IN SEARCH OF "THE FATHER OF THE TOWN"

1913. Vorontsov-Dashkov's Terms

As was customary at the time, on New Year's Day the Baku City Charity Society held its traditional reception. This gathering took place in the winter premises of the Baku Public Assembly on Krasnovodskaya Street (now S. Vurgun Street). This beautiful building, which was known as the House of Officers in the Soviet years, belonged to Musa Nagiyev. Almost all the important events of those years were held there. The society's president, Yelena Martynova, the wife of Baku's civic head, Petr Martynov, welcomed the guests. The mayor himself also attended the reception and received New Year greetings from the city's dignitaries, public figures and representatives of the clergy. The organisers received donations for the poor amounting to approximately 3,000 roubles. 

It may have been a public holiday, but the mayor was still faced with the serious task of choosing a chairman for Baku City Council (Duma). It had been nine months since the City Council had been elected, but a leader had not been chosen for it in that time. The problem became so serious that Count Vorontsov-Dashkov, the emperor's viceroy in the Caucasus, made a peremptory demand that, if a leader of the city was not elected before 15 January, he himself would appoint the "father of the city". Talk among the City Council's deputies indicated that the viceroy had asked Vladimir Kokovtsev, the chairman of the Council of Ministers to recommend people for the post of head of Baku. He had reportedly recommended three individuals, but their names were kept secret. The arrival of the viceroy's son, a cavalry captain in the tsarist army, Count Ivan Vorontsov-Dashkov only further fuelled that talk. He was thought to have brought the names to Mayor Martynov. Vorontsov-Dashkov Jnr had, however, come to Baku for quite a different purpose, namely to look over his businesses in the nearby town of Balakhani, just to the north of Baku.

The situation was further aggravated by the fact that an outsider was normally elected as the chairman of the council. For example, Rayevskiy, who headed the Council in 1907, had come from the central Russian city of Kursk, while his predecessor had come from Astrakhan on the river Volga. 

The appointment of the civic head of Baku had always been fraught with difficulties, but had never caused such tension before. Even the considerable remuneration of 20,000 roubles did not attract the many well-known individuals who were quite capable of running the city's economy. Only the heads of the empire's two main cities, St. Petersburg and Moscow, received a larger salary. 

The Council's Councillors

At the beginning of January Gadzhi Zeynalabdin Tagiyev invited a group of city councillors to meet at his flat to discuss who should be City Council chairman among other things. They decided to request M. G. Hacinski and M. A. Unanov, on the behalf of the Council, but in private, to ask the engineer Gorbachev, the former chairman of Rostov Council, whether he would agree to take the post of Baku city leader. This request was made, but Gorbachev refused to go to Baku. True, a telegram was sent by Khabarovsk city mayor Yeremeyev, a retired colonel, offering to take the post of chairman of the Baku City Council, but the local city councillors did not regard him as suitable and rejected his offer.

The members of the City Council realised that there was no point in looking for a chairman elsewhere, that they had to find a home-grown one. But the councillors, who knew more about the city's problems than anyone else, were not keen to become the leader of the Council. Offers were made to Prince Dadiani, to Habinski, Iretsky, Saparov and others. But no-one would agree to head the Council. The "Kaspiy" newspaper wrote ironically: "True, there are suitable candidates for city head among the councillors. More's the pity that we have to choose not the best and the most worthy, but the one who happens to take the job."

Last year Ivan Esau, an engineer and ethnic German, the former head of Yekaterinoslav (now the city of Dnepropetrovsk - author) Council, was offered the post of chairman of Baku City Council. He possibly "took the fancy" of the Baku councillors because had drawn up a water-supply project, and then constructed a city water supply system when he was chairman of the Council. For several decades the Baku councillors had been wracking their brains over a decision to provide a city water supply, but without any noticeable success. But Esau turned down their offer, informing them that he could no leave his business partner, the Yekaterinoslav engineering works, in the lurch. In the Soviet years that enterprise became the Dnepropetrovsk combine-harvester works.

But then "their bacon was saved" by a telegram from Esau withdrawing his refusal and agreeing to undergo a ballot for chairman of the Baku Council, but he demanded a salary of 26,000 roubles per annum. The councillors were ready to agree to any condition, because the deadline set by the viceroy for the elections for city leader was drawing near, and no-one knew what would happen afterwards. What is more, the Baku councillors' intention to cautiously request a further two weeks to find a city leader had met with a refusal from the viceroy. 

"The day was saved"…

On 11 January a hastily convened special meeting of the Baku's councillors supported Esau's nomination. But the councillors' joy was short-lived, because three days later they received a telegram from Esau once again turning down the post of head of Baku Council, but this time on health grounds. 

Panic seized the councillors once again. The deadline for electing the city leader was to run out the very next day, and yesterday's candidate had disappeared. The councillor Luka Bych helped them out. On 15 January, the day on which the deadline for the head councillor elections was set, this 42-year-old native of southern Russia's Kuban region, a law graduate from Moscow University in 1894, head of the Caspian branch of the Eastern Society of Goods' Warehouses, agreed to take the post of city leader. Fifty-eight of the 60 councillors attending the Council meeting voted for his nomination. It may be said that, by agreeing to take the post of Council head, he saved the councillors from further considerable reproaches, accusations of inactivity and ridicule. Councillor Isabek Gadzhinskiy remarked quite fittingly that he was grateful to Bych for sacrificing himself for the population.

Once they had elected their chairman, the councillors began to discuss what to do about Esau's telegram, whether they should reply to him or not, and, if they did reply, what kind of reply they should send. There were considerable differences of opinion. Some proposed not answering at all, while others could not forgive him for letting them down and suggested sarcastic or humorous replies. Having relieved themselves of a heavy burden, the councillors could allow themselves a joke or two. Mirza Asadullayev proposed the most original reply, that they should thank him for his offer, but tell him he ought to have gone to the doctor first. Consequently, the councillors decided not to reply to Esau…