Guba, April-May 1918. Documented Pogroms of the Muslims

218

Novruz Bayram,

the Spring Holiday, also known as the new year in a num-

ber of Eurasian countries, celebrated on the day of vernal equinox (March 21) and

enjoying the status of national holiday in Albania, Azerbaijan, Afghanistan, India,

Iran, Macedonia, Turkey and Uzbekistan, as well as in Kazakhastan (March 21-23),

Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. As a local festivity

Novriz

is celebrated in Tatarstan, Bash-

kortorstan and some other autonomies of Russian Federation.

The Baku Events,

i.e. events of March 1918 in Baku and its environs where

by 12 thousand civilians (Azerbaijanis in their overwhelming majority) were mas-

sacred within 3 days (March 30 to April 2) in the course of pogroms perpetrated by

the Bolshevik and Armenian units partially supported by the local Armenian popu-

lation. Dozens of thousands households in the Muslim neighborhoods, Azerbaijani

owned industrial, social and commercial facilities, as well as a number of cultural

and spiritual shrines were set ablaze. The damage inflicted to the city’s Muslim

population was estimated at several hundreds millions rubles.

1905

implies the armed conflict that broke out as of February that year in

Baku between the city’s Armenian and Muslim (i.e. Azerbaijani) communities and

gradually evolved into an Armenian-Muslim confrontation and massacre all over

the Transcaucasia. The clash resulted in the devastation of 158 Azerbaijani and 128

Armenian residential areas in Baku, Tiflis, Erivan, Shusha, Zangazur, Nakhchivan, Or-

dubad, Echmiadzin, Javanshir, Gazakh and other locations.

Manuylov Matvey Alexandrovich,

Assistant Justice of the Peace, Head of

the Investigation Precinct of Guba Uyezd, one of the officials who stayed in Guba

during the retreat of Ghelovani’s units, diskissed on July 1, 1918 pursuant to the

resolution of the Government of Azerbaijan passed on June 24, 1918. No further

information available.

Baghirov (i.e. Baghirov Mirjafar Abbas oghlu)

(1895-1956), a well-known

Azerbaijani statesman, the head of special services and the government of the Soviet

Socialist Republic of Azerbaijan, the First Secretary of the Azerbaijani Communist

Party in 1933-1953, the Candidate to the Presidium of the Central Committee of the

Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Born to a peasant family in Guba, Baghirov

was a teacher at a rural school. His life records of 1917-1918 are quire contradictive.

According to Baghirov’s claims, he joined the Bolshevik (Communist) Party in 1917

to become the deputy chairman of the Guba Revolutionary Committee. However, it

is generally known that at that particular time he was heading militia in the Second

(Jewish) Section of the town of Guba, and then the assistant of the Uyezd Com-

missar subordinate to the Transcaucasian Seim. Menawhile, back in March 1918,

he was referred to as a Bolshevik cooperating with Ghelovani and Amazasp in a

number of the AHIC files related to the Guba events which, as Baghirov confessed,

he got involved in beyond his will. It may be assumed that the telegram regarding

Amazasp’s atrocities he sent to Japaridze, played a certain role in ending pogroms

of the Muslim population of Guba Uyezd. Upon his departure from Guba in 1918,

Baghirov joined the Bolshvik party and in 1919, under S.M.Kirov’s guidance, he took

part in the suppression of the uprising in Astrakhan. He only got back to Azerbaijan

after the Soviet regime was established there. In 1920, the positions he held varied

from the Chairman of the Revolutionary Committee of Garabagh region to the Mili-