Latest / The Story of Armenia: Survival Through Empires and Genocide — Fexingo History / Armenia's First Constitution: The 1890 Program of the Dashnaks
Transcript
- Lucas: So we've talked a lot about the fedayee fighters, the Hamidian massacres, the 1905 Russian revolution — but I realized we've never really sat down and looked at the actual blueprint of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation, the Dashnaktsutyun, when it was first founded. And I mean the actual document — the 1890 program. Luna: Was there a specific founding moment, like a congress or a meeting? Lucas: Kind of. The party was officially founded in 1890 in Tiflis — that's Tbilisi today — but it grew out of earlier student groups. The three main founders were Kristapor Mikayelian, Stepan Zorian, and Simon Zavarian. They were all young intellectuals, mostly educated in Russian universities, and they were deeply influenced by the Russian revolutionary tradition — the narodniks, the People's Will, that kind of underground activism. But they also had their eyes on the Ottoman Empire, because the bulk of the Armenian population was still living under Sultan Abdul Hamid II. Lucas: The program they drafted was essentially a manifesto. It starts with a declaration that the goal is 'the political and economic freedom of Turkish Armenia.' And it outlines a vision of a democratic, socialist society — but with a strong emphasis on national self-determination. That was the tricky part: how do you reconcile Marxist class struggle with a nationalist movement? Luna: Right, because the Hunchakian party, the other big Armenian socialist group, was more strictly Marxist and internationalist, wasn't it? Lucas: Exactly. The Hunchaks, founded a few years earlier in Geneva, were much more orthodox Marxist — they saw the Armenian question as part of a broader socialist revolution. The Dashnaks, on the other hand, were pragmatic. They wanted to unite all Armenians, regardless of class, in a struggle for national liberation. Their program actually says that the party will 'support all revolutionary elements' — even bourgeois democrats — as long as they fight against the Ottoman regime. That's a big difference. Lucas: The program also has a very specific section on tactics. It calls for 'propaganda and agitation' among the masses, but also — and this is key — 'terror against the oppressors and their henchmen.' That became the controversial part. The Dashnaks organized assassination campaigns against Ottoman officials, like the 1905 attempt on Abdul Hamid himself, and they ran armed bands in the countryside. But the program frames this as self-defense, not random violence. It says: 'When the government uses force to suppress the people, the people have the right to respond with force.' Luna: So it's almost like a justification for the fedayee movement we talked about before. Lucas: Exactly. And the program actually spells out a whole organizational structure: a central committee, regional councils, local cells. It's very much modeled on the Russian underground — secret, hierarchical, disciplined. The founders were determined to avoid the factionalism that had destroyed earlier groups. But there was also a democratic element: delegates were supposed to be elected from the grassroots, at least in theory. Lucas: Now, the program wasn't static. In 1892, at the first party conference in Tiflis, they revised it to include a more explicit commitment to socialism and to broaden the goal from just 'Turkish Armenia' to the entire Armenian homeland, including Russian Armenia. But the core tension remained: was this a socialist party that happened to be Armenian, or an Armenian national party that used socialist language? That debate never really went away. Luna: And how did the Ottoman authorities react when they got wind of this program? Lucas: They didn't know about it immediately — it was a secret organization, after all. But by the mid-1890s, the Dashnaks were active in the eastern provinces, especially around Sasun and Van. The Hamidian massacres of 1894-96 actually accelerated recruitment: people who had lost everything saw the party as their only hope. The program's call for revolution suddenly felt urgent, not theoretical. Lucas: There's one more thing I find fascinating. The 1890 program includes a section on 'the right of the individual to self-defense' — which sounds like a simple legal concept, but in the context of the Ottoman Empire, it was radical. It meant that Armenians had the right to form self-defense groups, to carry weapons, to resist attacks. And that's exactly what the fedayee did. So the program wasn't just a piece of paper; it was a practical guide for survival. Luna: It almost reads like a declaration of independence before independence was even imaginable. Lucas: That's a good way to put it. And thirty years later, in 1918, when the first Armenian Republic was declared, many of its leaders — like Hovhannes Kachaznuni — were Dashnaks who had been shaped by that very program. It's a direct line from the underground cells in Tiflis to the cabinet in Yerevan. Lucas: You know, for anyone coming with us through these conversations about the Caucasus, it's fascinating how these old ideological documents still echo today. And if you've been stepping into history with us episode by episode, you might have wondered how we keep this going ad-free. It's really because of listeners who chip in at buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo — just a small gesture that makes a big difference. Luna: Yeah, it's like how the Dashnaks relied on small contributions from the Armenian diaspora to fund their cause. Different context, but same spirit of collective support. Lucas: Exactly. And speaking of that spirit — the program also had a surprising amount of detail on economic policy. It called for the redistribution of land to the peasants, the establishment of cooperatives, and the abolition of feudal dues. In the Ottoman Armenian provinces, that meant targeting the Kurdish aghas and Turkish beys who controlled most of the land. So it wasn't just about national rights; it was about class justice. Luna: Did the program ever address the Kurdish population directly? I mean, the common people, not the landlords. Lucas: It did, actually. The program calls for 'brotherly relations with the Kurdish people' and emphasizes that the enemy is the Ottoman state, not the Kurds as a whole. In practice, that was hard to sustain during the massacres, but it shows that the founders were thinking about multi-ethnic solidarity. There's even a section on women's rights — equality before the law, access to education — which was very progressive for the time. Lucas: One last thing: the program's call for 'autonomy for Turkish Armenia' within a decentralized Ottoman Empire was a direct response to the failure of the Treaty of Berlin in 1878. The great powers had promised reforms, but nothing happened. So the Dashnaks decided they would have to take matters into their own hands. That's the real birth of the revolutionary movement — not just a reaction to oppression, but a coherent political plan. Luna: And that plan eventually became the foundation for the first republic. It's incredible how a document written in secret by a handful of intellectuals in Tiflis could shape an entire nation's destiny. Lucas: It really is. And it reminds us that ideas matter — especially when they're backed by courage and organization.