Britain’s involvement in a mass murder
In an interview with the editorial team of the Research Institute for Mezalim (FEM), Irish historian Dr. Pat Walsh clearly criticizes Great Britain for being partly responsible for the violent crimes committed against the Azerbaijani civilian population by Armenian militias on 31 March 1918. Despite overwhelming evidence, the British government did not take action against those responsible at the time.
Dr. Walsh, March 31 is approaching, when Azerbaijanis around the world will mark the anniversary of the murder of tens of thousands of their compatriots. The events are considered the bloodiest chapter in the history of Azerbaijan. Can you briefly tell us something about the background?
At the end of March 1918, forces of the Baku Soviet under the leadership of Stepan Shahumyan launched a surprise attack on the political representatives of the Muslim population. Baku was then “a Soviet island in an anti-Soviet sea”, and Shahumyan, an old Armenian Bolshevik close to Lenin, was determined to gain and maintain Bolshevik control of the city and its large oil fields, which were essential to the Soviets in Russia.
On March 29, the Bolsheviks attempted to disarm the crew of the steamship Evelina in Baku, which had returned with 40 members of the tsar’s “Muslim division” to bury the son of a local Azerbaijani oil entrepreneur. The sight of the armed Muslims was perceived as a provocation by the small minority that led the Baku Soviet and their Armenian allies. He signaled what might come, and so they decided to prevent future democracy by massacring the majority. The event was used as a trigger for the March events in the city.
“However, the Armenian forces took the opportunity to carry out a large-scale massacre of the Muslim population, including horrific barbarities against women and children.”
When there were demonstrations by Muslims demanding the return of weapons to the mountain dwellers, the Baku Soviet demanded “absolute obedience to its authority” and threatened war, whereby the Musavat, the political representatives of the Muslim population, would have to bear the consequences. Mensheviks and Cadets allied with the Bolsheviks against the Musavats. The defeated Azerbaijanis, who had accepted an earlier Armenian declaration of neutrality in good faith, were surprised by the reversal of the Armenian position. After gunboats of the Caspian Fleet, belonging to the Social Revolutionary faction, had decimated the Muslim quarters of the city, Lenin urged Shahumyan to declare a ceasefire. However, the Armenian forces took the opportunity to carry out a large-scale massacre of the Muslim population, including horrific barbarities against women and children.
Reports from the British Foreign Office indicate that the Armenians used the Bolshevik attack on the Musavat to kill over 8,000 Muslims in Baku and then massacre 18,000 in Elizavetpol [Ganja]. It was reported that the Tatars/Azerbaijanis had suffered considerable losses and a large part had been driven out of Baku. The actual number of Azerbaijanis killed in the March events is probably around 12,000. Baku was not the only area in which massacres took place in March 1918. Shahumyan had sent troops from Baku to Shamakhi and Cuba. In Shamakhi, the mainly Armenian troops destroyed the Muslim quarter and killed over 3,000 people. 400 women and children who had sought shelter in a mosque, one of 13 destroyed, were slaughtered. A further 4,000 people were killed in other nearby settlements. In the Quba district, 2,000 people were killed by the Armenian-Soviet troops, including many members of the historic Jewish hilltop community.
In your book “Great Britain against Russia in the Caucasus”, published in 2020 by Manzara you already indicate in the subtitle that the South Caucasus region has become a target for the warring superpowers. How did this come about?
It is a consequence of the Great War of 1914, which the Allied powers waged against Germany and the Ottoman Empire. What changed things, however, was a major strategic realignment of Britain that had previously taken place through Sir Edward Grey’s policy of forming a Grand Coalition against Germany between 1904 and 1907, which could be activated in the event of a European war. Britain reached agreements with its two former main enemies in the world, Russia and France, in order to encircle Germany and make a British naval blockade effective in the event of war. When this European war broke out in July 1914, Grey informed the Tsar that Great Britain would no longer stand in the way of the “Russian steamroller”, which could storm towards Berlin from the east, on its way to Constantinople/Istanbul. The dictum of British foreign policy for generations, “the Russians should not get Constantinople”, was turned into its opposite.
But although the Tsar was massively supported by the British Treasury, his “steamroller” proved inadequate against the efficiency of the German army. In February 1918 the revolution broke out, and as the Kerensky government continued the war and launched offensives, the Russian lines began to collapse, aided by Lenin’s call to the peasants to leave the imperialist war and take their land. This led to a problem for the British, as the Russian lines in the Caucasus began to collapse. What had previously been regarded as a Russian sphere of influence suddenly demanded the attention of the West, and the UK in particular.
