Historyczne uwarunkowania powstania ormiańskich i azerbejdżańskich partii politycznych na przełomie XIX i XX w

THE PRIMARY IMPETUS for what was to become the Armenian-Muslim conflict lay in Russian imperial expansion. At the time of Ivan the Terrible, circa the sixteenth century, Russians began a policy of expelling Muslims from lands they had conquered. Over the next three hundred years, Muslims, many of them Turks, were killed or driven out of what today is Ukraine, Crimea and the Caucasus. In the Caucasus region, 1.2 million Circassians and Abazians were either expelled or killed by Russians. Members of the Armenian minority in the Caucasus began to rebel against Muslim rule and to ally themselves with Russian invaders in the 1790s: Armenian armed units joined the Russians. In these wars, Muslims were massacred and forced into exile. Armenians in turn migrated into areas previously held by Muslims, such as Karabakh. This was the beginning of the division of the peoples of the southern Caucasus and eastern Anatolia into two conflicting sides – the Russian Empire and Armenians on one side, the Muslim Ottoman Empire on the other. Most Armenians and Muslims undoubtedly wanted nothing to do with this conflict, but the events were to force them to take sides. In response to the superior organization of the Dashnaktsutiun, various Muslim groups that had been fighting in a hit or miss fashion began to coordinate their actions. The Difai organizations was founded in Ganja, in 1906 on the initiative of some local notables, who thereby started their careers in politics.