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The "March Days" in Baku
Located on the Apsheron Peninsula, Baku was the most cosmopolitan and proletarian city in Transcaucasia. No single political party was powerful enough to control the civil administration or the soviets. During the November 1917 elections to the Constituent Assembly, for example, the following returns were recorded for the leading slates: 71
| Slate number and party |
Votes |
| I |
Menshevik |
5,667 |
| II |
Kadet |
9,062 |
| III |
Social Revolutionary |
18,789 |
| IV |
Dashnaktsoutiun |
20,314 |
| V |
Bolshevik |
22,276 |
| X |
Musavat |
21,752 |
| XIV |
Moslems of Russia |
7,841 |
In the Workers' and Soldiers' Soviet elected in December, the Bolshevik minority was able to dominate the Executive Committee only with the indulgence of many non-Communist members. On issues such as the approval of the Sovnarkom's Brest-Litovsk policy, Musavat delegates voted with the Bolsheviks, whereas most Dashnakists and Social Revolutionaries assisted Shahoumian in moves against Baku's non-socialist organisations. 72 Shahoumian, though often castigating the non-Bolshevik groups, did not renounce joint action. On more than one occasion he wrote that, since the Bolsheviks alone could not master Baku, it was necessary to rely on other elements. By mid-March, however, relations with the Moslems had reached the breaking point, for the powerful Musavat party refused to accept the Bolshevik contention that the Soviet was the only legal administrative body in Baku. 73
While supporting the Baku Soviet, the more than seventy thousand Armenians of the city selected a national council to express their collective will. This council, formed in December, 1917, assumed the administration of the Armenian troops who, arriving daily by rail from Vladikavkaz and Petrovsk or by sea from Astrakhan, sought passage to western Transcaucasia. Stranded in Baku because of Moslem control of the railway to Tiflis, the several thousand restive Armenian soldiers threatened to disrupt the uneasy lull. 74 Moslem and Armenian councils conferred repeatedly to break the deadlock, but the roads remained closed. The Musavatists of Baku claimed to have neither jurisdiction nor influence over the bands that blocked the railway. The subsequent organisation of two Armenian regiments from the nearly six thousand soldiers elicited sharp protest from the Moslem spokesmen. The explanation that the regiments had been formed to be combat-ready upon arrival at the Kars front did not satisfy the Tatars, who feverishly reinforced and augmented their own militia. 75 By February, 1918, interracial violence had erupted in several districts of the Baku guberniia. Still, a tenuous calm prevailed in the city until a feud between the Musavat party and the Executive Committee of the Soviet provoked the tempest known as the "March Days."
On March 29, a deputation from the Moslem "Savage Division," then based near Lenkoran, arrived in Baku aboard the "Evelina" to participate in the funeral of a comrade, the son of millionaire Haji Zeinal Abdin Taghiev. Returning to the ship after the services, the Moslem troops were involved in a skirmish with a detachment subject to the Bolshevik-controlled Military Revolutionary Committee. 76 When the Military Committee of the Baku Soviet learned this, it issued orders to disarm the men from the "Evelina." 77 The Armenian council declared its neutrality in the evolving Bolshevik-Moslem conflict and attempted to mediate between the disputants. Fortunately, partial minutes from the Council have been preserved, providing an important source for investigation into the March events, which remain the subject of vigorous controversy. According to those records, the Council sent representatives to the Moslem leaders and the Soviet Executive Committee, offering its services in re-establishing order. Those same minutes, however, reveal that the Armenian Council was aware of its inability to restrain the troops under its jurisdiction if the hostilities were to continue. 78
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72) B. Ishkhanian, "Kontr-revoliutsiia v Zakavkaz'e" (Baku, 1919), pp. 67-68, 78-81; Firuz Kazemzadeh, "The Struggle for Transcaucasia (1917-1921)" (New York and Oxford, [1951]), pp. 66-67.
73) L. A. Khurshudian, "Stepan Shahoumian: Petakan yev partiakan gortzenoutyoune 1917-1918 tvakannerin" [Stepan Shahoumian: Governmental and Party Activity, 1917-1918] (Yerevan, 1959), pp. 212-217; Sergei Melik-Yolchian, "Bakvi herosamarte", [The Heroic Battle of Baku], Hairenik Amsagir, III (May, 1925), p. 115. Until the spring of 1918, the Baku City Duma, composed of representatives of all political shades, was generally considered the legal administration.
