Preface

"The mountain range that stretches from the Taman Peninsula to the Apheron Peninsula is called the Caucasus or the Greater Caucasus. In a broader sense, the Caucasus includes the entire isthmus that separates the Black Sea from the Caspian Sea. The terms Ciscaucasia and Transcaucasia are of Russian origin. Ciscaucasia designates the territories that, from Russia, are located on this side of the Greater Caucasus and Transcaucasia, those located on the other side (the current republics of Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan)"1. Trampled by Mongol, Persian, Ottoman or Russian armies, this connecting area between Europe and Africa has been the scene of numerous battles throughout history. Most of the Caucasus came under the rule of the Russian Empire in the mid-19th century. In the period 1850-1900 Ciscaucasia and Transcaucasia witnessed a great process of emigration when the local Muslims were helped by the Russians to leave their homeland. Their place was taken mainly by Russians, Cossacks and Armenians.

In the 19th century, a series of wars took place between the Russian and Ottoman Empires. In each of these wars, the Tsarist troops faced the Turkish ones on the Caucasian Front. The losses suffered by Turkey after the war of 1877-1878 paved the way for Turkey's entry into the First World War. Again, the Caucasus became the scene of another war between the empires mentioned above. This book presents the events that took place in the First World War on the Caucasian Front from a military point of view. At the same time, the book also provides the reader with an analysis of the situation of the Ottoman Empire in the period preceding its entry into the war precisely so that the reader can understand why this empire entered the First World War and why it fought again with Russia in the Caucasus. The subject of the Caucasus campaign during the First World War has not been addressed in many works in universal military historiography. This is because the Russian-Ottoman Front in the Caucasus was of interest only to Russian and Turkish historians. As a result, the most important books that have dealt with this subject are in Turkish and Russian. The research work that made this book possible led me to divide the sources I had access to into the following categories:

a. works whose authors participated in the battles on the Caucasian Front and reported the events as truthfully as possible:

1. N.G. Korsun2, ?????? ??????? ????? ?? ?????????? ??????. ??????????-?????????????? ????? (The First World War on the Caucasian Front 1914-1917, Strategic and Operational Outline), Military Publishing House of the U.S.S.R., 1946. The author, who was an officer of the RAC, made full use of the archive of the former Caucasian Military District from which he obtained valuable data that helped him in writing the book. Probably this book of N.G. Korsun is the most complete and concise work dealing with the Caucasian Front of the First World War. In this way I would like to thank the administrators of the militera.lib.ru website who made a special effort to make this particularly important work available to interested readers;

2. N.G. Korsun, ????????????? ???????? (Sarikamish Operation), Publishing House of the Commissariat of Defense of the USSR, Moscow, 1937;

3. N.G. Korsun, ??????????? ???????? (Erzurum Operation), Publishing House of the Commissariat of Defense of the USSR, Moscow, 1938;

4. E.V. Maslovski3, ??????? ????? ?? ?????????? ??????. 1914-1917 ??. (The Great War on the Caucasian Front. 1914-1917), Publishing House Vece, Moscow, 2015. E.V. Maslovsky was a direct participant in all military operations on the Caucasian Front in the period 1914-1917. He praised in his book the role played by gen. Yudenich in all the important battles that took place in the Caucasus. After the victory of the Bolsheviks in Russia, E.V. Maslovsky was forced to emigrate to France. The first edition of the book was published in Paris in 1933. Being far from Russia the author did not have access to the archives and had to rely on the memoirs of former colleagues in the Caucasian Army to reconstruct some of the events he recounted in his book.

5. Felix Guse4, Birinci Dünya Savasi'nda Kafkas Cephesi'ndeki Muharebeler (Battles on the Caucasian Front in the First World War), Turkish Army General Staff Printing House, Ankara, 2007. Felix Guse was the Chief of Staff of the 3rd Ottoman Army on the Caucasus Front. His memoirs are particularly important for finding out the Ottoman and German versions of what happened on this front during the First World War.

