Sevinge Yusifzade

Professor of History

Baku State University

I met with a very dignified and interesting group of gentlemen from Azerbaijan, men who spoke the same language I did about ideals and concepts of liberty, rights and justice.

--Woodrow Wilson

    President of the United States 

   May 1919

When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, Azerbaijan had a distinct advantage compared to most of the other “new” states when it came to developing its foreign policies. It could look back to the first Azerbaijan republic of 1918-1920 for a model of how they should proceed, something many of its leaders and people did because to an uncanny degree, post-Soviet Azerbaijan faced many of the same challenges and opportunities that republic faced during its brief existence more than 70 years earlier.

Indeed, Azerbaijan’s post-Soviet leaders have been explicit about the impact of that experience on the decisions they have taken. The late President Heydar Aliyev frequently said that Baku’s policies now must reflect “the history and national traditions” of the Azerbaijani people, including those manifested in the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic (ADR). Consequently, anyone interested in Azerbaijan’s foreign policy now must begin by examining the ADR’s diplomatic activities, carefully separating the realities of that time from the myths that have grown up around it. 

On May 28, 1918, the leaders of Azerbaijan declared their independence from Soviet Russia and the formation of the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic.  They expected that the United States and the other great powers would quickly recognize them because most of those behind the declaration had been inspired to take this step by U.S. President Woodrow Wilson’s 14 Points speech in which he had proclaimed support for the right of all peoples to national self-determination.  Moreover, they believed that the secular, democratic political system their country was creating would be especially attractive to the European and American governments. And the ADR’s leadership was confident that recognition would lead to the kind of support that would guarantee their independence.

But such recognition did not come as the ADR leaders expected, and as many of the most thoughtful in Baku recognized even then but some do not even now, it would not have been the solution to all their problems even if it had. Instead, they found themselves forced to get involved in the complicated and often trying business of diplomacy, untying the bonds which had linked them to the crumbling Russian empire, establishing relations with various neighbors, and seeking a place in the international system that would best help the people of Azerbaijan to have a better life – all at a time of great uncertainty and from a position of weakness relative to many of the other players.

Like any new country, Azerbaijan in 1918 faced three interrelated sets of extraordinarily difficult problems: sorting out the problems with neighboring states arising from the collapse of an empire, recruiting a diplomatic corps to implement its national goals abroad, and attracting the attention of the great powers and securing their recognition and support. In each of these cases, the ADR made some remarkable progress even though it lasted only two years as the result of an act of force majeure by Soviet Russia. 

Coping with challenges like defining borders or dividing property when an empire collapses and setting up relations with the former imperial center when other countries are going through the same process and with other neighbors who did not expect to have new ones was the first set of challenges the new ADR had to face.  Given that it had to address these issues during a period of enormous instability and from a place where some of the other countries involved were hostile and aggressive, the ADR did remarkably well. 

On the negative side, Baku never overcame the unwillingness of Soviet Russia to acknowledge its independence, a failure that ultimately presaged the invasion of the Red Army and the extinction of the ADR. Nor did it overcome the hostility and aggressiveness of the Armenians, who were never prepared to cooperate with Azerbaijan even when the Americans worked to mediate the dispute between the two countries and whose invasion seriously weakened the ADR. Indeed, at the time of the Soviet invasion, most Azerbaijani troops were arrayed not on the northern border but along the Armenian front.

But on the positive side, not only is it unlikely that diplomacy alone could have changed that situation in any fundamental way, but within that difficult environment, the ADR did manage to develop close cooperative relations with Georgia, quickly agreeing on borders and the division of property, creating a postal-telegraph union and reaching an agreement on tariffs and railroads, working to promote greater cooperation in the Southern Caucasus despite Yerevan’s opposition when the Western powers called on the countries of the region to do so, and even forming a military alliance when threatened by General Denikin’s anti-Bolshevik White Army.

Azerbaijan faced an equally mixed picture in dealing with its two largest neighbors that had not been part of the Russian Empire: Turkey and Persia.  Turkey was an enthusiastic supporter of Azerbaijan, but like many such backers, it wanted to exert more influence on the internal life of the ADR than that country’s leadership were prepared to accept. And consequently, with this closest friend, Azerbaijani diplomats frequently had to work to get Turkey to be less involved rather than more. 

