Baku on August 1, 1918 to be replaced by the so-called

Central Cas-

pian Dictatorship (Centrocaspi)

. The resignation was followed by an

attempt to flee the city. As far as Azerbaijan’s countryside areas are

concerned, Guba Uyezd among them, there was no official power per

se, so the subsequent situation was controlled by local leaders unless

Baku was liberated by the Turkish and Azerbaijani forces in Septem-

ber that year and the jurisdiction of the Democratic Republic of Azer-

baijan was spread all over the area.

***

On May 28, 1918, Azerbaijan was declared an independent state

at the first meeting of the National Council created by the Azerbaijani

faction of the Transcaucasian Seim upon its dissolution. The Indepen-

dence Act provided legal grounds for the newly-formed democratic

state. The first Government was formed at the same meeting with

F.Khoyski as the Chairman (Prime Minister), M.Hajjinski the Minister

of Foreign Affairs and K.Khasmammadov as the Minister of Justice.

By mid-July 1918, a month and a half after starting its activities

and moving from Tbilisi (Georgia) to Ganja (Azerbaijan), the Cabinet

of Ministers of the Democratic Republic of Azerbaijan decided to ex-

press its attitude towards the ongoing events in the country in ge-

neral, and the facts of violence against civilian Azerbaijani population

in particular. The report by the Minister of Foreign Affairs M.Hajjinski

reads the following:

“For the period of four months so far, various parts

of Azerbaijan have been torn apart by gangs acting under the guise of

the Bolsheviks, irresponsible Armenian squads and others perpetrating

unprecedented atrocities against the Muslim civilians sparing neither

their lives nor assets. In the meantime, a totally different public opinion

is created in Europe due to the perverted information channeled by the

masterminds of these gangs”.

The rapporteur therefore stressed the necessity of establishing

an agency in charge of compiling “precise files regarding each and

every case of violence and preconditions conductive to their commit-

ment, identification of culprits and the damage inflicted”. The agency

in question was viewed as a tool for advocating interests of both the

affected groups of population and the whole nation. This was the

way the idea of a special investigation commission was conceived.

Outcomes of the investigation published in Turkish and in various Eu-

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

of Azerbaijan’s Muslim Population