The Times, UK
Sept 30 2017



Chaos in the Caucasus exposes a gap in the frontier that the British must close

With an unguarded region that offered the Turks a route into the
Caucasus, the British had to safeguard a possible route through
neutral Persia to Afghanistan and on to India

by Michael Tillotson


The 500-mile wide neck of land between the Black Sea and the Caspian
is a natural breeding ground for conflict and chaos. It is a corridor
from Christian Europe to Muslim northwest Asia, an area crowded with
small nations competing for allies to help them take advantage of
their neighbours or exact revenge for age-old hatreds.

Allegiance to tsarist Russia was a nebulous concept, overshadowed by
the authority of the local strongman and his followers ready to string
up your menfolk and burn your house down. Yet news of the announcement
in far off Petrograd of the Provisional Government to succeed that of
the Tsar, on September 14, 1917, had an oddly unifying impact in the
Caucasus. Hitherto antagonistic groups met in the old tsarist
administrative centre, Tiflis (now Tbilisi) the capital of Georgia, to
form a government of their own.

Fair representation appears to have been the watchword. The
Transcaucasian Commissariat had a Georgian president, three other
Georgians, three Armenians, three Azerbaijanis and a couple of ethnic
Russians thrown in to be on the safe side, in case whoever was in
charge in Petrograd woke up to what was happening and decided to
assert control over what looked increasingly like a breakaway region.

Politically, the Tiflis government was broad-based, accepting
revolutionaries of most kinds, including the Mensheviks, but not the
other part of the Social Democratic Labour Party that had split off to
form the Bolsheviks. Each member of the cabinet, or "commissioner",
had a portfolio of responsibility for agriculture, education, finance
and so on. All seemed stable until the tsarist troops manning the
Caucasian front with Turkey began to withdraw.

Although the armistice on the Eastern Front was not to be agreed until
December 1917, fighting between the Russian and Turkish armies in
eastern Turkey had lapsed. This was because, hearing of the grants of
land available to military veterans, the Russian units began to melt
away northwards so as not to miss their shares. The result was an
unguarded frontier that offered the Turks a route into the Caucasus
and, as the British government suddenly became aware, a possible route
through neutral Persia to Afghanistan and thence to India.

At the same time a rival authority appeared in the port city of Baku
on the Caucasus east coast facing the Caspian. The Bolsheviks had
seized control of the city and surrounding countryside, much to the
alarm of the Muslim Azerbaijanis of the region, who feared that the
Bolshevik leader, an Armenian friend of Lenin's called Stepan
Shaumian, might use the arms left behind by the withdrawing Russians
for a pogrom against them. They would certainly be ready to act at
what would later be termed a "fifth column" if their coreligionist
Turks could be persuaded to take advantage of the open frontier and
invade.

In London the war cabinet pondered urgently as to what could be done
to plug the Caucasian gap before the Turks moved through it. No
British force was to hand, the nearest being General Sir Stanley
Maude's army 600 miles to the south in Baghdad, removal of which, even
if logistically feasible, would leave Mesopotamia wide open for the
Turks to reoccupy. Local allies had to be found and - without doubt -
generously funded. The Georgians were tough and resilient fighters,
but nationalistic to a fault, so unlikely to be interested in fighting
beyond their borders. As the Azerbaijanis would be supporting the
Turks, the only remaining option were the Christian Armenians,
hopefully without Stepan Shaumian, the Bolshevik leader in Baku,
hearing about it.

The next problem was how to persuade the Armenians to act - ostensibly
in part in their own defence - and deploy to the frontier. Their
acceptance of substantial financial support was not thought to be an
issue, but how to deliver the requisite roubles - still the main
currency in the region - most certainly was.

A small British military mission positioned to advise the tsarist army
on tactics and logistics lingered uselessly in Tiflis, but seemed more
likely to become a liability as hostages than a guileful negotiating
and money-handling team. Then someone remembered Aeneas Ranald
MacDonell, the British vice-consul at Baku, who knew the Caucasus as
well as any foreigner, had a reputation for a resolute disposition and
be could be supplied with all the roubles the British government
sought to provide through one or other of the international trading
banks in Baku. He was granted a commission as a major in the British
Army, presumably to give the Armenians an impression of sound British
military intention, and invited to get working on them.

Baku, as the capital of Azerbaijan, was no place for him to start so
he decided to consult the residual military mission in Tiflis to ask
whether they had useful Armenian contacts that he could exploit.

As the British vice-consul - in effect the local head man in the
consulate - one would expect him to have a prestigious British-made
automobile. However, motor roads outside the towns were infrequent, so
he had a private train comprising the engine, a coach as office and
living quarters, a second one for sleeping and a third to carry his
escort.

Arriving in Tiflis, he found that the Transcaucasian Commissariat had
failed to establish authority in the Georgian capital in any way
comparable to the Bolshevik grip on power in Baku. His first report to
London included depressing news: "The town is full of loafing
soldiers, the cafés, hotels and night clubs in the fashionable
Golivinsky Prospect are filled with officers in splendid uniforms and
beautiful dark-eyed Georgian women. As long as the wine and women last
the Georgians were content to enjoy themselves and no one else seems
to give a damn."

This was a discouraging start to a difficult mission, but Major
MacDonell went on to risk life and limb and distributed millions of
roubles from his private train while trying to close the Caucasian
gap.

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