Guba, April-May 1918. Documented Pogroms of the Muslims

labor, and this constitutes a sin.” Hajjibaba Akhundzadeh shared this

view. They both were given a chance to express their views in an open

way with no pressure or duress whatsoever”. (55)

This way or another, the Muslim clergy of Guba got involved

in addressing political issues beyond their will and they were still to

express their views on the ongoing events in town and advocate the

rights of their fellow believers.

One may argue about how long the Soviet power represented

by Ghelovani as the Uyezd Commissar could survive in Guba, how-

ever there was another force historically known in the area, i.e. the

rebellious highlanders, armed Lezghin residents of adjacent villages,

with their overt aversion to the Soviet regime. After three days of se-

vere fight, the Lezghin vigilantes succeeded in pushing the first group

of Bolsheviks out of town.

Was this ‘liberation’ act by the Lezghins initiated by the residents

of Guba? According to numerous testimonies by local residents, the

attack was quite unexpected for them too, so they did not take part in

the clash. The same idea was upheld by Ghelovani himself, although

his unit shot down 27 Guba residents reportedly supportive of the

highlanders. (56)

An armed clash between the Lezghins and Ghelovani’s units

backed up by additional “150 soldiers and 2 cannons from Khachmaz

manned exclusively by ethnic Armenians and headed by lieutenant

Aghajanyantz” (57) was in fact the first and the last battle for “es-

tablishing the Soviet rule” in Guba. Proponents of the Soviet regime,

mainly the Armenians with a miniscule portion of Russian and Jewish

soldiers, led by the Georgian prince of Menshevik views, were defea-

ted. There were casualties from both sides. The Lezghin units lost 200

warriors. There were also about 70 civilian victims of the clash. While

retreating, Aghajanyantz’s unit set fire on Boulevard Street, massacred

16 persons at Bazarnaya Street and 7 men at Komendantskaya Street.

35 more civilians were slain near the old prison, within the town. The

fleeing Bolsheviks also made arson in the premises of the Uyezd Ad-

ministration, the Town Hall, and the Peace Court, and attempted to

set afire the local Friday Mosque (Juma Mosque)”. (58)

Despite the purported “political” character of this first battle

featuring the so-called “civil war”, active involvement of the ethnic

Armenians alien to the area and the brutalities they committed in the