Azerbaijanis around the world mark the mass killing of tens of thousands of their compatriots by Armenian forces in Baku and throughout numerous districts of Azerbaijan a century ago, starting on March 31 in 1918.
The day is officially recognized as the Day of Genocide of Azerbaijanis in the Caspian country, which locates in the South Caucasus along with its western neighbor Armenia. March 31 is remembered for the slaughter of over 50,000 Azerbaijanis and other Muslims, as well as Jews and ethnic Germans living in Azerbaijan at the time by the Armenian Revolutionary Federation, also known as Dashnaktsutyun nationalist party, and Bolsheviks revolutionaries.
According to historians, the number of victims is said to have been higher than those of the Srebrenica massacre that formed part of the 1995 Bosnian war in the Balkans.
“The massacre of 1918 was prepared more skillfully and implemented more ruthlessly than the 1905 attacks,” Atakhan Pashayev, head of the National Archive Department of Azerbaijan, wrote in an article in 2007 about the March Events.
Multiple experts believe that Bolsheviks’ authorities of the Soviet Russia in the early part of the 20th century were either interested in, or actively encouraged, ethnic clashes in the Caucasus region that involved both Armenians and Azerbaijanis.
“The Bolsheviks’ victory in Russia and the withdrawal of Russian troops from the battlefields of World War One opened the way for the massacre,” Pashayev wrote.
The collapse of the Russian Empire in the wake of the World War I had pushed Azerbaijan into a political panic. The most dramatic events in the country started with the ousting of Russia’s Tsarist rule by Bolsheviks in the 1917 October Revolution and their promotion of ethnic Armenian politicians in Azerbaijan.
Baku had lured an influx of entrepreneurs and workers from other nationalities, including Russians and Armenians due to the booming oil industry in Azerbaijan, thanks to vast reserves discovered beneath the Caspian Sea. Taking Baku under control was pivotal for the newborn and fragile Bolshevik government. Their leader, Vladimir Lenin, appointed the ethnic Armenian Stepan Shaumyan as the Extraordinary Commissioner for the Caucasus and the head of the Baku Council, or BakSoviet, and the Baku Commune.
Shaumyan’s rise to power accelerated the union of Armenians in Baku as a fifth column to undermine a revolt against Azerbaijanis. Armenian entrepreneurs in the city, who were promoted and backed firmly by Bolshevik leaders, were the financial masterminds of the march against indigenous Azerbaijani people and the entire Muslim population in Azerbaijan.
Against the backdrop of growing Armenian influence in Baku, ethnic Azerbaijanis were deliberately deprived of ruling power, despite comprising the absolute majority of the population throughout what became the Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic by 1920.
Azad Rzayev, Dean of the History Department at Baku State University, says there was a strong union of Bolsheviks and Armenians which were seen as a disturbance by Azerbaijanis.
“When Bolsheviks came to power in 1917, the intelligentsia in Azerbaijan saw that there was an explicit alliance between them and the Armenians, and the Bolsheviks were carrying out their plans [in Transcaucasia] through Armenians,” Rzayev told Caspian News.
“This pushed the Azerbaijani authorities to come up with the idea of splitting apart from Russia and establishing an independent country. And the Bolsheviks realized well that losing Azerbaijan was leaving the young Soviet Russia without strategically important oil reserves.”
The Baku Soviet disarmed a small armed detachment of Azerbaijanis between March 29 and 30 in the southern Lankaran district of Azerbaijan, which stirred resentment across the country and amongst the Muslim population especially. On March 30, Azerbaijanis held a peaceful meeting in Baku, which is considered by historians to be the main pretext for Stepan Shaumyan to begin an unprecedented pogrom.
Shaumyan deployed 7,000 armed Armenians, mainly from the Dashnaktsutyun party, in Baku, ranks that eventually grew by another 12,000 soldiers sent by Soviet Russia and from its Red Guards. The first armed attack against Azerbaijanis took place on March 30 in central Baku by the Dashnak soldiers, and mass carnage was reported to have occurred from March 31 to April 2, when over 12,000 Azerbaijanis were massacred in the capital.
Continuation of the ethnic cleansing continued throughout many regions of Azerbaijan, including Guba, Shamakhi, Khachmaz, Lankaran, Salyan, Hajigabul, Karabakh, Zangazur, and Nakhchivan, where more than 30,000 Azerbaijanis were brutally killed.
Armenian soldiers are said to have made a rehearsal of the Holocaust that was to take place decades later during World War II, when they killed over 3,000 mountain Jews in Guba district who had been living in Azerbaijan for approximately 1,500 years. In addition, 16,000 Azerbaijani Muslims were killed in Guba. The refusal by Jews to cooperate with Armenians is considered the main motive for their annihilation.
“Shaumyan wrote in his letters to Lenin that an independent Azerbaijan should be unacceptable [for Soviet Russia],” Professor Rzayev told Caspian News.
“This was a clear signal at an upcoming armed invasion and carnages by the Bolsheviks to suffocate freedom chants in Azerbaijan,” he said.
Dr. Ikram Aghasiyev, a historian at the Azerbaijan National Academy of Sciences, says Shaumyan and his BakSoviet, which, in fact, was an Armenian Dashnak organization disguising itself as a Bolshevik community, had had a special purpose to start massacring Azerbaijani people in Baku in March of 1918.
“The Ottoman empire’s forces were gradually liberating the cities to the west of Azerbaijan that were under Russia’s occupation in February 1918,” Aghasiyev told Caspian News.
“Shaumyan feared that they could reach Baku and that the Turkic [Azerbaijani] and Muslim population in the city will side with Ottoman [Turkish] soldiers. So, they decided to annihilate the Turkic [Azerbaijani] and Muslim people in Baku,” he added.
“During four days of carnage in Baku, 12,000 civilians were killed, according to documentation. However, some sources say the death toll reached 15,000,” Aghasiyev said. “The total human loss in Baku and in other regions of Azerbaijan surpassed 50,000 Azerbaijanis and other Muslim people.”
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