Russians enter Van

On 19 May 1915 Russian troops began to enter Van on Lake Van. They did not have to fight for the city. The Ottoman troops of the governor Cevdet Bey, which had been besieging the Armenian quarters since 20 April, had withdrawn during the night of 16–17 May, and on 17 May the Armenians took control of the whole city. The entry of the Russians closed the defence of Van, the only major case of successful Armenian resistance in the spring of 1915. A British chronology of the war recorded the day as the capture of Van by the Russians and the relief of the Armenian garrison.

The volunteers came first

The Russian command had planned the march on Van as early as April. From the direction of Bayazid came General Trukhin’s column with a brigade of Transbaikal Cossacks and Armenian volunteer druzhinas, and from Persian Azerbaijan, after the victory at Dilman, the troops of General Nazarbekian. In the vanguard marched Armenian volunteers, partly refugees from Turkish Armenia, who had sided with Russia after the outbreak of war.

According to the American missionary doctor Clarence Ussher, who lived through the siege in the city, the leading volunteer units entered Van on the afternoon of Tuesday 18 May, six hours ahead of the main force. They had expected to have to break the siege and were surprised to find the city in Armenian hands. On Wednesday and Thursday, 19 and 20 May, Russian units marched into Van. Ussher recalled how overjoyed the inhabitants, who for four weeks had expected to die, were at the sight of the Russian soldiers. At a ceremonial reception their commander, General Nikolaev, was handed the keys of the citadel and the city.

These dates differ in the sources. Eyewitness accounts from Van, on which the British chronology also relies, speak of 18–20 May. The classic history of the wars on the Caucasian frontier by W. E. D. Allen and Paul Muratoff dates the entry of Trukhin’s column as late as 31 May. Some studies give still other days, among them 23 May.

Armenian Van

For the first time in centuries the Armenians of Van could govern themselves. The Russian command confirmed the administration formed during the siege, and the leader of the defence from the Armenian Revolutionary Federation, Aram Manukian, became governor of the vilayet. In the first days after the Turks left there was some revenge. Ussher wrote that Armenians burned and looted Muslim houses and killed Turkish men who were in hiding. Women and children were spared, and the American mission also took in Turkish refugees.

Only now could the scale of the crimes committed in the area be seen. The Russians found villages full of bodies and rivers full of corpses. According to an account passed on by Ussher, Russian units burned the bodies of about 55,000 people killed in the vilayet. The figure is uncertain, but it shows what had been happening outside the city walls during the siege.

A brief freedom

Halil Bey, who after his defeat in Persia was retreating south of the lake, bypassed Van and moved off towards Bitlis, and Cevdet’s troops followed him. Russian control of Van, however, was short-lived. When in July the Turks went over to the offensive north of the lake, the Russians decided to withdraw from the area, and tens of thousands of Armenians fled with them to Transcaucasia.