Smbat Hovhannisyan

In 1921, both Turkey and Russia were still in the middle of their own civil wars. Mustafa Kemal Ataturk’s Turkish Grand National Assembly had made major inroads into the Caucasus with its victory in the Turkish-Armenian War of autumn 1920; its armies occupied Alexandropol (today’s Gyumri). The Bolshevik Communists, headquartered in Russia, had taken control of the briefly-independent Transcaucasian republics of Armenia, Georgia and Azerbaijan.