Guba, April-May 1918. Documented Pogroms of the Muslims
26
all Azerbaijani households in the town’s Armenian section, Azerbaijani
commercial outlets and other property, as well as all mosques with
people sheltered inside. It was only the secondary school building that
survived out of the town’s 5 thousand households. (44) The death toll
exceeded 8 thousand out of 21,127 Muslim residents of Shemakha. The
rest Azerbaijani population fled the town to rescue their lives.
Pogroms spread all over the adjacent villages of Shemakha
Uyezd. All together, 110 Azerbaijani villages were looted and devas-
tated with total number of victims reaching 10,341, 4,359 out of them
women and children. (45) The number of local residents starving to
death while trying to find refuge in forests and mountains or even
streaming to neighboring areas exceeded the victims of massacre
manifold, estimated at several dozens of thousands.
Commencement of the attack on Shemakha just several hours
prior to similar events in Baku clearly indicated the common com-
mand and control center coordinating the Bolshevik and Dashnakt-
sutyun crackdown upon the civilian Azerbaijani population in various
parts of Azerbaijan.
***
The Guba Uyezd was the third Azerbaijani region targeted by
the Bolsheviks in the aftermath of the blood bath of March 1918 in
Baku and Shemakha. However, local conditions in Guba were slightly
different as opposed to the two previous areas. As it may be conclu-
ded from the survey presented above, Guba’s Armenian community
never played any tangible role in the political, social and economic
life of neither the Khanate of Guba, nor the Uyezd of the same name.
By 1918, tiny pockets of Armenian population were residing par-
tially in the town of Guba and in a couple of Armenian villages around.
With its own churches, seminaries and other public institutions the
Armenian community was lacking an influential elite to represent it in
local municipal or district administration dominated by the Russians,
Azerbaijanis, Tats, Lezghins and Jews.
As it was mentioned above, local Bolsheviks were also far
from being a dominant force in the Guba Soviet of Worker and
Soldier Deputies. So the power base for the Soviets was ob-
viously missing. The real power was then concentrated in the
hands of the Executive Committee of Public Associations officially
answerable to the Trans-Caucasian Seim that had recently re-