ABSTRACT
The Russian conquest of the South Caucasus, which began with the annexation of eastern Georgia in 1801, was a slow process. Russian military and political leaders assumed that Georgians and Armenians, as Christians, preferred Russian rule and would support Russian domination over the large Muslim population living in the Caucasus. The South Caucasus experienced yet another re-formation, this time into new provinces: the Elisavetpol Province created from the former khanates of Ganja, Sheki and Karabagh and the former Georgian districts of Kazakh and Shamshadil and Tiflis Province, Yerevan Province, and Kutais Province. In 1844, in order to further consolidate the North and South Caucasus, the Russians created a single administrative division of the region headquartered in Tiflis. Following the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–1878, Russia obtained additional territory in the southwest Caucasus; namely, Kars and Batum. The Bolshevik Revolution and subsequent events resulted in great and unexpected changes to the Yerevan Province and all of the South Caucasus.
