Latest / The Story of Armenia: Survival Through Empires and Genocide — Fexingo History / The First Republic of Armenia's Secret Constitution
Transcript
- Lucas: So we've talked a lot about the battles that saved Armenia in 1918 — Sardarabad, Bash Abaran, Karakilisa — but what happened right after is just as fascinating, and in some ways even more fragile. Luna: I mean, they declared independence in a Tiflis apartment, right? Lucas: Exactly. On May 28, 1918, the Armenian National Council meeting in Tiflis — which is now Tbilisi — declared the Republic of Armenia. But for months, there was no constitution. No codified laws. Just a provisional government scrambling to function while Ottoman troops were still moving east. The first order of business was just survival. Lucas: By June 4, 1918, Armenia signed the Treaty of Batum with the Ottoman Empire, which reduced the republic to a tiny rump state around Yerevan and Lake Sevan. Something like twelve thousand square kilometers, blockaded, cut off from the rest of the world, and flooded with refugees from the genocide in the west. Luna: And they still tried to write a constitution in the middle of that? Lucas: They did. And it's remarkable that they did. The driving figure here was Hovhannes Katchaznouni — he'd been the first prime minister, and he chaired the constitutional commission. The document they produced in 1919 is a fascinating hybrid. It borrowed heavily from the Swiss federal model and from the French Third Republic — two of the most admired democratic systems at the time — but it also had to accommodate the realities of a multi-ethnic, blockaded, devastated country. Luna: What about the Dashnaks? They were the dominant party, weren't they? Lucas: The Armenian Revolutionary Federation — Dashnaktsutyun — had been a socialist revolutionary party for decades, operating underground in the Ottoman and Russian empires. Now they had to govern. And they were deeply divided on how much socialism to embed in the constitution. The final document was a compromise: it guaranteed private property, but also included provisions for land reform and worker protections. It was, in many ways, a social-democratic constitution before that term was common. Lucas: One of the most progressive elements — and something that still surprises people — was women's suffrage. Article 4 of the 1919 constitution gave women the right to vote and be elected, without any property or literacy qualification. That put Armenia ahead of the United States, ahead of most of Europe. The first woman elected to parliament was actually elected a bit later, but the principle was there from the start. Luna: Wow. So that was a Dashnak priority? Lucas: Partly. The Dashnaks had included women in their party structure from the early 1900s, especially in the Caucasus. But it also reflected the broader desperation — they needed every capable person involved in rebuilding. There was no room to exclude half the population. The constitutional commission actually debated whether to tie suffrage to military service, but they decided against it. Lucas: The parliament itself — the Khorhurd — was a single chamber, elected by proportional representation. The executive was a prime minister and a cabinet, answerable to parliament. And there was a president — but the president was mostly ceremonial, a bit like the French model. The first president was Avetik Sahakyan, but Katchaznouni as prime minister held the real power. Luna: So what went wrong? Why didn't this constitution survive? Lucas: The constitution was only in effect for about two years. The First Republic itself collapsed in December 1920, when the Red Army invaded and installed a Soviet government. The constitution was formally abolished by the Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic in 1921. But the interesting thing is that the constitutional debates — and the document itself — didn't just disappear. They became a kind of blueprint for the Armenian diaspora's political aspirations, and they influenced the post-Soviet constitution of 1995 in subtle ways. Luna: I had no idea there was such a sophisticated constitutional project in the middle of a humanitarian catastrophe. Lucas: It's one of those underappreciated stories. The commission had to work with almost no resources — they met in a drafty building in Yerevan, sometimes by candlelight, because there was no electricity. They had to consult French and Swiss texts they'd brought from Tiflis. And they were constantly interrupted by news of territorial disputes with Georgia and Azerbaijan, by refugee crises, by the constant threat of a renewed Turkish offensive. Lucas: And yet they produced a remarkably coherent document. It had 113 articles, covering everything from citizenship to the judiciary to local government. It even included provisions for the protection of minority languages — Russian, Kurdish, Assyrian, Greek. The constitution was never fully implemented, but it was a statement of intent: we are a modern, democratic, multi-ethnic republic. Luna: You mentioned disputes with Georgia and Azerbaijan — how did the constitution handle borders? Lucas: It didn't, really. The constitution defined the territory of the republic as 'the territory governed by the Armenian National Council at the time of independence,' which was deliberately vague. In practice, Armenia was in a violent three-way border war with Georgia over the Lori region and with Azerbaijan over Zangezur and Karabakh. The constitution basically punted on that — it set up procedures for future boundary agreements, but everyone knew those would be settled by force more than by law. Lucas: One more thing that I think is telling: the constitution never mentioned a state religion. It guaranteed freedom of conscience and separation of church and state. That was a radical break — the Armenian Apostolic Church had been the central institution of Armenian identity for over a thousand years. The Dashnaks, who were largely secular intellectuals, pushed for that. The church resisted, but they lost. It was a signal that the new republic was going to be a civic nation, not just a religious one. Luna: That must have been incredibly controversial. Lucas: It was. And it's part of why the constitution has been remembered differently by different groups. For some, it was a heroic attempt to build a liberal democracy against impossible odds. For others, it was a flawed document that alienated the church and couldn't secure the borders. But the simple fact that it was written at all, under those conditions, is extraordinary. Luna: I do want to mention — the reason we can even have these deep-dive episodes on Armenian history is because of listeners who chip in a few bucks each month at buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. It's a small group, but it keeps the show ad-free and lets us spend time on stories that don't get told elsewhere. So if you've been following along from Sardarabad to Sevan to the constitution, and you've got a couple dollars to spare, that would honestly make a difference. Lucas: Yeah, it's something we don't talk about often, but it's true. That support is what allows us to keep going into these corners of history. And we're grateful for it. Lucas: To close out — the 1919 constitution of the First Republic of Armenia was a document born of extraordinary hope and desperation. It didn't survive, but the ideas in it — democracy, women's rights, social justice — they didn't die either. They went underground, into the diaspora, into the memory of a generation that had tasted independence. And when Armenia became independent again in 1991, those same debates resurfaced. So in a way, that candlelit commission in Yerevan was talking to the future. Luna: It's amazing how much a piece of paper can carry across generations. Lucas: Exactly. The constitution was never fully implemented, but it was never forgotten. And for anyone curious about how nations are built in real time, it's a remarkable case study.