American expert accuses Armenians

The development of high technology brought with it the rapprochement of geographically-distant peoples. Yet the best way to get to know each other is still private communication. This is the way Michael Reynolds, a professor at Princeton University, discovered the Caucasus in general and our country in particular. How did this happen? How does the U. S. historian see Azerbaijan and its people? He has told this and many other things to "Azeri News".

- How did you become interested in the Caucasus and Azerbaijan in particular?


- I was a student at Harvard University, a future political scientist, and like many people in this period, the end of the '80s, I was interested in Russia and wanted to learn Russian. I went to Moscow, studied at MISiS, only because there was a department of Russian language for foreigners. And I had a passion for sports - weightlifting which was very unpopular with the U.S. people, and the Soviet Union was the leader in this sport. This was the beginning. In the sports complex of CSKA I met with Ovsat, its manager, an Azerbaijani from Derbent. I made friends with him; a year later I returned to Moscow, and our relationship with Ovsat continued. Also among the weightlifters there were a lot of Azerbaijanis and other Caucasians. They were markedly different from the Russians whom I already knew. And though I was still in Russia, I understood that this was another interesting culture, and I wanted to find out more about it. I went to Derbent. I liked everything - both the people and the history, in which I was greatly interested and which I considered to be the root cause of contemporary political processes. Thus the passion for the East, especially its Turkic component - Azeris in Dagestan, Turkey, and then your country - appeared.


- What did you do after graduating from Harvard?


 - I became a lawyer. Almost all the members of my family are lawyers, and this profession, as you probably know, is well-paid in America. In addition, it is no secret that we Americans are a pragmatic people. So I decided that I would go to Moscow, work in the American law firm, earn lots of money and then take up the study in which I was at that time interested most of all - the First World War and the collapse of the Ottoman and Russian empires. I began to read history books and learn languages. Then I realized that it would be very difficult to do all this later; two years later I left the field of law. I did not manage to choose a roundabout way to my favorite cause. I decided that I should do it right now. I entered a PhD program, first at Columbia University and then at the Faculty of Oriental Studies of Princeton University.

- Why did you choose Turkey of all the countries of the Caucasus?

- I started from the fact that, although Turkey is a little-studied country for American historians, but, unfortunately, the Caucasus region is even less studied, and I had to reckon with this. At Princeton, I started working with one of the most famous experts on the Young Turks in the West, Mammad Shukyurhan-oglu, who is now in charge of our department; he supported my interest in Turkey. His grandfather was a Kumyk, an officer in the tsarist army who left Russia for Turkey after the October Revolution. At first I did not know what my thesis would be, but I really wanted to make this scientific work connected both with the October Revolution in Russia and with the fall of the Ottoman Empire. It seemed to me very interesting from the scientific point of view.

The period of the First World War in this region was studied so badly that some scholars equated the Young Turks to the Nazis (!). In my opinion, this is complete ignorance of history: the Young Turks could not think of establishing a new empire like the Nazis,. The Ottoman Empire broke up, and they had to do something to save Turkey. Then, when I got to know the history of relations between different ethnic groups there and thoroughly examined what happened in Turkey during the First World War, I figured out where the roots of this lie about the Young Turks lay. Of course, we are talking about the Armenian influence in this case.

I went to Istanbul to work in the archives. For two years I studied the documents of the period of the First World War; then I worked for six months in Ankara in the archives of the General Staff; I found several stunning documents relating to the period I studied. I collected a lot of material for my thesis. Russian sources were necessary, and I went to Moscow, where I managed to work in another remarkable repository of historical information, i. e. the archive of the documents relating to the foreign policy of the Russian Empire and in other better-known archives. Ten years ago, I presented my thesis, which then resulted in a monograph titled "Collapsing Empire:" The Ottoman-Russian struggle for Anatolia and the Caucasus in 1908-1918”. The word “collapsing” is a world-play with two meanings – “destroying” and “breaking up”. We are talking about empires, which broke up and destroyed the destiny of their people. I must admit that I am very pleased that the main organization of the U.S. historians, The Association of American Historians, called this work "the best book in the field of international history”.


