After the discovery of the oil fields, Baku became a special place, where various economic and political interests of international coalitions, industrial clans and leaders were concentrated and clashed. VK begins publishing chapters from the book by Ismail Agakishiev "History of the Baku Oil Industry and the Second Oil Boom (second half of the 19th century - beginning of the 20thcentury.)". The book presents a historical analysis of the emergence and current state of the Azerbaijani oil industry.
No historical research offers direct proof of the complicity of the autocratic regime in the inter-ethnic tragedy. It seems that this version appeared after the deadly terrorist attack on Baku governor Nakashidze in the summer of 1905. Socialist revolutionaries or dashnaks were said to be responsible for this attack. The terrorists themselves explained their actions by alleged propaganda of inter-ethnic aggression by the governor. Were these allegations true remains unclear. At least, there’s no conclusive proof to back them up.
There are no doubts that the tsarist government was afraid of the situation in the Caucasus destabilising. For a state involved in a war with Japan, any internal, even local conflict was absolutely undesirable. Yet the governmental structure turned out to be helpless against this unexpected problem. The police, the gendarmerie and army regiments were unable to stop military conflict on a wide territory. In most situations the actions of the local administration could be interpreted as aimed ay supporting one side of the conflict. This only embittered the militants and increased the number of victims. The growth of terrorism in 1905-1907 was clearly connected to the explicit venality of certain bureaucrats who were easily bribed by the terrorists. History knows numerous instances when the bureaucrats and military were selling weapons to both the Azeris and the Armenians. What was the cause of the conflict?Obviously, the return of the historic lands and “historical justice” were part of the discourse. The current territory of Azerbaijan and Armenia was mostly shared by the three regional governments – Baku, Elizavetpol, and Erivan. All these regions were merely the administrative units of the Russian Empire and were ruled by governors appointed from St. Petersburg. Therefore, any territorial requests were out of the question. The conflict could have a purely ethnic character, which in that situation was expressed in religious terms – between Armenians-Georgians and Muslims. The later attempts to present this conflict as a military struggle between Armenians and only Azeri Turks have no logic behind them.Who needed this conflict? Of course, it would be incorrect to claim that there were no reasons for this ethnic conflict. There were economic reasons. They were formulated in a struggle for the regional resources, a struggle with an ethnic character. Naturally, oil and everything connected to it became a priority in this conflict. Armenian expansion in the region and first of all in the oil industry was ethnically the most persistent. Armenians composed 18.8.% of Baku's population, but owned 43% of all the property. I have already mentioned the big role of Armenian capital in all the branches of the oil business. Nevertheless, although the Muslim entrepreneurs were annoyed by this fact, it alone could no become the reason for a long ethnic conflict. A more serious reason, a more powerful incentive was needed.It is believed that the conflict started after a prison guard of Armenian ethnicity killed an Azeri prisoner and the revenge attempts for this. This is how the military clashes in Baku started and then moved to the regions of Baku, Elizavetpol, Tiflis and Erivan. Bloody events took place in the main cities –Baku, Elizavetpol, Tiflis, Erivan. It is interesting to note that the oil industry was particularly damaged. The numerous arsons basically paralyzed the industry. Why did the anger of the fighters become channelled in this particular direction? There is no precise answer to this question now, but some researchers see here a “British trace”. The influence of the British firms in Azerbaijan at the turn of the century was clear, but there are no traces of the British secret services, it is pure speculation. A.A. Igolkin in his study notes the suspicious fact that property belonging to the British firms was not affected by the riots.The British firms were indeed interested in a crisis of the Baku oil industry. It would allow oil prices on the world markets to rise and increase the profitability of these firms, whose oil property was scattered across the world. However, even if we agree with this argument, we still face the question: what was the mechanism of stimulating the arsons?Igolkin and some other authors assume that the cunning strategy of the British was performed by the mullahs who flooded Baku and talked to the workers from Persia, who then performed their destructive mission in Baku. As S.S. Khizhnyakov and V.G. Osipov put it, “if we consider that the tactics of stimulating religious and ethnic conflicts was successfully used by the British secret service and that the mullahs appeared from Persia that was under strong British influence, it is clear who was that third dark force that directed the events”. Maybe it is clear to the authors, but I am afraid that they simply demonstrate their incompetence. First of all: who were these mullahs? It seems that they belonged to some category of Muslim theologians known as Sufis. Sufis were never known for religious or ethnic fanaticism. Blaming them for stimulation is groundless.The authors believe that the numerous Persian workers were the driving force of the pogrom. It is incorrect though to call them Persian because, although from Persia, many of them were ethnic Azeris. If we follow the logic of the authors, we can conclude that ethnic Armenians could have also been used by that “third force”. Unlike Azeris, Armenians had a terrorist organization in the form of the “Dashnaktsutyun” party. Muslims got something similar only in 1905 in the form of the “Difai” party, which from an organizational point of view was much weaker than “Dashnaktsutyun”. It is known that the Russian government even banned “Dashnaktsutyun”, because the aim of that party was to create an independent Armenian state that would include some territories of the Russian empire. Dashnaks used terrorist methods, and the assassination of tsarist bureaucrats was not that rare. It is interesting that the activity of “Dashnaktsutyun” decreased considerably after 1907, when Russia and Britain reached an “entente”. Before that Russian-British relations were quite tense, especially after the Russian expansion into China. This was reflected also in British diplomatic support for Japan during the Russo-Japanese war. It can be said that then Britain and Japan were allies against Russia. The contradictions in Central Asia connected to the establishment of Afghanistan's borders also complicated Russian-British relations. Britain was interested in destabilizing the internal situation in Russian and supported the opposition forces.