6. Ali Ihsan (Sâbis)5, Harp Hatıralarım Birinci Cihan Harbi (My Memories of the First World War), vol. I and II, Nehir Yayınlan, Istanbul, 1990.

7. V.L. Levitsky, ?? ?????????? ?????? ?????? ???????. ???????????? ???????? 155-?? ????????? ?????????? ?????. 1914-1917 (On the Caucasian Front of the First World War. Memoirs of a captain of the 155th Kuba infantry regiment 1914-1917), Kuchkovo Pole Publishing House, Moscow, 2014.

8. Garegin Pasdermadjian, Why Armenia should be free, Hairenik Publishing Company, Boston, 1918.

b. works developed based on information about the Caucasian Front obtained from Russian or Turkish Archives:

1. A.M. Zaionchikovski6, ?????? ??????? ????? 1914-1918 ??. (First World War 1914-1918), Poligon Publishing House, St. Petersburg, 2002. The author, a general of the Tsarist army, participated in the military operations of the First World War as commander of an army on the Romanian Front. As a historian, A.M. Zaionchikovskiy reported on the events on some fronts of the First World War either as a direct participant or based on orders, dispatches and notes issued by the Stavka.

2. Birinci Dünya Harbi'nde Türk Harbi Kafkas Cephesi (The Turkish Caucasus Front in the First World War - operations of the 3rd Ottoman Army), Turkish Army General Staff Printing House, Books I and II, Ankara, 1993. It is a book printed in Ankara by military history specialists from the Turkish Army General Staff. For the events on the Caucasian Front, the authors made full use of the ATASE archive.

3. ??????????? ???? ?????? ? ?????? ??????? ????? 1914-1917 (Russian Armed Forces in the First World War 1914-1917), vol. I and II, Megapolis Publishing House, Moscow, 2014. The work mainly used information from the RGVIA archive to recount in as much detail as possible the events on all the fronts on which Tsarist Russia fought in the First World War.

c. works based on information obtained from other event participants:

1. W.E.D. Allen, Paul Muratoff, Caucasian Battlefields, a history of the wars on the Turkish-Caucasian border, 1828-1921, Cambridge University Press, New York, 1953. The authors wrote the book in 1953. The information was collected by W.E.D. Allen from Turkey7 and by Paul Muratoff from a number of former Russian military commanders who emigrated to Western Europe.

2. Anton A. Kersnovski, ??????? ??????? ????? (History of the Russian Army), vol. IV, Golos Publishing House, Moscow, 1994. One of the best and most documented books on the Tsarist army. It contains valuable information about the Russian troops who fought on the Caucasus front during World War I. The author emigrated to Serbia in 1920 and then to France. His most important book, History of the Russian Army, was originally published in Belgrade between 1933 and 1938.      

3. P.N. Strelianov (Kalabuhov), ?????? ? ?????? 1909-1918 rr. (Cossacks in Persia, 1909-1918), Tsentrpoligraf Publishing House, Moscow, 2007;

4. Edward J. Erickson, Ordered to die, a history of the Ottoman Army in the First World War, Greenwood Publishing, Westport, 2001. The author, a gen. of U.S. Army who served in NATO troops deployed in Turkey, wrote this book based mainly on Ottoman sources. Since some of the Turkish archives are still blocked, we can assume that the author did not have all the information necessary for his study to be complete.

d. memoirs of some members of the armies allied with Turkey who were in the Ottoman Empire during the First World War:

1. Otto Liman von Sanders, Five years in Turkey, United States Naval Institute, Annapolis, 1927. An excellent memoir by the head of the German Military Mission in the Ottoman Empire from 1913 to 1918. This german gen., who led the Ottoman troops during the Gallipoli Operation (1915-1916), criticized the way the Turkish troops were organized on the Caucasus Front. With very few reservations, the information provided by Otto Liman von Sanders can be taken into account for the preparation of the present work.

2. Joseph Pomiankovski, Der...