“Great Britain formed a front with the Armenians and others against the Ottoman Empire”
British armies advanced north into the Russian zone of influence in Persia, south of Baku, and joined the Indian Army’s Mesopotamia Expeditionary Force in the west. British agents in the Caucasus established contacts with the Armenians and anyone else willing to form a front against the Ottoman armies, which were now pushing east towards Baku without Russian troops, massacring Dashnaks, Turks and Azerbaijanis. Finally, some Russian revolutionaries, including Bolsheviks who held Baku, were determined to maintain the Russian presence in the Caucasus in order to secure the area and its vital oil fields for a future Soviet state.
In your work, you describe an overlap of interests between Bolshevik Russia and Great Britain in the spring of 1918, which led to an alliance between the United Kingdom, the Bolsheviks and the ultra-nationalist Armenian Dashnaks. Can you explain this strange constellation in more detail?
As early as October and November 1917, the Armenians were identified by London as the most likely element that could be mobilized for a new Caucasus army to replace the collapsing Russians. The British estimated the number of Armenians in the Russian army at around 150,000, although there were only 35,000 on the Caucasus front at the time. General Barter was instructed by the British General Staff to induce the Russian leadership to move the remainder to the Caucasus.
“The Armenians were the most militarized people in the region”
The British Foreign Office also contacted James Malcolm of the Armenian National Council in Britain, who advised contacting Boghos Nubar, the head of the Armenian National Delegation in Europe, who in turn wrote to the Catholicos, the head of the Armenian Church, asking him to help mobilize Armenians at the front. The Armenians were very useful because not only were they likely to be ready to fight, but they were also the most militarized people in the region.
The Armenians were therefore the most important material for the reconstruction of the British front. They were numerous, militarily trained, armed and had the will to fight the Ottomans, which the Russian peasants now lacked. At the end of 1917, they were the first to receive financial and material support from Great Britain. At its meeting on December 7, the British War Cabinet decided to grant financial support to the Armenian armed forces.
Sir G. Marling, British representative in Tehran, and Consul Stevens in Batumi were instructed to authorize the Armenian authorities to purchase arms, materials and transport from the departing Russians and to inform the Armenians that Britain was prepared to organize and train them to fight the Turks. In the event that the Armenians were not compliant, they were told that the weapons would go to the Kurds and Tatars (Azerbaijanis) instead.
“The Armenian armed forces were supported by Great Britain with weapons, ammunition and financially.”
British military intelligence asked General Shore in Tbilisi to provide the resources needed to organize these troops. General Shore met with Armenian General Andranik to discuss the logistics of this process and reported that he would be able to raise a force of 10,000 Ottoman Armenians, which would require a sum of 5 to 10 million rubles. Andranik told Shore that he could increase the Armenian force to 20,000 men if Britain and Russia supplied weapons and ammunition. General Shore was then authorized by his superiors to provide the leaders of the Armenian armed forces with the necessary weapons, ammunition and financial support. Ranald MacDonell, a British intelligence officer who headed the British mission in Baku, became the Armenians’ paymaster and personally transported millions of roubles from Tehran via Baku to Tbilisi over a period of months to pay the Armenian armed forces.
While the British government refused to recognize Bolshevik authority in Baku, Britain maintained relations with the Bolshevik regime because Lenin was prepared to continue the war there. As Great Britain was primarily a naval power and was severely strained by the Three Years’ War, it was unable to send any significant forces to the Caucasus to continue its policy. It had to rely not only on the Armenians but also on its ideological enemy, the Bolsheviks, to forge a temporary alliance of convenience to maintain the front that Lenin was rebuilding in his own interest – that of the oil fields and the proletarian center of Baku.
Both the British and the Bolsheviks had a common use for the Armenians in this situation. The Bolsheviks themselves brought back 100,000 Armenians and armed them to resist the Ottoman advance, which had been triggered by Lenin’s revolutionary defeatism. The Russian Caucasus Army, which numbered around 320,000 men, left most of its weapons and ammunition to the Armenians under the command of General Andranik.
This shows that Armenian units in particular were chumming up to the expanding British hegemonic power in the South Caucasus. What promises were made to the Armenian side?