Dealing with Persia was far more difficult. Not only were its rulers suspicious of the ADR’s possible links to the ethnic Azerbaijanis in the northwestern portion of the country, but Tehran had designs on parts of Azerbaijan itself. That situation makes the achievement of Baku’s diplomats there all the more important. After an ADR delegation visited Tehran in March 1919, the two sides agreed to hold a conference beginning in December of that year which resulted in an accord on trade. 

The ADR achieved its greatest success in creating a diplomatic corps from scratch.  It attracted intellectuals and businessmen who quickly demonstrated a natural gift for diplomacy.  The ADR recruited the distinguished writer Chemenzemenli to go to Ukraine, and its delegation to the Versailles Peace Conference, led by Ali Topchibashev, who was supported by M.G. Hajinsky, M.Mir-Mehdiyev and D. Hajibayov, was skilled enough to impress Woodrow Wilson as the epigraph to this article attests even if the constellation of forces working on him and on the leaders of the other major powers did not allow them to achieve their goal.

Despite their efforts, the ADR was not able to achieve the diplomatic recognition it hoped for.  There were many reasons for this. First of all, the situation on the ground in the Caucasus was far from clear. There were White Armies, Red Armies, and the armies of the newly emerged states. In this situation, even those like the British who did not want to see a united Russia emerge again, felt it was best to wait.

Lord Curzon, the British foreign secretary at the time, famously observed that “we are not obligated to recognize all small countries immediately.” While many people have extrapolated his comment to apply to a wide range of situations, Curzon made it at a time when it was unclear whether the White Russian army would win and thus European countries would not want to undercut it by recognizing new states on its borders or whether the Red Army would win and the West would have good reason to limit its influence. In the event, of course, by taking this wait-and-see attitude, the European powers provided an opening for the latter while doing little to help the former.

Second, most of the major powers represented at Versailles had been approached by Armenians or missionaries who recounted the sufferings of that community in the Ottoman Empire. In many cases, these people did not make a clear distinction between that state and Turkey or even between both of them and Azerbaijan. As a result, and in an entirely unfair way, Azerbaijan was tarred with a very broad brush.

And third, the United States and its president were conflicted in their thinking. Wilson remained committed to self-determination but he did not want to see a world consisting of a large number of small states. His own utopianism led him to push for a Transcaucasian Confederation or even a “neutral zone” there under an American “governor general,” even though the U.S. was not prepared to send the number of troops needed to make that happen. And he was caught between those who wanted to develop good relations with Azerbaijan because of its oil and those who accepted Armenian attacks at face value.

These internal conflicts were directly reflected in Wilson’s dealings with the Azerbaijani delegation.  On the one hand, he met that delegation before he met any other, a signal honor, and was impressed by what its members had to say.  But on the other, he was not prepared to offend the French or anger the Armenian diaspora by moving quickly to extend to the ADR the diplomatic recognition it so urgently sought and so obviously needed.

 

Even if that recognition had been extended, however, it is very unlikely that it would have altered the course of events.  Soviet Russia almost certainly would not have been put off by the presence of a few Western diplomats once it was in a position to take back that which it believed was its territory by right. But many Azerbaijanis thought otherwise, a view that reflected the notion that diplomatic ties could invariably trump other kinds of power. 

  

During the first 18 months of its existence, the ADR took concrete steps to establish diplomatic ties of various degrees of closeness with Georgia, Persia, and Turkey. It set up consulates in Tabriz and five other cities in Persia, in Batumi in Georgia, in Crimea in Ukraine, and in Ashgabat in Turkmenistan. And on April 22, 1920, the ADR parliament adopted a law on the creation of diplomatic missions in the major countries of Europe, the United States, and Soviet Russia, even though it had not yet reached accord with these states.  Moreover, the parliament voted to replace the diplomatic mission to the Paris Peace Conference at Versailles with missions to the governments of the countries that had taken part in the talks. 

But this action became moot less than a week later when the Red Army of Soviet Russia crossed Azerbaijan’s northern border, extinguishing the ADR as a subject of international law. Although the ADR lasted only two years, its actions, especially in the diplomatic area, were so impressive that 71 years later they provided instruction to the leaders of the Republic of Azerbaijan on how best to proceed in what is still a dangerous and uncertain world.  And consequently, those hard-won lessons have already put post-Soviet Azerbaijan on the road not only to survive but to prosper for a long time to come.