from Adil Shamiyev
Azerbaijan is a country in the South Caucasus that was affected by a great division and has experienced a 100-year history of tragedy. The foundation for these tragedies was laid by the Gulustan and Turkmenchay agreements signed in 1813 and 1828, before the split of the Azerbaijani people and the division of its historical territories. At the end of March 1918, the armed formations of the Armenian nationalist “Dashnaktsutyun” party under the leadership of Stepan Shahumyan committed mass murders and pogroms against Azerbaijanis with the support of the Bolshevik leaders of the Baku Council.
After the October Revolution in Russia in 1917, the Bolsheviks took power in Baku and saw the Armenian nationalist party Dashnaksutyun as an ally to capitalize on the situation on the ground. The leader of the Russian Bolsheviks, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, appointed the ethnic Armenian Stepan Shahumyan as extraordinary commissioner for the Caucasus. The strong encouragement and support from the Bolshevik rulers encouraged the Armenians to implement a plan to exterminate the population of Azerbaijan as part of the so-called operations against counter-revolutionary elements.
The mass killings of Azerbaijani civilians began at the end of March 1918
There were many reasons why the Armenian National Council and “Dashnaksutyun” supported the Bolsheviks. At first, the Armenians, especially those who had fought in the Russian army, were very frustrated by the failure of their aspirations for national autonomy or a nation state. The Azerbaijani people of Baku, who were defenseless, should now be the victims of this frustration. From the point of view of Armenian nationalists, they were a suitable target for revenge for unfulfilled national fantasies. Moreover, Baku was very valuable in itself and could later be annexed to the new Armenian state or exchanged for the other Azerbaijani territories. The mass killings began in Baku at the end of March 1918 and spread to other regions of Azerbaijan, including Shamakhi, Guba, Karabakh, Zangezur, Goycha, Nakhichevan, Salyan and Lankaran.
Until the liberation of the city of Baku, it was subjected to the terror of Armenian forces
The civilian population was brutally massacred, villages were reduced to rubble and monuments were systematically destroyed in order to rid the region of all cultural and historical evidence of Azerbaijani existence. The image of the city of Baku after the massacre looked terrible. The Azerbaijani neighborhoods were empty and destroyed. Until the liberation of Baku in September 1918, the population was subjected to the terror of the Armenian troops. The Special Investigation Commission, which was appointed after the liberation of Baku to investigate the events of March 1918 and bring the perpetrators to justice, reported twelve thousand victims, including many women and children.
After the proclamation of the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic (ADR) on May 28, 1918, the “March Events” were investigated by the ADR government. The Commission’s documents reflect the terrible statistics of the tragedy. Armenian Dashnaks massacred the Turkish-Muslim population, not even sparing children, old people and women. The occupation of Azerbaijan by the Soviet army in 1920 and the collapse of the ADR prevented the investigation process and the political and legal recognition of the tragedy.
In Soviet times, it was not permitted in Azerbaijan to commemorate the victims of the 1918 genocide
The Azerbaijani people could not commemorate the genocide of the Azerbaijanis during the Soviet years (comparable to the Ukrainians who could not remember the Holodomor and the Circassians who could not remember the genocide of 1864). It was only after the restoration of the independence of the Republic of Azerbaijan in 1991 that the issue became more important, and an investigation into this bloody genocide was launched on the initiative of the national leader Heydar Aliyev. By a historic decree of March 26, 1998, March 31 was declared “Azerbaijan Genocide Day”. Since then, March 31 has been celebrated every year in our country and in other places where Azerbaijanis live as Genocide Day and the commemoration of its victims.
History is not dead and buried
The mass grave, which was discovered by chance during construction work in the town of Guba in 2007, was a vivid testimony to the genocide of the Muslim population of Guba, which was committed by Armenian forces under the Bolshevik name in May 1918. On December 30, 2009, the current President of the Republic of Azerbaijan, Ilham Aliyev, signed a decree to establish a “Genocide Memorial Complex” in the city of Guba to remind the world community of these facts, to preserve the national memory of future generations of the Azerbaijani people and to perpetuate the memory of the victims of the genocide.
The place where the human bones were found during the reconstruction of the sports complex on the right bank of the Gudyalchay in the Guba region cannot be called a cemetery. The human bones were found in a pile that had been thrown into large holes. The bones were found in two wells on the banks of the river. The diameter of the large fountain is 5 meters, that of the smaller one 2.5 meters. The distance between the fountains is two meters. Hundreds of human skeletons were thrown into the large well.
However, Armenian vandalism did not end with the genocide of 1918. When we leaf through the history books of 1990, 1991 and 1992, we once again come across the tragedies of genocide. Such tragedies as Garadağli, Khojaly, Agdaban, Ballıgaya, Bashlibel and others show that the hatred towards Armenians has not cooled down over the years. Nevertheless, this had to end one day, and that day finally came with the second Karabakh or Patriotic War, which ended with the glorious victory of the Azerbaijani army under the command of the commander-in-chief. The victory put an end once and for all to the century-long Armenian policy of genocide against the Azerbaijani people.
Adil Shamiyev is an interpreter and studied politics and international relations at Humboldt University for one semester. In addition to his full-time work as an interpreter, he writes articles for various media focusing on the Caucasus and Eastern Europe.