215
makes no provisions on the total loss of the town of Guba equal to 63,703,760.00 rubles.
20
Shaumyan Stepan Georgiyevich
(1878-1918), a notorious Bolshevik ac-
tivist, a member of the Russian Social Doemocratic Workers Party (RSDWP) as of
1900, elected the Chairman of the Baku Soviet of Workers Deputies in March 1917
in absentia, editor-in-chief of the Bolshevik newspapers like
Bakinski Rabochy
and
Social Democrat
. In early October 1917, Shaumyan headed the First Congress of
the Trans-Caucasian Bolshevik Organizations during which the tactics of local Bol-
sheviks in their fight for power. In December 1917, following the resolution passed
by the Soviet of People’s Commissars of the Soviet Socialist Federal Republic of Rus-
sia, Shaumyan was appointed the Commissar Extraordinary of Transcaucasia to be
promoted to the position of the Chairman of the Baku Soviet of People’s Commis-
sars. During the March events in Baku, 1918, Shaumyan was personally guiding
the Bolshevik and Armenian armed forces engaged in mass extermination of the
Azerbaijani population in Baku and its environs, as well as urban and rural areas
far beyond. It was Shaumyan who initiated the mission by Amazasp’s units in Guba
Uyezd in late April, 1918. The units were engaged in massacres and atrocities to-
wards the Muslim population. Upon collapse og the Soviet regime in Baku in July
1918, S.Shaumyan was arrested by the Central Caspian Dictatorship government to
be then executed among the 26 Baku Commissars in Trans-Caspian desert by the
Social Revolutionary (
Eser
) government of the Trans-Caspian area and the British
Military on September 20, 1918.
21
Korganov (Korganyan) Grigory Nikonovich
(1886-1918), an influential
figure among the Bolsheviks actively involved in the formation of revolutionary
armed squads in the Caucasus in the aftermath of the February Revolution of 1917.
During the events of March 1918, Korganov was in charge of the Bolshevik and
Dashnaktsutyun dominated Red Army brigades’ military raids in Baku’s Muslim
neighborhoods. The raids resulted in atrocious carnage of the Azerbaijani civilians.
The People’s Commissar for military and naval affairs at the Baku Soviet of People’s
Commissars as of April 1918, Korganov together with Shaumyan was the one who
passed decision to dispatch Amazasp’s units to Guba. The punitive raid resulted in
massacre of the local Muslim population. One of the driving forces in resisting the
Turkish and Azerbaijani troops advancing towards Baku, Korganov was among the
26 Baku Commissars executed in September 1918.
22
Dashnaktsutyun (the Union),
the Armenian bourgeois nationalist party
incorporated in Tiflis (Tbilisi) in 1890 with various groups of the Armenian bourgeoi-
sie as power base and S.Zavaryan, S.Zoryan (Rostom), Mikaelyan and others acting
as founders. The party’s major objective, as stated in the constituent documents
was based of the idea of liberation of the Turkish Armenians and the foundation
of an Armenian state in the territory of Turkey. To accomplish this goal, all forms
of struggle were considered admissible including violence and terrorism. During
World War 1, the party was supportive of the militaristic policy pursued by the Cza-
rist administration through forming voluntary armed units to act under command
of Russian Caucasian Front. In 1914-1918, activists of
Dashnaktsutyun
were operating
as Russia’s agents of influence in Ottoman Turkey. Advocating the idea of liberation
of the Turkish Armenians and formation of ‘a common single homeland’ for the Rus-
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