The promises that the British made to the Armenians were deliberately vague. The Armenian revolutionaries joined the Allied war effort against the Ottomans because they assumed that they would be offered an Armenian state. During the war, people like Pasdermadjian realized that they would be abandoned by the Russians, their greatest hope for territory in Eastern Anatolia and the South Caucasus. The Russians wanted “Armenia without the Armenians”, he writes in one of his publications. Therefore, after the end of 1917 and the collapse of Russia, the Armenians concentrated on demanding promises from the British.
“The Armenian Dashnaks were pursuing their own fundamental goal of cleansing the territory of Muslims in order to establish their Greater Armenia, and there is no avoiding the fact that the British supported them in this, in pursuit of what MacDonell himself called ‘the common cause’.”
The British state is a multidimensional entity. Its liberal, moralizing elements have always pushed for an Armenian state, ever since James Bryce wrote in the 1880s. However, the realists at the head of the state, such as Prime Minister Lloyd George, were ruthless towards the Armenian demands. They made the Armenians believe that they would get a state, and indeed some attempts were made in this direction when the Bolsheviks appeared in the South Caucasus. Ultimately, however, Britain was unwilling to impose its will on the natives when resistance arose and Britain’s strategic interests changed.
Britain bears part of the blame for the violence against Muslim civilians in Baku. Some accuse the British government of a grossly negligent policy, as they, the British, should have foreseen the coming catastrophe. Can you briefly comment on this?
At the end of 1916, Great Britain found itself in a desperate situation that lasted until the armistice in November 1918. The Germans and the Ottomans had proved to be far stronger opponents than expected, and Britain had been forced to raise huge armies of millions, take out extensive loans from the United States and extend the war to many fronts. But it had all been in vain, and now his allies were buckling or collapsing. Only an American intervention could save the British in this European war, which they should have avoided in the interests of the Empire, but which they had turned into a global conflict through their involvement.
“And this was a war that Britain had to win, no matter what the consequences for humanity. Herein lies the reason for the terrible things that happened. “
This desperation gave rise to a ruthlessness in which any force, however malevolent, was supported if it served the war effort to achieve victory, whatever the cost. In fact, entire nations have become pawns on the chessboard of world conflict. And this was a war that Britain had to win, regardless of the consequences for humanity. This is the reason for the terrible things that have happened. Smarter people on the ground saw the potential consequences, but those in London who ran the chessboard were playing for higher stakes than the lives of the ordinary people caught up in the disaster.
How did the British officials on the ground react to the pervasive atrocities committed by the Armenian militias? Have any measures been taken? Have those responsible been held accountable?
Ranald MacDonell, the British vice consul in Baku, conveyed his view of events in a report to General Dunsterville in March:
“… The trouble between the Bolsheviks and the Mussulmans began over the disarming of a Mussulman ship and culminated in the massacres of March. The Armenians joined the Bolsheviks, and the Musselmen were virtually driven out of Baku, with not a single Musselman of consequence remaining. As you can imagine, this fueled the hostile feelings of the Mussulmans in the Caucasus against us even more. Even Russian officers half-jokingly asked us how much the British government had paid for such a successful campaign and the elimination of the Turkophile elements in Baku. At that time I protested to the Armenian National Council, and I still maintain that they made one of the biggest mistakes in their history when they supported the Bolsheviks against the Musselmen. All the blame for this policy must be laid on the Armenian Political Society, known as Dashnachtsasoun… Without Armenian support, the Bolsheviks would never have dared to take action against the reactionary Musselman at that time.”
Later, MacDonell, who had witnessed the earlier massacres of Muslims in Baku in 1905-6, described his memories of the March days in his memoirs:
“…The cauldron of Baku boiled over. The fleet allied itself with the Armenians and the Bolsheviks, and for four days the war against all Muslims raged in Baku. The carnage was incredible; the fleet bombarded the Tartar quarter day and night and inflicted great damage on the local buildings. For three days, it was touch and go as to who would come out on top. Eventually the Tartars and the Savage division were repulsed, and by the fifth day there was not a single Muslim of any importance left in the city, and only a few of their houses were still standing. Of all the incidents in which people were killed, this was the worst I experienced during my years in Baku.”
“But while British courts prosecuted the Ottomans for the Armenian resettlements of 1915 and Nuri Pasha for the revenge killings after the fall of Baku to the Ottomans/Azerbaijanis later in 1918, no attempt was ever made to try the Armenians for what happened.”
