(pointing to the hill with cannons installed) and start bombarding the

town that I will level to the ground. Now I’m engaged in a battle with

Digah and Alpan villages. Uchgun and Gymyl are the next, and leaving

you ablaze I will break my way to Shahdagh, and then you will realize

what it means to kill Armenians. I am not here to restore any law and

order or to establish the Soviet power, but I am here to avenge you for

the Armenians murdered”.

(66)

This message by Amazasp, although in various interpretations,

was confirmed by all those attending that meeting near the mosque.

Amazasp’s impudent revelation was a sort of response to complaints

by A.Alibeyov, the head of municipality, about atrocities committed

towards the civilians. It was also a clear message to the chief local Shi-

ite cleric Mullah Hajjibaba Akhundzadeh who refused to shake Ama-

zasp’s hand saying:

“What a power is this? You are not the Bolsheviks,

you are crooks, assassins, rapists and robbers. We never resisted you,

so what is the reason of so many people slain and still being murdered

by you?”

(67)

The leitmotif of Amazasp’s address to Guba residents could

be boiled down to the following:

“We were ordered to exterminate

all Muslims from the Caspian shore to Mount Shahdagh, as we did it

in Shirvan (Shamakhy), and to level your dwellings to the ground to

avenge for our Armenian brothers killed by you and the Turks”.

(68)

So who could give such bloodthirsty order to Amazasp, a person

who in fact needed not to be ordered to slaughter any Muslim of Tur-

kic descent? It goes without saying that the Armenian unit of several

thousand militants was dispatched to Guba by the Baku Soviet led by

Shaumyan. And the mission was exclusively punitive. This well known

fact is supported by a number of historic sources, including Shaum-

yan himself. The latter one’s attitude towards the events in Guba was

clearly demonstrated in his conversation with A.Alibeyov, municipal

chief of Guba who headed to Baku immediately after the Armenians

left the town to find out

“whether the Soviets really sent Amazasp’s

punitive forces to Guba from the Bolshevik ring leaders Shaumyan and

Japaridze, and to communicate them the details of the unit’s actions in

Guba”

. According to Alibeyov’s recollections,

“Shaumyan listened with

a smile on his face saying that while Muslims and Turks have murdered

hundreds of thousands Armenians, Muslims are shedding tears for a

couple of their fellows killed by Armenians in Guba. As for Japaridze, he

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

of Azerbaijan’s Muslim Population