«Հանցավոր դավադրություն» - Յուրի ԲԱՐՍԵՂՈՎ

Yuri Barsegov's article "'Criminal Collusion'" (based on materials from the book "The Armenian Genocide. Turkey's Responsibility and the Obligations of the World Community") is devoted to an analysis of the diplomatic preparation and course of the Soviet-Turkish Moscow Conference of 1921, during which questions determining the territorial fate of the Armenian people were resolved without the participation of the Armenian SSR.

The Question of the Content and Format of the Conference
The author demonstrates that the original conception of the RSFSR People's Commissariat for Foreign Affairs (NKID) envisaged the participation of representatives of Soviet Armenia as a full-fledged party in resolving the Armenian question — in contrast to both the Treaty of Sèvres and the Treaty of Alexandropol. However, the Kemalist delegation from the very outset refused to recognize Armenian participation as anything other than "minimal," insisting on the validity of the Treaty of Alexandropol. Barsegov reconstructs the course of the unofficial "preparatory negotiations" of February 23, 1921, showing how the Turkish side, employing the rhetoric of alliance against "imperialism" combined with direct political blackmail (threats of reorienting toward London), succeeded in excluding the Armenian SSR from the negotiating process. Also noted is the telling fact of the removal, at Stalin's demand, of Deputy People's Commissar L. Karakhan — on account of his Armenian origin.

Stalin's Role in the Armenian Question
Drawing on the memoir testimony of Turkish diplomats (Ali Fuad Cebesoy, Kâzım Karabekir), the author provides documentary confirmation that it was precisely the intervention of Stalin and his entourage (in particular, Mdivani) that allowed the Turks to bypass the position of the People's Commissariat for Foreign Affairs, which had championed Armenian interests. Turkish sources directly identify Stalin as the key figure who secured an outcome to the negotiations favorable to Ankara.

The Ideological Justification for Territorial Concessions
Particular attention is devoted to the publications of A. Skachko, an official of Stalin's People's Commissariat of Nationalities, who justified the necessity of Armenia's renunciation of the vilayets of Van and Bitlis by invoking the principle of "the greatest national sacrifices" in the name of world revolution. Barsegov underscores the cynicism of this argumentation: Skachko cites the sharp decline of the Armenian population in these vilayets as an "objective" fact, while passing over in silence that it was the direct consequence of genocide — that is, he uses the results of a crime as justification for legitimizing its territorial consequences.

The article's central conclusion is that the decisions of the Moscow Conference of 1921 represented not a diplomatic compromise but the result of a deliberate political collusion between the Soviet and Kemalist leaderships, in which:

the Armenian side was denied any voice in matters determining its own fate;
the Soviet leadership, contrary to its declared principles, made territorial concessions in favor of Turkey and Azerbaijan at Armenia's expense;
the ideological cover of these concessions as serving "the interests of world revolution" served to legitimize the de facto consolidation of the results of the genocide of the Armenian people.