Massacre of ethnic Azerbaijanis is committed by allied armed groups of Armenian Revolutionary Federation and Bolsheviks. Nearly 12,000 Azerbaijani Muslims are killed.
The Armenian Revolutionary Federation (Armenian: , (classical spelling), abbr. ARF or ARF-D) also known as Dashnaktsutyun (collectively referred to as Dashnaks for short), is an Armenian nationalist and socialist political party founded in 1890 in Tiflis, Russian Empire (now Tbilisi, Georgia) by Christapor Mikaelian, Stepan Zorian, and Simon Zavarian. Today the party operates in Armenia, Artsakh, Lebanon, Iran and in countries where the Armenian diaspora is present. Although it has long been the most influential political party in the Armenian diaspora, it has a comparatively smaller presence in modern-day Armenia. As of October 2021, the party was represented in three national parliaments with ten seats in the National Assembly of Armenia, three seats in the National Assembly of Artsakh and three seats in the Parliament of Lebanon as part of the March 8 Alliance.
The ARF has traditionally advocated socialist democracy and has been a full member of the Socialist International since 2003, which it originally joined in 1907. Politically the ARF supports a socialism aligned with Marxism. In line with their Marxist socialist alignment, the ARF Program promotes a materialist conception of history stating "human beings and human societies, peoples and nations have aspired to freedom and equality and have struggled to attain them" and that the "natural and conscious struggle for the development of both individuals and societies has progressed through the interaction of the subjective and objective factors of life", the ARF program continued stating that the historical context is in both "national liberation struggles and human societies' evolutionary and revolutionary progress." It has the largest membership of the political parties present in the Armenian diaspora, having established affiliates in more than 20 countries. Compared to other diasporan Armenian parties which tend to primarily focus on educational or humanitarian projects, the ARF is the most politically oriented of the organizations and traditionally has been one of the staunchest supporters of Armenian nationalism. The party campaigns for the recognition of the Armenian genocide and the right to reparations. It also advocates the establishment of United Armenia, partially based on the Treaty of Svres of 1920.
The ARF was founded as a merger of various Armenian political groups, mainly from the Russian Empire, with the declared goal of achieving "the political and economic freedom of Turkish Armenia" by means of armed rebellion. In the 1890s, the party sought to unify the various small groups in the Ottoman Empire that were advocating for reform and defending Armenian villages from the massacres and banditry that were widespread in some of the Armenian-populated areas of the empire. ARF members formed fedayi groups that defended Armenian civilians through armed resistance. The party refrained from revolutionary activity in the Russian Empire until the decision of the Russian authorities to confiscate Armenian Church property in 1903. Initially restricting its demands to the establishment of autonomy and democratic rights for Armenians in the two empires, the party adopted an independent and united Armenia as part of its program in 1919.In 1918, the party was instrumental in the creation of the First Republic of Armenia, which fell to the Soviet communists in 1920. After its leadership was exiled by the communists, the ARF established itself within Armenian diaspora communities, where it helped Armenians preserve their cultural identity. After the fall of the USSR, it reestablished its presence in Armenia. Prior to Serzh Sargsyan's election as president of Armenia and for a short time thereafter, the ARF was a member of the governing coalition, even though it nominated its own candidate in the presidential elections.ARF then reentered Sargsyan's cabinet in February 2016 in what was defined as a "long-term political cooperation" agreement with the Republican Party by means of which the ARF would share responsibility for all government policies. The ARF then approved of Sargsyan's nomination as Prime Minister, from which he resigned six days later amid large-scale protests in what came to be known as the Velvet Revolution. By the evening of 25 April 2018, ARF-Dashnaktsutyun had withdrawn from the coalition.
Following the Velvet Revolution, the party lost support from the general public in Armenia and is now being polled at 12%. The party then lost political representation after 2018 Armenian parliamentary election after receiving only 3.89% of the votes, which is lower than the 5% minimum threshold required for representation in parliament.
During the 20202021 Armenian protests, the party confirmed it would participate in the 2021 Armenian parliamentary election as part of a political alliance with Reborn Armenia. In the election, the Armenia Alliance led by the second President of Armenia, Robert Kocharyan won 21% of the popular vote and gained 29 seats in the National Assembly.
The March Days or March Events (Azerbaijani: Mart hadisələri) was a period of inter-ethnic strife and clashes which led to the death of about 12,000 Azerbaijani and other Muslim civilians that took place between 30 March – 2 April 1918 in the city of Baku and adjacent areas of the Baku Governorate of the Transcaucasian Democratic Federative Republic.Facilitated by a political power struggle between Bolsheviks with the support of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (Dashnaktsutiun) on one side and the Azerbaijani Musavat Party on another, the events led to rumours of a possible Muslim revolt on the part of Bolshevik and Dashnak forces and the establishment of the short-lived Baku Commune in April 1918.Most historic sources and accounts interpret the March events in the context of civil war unrest, while contemporary Azerbaijani sources officially refers to the March Days as a genocide (soyqırım). These were followed by the September days where 10,000 ethnic Armenians were massacred by Army of Islam and their local Azerbaijani allies upon capturing Baku.