Guba, April-May 1918. Documented Pogroms of the Muslims
22
methods of changing power and addressing existing problems.
Nonetheless the Bolsheviks were trying hard to increase their
influence upon certain groups of population, mainly targeting pea-
sants of Russian-populated villages and soldiers of the Guba and Gu-
sar Garrisons. However, even with this hard-won majority in just one
branch of local authorities, the Bolsheviks were not in a position to
control the whole Uyezd with the town of Guba. Neither could they
manage even smaller communities.
This being the case, their major efforts boiled down to the foun-
dation of the railroad workers’ trade union in Khachmaz, formation of
militia-type railroad security force under the trade union’s umbrella
and holding several meetings involving Russian peasants that passed
non-mandatory resolutions ‘to support the Soviet power’. One of
such meetings held on February 26-27, 1917 in Yelenovka village,
Mushkur Precinct was attended by residents of Gusar, Nicolayevka,
Petropavlovka, Alexeyevka, Mikhaylovka, Borispol, Novomikhaylovka
and Shibyakin villages, as well as Druzhba farmstead. (33)
On March 12, 1918, following the major Bolshevik motto of
accomplishing their goals by force of arms, the peasant meeting of
Guba Uyezd passed the resolution calling “all men capable of carrying
arms to be armed with a view to conducting self-defense”. (34)
The resolution made no provisions on whom the so-called ‘pea-
sants of Guba Uyezd’ were supposed “to conduct self-defense” from.
However, the very language of the documents reveals the intent of
the Bolsheviks to take over the power in the area by force of arms.
This was the reason of their zeal to have local population armed.
Given a relatively low share of the local Russian population po-
tentially supportive to the Bolsheviks, the communists were striving
to gain support among other ethnic groups in the area.
In late March 1918, Meshadi Azizbeyov, one of Hummet lea-
ders and a member of the Baku and Municipal RSDRP(b) Committees,
elected to the Commission to form Red Guard Squads earlier that
year, arrived at Khachmaz to hold a meeting with representatives of
the Bolshevik organizations. The meeting took note of the importance
of Guba Uyezd’s location in providing Baku’s security. The Bolsheviks
were reportedly concerned about increasing movement of highland
population in Dagestan. (35) Several days later, “the Bolshevik gat-
hering was held at the household of I.Ifraimov, one of the Red Guard