26 Baku Commissars
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The 26 Baku Commissars were Bolshevik and Left SR members of the Baku Soviet Commune that was established in Baku (current capital of Republic of Azerbaijan)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.
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[edit] 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]
[edit] The executions
After the fall of the Baku Soviet, the Bolshevik leaders and some loyal troops tried to reach Astrakhan by sea. However, their ship was intercepted by the military vessels of the Caspian 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, after the fall of Baku to the Turks, a commando unit led by Anastas Mikoyan freed them from their prison.
Shahumyan, Dzhaparidze, Azizbekov, and their comrades, along with Mikoyan, then boarded the ship Turkmen, intending to reach Astrakhan, the only Caspian port still in Bolshevik hands. According to recent historians, the sailors chose instead to sail to Krasnovodsk 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 Revolutionary Fyodor Funtikov, about what should be done with them. Three days later, British Major-General Wilfred Malleson, on hearing of their arrest, contacted Britain's liaison-officer in Ashkhabad 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, the liaison-officer, Captain Reginald 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 he left before a decission was made. [5] The following day he discovered the committee had eventually decided to issue orders that the commissars should be executed. According to historian Richard H. Ullman, Reginald Teague-Jones could stop the executions if he only wanted since the Ashkabad Committee was totally dependent on British support and couldn't refuse a request from its powerful ally, but he decided not to do so [6]
On the night of September 20, 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 the Transcaucasian Railroad. 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[7].
| “ | 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 ... | ” |
[edit] Impact of the executions
Soviet officials later blamed the executions on British agents acting in the Baku area at the time.[8][9] [10] 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 fledgling Soviet government and helped lead to the confrontational attitude of both sides in the coming years.
According to Soviet historiography two British officers onboard 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 death of the 26 commissars through, among other things, movies,[11] artwork,[12] stamps,[13] and public works including the 26 Commissars Memorial in Baku. In Isaak Brodsky's famous painting, British officers are incorrectly depicted as being present at the executions.[14]
According to B.Sennikov, the 26 where decapitated and not shot and the executioner was a Turkmenian. (B. Sennikov, Tambovskoe vosstanie 1918-1921 gg. i raskrest'janivanie Rossii 1929-1933 gg., Moskva, 2004)
[edit] The Commissars
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.
The 26 Commissars were:[15]
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
[edit] Trivia
Russian alternative music band WOMBA named one of its albums The 27th Baku Commissar.
Italian prominent writer Tiziano Terzani wrote about the Baku Commissars in his book 'Buonanotte, signor Lenin' (Goodnight, Mr Lenin: A Journey Through the End of the Soviet Empire, 1992).
[edit] Notes
- ^ Year One of the Russian Revolution | Chpt. 6
- ^ http://www.pjsymes.com.au/articles/az-baku.htm
- ^ Year One of the Russian Revolution | Chpt. 6
- ^ http://www.pjsymes.com.au/articles/az-baku.htm
- ^ C. Dobson & J. Miller The Day We Almost Bombed Moscow Hodder and Stoughton, 1986. p94-95.
- ^ Richard H. Ullman Anglo-Soviet Relations 1917-21. Vol. I. Intervention and the War Princeton, N.J., 1961 p. 324.
- ^ , 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.
- ^ The Shooting of the Twenty-Six Baku Comrades
- ^ [1]
- ^ Dvadtsat shest komissarov (1933)
- ^ Художники-баталисты Свободной России
- ^ http://home.nestor.minsk.by/fsunews/ussr/1968/su3535.html
- ^ C. Dobson & J. Miller The Day We Almost Bombed Moscow Hodder and Stoughton, 1986. p96
- ^ Peter Hopkirk, Like Hidden Fire Kodansha, 1995. Names transliterated from a Soviet pamphlet showing names and pictures of the commissars.