- Have you considered the subject of the so-called "Armenian genocide" in the Ottoman Empire in your work?


 - As you know, this topic cannot be circumvented examining this period. However, I did not use the word "genocide" anywhere in my book. The numbers of the Armenian victims in Turkey listed in the Armenian sources do not seem true to me. They are, in my opinion, too high, say, twice as much, and each year this figure, oddly enough, is growing.

I was very worried about my colleagues' attitudes to the work I published. Among other things, there was a reason, which was associated with the continuation of my future work at the university where I was a professor for six years. In the U.S. it is usual that after six years in high school your works are sent to your colleagues, historians (i. e., to about half to two dozen scientists), and they give their expert opinion on your works. And if even one of them does not like a scientific study, the University may terminate the contract with you.

Last year, Princeton extended its contract with me. Among the scholars approving my monograph there was Ronald Suny, a very well-known scientist in the United States, an ethnic Armenian. According to Wikipedia, a number of historians and journalists in Armenia accuse leading Western Armenologists, including Suny, of deliberate falsification of Armenian history. The famous Zori Balayan considers "Looking at Ararat: Armenia in Modern History", the work of Suny, to be “a pasquinade”. It is known in the academic community that, speaking at the conference held by the American University in Yerevan, Suny said that in the middle of the XIX century, the Armenians were not the predominant ethnic group in Yerevan, and that it was not an Armenian territory. The lecture was interrupted, and Suny left the hall through the back door. This means one thing: he is an honest historian. And I also started from the principle that an historian should tell the truth.

- You are a famous scholar specializing in history. What is the reason for the appeal of our history to you and what period are you going to study?


- I have a moral duty to my Azerbaijani friends and, first of all, to Ovsat Ovsatov, who, frankly, changed my life. If I had not met with this man on my way, maybe I would not become who I am today. There are other Azeri who have played a role in my life.


I gave a course of lectures on "Architecture and Culture of the Ottoman Empire" at the University and wanted to see the mosques and museums of Istanbul. In 1991, my dream was realized with the support of Hafiz Suleymanov, an Azeri who supported Turkey in those days and repeatedly won first prizes at the championships in weightlifting; I am very grateful to him. At Princeton, I also gave the course "Introduction to the Caucasus" for students of all years, amongst whom there was your compatriot. So it is impossible to enumerate all the people who help me.

But there is also a duty of the scientist. Azerbaijan has a unique history, which not only is not widely known in the West, but, "thanks" to the Armenians, is learned in a distorted form. They say that they are cruel to the Armenians, because they are Turks; besides, they were in the Russian Empire, then, they should be doubly cruel. So I want to tell the truth about Azerbaijan and Azerbaijanis.


Unlike my first book, in which I described a lot of deaths and stories of the suffering associated with the war, the second book will be full of positivity. Replacing the first democratic republic in the East, what was the ADR, the Soviet government destroyed almost all traces of its existence. Even in the West almost nobody realizes how the democratic way of Azerbaijan has developed. For the first time women were given equal rights with men, minorities were represented in parliament, science, the national opera and many other things were developing; all of this can be considered to be the primacy of your country. In the West, people believe that Turkey is the first republic in the East. But it is Azerbaijan that has played a role in the establishment of the Turkish Republic. And what about Iran? American Iranists, who are, as a rule, ethnic Persians, never write about the role of Azerbaijan in the Iranian Constitutional Revolution of 1909, about the Iranian Azeris of Baku who brought the slogans of democracy to the country. Of course, you are well aware of it, unlike the West, except, of course, such scholars as Tadeusz Svyatohovsky and Alexander Bennigsen.


There is even a theory among the scientists of the West that the Russian Empire and the Ottoman Empire, inhabited by different peoples, broke up because of nationalist factors. But having the documents on the activities of the ADR, I consider it necessary to refute this view. I can say that I was shocked by the fact that the leaders of the First Republic, in spite of everything that happened during the March events of 1918 because of the Armenians, did their best for reconciliation, to the point that they gave Irevan to the Armenians, so that they could have their own capital.