Guba, April-May 1918. Documented Pogroms of the Muslims
20
Guba’s major landlords and former Russian Army captain, was ap-
pointed the Uyezd Commissar by OZACOM. (23)
In the meantime, the Soviet of Soldier Deputies was founded in
Guba-based military units, followed by the Soviet of Worker Deputies
in mid-March 1917 dominated by the Essers (Socialist Revolutiona-
ries), the Mensheviks and bourgeois nationalists. (24) Thus the diarchy
power was also featuring the situation in Guba Uyezd.
The Bolsheviks, anxious about existing situation, were trying to
increase their influence basically among the soldiers of military units
deployed in Guba and Gusar, as well as in the workers’ dominated
areas. This was the way they succeeded in forming cells among rail-
road workers at Khachmaz and Davachi stations. (25)
In the meantime, the Uyezd’s Azerbaijani population was get-
ting increasingly active as well, with branches of Mussavat National
Democratic Party established by local intellectuals. Habilgasym Rous-
tamov was the founder of the Mussavat’s branch in Guba, whereas
Alipanahbey Sherifbeyov, a representative of one of Guba’s high-born
landlord families, was the deputy chief of the local committee. (26)
In July 1917, outlets of the party emerged in Davachi, Galagah vil-
lage of Davachi Precinct and other places. (27) Subsequently, branch
of Ittihad religious party was established in Guba by Alibey Zizikski,
Hamdulla Effendi Effendizadeh and other recognized representatives
of local elite. (28)
Besides this, Muslim National Committees started emerging in
Guba as of May 1917 to include mainly representatives of landlords,
merchants and clergy. (29)
That being said, none of the newly-emerging power structures
was capable of reforming existing agrarian relations, the core factor
determining social and political stability for decades not only in Guba
Uyezd, but elsewhere in Azerbaijan or the whole of South Caucasus.
Nonetheless, compared to other places, particularly Elisavetpol and
Gazakh Uyezds then overtaken by peasant unrest, the situation in
both the town of Guba and the rest of the Uyezd was generally under
control, and cases of peasant attacks on landlord mansions and farm-
steads very seldom.
It should be also noted that local beys, landlords, bureaucrats
and intelligentsia, sufficiently represented in the local authorities,
subordinate first to OZAKOM and then to the Trans-Caucasian Com-