26 Baku Commissars
The 26 Baku Commissars were Bolshevik and Left SR members of the Baku Soviet Commune that was established in Baku after the October Revolution. The commune was led by Stepan Shahumyan until July 26, 1918 when the Bolsheviks were forced out of power by a coalition of Dashnaks, Right SRs and Mensheviks. After the overthrow, the Baku commissars attempted to escape but were captured by the White Army and placed in a Baku prison. On September 14, Red Army soldiers broke into the prison and freed the commissars who then boarded a ship to Krasnovodsk, where they were promptly arrested, and on the night of September 20, 1918 executed by a firing squad between the stations of Pereval and Akhcha-Kuyma of the Transcaucasian Railroad.
Baku Commune
The Baku Commune was a short-lived political entity which lasted from 13 April to 25 July, 1918. During its brief existence the Commune had to face several problems: from the shortage of food and supplies to the threat of a strong Ottoman Empire Army who wanted to attack Baku. Despite the difficult conditions, the Commune managed to make several social reform, like for example the nationalization of the oil industry. This is how the Trotskyist writer Victor Serge desribed the situation in May, June and July and the state of the small Red Army of Baku [1]:
In May, June and July the inhabitants could be given only minute rations of nuts and sunflower seed; the small quantities of corn that the Soviet managed to bring in by sea were reserved for the troops. Attempts at requisitioning were made by the small Red Army of Baku, a poorly disciplined, poorly officered body composed largely of Armenians who were alien to the revolutionary spirit of the proletariat. These drank in excess and plundered the Moslem peasants, causing disaffection among them.
On 5 June, the Baku Red Army repulsed victoriously an assault of overwhelming Ottoman troops but later it launched an unsuccessful assault on Ganja where the headquarters of the ottoman "Army of Islam" were and was obliged to retreat to Baku. [2] At this point, Dashanaks, Right SRs and Mensheviks started to negotiate with General Dunsterville, 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 were opposed to it but on 25 July the majority of the Soviet voted to call in the British and the Bolsheviks resigned. The Baku Commune ended its existence and was replaced by the Centralcaspian Dictatorship.
Contrarly to what happened in many parts of Russia, where the Bolsheviks earned a reputation for ruthlessness executing those who didn't support them, Bolsheviks of Baku were not so strict. Cheka in Baku executed only two persons, they were members of the Soviet who were caught in embezzling public funds: the Commissar for Finance, Aleksandr Kireev, and the commissar of the steamship Meve, Sergei Pokrovskii. [3] [4]
The execution
The Bolsheviks and some loyal troops tried to reach Astrakhan by sea but their ship was intercepted by the military vessels of the Caspian fleet and after undergoing an hour's bombardment in mid-sea they surrendered. Most of the Bolshevik militants were arrested and they remained in prison until a commando led by Anastas Mikoyan freed them from the prison with a military action. Dzhaparidze, Azizbekov, Shahumyan and their comrades boarded a ship to Krasnovodsk, where they found a government led by SRs and some British officers who immediately ordered the arrest of the 'Commissars'. On the night of September 20, three whole days after being arrested, twenty-six militants were executed by a firing squad between the stations of Pereval and Akhcha-Kuyma of the Transcaucasian Railroad. How Anastas Mikoyan, who was part of the group, managed to survive is still a mystery as it is the reason why his life was spared. Here it is a description of the moments before the execution[5].
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 ...
Impact of execution
Soviet officials blamed the execution on British agents acting in the Baku area at the time, in particular, Reginald Teague-Jones.[6][7] [8] The British denied involvement in the incident, saying it was done by local officials without any knowledge of the British. This caused a further souring of relations between the British and the then fledgling Soviet government and helped lead to the confrontational attitude of both sides in the coming years.
The Soviets would later immortalize the death of the 26 commissars through, among other things, movies,[9] artwork,[10] stamps,[11] and public works including the 26 Commissars Memorial.
Commissars
The 26 Commissars were:[12]
Stepan Shahumyan
Meshadi Azizbekov
Prokopius Dzhaparidze
Ivan Fioletov
Mir-Hasan Vazirov
Grigory Korganov
Yakov Zevin
Grigory Petrov
L.V. Malygin
A.M. Amiryan
M.V. Basin
S.G. Osepyan
E.A. Berg
V.F. Poluhin
F.F. Solntzev
A.A. Bor'yan
I.Y. Gabyshev
M.R. Koganov
B.A. Avakyan
I.P. Metaksa
I.M. Nikolayshvili
A.M. Kostandyan
S.A. Bogdanov
A.A. Bogdanov
I.A. Mishne
T.M. Amirov
International composition
The twenty-six Baku Commissars were not all Commissars and were not all Bolsheviks, some of them were Left SRs. They were of many different nationalities among them: Jew, Russian, Georgian, Armenian and Azerbaijani.
Notes
- ^ [1]
- ^ [2]
- ^ [3]
- ^ [4]
- ^ V. Chaikin, On the History of the Russian Revolution (K Istorii Rossi skoi Revoliutsii) (Moscow, 1922)
- ^ Reginald Teague-Jones, The Spy Who Disappeared: Diary of a Secret Mission to Russian and Central Asia in 1918 Gollancz, 1990.
- ^ [5]
- ^ [6]
- ^ [7]
- ^ [8]
- ^ http://home.nestor.minsk.by/fsunews/ussr/1968/su3535.html]
- ^ Peter Hopkirk, Like Hidden Fire Kodansha, 1995. Names transliterated from a Soviet pamphlet showing names and pictures of the commissars.