March Days
The March Days or March Events was a period of inter-ethnic strife and clashes which took place between 30 March – 2 April 1918 in the city of Baku and adjacent areas of the Baku Governorate of the Transcaucasian Commissariat.
Facilitated by a political power struggle between Bolsheviks with the support of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation on one side and the Azerbaijani Musavat Party on another, the events led to rumours of a possible Muslim revolt on the part of Bolshevik and Dashnak forces and the establishment of the short-lived Baku Commune in April 1918.
Most historic sources and accounts interpret the March events in the context of civil war unrest, while contemporary Azerbaijani sources officially refers to the March Days as a genocide. These were followed by the September days where 10,000 ethnic Armenians were massacred by Army of Islam and their local Azerbaijani allies upon capturing Baku.
Background
Political situation
Following the February Revolution, a Special Transcaucasian Committee, including Armenian, Azerbaijani and Georgian representatives, was established to administer parts of the South Caucasus under the control of the Russian Provisional Government. After the October Revolution, on 11 November 1917, this committee was replaced by the Transcaucasian Commissariat, also known as the Sejm, with headquarters in Tbilisi. The Sejm opposed Bolshevism and sought separation of the South Caucasus from Bolshevik Russia. To prevent that, on 13 November 1917, a group of Bolsheviks and Left Socialist-Revolutionaries proclaimed the Baku Soviet, a governing body which assumed power over the territory of Baku Governorate under the leadership of Bolshevik Stepan Shahumyan. Although the Baku Soviet included Azerbaijanis and Armenians who were neither Bolsheviks nor necessarily sympathetic towards Bolshevik ideas, the two nationalist parties and members of the Sejm ― the Musavat and Armenian Revolutionary Federation ― refused to recognize its authority. The Baku-based Musavat dominated the Muslim National Councils, a representative body which eventually formed the first Parliament of the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic. Mammad Hasan Hajinski chaired the Temporary Executive Committee for the MNCs, while Mammed Amin Rasulzade, Alimardan Topchubashev, Fatali Khan Khoyski and other prominent political figures were among the 44 Azerbaijani delegates to the Sejm. Meanwhile, the ARF, which was established in Tbilisi, formed a 27-member Armenian delegation to the Sejm. The leader of the Baku Soviet, Shahumyan, kept contacts with ARF and viewed it as a source of support for eliminating Musavat influence in Baku.File:Stepan Shahumyan youth.jpg|thumb|left|Stepan Shahumyan, an ethnic Armenian leader of the Bolshevik Baku Soviet
After the October Revolution, the Russian army fell apart and its units fled the front lines en masse, often harassing local residents. Concerned with the situation, the Sejm established a Military Council of Nationalities, with Armenian, Azerbaijani and Georgian representatives, which had troops at its disposal. When a large group of Russian soldiers withdrew from the Ottoman front line in January 1918, the head of the council, Georgian Menshevik Noe Ramishvili, ordered their disarmament. The Russian soldiers were stopped near Shamkhor station and, upon a refusal to surrender, were attacked by Azerbaijani bands in what became known as the Shamkhor massacre. The Baku Soviet played out this incident into its favor against the Sejm.
On 10–24 February 1918, the Sejm adopted a declaration of independence. In the meantime, to support Armenian resistance against the Ottoman Empire, the British government attempted to re-organize and train a group of Armenians from the Caucasus under the leadership of General Lionel Dunsterville in Baghdad. The Allies had also provided Armenians with 6,500,000 rubles in financial assistance. In addition, the Armenian National Organization of the Caucasus formed an Armenian Military Committee in Petrograd under General Bagradouni and called upon all Armenian military personnel scattered throughout Russia to mobilize on the Caucasus front. In response to this call, by early March 1918, a large number of Armenians had gathered in Baku, joining a group of 200 trained officers accompanied by General Bagradouni and the ARF co-founder Stepan Zorian.
