Guba, April-May 1918. Documented Pogroms of the Muslims
34
listened carefully saying that the Soviets were not involved in sending
the punitive force”. (69)
D.Ghelovani is another person naming Shaumyan as the master-
mind of dispatching the punitive unit to Guba. “There was not a single
ethnic Russian in Amazasp’s unit, - he wrote, - only Armenian, all of
them members of Dashnaktsutyun Party to the last person. Amazasp
himself was a zealous Dashnaktsutyun activist. I believe the punitive
force was sent to Guba following Shaumyan’s order, however manning
the troops was determined by Korganov, the War Minister”. (70)
Another interesting source of information may be found in tes-
timonies of a Guba resident who was informed by Amazasp’s friend
from Constantinople that ‘they spared a number of Muslims because
Mullah Hajjibaba rescued a lot of Armenian women, and he also told
him that Shaumyan ordered to exterminate the Muslims ruthlessly, but
they did not do that for Mullah Hajjibaba”. (71)
Another question that arises in this regard is the following: who
managed to put end to Amazasp’s atrocities in Guba, and what was
the reason for that? Was the religious leader Mullah Hajjibaba really
instrumental in rescuing the rest of Guba residents from an unavoid-
able carnage? In fact, spiritual leader of Guba’s Shiite Muslims hap-
pened to be in the thick of ongoing events again and reportedly en-
joyed a great deal of respect from Amazasp who had even “brought
his apologies for the evil committed” claiming that “such things are
inevitable in wartime”. (72) However, Mullah Hajjibaba Akhundzadeh
left Guba for good after these events and clearly denied anything at-
tributed to him by local residents, including rescuing the Armenian
women and compiling lists of Muslim women and girls raped by the
Armenians. (73)
A totally different assumption may be concluded from Ghe-
lovani’s testimonies shedding the light on the person who could have
really played a role in stopping the massacre in Guba. This person
was… Mirjafar Baghirov.
***
The future “boss” of the Soviet Azerbaijan holding the post of
the First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Azerbaijani Com-
munist Party, was with no doubt one of the well-known Guba resi-
dents throughout the whole history of Azerbaijan. By virtue of cir-
cumstances, it was him who became quite a visible, if not a key figure