| Baku Commune | |||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1918 | |||||||||||
 Flag | |||||||||||
| Capital | Baku | ||||||||||
| • Type | Commune | ||||||||||
| Historical era | World War I | ||||||||||
| 13 April 1918 | |||||||||||
• July 26 Baku Coup d'état | 26 July 1918 | ||||||||||
| |||||||||||
| Today part of | Azerbaijan | ||||||||||
The26 Baku Commissars wereBolshevik andLeft Socialist Revolutionary (SR) members of the Baku Commune. The commune was established in the city ofBaku, which was then the capital of the briefly independentAzerbaijan Democratic Republic, and is now the capital of theRepublic of Azerbaijan. The commune, led byStepan Shahumyan, existed until 26 July 1918 when the Bolsheviks were forced out of power by a coalition ofDashnaks,Right SRs andMensheviks.
After their overthrow, the Bakucommissars attempted to leave Baku but were captured by theCentrocaspian Dictatorship and imprisoned. On 14 September 1918, during thefall of Baku to Ottoman forces,Red Army soldiers broke into their prison and freed the commissars; they then boarded a ship toKrasnovodsk, where they were promptly arrested by local authorities and, on the night of 20 September, executed by a firing squad between the stations of Pereval and Akhcha-Kuyma on theTranscaspian Railway by Turkmen SR soldiers of theAshkhabad Committee. They were executed for essentially letting theIslamic Army of the Caucasus seize Baku.[1]
TheBaku Commune lasted from 13 April to 25 July 1918. It came to power after the bloody confrontation with theMuslim population, known as theMarch Days in Baku. During its brief existence, the Commune had to face several problems: from the shortage of food and supplies to the threat of a strongOttoman Empire Army which wanted to attack Baku. Despite the difficult conditions, the Commune carried out several social reforms, such as thenationalization of the oil industry.[2]
Modeled on the Paris Commune, the Baku Commune included its ownCouncil of People's Commissars (Sovnarkom)[3] and Commissariat of Foreign Affairs.[4]
On 5 June 1918 the Baku Red Army repulsed an assault by overwhelmingOttoman troops, but later it launched an unsuccessful assault onGanja, the headquarters of theOttoman Army of Islam, and was obliged to retreat to Baku.[5] At this point,Dashnaks, Right SRs and Mensheviks started to negotiate with GeneralDunsterville, the commander of the British troops in Persia, inviting his troops to Baku in order to defend the city from an imminent Ottoman attack. The Bolsheviks and their leftist allies opposed this scheme, but on 25 July the majority of the Soviet voted to call in the British, and the Bolsheviks resigned.[6] The Baku Commune was imprisoned by Turkmen Social Revolutionaries for participation in unlawful military formations,[citation needed] particularly for theMarch Days atrocities and was replaced by the Central-Caspian Dictatorship.
In contrast to what happened in many parts of Russia, where the Bolsheviks earned a reputation for ruthlessness executing those who did not support them, the Bolsheviks of Baku were not so strict. TheCheka in Baku executed only two persons, both members of the Soviet caught in embezzling public funds: the Commissar for Finance, Aleksandr Kireev, and the commissar of the steamshipMeve, Sergei Pokrovskii.[7][5]
After thefall of the Baku Soviet in July 1918, the Bolshevik leaders and some loyal troops tried to reachAstrakhan, the onlyCaspian port still in Bolshevik hands. However, their ship was intercepted by the military vessels of theCaspian fleet and after undergoing an hour's bombardment in mid-sea they surrendered and returned to Baku. Most of the Bolshevik militants were arrested and remained in prison until a commando unit led byAnastas Mikoyan freed them from their prison.
Shahumyan, Dzhaparidze, Azizbekov, and their comrades, along with Mikoyan, then boarded the shipTurkmen, intending to reach Astrakhan by sea. According to recent historians, the sailors chose instead to sail toKrasnovodsk for fear of being arrested in Astrakhan. At Krasnovodsk the commissars were arrested by the town's commandant who requested further orders from the "Ashkhabad Committee", led by the Socialist RevolutionaryFyodor Funtikov, about what should be done with them. Three days later, British Major-GeneralWilfrid Malleson, on hearing of their arrest, contacted Britain's liaison-officer in Ashkhabad, CaptainReginald Teague-Jones, to suggest that the commissars be handed over to British forces to be used as hostages in exchange for British citizens held by the Soviets. That same day, Teague-Jones attended the committee's meeting in Ashkabad which had the task of deciding the fate of the Commissars. For some reason, Teague-Jones did not communicate Malleson's request to the committee, and claimed he left before a decision was made.[8] He further claimed that the next day he discovered the committee had eventually decided to issue orders that the commissars should be executed. According to historian Richard H. Ullman, Teague-Jones could have stopped the executions if he wanted since the Ashkabad Committee was dependent on British support and could not refuse a request from its powerful ally, but he decided not to do so.[9]
On the night of 20 September, three days after being arrested, twenty-six of the commissars were executed by a firing squad between the stations of Pereval and Akhcha-Kuyma on theTrans-Caspian railway. How Anastas Mikoyan, who was part of the group, managed to survive is still uncertain, as is the reason why his life was spared. In 1922, V. Chaikin, a Socialist Revolutionary journalist, published a description of the moments before the execution.[10]
At around 6 A.M. [relates a witness], the twenty-six commissars were told of the fate awaiting them while they were in the train. They were taken out in groups of eight or nine men. They were obviously shocked, and kept a tense silence. One sailor shouted: "I'm not afraid, I'm dying for liberty." One of the executioners replied that "We too will die for liberty sooner or later, but we mean it in a different way from you." The first group of commissars, led from the train in the semi-darkness, was dispatched with a single salvo. The second batch tried to run away but was mown down after several volleys. The third resigned itself to its fate ...
