Guba, April-May 1918. Documented Pogroms of the Muslims
72
the Azerbaijani Cheka (The Extraordinary Commission, predecessor of
KGB). Despite such a high level of protection, he still remained under
surveillance, and was arrested on December 28, 1926 during another
campaign against “former enemies” based on informants’ reports”. A
notable fact is that with all his life history perfectly known to prosecu-
tors, what they charged him with was a “new discrediting evidence”, i.e.
illegal support to Mussavat party, active work against the working class,
links with counter-revolutionary organizations abroad and involvement
in uttering counterfeited banknotes. (192)
The investigation had been working hard for the whole year and
a half, trying to link ‘the Zizikski Case’ with ‘the North Caucasus High-
lander Counterrevolutionaries’ Case’ with H.I.Kantemirov as the key
figure. However either due to the lack of evidence, or by virtue of
other causes, investigators decided to file the papers regarding Zizik-
ski’s activities in 1918.
On June 9, 1928, an investigator from AzGPU (Azerbaijan State
Political Department, the then Cheka name) interrogated one Guba-
born resident of Baku. Interrogation transcript of the first witness for
the prosecution on “Zizikski’s Guba past” case presented him as “an
exploiter and torturer of the impoverished Guba peasantry”, who
“foreseeing the imminent establishment of the proletarian dictator-
ship in Guba conspired to form a gang and launched a furious activity
against the Soviet rule”.
Description of A.Zizikski’s further activities using the same lan-
guage led to the only possible conclusion: “…in no way can the sus-
pect ever come to terms with the proletarian dictatorship, and the
proletarians of Guba loathe him deeply for the tortures ha had been
inflicting to them for a number of years”. (193)
Apparently such an ideology-dominated style of unmasking tes-
timonies lacking specific evidence was not sufficient for the investiga-
tion agencies which, back in the 1920’s still tried to abide by judicial
procedure, at least formally. This was the reason why on July 11, 1928,
a letter was sent by the deputy chief of AzGPU to the head of the
Guba Information Unit (GIU) making the latter one “personally re-
sponsible for interrogating persons capable of confirming A.Zizikski’s
above-mentioned activities and dispatching the whole records to
AzGPU within one week’s time”.
What the “A.Zizikski’s above-mentioned activities” implied was