35
in Guba during the events of April-May 1918. He was oftentimes re-
ferred to as ‘a Bolshevik’, ‘a fervent Bolshevik’ or ‘a local Bolshevik’ by
both local residents and Ghelovani.
As for Mirjafar Baghirov himself, in his autobiography written in
1923 while the Chairman of the State Political Department (GPU) of the
Soviet Socialist Republic of Azerbaijan, he provided quite a detailed
information regarding the situation in Guba during the pogroms and
shortly prior to them, including the causes that had brought him to
the pogrom-makers’ camp.
Needless to say, a lot of details presented by M.Baghirov dif-
fer, if not contradict other sources. In fact, the Guba period is the
most dubious part of Baghirov’s life history. The controversy could
be created by the author himself as this is far not the most remark-
able part of his profile. That being said, not delving into the details
of Baghirov’s Bolshevik career so eloquently elaborated upon in his
biography, it should be admitted that he had already been with the
Communists party by the time of the tragic events enfolding in Guba.
Moreover, according to the document in question (see the passage
below), Baghirov looks almost the driving force behind the attempted
seizure of power by Ghelovani:
“My mission was to get to Baku at any cost to present the de-
tails of existing situation in Guba Uyezd and to get the sanction to
seize power there. Yet the mission was quite complicated and I was just
about to pay my life for this. Then I decided to get back to Guba and
seize power with no sanction from the center whatsoever in hope that it
would be better to be held responsible vis-à-vis my comrades later than
give a chance to Zizikski and Gotsynski to get a stronghold in Guba on
their way back from Baku. That was exactly what I did. However I did
send a telegram to Baku on the same very day, and this helped a lot
in the course of further development of the civil war in Baku Province
(Guberniya), so that not only had Zizikski no chance to get reinforced
in Guba Uyezd, but he could not even show up there. So he fled to
Daghestan with Gotsynski where they got reinforced and were making
plans for their assault on Guba later in May. Once the road between
Baku and Gyzyl-Burun opened, I got in touch with advance guard of
the Red Army forces led by comrades George Sturua, Artak (Stam-
bulyanz) and Barsky whom I thoroughly described everything and
who recommended me to have someone Ghelovani as the Center’s
Events of 1918 in Guba in the Context of Plans for Mass Extermination
of Azerbaijan’s Muslim Population