Today, the citizens of Azerbaijan commemorate the 108th anniversary of the March Genocide of 1918 - one of the most harrowing tragedies in human history in terms of its brutality and scale. Tens of thousands of peaceful Azerbaijanis were killed solely on the basis of their nationality.
Today is a day of mourning in Azerbaijan. One hundred and eight years ago, on March 31, 1918, an unprecedented act of intimidation against the local population began. Bolsheviks and Dashnaks, showing no mercy to children, the elderly, or women, launched a ruthless campaign to eliminate Azerbaijanis, carrying out an unparalleled massacre of civilians that lasted until April 3.
The frenzied slaughter engulfed Baku, Ganja, Shamakhi, Guba, Karabakh, Zangazur, Nakhchivan, Lankaran, and other regions of the country. With particular cruelty, over 70,000 innocent people were killed. In the Baku district alone, 229 villages were wiped off the face of the earth; in the Ganja district, 272; in the Zangazur mahal, 115; and in Karabakh, 157. All these villages were burned to the ground along with their inhabitants. Thousands of families who managed to escape the massacre were exiled from their native lands. This orgy of lawlessness and impunity constituted a large-scale crime against humanity, violating all norms of international law and human morality.
The immediate cause of the atrocities was a fierce political struggle. The Musavat party sought to create an independent Azerbaijan Democratic Republic. However, for the Bolsheviks, who were then sitting in the Baku Soviet, it was critically important to retain control over territories of such economic significance. At the time, Azerbaijan was producing about 90% of all oil extracted within the Russian Empire. The Bolsheviks had a clear directive: to hold onto the country's oil-rich lands at any cost.
Achieving this alone was difficult, so they resorted to a ruse. The Bolsheviks formed a coalition with the Armenian radical nationalist party Dashnaktsutyun, whose members were nurtured in an atmosphere of Turkophobia and Islamophobia. To achieve their goals, they were prepared to commit any atrocity to completely eliminate Azerbaijanis from the region and subsequently declare all these territories part of an Armenian state.
The massacre was triggered by an event on March 27. A group of soldiers and officers from a Muslim regiment arrived in Baku from Lankaran for the funeral of Muhammad, the son of prominent Azerbaijani industrialist Haji Zeynalabdin Taghiyev. Muhammad served in the same division and died in a fatal accident - due to the careless handling of a weapon.
After bidding farewell to their comrade, on March 29 the soldiers prepared to sail back to Lankaran on the ship Evelina. At that point, the Baku Soviet decided to disarm them, sending armed guards, among whom were many Armenians, to the port. The detachment refused to comply, and the guards forcibly seized their weapons.
The timing of the action was not coincidental. Baku was hosting officers of the former "Wild Division" who had arrived from the fronts of World War I. There were only a few dozen of them. However, the ostensibly "noble" goal of disarming them became the pretext for the start of the mass killings. The "dirty work" was conveniently entrusted to Armenian soldiers under the control of the Dashnaks, who had also returned from the front. They eagerly and with relish instigated the mass slaughter.
The statistics are horrifying. In Baku alone, from March 31 to April 3, 1918, Dashnak forces killed 12,000 people. In the districts of Arash, Goychay, and Shamakhi, 8,000 people were killed; in Zangazur, 7,700; in Shamakhi, 7,000; in Nakhchivan and Sharur, 3,000; and in Guba, 2,000.
But even this seemed insufficient to Andranik's bandits. They looted and burned surrounding villages, often along with their inhabitants. In the Erivan province alone, 211 Azerbaijani villages were destroyed in a matter of days. In Karabakh, 150 Azerbaijani villages met the same fate. A similar destiny befell 122 Azerbaijani villages around Guba, 115 in Zangazur, 92 in the Kars region, and 58 around Shamakhi.
The forces were not just unequal; they were incomparable. A peaceful population faced well-trained, heavily armed Dashnak terrorists with immense combat experience. They were resisted only by the virtually unarmed members of Musavat and a handful of Wild Division officers. Moreover, the Caspian Military Fleet soon joined the inhumane actions of the Dashnaks, beginning to shell the Muslim quarters of Baku with artillery from its warships.
Even at this stage, the March massacre could still have been prevented, but the Bolsheviks chose not to, aiming to further inflame the interethnic conflict. They hoped this conflict would hinder the struggle of the peoples of the South Caucasus for their independence. Another contributing factor was that the advanced intelligentsia of Azerbaijan, most of whom were in Tbilisi participating in the work of the Transcaucasian Seim, could not intercede on behalf of the country's population. It was only after their return to Baku and the establishment of the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic in May of the same year that an official assessment was made of the genocidal atrocities.
Immediately after the proclamation of the ADR, the new authorities of Azerbaijan declared March 31 a day of national mourning. To investigate the tragedy, the Council of Ministers issued a decree on July 15, 1918, establishing an Extraordinary Investigative Commission. This marked the first attempt in history to provide a political assessment of the acts of genocide against Azerbaijanis and the occupation of their lands that had continued for over a century. However, this work was interrupted by the fall of the republic.
In the 1990s, this work resumed, revealing new horrifying facts. In Shamakhi alone, during March-April 1918, under the leadership of Armenian criminals S. Shaumyan, S. Lalayev, Z. Arestisyan, and the brothers T. Amirov and A. Amiryan, approximately 14,000-16,000 people were killed. In its 40 villages and surroundings, 6,000-8,000 people were killed. The number of people displaced as a result of the Shamakhi events exceeded 18,000. In the Guba district, over 16,000 people were killed with particular cruelty, and 167 villages were destroyed. Researchers found that Armenian armed formations under the command of Amazasp killed not only Muslims but also Jews: in 1918-1919, Armenians killed up to 3,000 Jews in Guba.
Seventy-four years later, history repeated itself. This time, the Azerbaijani town of Khojaly was subjected to genocide. On the night of February 25-26, 1992, as a result of a treacherous attack on the town, 613 people were killed with particular cruelty, including 106 women, 63 children, and 70 elderly. A total of 487 people were wounded, including 76 children, and 1,275 people were taken hostage.
Only after the restoration of Azerbaijan's independence was a state political and legal assessment given to all these acts of massacre. This was done by the Decree of national leader Heydar Aliyev dated March 26, 1998, "On the Genocide of Azerbaijanis."