The Azerbaijanis grew increasingly suspicious that Shahumyan, who was an ethnic Armenian, was conspiring with the Dashnaks against them. The units of the Caucasian Native Cavalry Division, composed of Caucasian Muslims who had served in the Imperial Russian Army, thus nicknamed the "Savage" Division, disarmed a pro-Bolshevik garrison in Lankaran, and Dagestani insurgents under imam Najmuddin of Gotzo drove the Bolsheviks out of Petrovsk, severing Baku's land communications with Bolshevik Russia. The Armistice of Erzincan, followed by the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk signed on 3 March 1918, formalized Russia's exit from World War I. According to Richard G. Hovannisian, a secret annex to the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk obligated the Bolsheviks to demobilize and dissolve ethnic Armenian bands on territories previously under Russian control. At the subsequent Trabzon Peace Conference, the Ottoman delegation called for a unified position of the Sejm before the negotiations could be completed. The Bolsheviks grew increasingly concerned about the emerging Transcaucasian Federation, and in the given situation, had to choose between Musavat and ARF in the struggle to dominate Transcaucasia's largest city. Thus the Baku Soviet was drawn into the nationalistic struggle between the Azerbaijanis and the Armenians, trying to utilize one people against the other.
As Baku produced 7 million tons of oil per year, during World War I the city remained in the sights of the major warring powers. Even though most of the oil fields were owned by Azerbaijanis and less than 5 per cent by Armenians, most of the production/distribution rights in Baku were owned by foreign investors, primarily the British. At the beginning of 1918, Germany transferred General Friedrich Freiherr Kress von Kressenstein from the Sinai and Palestine Campaign to establish the German Caucasus Expedition with the aim of capturing Baku. In response, in February 1918, the British dispatched General Lionel Dunsterville with troops to Baku through Enzeli, in order to block the German move and to protect the British investments.
Demographics and armed groups
Before World War I, the population of Baku, including the Bailoff promontory, the White Town, the oil fields and the neighboring villages, amounted to over 200,000, distributed as follows: 74,000 temporary migrants from various parts of Russia, 56,000 Azerbaijani natives of the town and district, 25,000 Armenians, 18,000 Persians, 6,000 Jews, 4,000 Volga Tatars, 3,800 Lezgins, 2,600 Georgians, 5,000 Germans, 1,500 Poles and many other nationalities numbering less than 1,000 each. Azerbaijanis formed the majority among natives and owned the greater part of land including the oil fields. They also constituted most of the labor force and small trading class as well as some commercial and financial posts. The petroleum industry was largely owned by a small number of foreign capitalists.Prior to the 1918 March events, the major armed groups in Baku consisted of 6,000 men from the remnants of the Russian Caucasus Army which had withdrawn from the Ottoman front line, about 4,000 men of the Armenian militia organized under the ARF Dashnaktsutiun, and an undefined number of soldiers of the Caucasian Native Cavalry Division disbanded in January 1918.
Events of 30 March – 2 April 1918
When the staff of the disbanded Caucasian Native Cavalry Division arrived in Baku on 9 March 1918, the Soviet immediately arrested its commander, General Talyshinski. The move sparked protests from the Azerbaijani population, with occasional calls to offer armed resistance to the Soviet. According to the historian Firuz Kazemzadeh, Shahumyan could have prevented bloodshed, had he been less impulsive and stubborn. Only a few days earlier, Shahumyan had received a telegram from Lenin, in which he was advised "to learn diplomacy", but this advice was ignored.The March 1918 confrontation was triggered by an incident with the steamship Evelina. On 27 March 1918, fifty former Caucasian Native Cavalry Division servicemen arrived in Baku on this ship to attend the funeral of their colleague Mamed Tagiyev, son of a famous Azerbaijani oil magnate and philanthropist, Haji Zeynalabdin Taghiyev. M. Tagiyev had been killed in a skirmish by Russian-Armenian forces in Lankaran. When the soldiers got back on board the Evelina to sail out of Baku on 30 March 1918, the Soviet received information that the Muslim crew of the ship was armed and waiting for a signal to revolt against the Soviet. While the report lacked foundation, the Soviet acted on it, disarming the crew which tried to resist. Other sources claim that Azerbaijanis were alarmed by the growing military strength of the Armenians in Baku, and called for the help of the Caucasian Native Cavalry Division units in Lenkoran. Their arrival caused great concern among both Bolsheviks and Armenians, and when officials were sent down to the dockside to try to discover what their intentions were, they were driven back by gunfire, a number of them being killed. Eventually these newcomers were disarmed by a stronger Bolshevik force, but when more units of the Caucasian Native Cavalry Division arrived on 1 April, in MacDonell's words, "the Baku cauldron boiled over". No one really knows who fired the first shot, but very soon Baku became a battlefield, with trenches and barricades being hastily prepared throughout the city.
