Guba, April-May 1918. Documented Pogroms of the Muslims
28
tribesmen in Baku and Shemakha resulted in attacks upon several
Armenian households. Local authorities coped with this immediately,
although in quite a bizarre manner. To protect Armenian residents of
the town of Guba numbering 40 to 200, they found no better way to
isolate them for time being than placing in the local jail where so-
called “prisoners” were safeguarded, well fed and treated very pro-
perly having access to their Azerbaijani neighbors who were delive-
ring them food and looked after their households while they were
out. The overall situation in town was manageable to the point that
Ghelovani, the first herald of upcoming Soviet regime, immediately
freed the Armenians realizing that there was no real danger for them
at all. (49)
That being said, there was a serious danger to the whole town
should the ultimatum to accept the Soviet rule made by Ghelovani be
rejected.
The answer of Guba residents, already scared by the events in
Baku and Shemakha was easy to imagine given the fact that they had
only 2 hours to contemplate under a blunt warning that the whole
town would be leveled in case of ‘no’ answer. The ultimatum was ac-
cepted, however the population of Guba ‘enjoyed’ the Soviet rule for
8 days only. This short-lived period resulted in quite a hullabaloo in
Baku’s Bolshevik press claiming that “the Soviet power was ceremoni-
ally proclaimed on April 23 at Guba’s central square met with enor-
mous enthusiasm by toiling classes”. (50) The Uyezd Revolutionary
Military Committee (Revvoyenkom ) was established on the same very
day, the so-called “political prisoners” set free, a million rubles contri-
bution imposed on the local bourgeoisie (51), and Ghelovani declared
himself the Uyezd Commissar.
It should be hereby mentioned that no other power except for the
municipality and inferior administrative bodies existed in Guba prior to
these events. The previous Uyezd Commissar, Alibey Zizikski, left Guba
for Baku after March events in Baku and Shemakha to join units of
Najmeddin Gotsynski hurrying to stretch the helping hand to the Azer-
baijanis with the support from Dagestan. So at this very moment they
were engaged in clashes with the Bolsheviks on distant approaches to
Baku trying to liberate the city and its Muslim population. (52)
With no real force to withstand the arriving military units, resi-
dents of Guba nonetheless took the Soviet regime seriously, and the