Soviet officials later blamed the executions on British agents acting in the Baku area at the time.[11][12][13] When Soviet rule was established in the whole Caspian area, Funtikov, the head of the Ashkhabad 'Directorate' responsible for the executions, was imprisoned. Funtikov put all blame for the executions onto Britain, and in particular Teague-Jones who, he claimed, had ordered him to have the commissars shot. Funtikov was tried and shot in Baku in 1926. Britain denied involvement in the incident, saying it was done by local officials without any knowledge of the British.
This accusation caused a further souring of relations between Britain and the nascent Soviet government and helped lead to the confrontational attitude of both sides in the coming years.
According toSoviet historiography, two British officers on board the commissars' ship ordered it to sail to Krasnovodsk instead of Astrakhan, where they found a government led by SRs and British officers who immediately ordered the arrest of the commissars. The Soviets would later immortalize the 26 commissars as fallen heroes,[14] through movies,[citation needed] artwork,[15] stamps,[16] and public works including the26 Commissars Memorial in Baku. In Isaak Brodsky's famous painting, British officers are depicted as being present at the executions.[17]
Boris Vladimirovich Sennikov published a book in 2004 about his findings on theTambov Rebellion where he mentioned several facts about the event.[18]
Sennikov claims that the famous Brodsky's painting is an invention of the Soviet historiography. The truth was established by the special commission of theAll-Russian Central Executive Committee (VTsIK) that arrived from Moscow. The commission was headed byVadim Chaikin (PSR). The commission also consisted of a big group of a high-ranking Moscow'sCheka officers headed byYakov Peters, an international criminal associated with theSiege of Sidney Street. Sennikov also brings up a quote of Chaikin in the article ofSuren Gazaryan "That should not be repeated" in the Leningrad magazine "Zvezda": "The painting of BrodskyExecution of the 26 Baku Commissars is historically false. They were not shot, but ratherdecapitated. And the executioner of the penalty was a single man - aTurkmen, a gigantic strengthbogatyr. That Turkmen by himself with his own hands using ashashka beheaded all of them."[19] The pit with remains of the commissars and their heads was uncovered under the surveillance of the VTsIK special commission and representatives ofCheka. The report on the death of Baku commissars was sent by the commission to VTsIK,Sovnarkom, and theCentral Committee ofRKP(b).
In 1922 Vadim Chaikin published his bookTo the history of the Russian Revolution through the Grazhbin Publishing (Moscow) commemorating the first part "Execution of 26 Baku Commissars" to the event. After serving time in theOryol Prison Chaikin on 11 September 1941 he wasexecuted by a firing squad along with 156 other Oryol prison inmates during theMedvedev Forest massacre.
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The 26 Baku Commissars comprisedBolsheviks andLeft Social Revolutionaries, and excluded the Right SRs, Mensheviks, and Dashnaks.[3] There were many ethnicities among them:Greek,Latvian,Jewish,Russian,Georgian,Armenian andAzerbaijani.[citation needed]
The 26 "commissars" were:[20][21]
In 1920, the remains of the commissars were exhumed and reburied as Soviet martyrs in a central square in Baku.[22] They remained their until 2009 when Azerbaijani authorities began demolishing the city's26 Commissars Memorial.[23] This was the latest monument of several that had been built to commemorate the Commissars erected in that park during the Soviet period. This last monument itself had been fenced-off since July 2008.[23] The remains of the commissars were reburied atHovsan Cemetery on 26 January 2009, with participation of Muslim, Jewish and Christian clergy, who conducted religious ceremonies.[24]
The dismantling was opposed by some localleft-wingers and by theAzerbaijan Communist Party in particular.[23] It also upset Armenia as the Armenian public believed that the demolition and reburial was motivated by the reluctance of the Azerbaijanis, after theNagorno-Karabakh War to have ethnic Armenians buried in the center of their capital.[25] Another scandal happened when Azerbaijani press reports claimed that during the exhumation only 21 bodies were discovered and that "Shahumyan and four other Armenian commissars managed to escape their murderers".[25][26][27][28] This report was questioned by Shahumyan's granddaughter Tatyana, now living inMoscow, who told theRussian dailyKommersant that:
It is impossible to believe that they weren't all buried. There is a film in the archives of 26 bodies being buried. Apart from this, my grandmother was present at the reburial.[25]
Almost all monuments in Azerbaijan dedicated to the commissars including Shahumyan, Azizbekov, Dzhaparidze and Fioletov, have been demolished. Most streets named after the commissars have been renamed.
Russian prominent poetSergei Yesenin wrote "Ballad of the Twenty-six" to commemorate the Baku Commissars, poem first published inThe Baku Worker, 22 September 1925.[29]
Russian bandWOMBA named one of its albumsThe 27th Baku Commissar.[citation needed]
Italian prominent writerTiziano Terzani wrote about the Baku Commissars in his bookBuonanotte, signor Lenin (Goodnight, Mr Lenin: A Journey Through the End of the Soviet Empire, 1992).[citation needed]
A street in southwest-central Moscow is named after the 26 Baku CommisarsUlitsa 26 Bakinskikh Komissarov.
Nine Photos of past monuments dedicated to the 26 Baku Commissars, plus photo of the funeral.Azerbaijan International, Vol. 15:2–4 (2011), pp. 167–169.
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