Guba, April-May 1918. Documented Pogroms of the Muslims
24
Mammadamin Rasulzade, the leader of Mussavat (39), but by other
parties involved in the events and the early Soviet researchers who,
despite an obviously biased approach, revealed the very crux of the
events of March 1918. (40)
The events of March 1918 with dozens of thousands massacred
and injured civilians of one ethnic origin only did not fit into Lenin’s
interpretation of civil war either as the Bolshevik leader identified civil
war as “the most radical form of class struggle whereby armed repre-
sentatives of one class are fighting against representatives of another
class”. (41) It was obvious that militant Armenian Dashnaktsutyun
units (then counting for 70 per cent of the available Red Army forces)
committed a massacre of a large number of civilians which did not fall
into a definition of a certain ‘social class’. Neither could the numerous
Armenian population of the city led by the Armenian National Council
and actively involved in the preparation of pogroms and massacre of
the Azerbaijani population be qualified as ‘a social class’.
Apparently, as “a true Russian Marxist”, S.Shaumyan realized this
factor and, faced with staggering scale of the bloodshed, understood
the necessity to comment on the unfolding events this way or another.
So Shaumyan had to admit that involvement of Dashnaktsutyun units
had “partially transformed the civil war into an ethnic massacre”. As
an immediate excuse to this he noted the following: “Nonetheless this
was unavoidable. So we made it consciously… for should they prevail
in Baku, the city would be proclaimed the capital of Azerbaijan”. (42)
This born in mind, thorough studies of the documents pertaining
to the events in question clearly indicate that despite the importance
of seizure of power in the city by the Bolsheviks, the Armenian factor
undoubtedly played a key role in the March events of 1918.
The history has also clearly demonstrated that the Armenian na-
tional movement was cherishing the dream of cleansing Baku under
the guise of “seizing power” with a view to gradually transforming it
into “an Armenian city” as part of a step-by-step preparation of the
Azerbaijani territory for the long-desired Armenian statehood.
By late 1917, the rapidly changing political situation worldwide
dispelled the hopes of establishing the Greater Armenia in Turkey che-
rished by the Armenian nationalist organizations. So they shifted their
claims towards Transcaucasia having their eye on vast areas with domi-
nant Azerbaijani population to be incorporated into the so-called Ar-