lished by the Government of Azerbaijan “having examined the case

regarding the devastation of the town of Guba and villages of Guba

Uyezd, Baku Province, and atrocities towards residents of the town

and villages mentioned above and the relevant Report by A.Novatsky,

the Commission member in charge for this case”, passed the Resolu-

tion to institute criminal proceedings against a number of persons.

Offences incriminated to these persons are the following:

“Due to religious and tribal hostility towards the Muslim popula-

tion…making a conspiracy among themselves and other persons not

identified in the course of the investigation, they formed a criminal

gang several thousand-strong, armed with cold weapons and firearms

pursuing the goal to exterminate the Muslim population, looting and

plundering its assets, and attacked the town of Guba, Baku Province, in

early April 1918, devastating the place, murdering about two thousand

men, women and children, plundering personal assets of the town’s re-

sidents, setting fire to municipal premises and leaving 105 households

ablaze. En route to Guba, the same criminal gang devastated 122 vil-

lages stealing all personal assets of their residents and murdering them

with no mercy to women or children”

. (124)

No doubt, Amazasp was the first in the list of accused persons

followed by his “comrades-in-arms” like Nicolay, the aide, Veluntz, the

commissar, and Armenian residents of Guba and its villages actively

involved in pogroms of the local Muslim population.

Involvement and active participation of a certain part of the local

Armenian population in violent actions against the Muslim residents

of Guba and adjacent villages, even though not as large in scale as

in Baku and Shemakha, still had a very serious effect on Guba’s Mus-

lim population, let it be the Azerbaijani Turks, the Lezghins, the Tats,

the Avars, as well as migrant workers of Iranian nationality (so called

south Azerbaijanis). Looting of local Lezghin and Tat villages along

with the Azerbaijani ones provides a clear evidence of all Muslim po-

pulation, irrespective of ethnic origin, being targeted by the Bolshevik

and Dashnaktsutyun forces. (125) Another noteworthy detail is that

not a single Russian village of the area was affected by the pogroms.

A relatively small number of Armenian residents of Guba in-

volved in the massacre of local Muslim population may be attributed

to the fact that these persons were identified by the victims who wit-

nessed their involvement and were unaware of all those local Arme-

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

of Azerbaijan’s Muslim Population