By Vestnik Kavkaza
Moscow-based Azerbaijanis gathered in the embassy to commemorate compatriots who became victims of the genocide of 1918. In the time of troubles which came with dissolution of the Russian Empire and holding the October Revolution a struggle for power turned into ethnic massacres in Azerbaijan.
80 years later, the president of Azerbaijan Heydar Aliyev signed the order on the Genocide of the Azerbaijanis. According to the ambassador of Azerbaijan in Russia, Polad Byul-byul Ogly, “even looking through a text of the historic document shows that it is not a simple legal act. The order contains an analysis of the events of the 19-20th centuries, which led to a chain of tragedies and losses of our people… The Council of Ministers of the Azerbaijani Democratic Republic (1918-1920) established an extraordinary investigating commission which gathered facts about the March massacre of 1918 and the followed bloody events. A special structure operated under the Foreign Ministry. It informed the international society about the matter. When the ADR collapsed, the work was interrupted, but the data base accumulated at the period enabled modern historians to study the tragic events of 1918 thoroughly.”
The ambassador urged compatriots to pay attention to spreading information about the tragedies which the Azerbaijani people faced on their historic path: “At the level of personal contacts with neighbors, colleagues, friends they should form an independent vision, contribute to elimination of cliché views and misinterpreted stereotypes.”
The events of March 1918 are connected with the events of the First World War. Yefim Pivovar, the president of RSUH, told Vestnik Kavkaza that “soon we will mark the 100th anniversary of the beginning of the First World War. Of course historians of the countries which were involved into the conflict turn to the most difficult and tragic pages of the epoch. The history of Baku in the end of the First World War is a huge page of the history of the Caucasus Front, of Russia, and modern Russia. These pages led to bloodshed and deaths of innocent citizens not on a battle field, but because of illegal activities by certain groups and structures which tried to use the situation not in favor of ideology or participation in military events on a side of this or that coalition, but in favor of their egoistic interests. But the page is complicated. There is no black and white in behavior of all sides involved into the slaughter. The First World War was a global conflict. Even though 100 years have passed, the events are connected with modern history of the South Caucasus, Russia, modern Turkey, and the whole Black Sea region. These lessons are very educatory for future generations. They are import for prevention of escalation of ethnic tension, ethnic conflicts which were numerous in the 20th century, unfortunately, and go on in the 21st century.”
