This paper presentation concerns the Armenian Regional Government that ruled the province of Van between May - July 1915. Exploring this unique episode in the history of the region my paper examines the visions and practices of Armenian nationalist elite in their attempt for the creation of an Armenian nation-state in a multi-ethnic and multi-religious province. The already very precarious inter-communal co-existence of diverse ethnic and religious communities in the eastern provinces of the Ottoman Empire collapsed suddenly and violently in the course of the World War I. The entire population of the area was disastrously affected by this collapse; yet, the Armenian communities of the region paid a disproportionate human cost due to the murderous forced deportation policy. The Armenians of the city of Van organized a successful one month long armed resistance in April 1915 following the murder of major Armenian leaders after a plot organized by the newly appointed governor of the province, Djevdet Bey. The Armenians of Van avoided an immediate massacre thanks to the occupation of the city by Russian troops accompanied by Armenian volunteer battalions in the early days of May. At the same historical moment when the rest of the Ottoman Armenians were facing extermination at the hands of their own government in Van an Armenian Governorship was created under the prot?gg of the occupying Russian armies on May 7, 1915. The Armenian government in the province of Van was short-lived (May 7-July 17, 1915); yet it is a unique experience of Armenian nation-state formation in eastern Anatolian provinces. The new government -although had limited economic and political resources--implemented policies to create a prototypical nucleus of a possible future independent Armenia. Drawing on the papers of the Armenian Regional Government, Ottoman archival documents, periodicals published in the province, memoirs and secondary sources my paper explores two major issues; first, how the new ruling Armenian nationalist elite justified, at ideological and discursive levels, their exclusive claims to statehood and territory. Second, by examining the treatment of non-Armenian groups of the province, such as Muslim Kurds and Turks, Yezidis, and Assyrians, I inquire into the new hierarchy of ethnic and religious identifications envisioned by the Armenian Regional Government. My paper does not only address an extremely rarely visited historical episode but also raises theoretical questions around the notion of communal victimhood and its political uses and implications.