. But the
upper classes appear to have been opposed to the whole program; indeed, they
were victimized themselves by threatening letters and by blackmail into the
financing of a scheme which they regarded as disastrous. As for the peasantry
in the provinces, it is perfectly obvious that they did not know what it was
all about. Isabella. Bishop, who travelled through the country in 1891, makes
the positive statement “that the Armenian peasant is as destitute of
political aspirations as he is ignorant of political grievances. . . not on a
single occasion did I hear a wish expressed for political or administrative
reform, or for Armenian independence.” Hogarth tells of Armenians in the
provinces who said they wished the patriots would leave them alone. But these
people were not consulted. Whether they liked it or not, they were marked out
by others for the sacrifice; their lives were the price to be paid for the
realization of the phantastic national-socialist state of the fanatics.