74) A. Giulkhandanian, "Bakvi herosamarte" [The Heroic Battle of Baku], Hairenik Amsagir, XIX (September-October, 1941), (July, 1941), pp. 98-101; S. Vratsian, "Hayastani Hanrapetoutyoun" [Republic of Armenia] (2nd ed., Beirut, 1958), p. 157. Official 1912 Russian statistics for the Baku guberniia show 1,175,000 inhabitants, of whom 300,000 were Christians. Over half of the Christian element was Armenian. Within the city limits there were 378,000 residents, of whom 176,000 were Moslems; 103,000, Russians; 73,000, Armenians; and 25,000, Europeans and Jews. Approximately 60,000 of the Armenians were concentrated in the city proper, while the other 13,000, mostly labours, lived near the oil fields.
75) Sergei Melik-Yolchian, "Bakvi herosamarte", [The Heroic Battle of Baku], Hairenik Amsagir, III (May, 1925), p. 119; M. Shatirian, "Drvagner motik antsialits" [Episodes from the Recent Past], Hairenik Amsagir, I (May, 1923), p. 114; L. A. Khurshudian, "Stepan Shahoumian: Petakan yev partiakan gortzenoutyoune 1917-1918 tvakannerin" [Stepan Shahoumian: Governmental and Party Activity, 1917-1918] (Yerevan, 1959), p. 191. Nariman Narimanov, Hummetist and later Premier of Soviet Azerbaijan, accused the Musavatists of bringing interracial bloodshed one step closer by blocking the exit routes of the Armenian soldiers. Consult his "Stat'i i pis'ma" (Moscow, 1925), pp. 7-8. Abraham Giulkhandanian, chairman of the Baku Armenian Council, gives a valuable account of the Armeno-Moslem negotiations of January-March, 1918. Consult his study, (August, 1941), pp. 108-113.
76) This was the group that had left Tbilisi at the beginning of the year after the Menshevik-Right Social Revolutionary coalition had seized the property of the Regional Army Soviet. The Military "Revkom" claimed jurisdiction over the Russian Caucasus Army.
77) General G. Korganoff, "La participation des Arméniens à la guerre mondiale sur le front du Caucase, 1914-1918" (Paris, 1927), p. 176; Sergei Melik-Yolchian, "Bakvi herosamarte", [The Heroic Battle of Baku], Hairenik Amsagir, III (May, 1925), p. 119; S. Vratsian, "Hayastani Hanrapetoutyoun" [Republic of Armenia] (2nd ed., Beirut, 1958), p. 162. There are many versions of the immediate cause for the outbreak of hostilities. Richard Pipes, "The Formation of the Soviet Union" (rev. ed.; Cambridge, Mass. 1964), pp. 199-200, states that the men were disarmed before being allowed to disembark, thus triggering a Moslem reaction. Most Soviet sources claim that the men from the "Savage Division" were already in Baku recruiting warriors to assist in the squelching of the Soviet administration that had been established in Lenkoran. Therefore, the Baku Soviet Executive Committee took measures to assist Lenkoran by forbidding the departure of their armed men. For the Soviet viewpoint, consult, for example, Ds. Aghayan, "Hoktemberian revoliutsian yev hai zhoghovourdi azatagroume" [The October Revolution and the Liberation of the Armenian People] (Yerevan, 1957), pp. 163-164; and B. H. Lalabekian, "V. I. Lenine yev sovetakan kargeri hastatoumn ou amrapndoumn Andrkovkasoum" [V. I. Lenin and the Establishment and Strengthening of Soviet Order in Transcaucasia] (Yerevan, 1961), p. 55.
78) Sergei Melik-Yolchian, "Bakvi herosamarte", [The Heroic Battle of Baku], Hairenik Amsagir, III (May, 1925), pp. 120-121; S. Vratsian, "Hayastani Hanrapetoutyoun" [Republic of Armenia] (2nd ed., Beirut, 1958), pp. 162-164; M. Shatirian "Edj me hai-trkakan krivneren" [A Page from the Armeno-Turkish Battles], Hairenik Amsagir, I (September, 1923), 96.
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