THE BLOODY TERROR OF 1918

On 31 March, Azerbaijan marks one of the most tragic dates in its history - the anniversary of the March 1918 massacre organized by Bolsheviks and their closest allies - the Dashnaks. According to various sources, the number of victims of those events totalled between 20,000 and 30,000 people.

Now that we finally have a chance to study our own history without "ideological" distortions and corrections, we can easily read in "open sources" about the chronology of the tragic events of March 1918 - the atrocities of the Dashnak gangs in Samaxi and Quba, the storming of the Old Town and people being machine gunned at the intersection of Bazaar and Nikolayev streets in Baku. It is far more difficult to understand the geopolitical mechanisms of the "March massacre" - even if there is no doubt that it was more about control over the oil fields of Abseron than power in Baku.

It must be noted that the "March massacre" was not the sole episode of Dashnak terror in Azerbaijan, Unfortunately, blood was shed not only in Baku.

According to information from the deputy director of the State Archive of the Azerbaijan Republic (GAAR) and candidate of historical science, S. Babayeva, Armenian terror in Azerbaijan began in December 1917.

On 15 July 1918, Azerbaijani Foreign Minister M. Hacinski wrote: "Already for four months, various parts of Azerbaijani territory have been devastated by bandits carrying out extraordinary atrocities against the life and property of the peaceful Muslim population on behalf of the Bolsheviks, irresponsible Armenian military units and others." The emergency investigative commission set up by the authorities of the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic soon submitted its report, and even short excerpts make it possible to see the scale of the tragedy: "In late April 1918, Armenians from the villages of Zargaran, Kevmoch, Ingar and others encircled the Muslim village of Kicatan. Local residents went to meet the Armenians with a white flag (alam) and decided to surrender to them. The aforesaid ringleaders demanded that all the residents of the village - men, women and children - gather in a place called Qurban Bag on the outskirts of the village. The Armenians separated the women and children and killed them all with rifles and daggers. They took the men away from this place, ordered them to lie on the ground and when they did so, they started shooting them and finishing them off with daggers… Thus, they killed 50 men, 60 women and 21 children."

"In early April 1918, an armoured train carrying a detachment of armed Bolshevik soldiers arrived from Baku at the Navagi train station, about two miles from the village of Navagi. On the same day, 15 men from the detachment, under the command of an Armenian officer, arrived in the village of Navagi. They told local residents that they were Bolsheviks and suggested that they recognize Bolshevik rule. The local residents agreed to obey the Bolsheviks and the Bolsheviks left. On the second and third days, several people - Armenians only - came and took the sheep, and when the herders and their owners protested at this, they killed them and threw their corpses into wells. Because of this behaviour by the Armenians, the Navagi residents severed all relations with them, hiding their cattle and sheep in the village. On seeing this, large detachments of Armenians launched an offensive on the village from all sides. The Navagi residents decided to defend themselves in order to give their women and children a chance to escape. A shootout occurred… The Armenians stormed the village and started mercilessly killing the population and carrying out all sorts of atrocities and violence against them: Those who ran away were shot, those who were captured were killed with bayonets and daggers, children were strung on bayonets, women were raped and had their breasts cut off.

As a result, they killed 555 men, 260 women and 140 children, and wounded 60 men. Having finished off the people, the Armenians started looting their property: they stole furniture from homes and goods from shops, took 2,200 head of cattle and 6,500 sheep and goats, and destroyed the standing crops. Finally, they started knocking down and destroying property: they set fire to and destroyed the mosque, the village school, the building of the village council, many shops and burnt down 1,500 houses and other buildings."

However, the tragedy reached its peak in Baku, also because the issue at stake was not just looting, but also control over the rich oil fields of the Abseron peninsula, which the Dashnaks seriously intended to merge with Armenia.

By the 1920s, the population of Baku was not dominated by Armenians. And the city was not even "international" in the true sense. Muslims accounted for 90 per cent of Baku's population at the time. Historians say that the city was actually packed with many workers from Central Russia, but no-one would actually call them Bakuvians - they were rather "labour migrants" who hoped to make some money and return home. For this reason, most of them had not even brought their families with them.

