THE QUESTION OF THE SUPPLY OF WEAPONS AND AMMUNITION TO THE REPUBLIC OF ARMENIA IN 1918-1920
Until now, there have been superficial, incomplete and one-sided, sometimes politicized references to the Armenian-British military-political relations and British support in terms of military assistance and the supply of weapons and ammunition to the Republic of Armenia in 1918-1920, as well as in terms of the professional training of officers of the Armenian army. All this has left the study of the problem incomplete. There were blank pages that needed to be covered, as well as to offer rethinking, new historical and in-depth approaches. In this context, in the Armenian-British military-political relations and the British military-political mission in the Transcaucasus, there were both individual positive phenomena and cumulative pro-imperialist and pro-British phenomena that need a new assessment, revealing, in particular, the so-called Armenian-friendly British cabinet officials, as well as, in particular, purely imperialist officials, on the one hand, considering military and political figures who have a certain positive attitude towards Armenia, such as Oliver Baldwin of Bewdley, as well as Captain J. Gracie, who knows Armenian and has a positive attitude towards Armenia, Colonel Cl. Temperley. The activities and steps, on the contrary, of V. Thomson, D. Shuttleworth and the purposeful actions of others are sharply anti-Armenian, pro-Azerbaijani - pro-Turkish in their nature, as a result of which the Republic of Armenia suffered significantly, relying on its faithful allies. Different sides of the problem, some facts and details can be found in the books by R. Hovhannisyan, G. Galoyan, Arts. Hovhannisyan, as well as other sources. In the works of contemporaries and state politicians Al. Khatisyan, S. Vratsyan and other statesmen, there is factual selective material, the authors of which, as well as in memoirs, for the most part, are dominated by the approach of proofreading realities and facts, due to which the truth is presented incompletely or distorted, depending on the party and political affiliation of these people and the interests of which country they served or what rank they had in world processes, their possible influence. For example, the Armenian political forces that collaborated with the Young Turks and Al. Parvus or with the main characters of the October Revolution in Russia in 1917 - V. Lenin, L. Trotsky and others. It is also obvious that the Armenian-British military-political ties and a new assessment of the military support of the Republic of Armenia, the activities of military-political mission of Britain in Transcaucasus should be covered with a deep consideration of geopolitical factors, focusing on the short existence of the Armenian statehood, its losses in the Turkish-Armenian war in the autumn of 1920 and the deepest causes of the fall of the Republic of Armenia. This is important because in 1918-1920 Armenia never showed any results in the military sphere, not without the participation of Great Britain, an ally of Armenia, with its incomplete, untimely and insufficient military assistance, and as for the rest powers, they did not show significant interest in this issue, as the oil and socio-political interests of these countries and the same England had other priority. The former “Entente ally” of Great Britain and rival Russia also chalked up its contribution to the above mentioned, which, after the fiasco by the “efforts” of the world powers in 1917, by superhuman efforts in the late 1919 and early 1920s, gradually came to its senses, as a result of which both sides turned the issue Armenia’s support in just a tool to fight against each other, and eventually came to a consensus to control the fate of Armenia by mutual agreement.
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