The Russian Caucasus Front collapsed following the abdication of the Tsar. In 1917, the Armenian Congress of Eastern Armenians asked the Armenian soldiers and officers scattered throughout Russian occupied regions to gradually be brought together. The plan was to mobilize Armenians on the Caucasian front. With that purpose in view, an Armenian Military Committee was formed with General Bagradouni as its president. That year, the Armenian National Congress created the Armenian National Council which created to the First Republic of Armenia. These Armenian conscripts and volunteers from the Russian Army later established the core of the armed forces of the First Republic of Armenia. Armenians refugees from the Ottoman Empire were flooding to the newly formed Armenian state. Further southeast, in Van, the fedayis helped the local Armenians resist the Turkish army until April 1918, but eventually were forced to evacuate and withdraw to Persia.