Seriously concerned about Shahoumian's popularity in Tiflis, the Commissariat ordered his arrest on the date the Seim was to assemble. Utilising the convenient hideouts of Tiflis, Shahoumian avoided the police; then, with the aid of several of his anti-Bolshevik Armenian compatriots, he slipped away to Baku. 103 Later both Shahoumian and Stalin claimed that Dashnaktsoutiun and Social Revolutionary part had opposed creation of the Seim and had even boycotted its opening session. 104 Though the latter contention was incorrect, Bolshevik appraisal of the Armenian psychology was not completely erroneous. Dashnakists in both Baku and Yerevan were highly sceptical of the Tiflis proceedings. They often felt that the party's Bureau, located in the Transcaucasian capital, had been subordinate to the will of the Georgian Social Democrats. Several Baku Armenian delegates to the Seim did not attend a single session. 105 Aram Manoukian, the chairman of the Yerevan National Council, also refused to participate in the "intellectual gathering," since the future of Transcaucasia depended not upon the decisions of the Seim but on the activities at the front. 106 Even in Tiflis, the Armenian members of the legislature were not in accord with the forceful anti-Bolshevik measures of the Mensheviks. They protested vociferously when a Bolshevik-sponsored rally, remonstrating against the convening of the Seim, was fired upon in Alexandrovsky Park by the Georgian militia. At least five men were killed and fifteen wounded in this ominous event. Dashnakists and Social Revolutionaries, in an attempt to embarrass their Menshevik colleagues, demanded explanations and an investigation of the incident. 107 But the tenacity of the Mensheviks were rewarded, for, recognising the serious threat to their physical existence, the Bolshevik leaders abandoned Tiflis. By March, 1918, their exodus toward Baku and the North Caucasus was under way. 108
During the opening session of the Seim, on the evening of February 23, the Menshevik candidate Nikolai Chkheidze, veteran of the Petrograd Soviet, was elected president of the legislature. Following the reading of a Bolshevik boycott proclamation, Gegechkori reviewed the activities of the Commissariat whose duties he considered completed. The Seim nevertheless authorised the Commissariat to act, after some reorganisation, as an executive until a government could be formed. 109 Besides listening to messages of felicitation appropriate to an inaugural session, the Seim confirmed the credentials of the delegates, affiliated politically as follows: 110
| Social Democrat, Menshevik 111 |
33 |
| Musavat-Moslem Non-partisan Bloc |
30 |
| Dashnaktsoutiun |
27 |
| Moslem Socialist Bloc |
7 |
| Social Revolutionary |
5 |
| Moslem Social Democrat (Hummet) 112 |
4 |
| Moslems of Russia (Ittihad) |
3 |
| Georgian National Democrat |
1 |
| Georgian Social Federalist |
1 |
| Constitutional Democrat 113 |
1 |
|
