Armenian–Tatar massacres of 1905–1907

Cossack patrol near Baku oil fields. 1905.

House of a Rich Armenian Burnt by Tartars.

Armenian Church Plundered and Desecrated by Tartars.

The Armenian-Tatar massacres also known as the Armenian-Tatar war of 1905—1907 refers to the bloody inter-ethnic confrontation between the Azeris (which were then referred to as Azerbaijani or Caucasian Tatars in Russia) and Armenians throughout the Caucasus, then part of Imperial Russia. The events were caused by a lasting hostility between Muslim Tatars on one side and Christian Armenians on the other. They were allegedly incited by the Russian government in order to reinforce its own authority during the revolutionary turmoil of 1905.

The massacres started during the Russian Revolution of 1905, and claimed hundreds of lives. The most violent clashes occurred in 1905 in February in Baku, in May in Nakhchivan, in August in Shusha and in November in Ganja, heavily damaging the cities and the Baku oilfields. Some violence, although of lesser scale, broke out also in Tiflis, but the local Social-Democratic Party, the only force enjoying popular confidence, was able to intervene between the two communities and to prevent larger carnage in the city.

Bibliography

• Stalin: A Critical Survey of Bolshevism at http://www.marxists.org.
• Thomas De Waal (2004), Black Garden: Armenia and Azerbaijan Through Peace and War, NYU Press, ISBN 978-0-8147-1945-9