Although MacDonell truthfully blamed the Armenian Dashnaks for the massacre of 12,000 people, he was disingenuous when he shirked responsibility in the name of his own government. Given the history of the Dashnaks, it was impossible to believe that the British government could use them as mere instruments of policy. The Armenian Dashnaks were pursuing their own fundamental goal of cleansing the territory of Muslims in order to establish their Greater Armenia, and there is no avoiding the fact that the British supported them in this, in pursuit of what MacDonell himself called “the common cause”.
The British never took action against those responsible for the March events, even though they had a wealth of evidence. Of course, many of them were later killed in the battle for Baku in September. Shahumyan and his commissioners were murdered by unknown persons (probably British agents) on the shores of the Caspian Sea. But while British courts prosecuted the Ottomans for the Armenian resettlements of 1915 and Nuri Pasha for the revenge killings after the fall of Baku to the Ottomans/Azerbaijanis later in 1918, no attempt was ever made to try the Armenians for what happened.
Immediately after the massacres in March, the events were investigated by a specially appointed commission. The evidence was downright shocking. Why has this large-scale massacre of Muslims in Azerbaijan, which borders on genocide, not found any resonance in the public perception of the Western world?
The details of the March massacres were later thoroughly investigated and documented by a special investigative commission of the Azerbaijani government from June 1918 to April 1920. The investigation resulted in 36 volumes and 3,500 pages of eyewitness accounts from survivors, documentation of the events and harrowing photographs of the death and destruction of Muslim communities. This was not war propaganda, like many of the atrocity stories that found their way into the English world through the efforts of Armenians, Christian lobby groups and some servants of the British state. It is therefore an obscure but real event about which little is known in the West.
“From the British point of view, there was an interest in covering up the massacres”
A number of British officers such as Ranald MacDonnell and Claude Stokes brought these events to the attention of their government, but there was a political interest in covering them up. The massacres were categorized as “interethnic violence”, which was routinely carried out by people who were considered to be below the level of civilization of the British. In the meantime, Armenian accusations against the Turks, which lent themselves well to war propaganda, were spread as facts, even though those who spread them to a worldwide audience knew they were false or exaggerated.
Since the British were desperate to get the US involved in the war, and this kind of propaganda was very effective in Christian fundamentalist America, it was used ruthlessly against the Turks and Azerbaijanis, eclipsing the actual atrocities against Muslims. Unfortunately, what is used as war propaganda tends to remain in the public consciousness for generations, negating the true, historical picture.
“Most of these murders and destructions done to the Azerbaijanis were committed by Armenian forces who wanted to establish a large Armenian state at the expense of the Muslim population already living in the area.”
To what extent have the mass crimes of violence against the Muslim civilian population influenced the history or the building of an Azerbaijani nation?
Nations are often founded in response to external threats to a people. Azerbaijan celebrated its centenary on May 28, 2018. This is the founding date of the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic in 1918.
In the first years of its existence, the state proclaimed by the Azerbaijani government fought for its territorial integrity and independence under the conditions of the Great War in which it was involved. However, it also emerged as a result of this war, out of the sheer necessity of organizing a people as a nation to ensure its survival while killing and destruction raged around it. Most of these murders and destructions inflicted on Azerbaijanis were committed by Armenian forces who wanted to establish a large Armenian state at the expense of the Muslim population already living in the area.
This is how nations are often created – in times of need, in moments of “now or never”. And nations are often not fully formed, but much still needs to be done to ensure their survival and development. It is not a process that can be modelled or systematized. It is the actual chain of historical events that creates a national consciousness and binds peoples together into nations.
The Azerbaijani nation is still developing, as can be seen from recent events. From 1920 until the late 1980s, Azerbaijan’s national development took place within the framework of the Soviet Union, which was actually a development of nations within the socialist state. However, with the collapse of this state, Azerbaijan’s national development was again influenced by the Armenians when they occupied Karabakh and the surrounding areas of Azerbaijan, which make up about 18 percent of its population, and ethnically cleansed 750,000 Muslims from the occupied territories.
This terrible scar on the nation activated a national development among the Aliyevs that saw the return of national territories after the defeat of Armenia in November 2020. This 44-day war and its results were another stage in the national development of Azerbaijan, which in turn was triggered by Armenian aggression and irredentism.