menian State

. This in turn necessitated large-scale ethnic cleansing to

be accomplished within the shortest period possible.

Following this scheme, since early 1918 the Armenian militants

launched expulsion of ethnic Azerbaijanis from the places of their in-

digenous inhabitance. By March 1918, they succeeded in cleansing

certain areas in south-west of Transcaucasia i.e. Kars, Erivan Provin-

ce, Zangazur, Goycha and a number of districts (uyezds) of Elisavet-

pol Province and Garabagh for a then non-existent Armenian state.

Needless to say, this was accomplished by means of violent expulsion

and mass extermination of the civilian Azerbaijani population, native

to the area.

The Armenian forces partially succeeded in Baku where in the

aftermath of the March massacre the whole power was concentrated

in the hands of the Baku Soviet transformed into

the Soviet of People’s

Commissars

on April 25, 1918. With S.G.Shaumyan as the chairman, a

good half out of the 12 ministerial positions was overtaken by ethnic

Armenians who were in charge of the key positions, such as foreign

affairs, army and navy, the military-revolutionary committee, mari-

time and railroad transportation, the Extraordinary Committee, the

State Control agency, etc. The Armenian armed units involved in the

carnage of the Azerbaijani population in Baku and its environs were

renamed into

‘Soviet troops’

and arranged into three brigades led by

the same Armenian warlords, i.e. Amazasp and Colonel-lieutenants

Bek-Zurabyan and Arutsunyan. Colonel Kazaryan became the Corps

Commander, whereas Colonel Avetisyan was appointed the Chief of

Staff. (43)

It was exactly these commanders who perpetrated the same

type of ethnic massacre in Azerbaijani countryside areas under the

guise of ‘establishing of the Soviet regime’.

***

Pogroms of ethnic Azerbaijanis in Shemakha Uyezd started on

March 30, 1918, almost at the same time with Baku. Here as well, the

Bolshevik and Dashnaktsutyun forces were prepared way in advance.

An armed assault after a heavy artillery bombardment of a sleeping

town was followed by arsons and terrible atrocities towards innocent

Azerbaijani civilians. The town was turned into a ruined site of fire. The

whole Muslim neighborhood was burnt to the ground together with

Events of 1918 in Guba in the Context of Plans for Mass Extermination

of Azerbaijan’s Muslim Population