How Was the Armenian Dream Destroyed?
Author: Tigran Avakyan, analyst (Armenia)
If Lenin had not helped Mustafa Kemal and had not invaded the South Caucasus, the 20th-century world would have developed in a completely different way. The fate of Turkey, the Caucasus, and even Soviet Russia would have followed a different path. Without Soviet gold, weapons, oil, and officers, the Kemalist movement would have had no chance of survival. In 1920, Kemal would have been without a rear, without ammunition, and without the ability to wage a prolonged war against Greek and Armenian forces supported by the Entente.
In reality, Lenin transferred about ten million gold rubles, tens of thousands of rifles, hundreds of machine guns and artillery pieces, and hundreds of millions of rounds of ammunition to Kemal. This support enabled Turkish nationalists to withstand the pressure. If this factor had been removed, Greek forces, with British support, would have taken Ankara in the summer of 1921, and the Treaty of Sèvres would have been fully implemented. Armenia would have received borders according to President Wilson’s decision, from Kars to Van and Bitlis; Kurdistan would have become an autonomous region under international control; Constantinople and the straits would have become an international zone; Greece would have secured Eastern Thrace and Smyrna. Turkey would have been divided into a collection of protectorates, and the Kemalist Republic would never have arisen.
At the same time, if Lenin had not invaded the Caucasus, the First Republic of Armenia would have preserved its independence and would not have been occupied by the Red Army. Georgia would have remained a democratic socialist country, and Azerbaijan would have been a British protectorate with an oil-based economy managed by Western companies. In the South Caucasus, a small but stable pro-Western alliance would have formed—something like the Baltic bloc: Armenia, Georgia, and Azerbaijan under British influence, with Armenia playing the central role. The British would have controlled Baku’s oil, while Americans would have assisted in restoring Armenian territories. Without Caucasian oil and gold, Lenin would not have been able to stabilize the economy, and Bolshevik power would likely have collapsed by the mid-1920s. The USSR in its familiar form would never have emerged.
In this alternative world, the British Empire would have established full control over the Middle East—from Suez to the Caspian. France would have consolidated in Syria and Lebanon, and Greece along the Aegean coast. Armenia and Kurdistan would have acted as buffer zones between the Arab and Persian regions. Moscow would have remained without access to Persia and Turkey, lacking the ability to influence the East. The world would have become Anglo-American, had it not been for Soviet expansion and the future Cold War.
Under these circumstances, Azerbaijan could not have existed as an independent state. Its power relied on Turkish officers and a British garrison, but without the Soviet invasion and without Kemal, the balance of power would have changed. The Musavat government had no stable army; their “state” was essentially a conglomerate of armed tribal units without discipline.
In Baku and Ganja, Armenians constituted up to half of the population, and the administrative apparatus and industry were mainly controlled by Armenians and Russian specialists. Had the region remained under Entente protection, Britain would have sought a force capable of stabilizing the Caucasus, and that force was precisely Armenia, a disciplined country with professional officers and moral legitimacy as the victim of genocide.
Thus, Azerbaijan would have either become a protectorate of Armenia or part of a broader Armenian-Georgian confederation, with Yerevan serving as the political center. Baku would have become an international port under British administration, but with an Armenian military presence. Two possible scenarios existed: either direct annexation into Greater Armenia under Wilsonian borders, or autonomous status under Armenian protectorate. In both cases, the Musavat government would have disappeared, and Baku’s oil would have come under joint Armenian-British control.
By 1925, Armenia would have controlled Zangezur, Karabakh, Nakhichevan, Ganja, and Baku; the British mission would have ensured the security of the ports; the Azerbaijani elite would have been partly integrated into the new administration as officials and industrialists and partly emigrated to Persia or Turkey. The Caucasus would have become an Anglo-Armenian strategic belt between the Black and Caspian Seas. Without the Bolshevik invasion and without Kemalist Turkey, Armenia would have become the main political and military center of the region, effectively removing Azerbaijan from the political map.
This outcome would have meant that the Soviet Union could not have risen, Turkey would not have been revived, Azerbaijan would have disappeared as a project, and Armenia would have assumed the role of a pivotal state in the Eastern Mediterranean and the South Caucasus. It would have been a completely different century—the century of an Anglo-Armenian alliance, where instead of Ankara and Moscow, the voices of Yerevan and London would have been heard, and the world would have known neither Kemalism, nor Sovietism, nor the subsequent Caucasian catastrophe.