Nevertheless, despite all this, the local cell of Dashnaktsutyun was quite influential thanks to the "privileged regime" that Tsarist Russia had created for the Armenians. Things reached a point when the Armenians got away with the murder of the city governor, Nakashidze. What is more, money and weapons were pumped through the Baku cells of Dashnaktsutyun for Armenian detachments in Eastern Anatolia. A great amount of both money and weapons remained in local organizations as well. In this way or another, by the beginning of 1918 units of the Armenian national guard under the command of the Dashnak party had 7,000 foot and mounted soldiers in Baku. Their closest ally was the Red Guard which had about 6,000 members. The Armenians also had important positions in the local oil business thanks to the Russian "privileged regime", rather than to their commercial talents.

Before the offensive of 1918, the Dashnaks who were working in close cooperation with the Bolsheviks, started implementing their far-reaching plans.

According to Erich Feigl's testimony, ahead of the Novruz holiday from 18 to 21 March 1918, the Dashnaks massacred more than 10,000 Azerbaijanis in Baku. But the tragedy reached its peak on 30-31 March. First they skilfully circulated rumours about the arrest of General Talisinski in Baku and then, in response to unrest, the Dashnak detachments, supported by the Bolsheviks, organized a real massacre of the Muslim population.

"On the night of 30-31 March 1918, shooting began in Baku," Tadeusz Swietochowski writes. "Representatives of the Muslim parties asked the executive committee of the Baku Council at 1600 on 31 March to give them weapons, but were denied by A. Japaridze. By the end of 31 March, the Soviet (6,000 people) and Armenian (7,000 people) troops took up positions from Balaxani Street to the boulevard through the parapet. The offensive on the unarmed Azerbaijani areas began at 2200 on 31 March. The combined Armenian-Bolshevik troops acted with special brutality and did not even spare children, women and old people. At 10 o'clock in the morning on 1 April, the Bolshevik-Dashnak troops received an order from the headquarters of the Baku revolutionary committee (the Astoria Hotel in Morskaya Street) to use heavy artillery against the local population."

Indeed, according to many eyewitnesses, the city came under fire from naval guns. But the main "job" was done by machine gun posts set up at crossroads in the city in order to shoot anyone who tried to run away. Three quarters of a century later, these terrible tactics would be employed in Xocali. Such "posts" were set up in Mariinskaya, Bazaar and Nikolayev streets, at the Metropol Hotel and at the office of the Kaspi newspaper in order to shoot those who tried to enter the Old Town. The storming of the Baku walls began on the night of 31 March. According to the most modest calculations, at least 20,000 people fell victim to this "ethnic cleansing".

As for the main reasons behind these events, many historians, including Daniel Yergin, say that in those years Lenin had promised, during secret negotiations with the German authorities ahead of the signing of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, to fully provide Berlin with oil. In exchange, the German authorities had to promise to curb the offensive of their allies - the Turks - in the Caucasus. If they lost control of the city and rich oil fields, the Bolsheviks would have lost a weighty trump card in the talks.

The Dashnaks also played their own game. The Armenians pinned their main hopes on the break-up of the Ottoman Empire. However, having raised a series of revolts in Turkey and failed to get the promised military support from the Entente, the Armenian nationalists drew the conclusion that they needed their own "blue chips" for political bargaining with the European powers. Many wanted Baku's oil, and they were ready to pay for control over oil with blood, especially if it was Muslim blood. The success of this policy allowed Moscow not just to keep a tight rein on Baku's oil, but also to split Turkey from the Caucasus on the one hand and Turkey from the Turkic-speaking peoples of Central Asia on the other. On 14 March, Lenin sent Shaumyan a telegram: "We are delighted with your firm and decisive policy. Combine it with very careful diplomacy prefaced with the current difficult situation, and we will win." In order to secure a victory, they had to change the ethnic make-up of Baku, and that's what Shaumyan was doing with the help of machine guns at the intersection of Bazaar and Nikolayev streets.