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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