By 6 p.m. on 30 March 1918, Baku was filled with fighting. The Soviet side, led by Shahumyan, realized that full civil war was starting and its own forces were insufficient against Azerbaijani masses led by Musavat. Allies were found among the Mensheviks, SRs, and the Kadets, which promised to support the Bolsheviks as the champions of the "Russian Cause." In response to these, Musavat's Achiq Söz newspaper noted that while Bolsheviks and Mensheviks were fighting all year, both were uniting against Musavat even with the Kadets and the Dashnaks. The paper attributed such alliance to national factors, and concluded that the Soviet's attempt to provoke "one nationality against another, instead of fighting a class war, was a tragic capitulation of democracy".
On the morning of 31 March, Azerbaijanis opposed to the Bolshevik disarming of the Caucasian Native Cavalry Division held protests in Baku, demanding to arm the Muslims. The Azerbaijani Bolshevik organization Hümmet attempted to mediate the dispute, proposing that the arms taken from the Caucasian Native Cavalry Division be transferred to the custody of the Hümmet. Shahumyan agreed to this proposal, but on the afternoon of 31 March, when Muslim representatives appeared before the Baku Soviet leadership to take the arms, shots were already being heard in the city and the Soviet commissar Prokofy Dzhaparidze refused to provide the arms. He informed the Hümmet leadership that "Musavat had launched a political war". The talks broke off abruptly when the Soviet's soldiers were fired upon. The Bolsheviks accused the Muslims of responsibility for the incident, stopped negotiations, and opened hostilities. Later Shahumyan admitted that the Bolsheviks deliberately used a pretext to attack their political opponents:
Armenians initially remained neutral as the Muslim rebellion against the Soviet began. The Musavat Party proposed an alliance with the Dashnaks, but was given a rebuff. The Armenian leadership withdrew its forces to the Armenian areas of Baku and limited its action to self-defense. On the evening of 31 March, machine-gun and rifle fire in Baku intensified into a full-fledged battle. On the morning of 1 April 1918, the Committee of Revolutionary Defense of Baku's Soviet issued a leaflet which said:
Forced to seek support from either Muslim Musavat or Armenian Dashnaktsutyun, Shahumyan, himself an Armenian, chose the latter. Following initial skirmishes in the streets, the Dashnaks proceeded to initiate a massacre, wildly killing Musavat military elements and Muslim civilians alike without mercy or discrimination in both Baku and the surrounding countryside.
There were descriptions of Dashnak forces taking to looting, burning and killing in the Muslim sections of the city. According to Peter Hopkirk, "Armenians, seeing that at last they had their ancient foes on the run, were now out for vengeance". In Balakhany and Ramany districts of Baku, the majority of Muslim workers stayed at their places and avoided the battles, while the peasants were not moved to join the anti-Soviet rebels. The Persian workers remained passive during all of the fighting, refusing to take sides. Left-wing Muslim leaders, including those of SRs and Hümmet Party, such as Narimanov, Azizbekov, Bunyat Sardarov and Kazi-Magomed Aghasiyev, supported the Soviet forces During the battles, Bolsheviks decided to use artillery against the Azerbaijani residential quarters in the city.
On the afternoon on 1 April, a Muslim delegation arrived at the Hotel Astoria. The Committee of Revolutionary Defense presented them with an ultimatum and demanded that representatives of all Muslim parties sign the document before the shelling stopped. Early in the evening, the agreements were signed and the bombardment stopped. The fighting did not subside, however, until the night of 2 April 1918, when thousands of Muslims started leaving the city in a mass exodus. By the fifth day, although much of the city was still ablaze, all resistance had ceased, leaving the streets strewn with dead and wounded, nearly all of them Muslims.