The Armenian congress at Erzurum (the 8th World Congress of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation), held from the end of July to August 2, 1914, was a watershed event where representatives of the ruling Committee of Union and Progress party requested the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (the leading Armenian party in both the Ottoman and the Russian Empire) to incite a rebellion of Russian Armenians against the Tsarist regime in order to facilitate the conquest of Transcaucasia in the event of the opening up of a Caucasus front.[1][2]