Word: transcaucasians
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...Russians say that "Kars is a British dagger pointed at Russia's heart-Baku." Kars dominates the valleys leading to Batum, Russia's rail and pipeline terminal on the Black Sea, and the Transcaucasian roads to Russia's biggest oilfields. But Kars can also be a Russian dagger pointed through Turkey at the British Empire's oil arteries. It flanks the Iranian province of Azerbaijan about which Russia is much concerned...
Roughly three-quarters of them are Slavs: Great Russians, Ukrainians (or Little Russians), White Russians. These peoples constituted three of the original four republics which joined to form the Soviet Union in 1922. The fourth was the Transcaucasian Republic, which later split into the Georgian, Armenian and Azerbaijan...
...Germans have attained their minimum objectives in the northwestern Caucasus. They hold Rostov, the naval base at Novorossisk, the Maikop oilfield 65 miles from the coast, the upper reaches of the Transcaucasian railway between Rostov and the Caspian. Last week they were fighting for Tuapse, a minor port on the Black Sea, 270 miles across winter-locked mountain passes from Batum...
...plains before Stalingrad. But southward the North Caucasian flatlands were suffering the same fate as the Dutch-Belgian lowlands. The Germans had wheeled south of Marshal Timoshenko's main defenses and were overrunning lightly defended territory up to the Caucasian foothills. Their swift advance down the transCaucasian railway left one body of the Red Army, probably a small one, cut off as were the British at Dunkirk. Instead of a Channel, the Black Sea was at the Russians' back. Already the Germans were bombing transports which they said the Red Army was using in a small-scale Dunkirk...
Beyond Kerch, which the Germans hold, lie three of the great Russian oilfields: Maikop and Grozny in the North Caucasus and Baku in the Transcaucasian Soviet republic of Azerbaijan. Maikop is closest to Kerch, 185 miles away. It produces 2,479,500 tons, only 7% of Russia's estimated yearly oil production. Grozny, farther along the way, produces slightly more. But Baku, nestled far down on the Caspian side of the Caucasus, is the richest oilfield in the world. Alone it produces nearly 75% of Russia's rich oil stores...