The March Events and Baku Commune of 1918

Abstract

This article investigates the March Events of 1918: city-wide fighting for control of Baku that involved the Bolshevik party, the Red Guards, and various Armenian and Azerbaijani militias. Besides many of these combatants, thousands of innocent Azerbaijanis and others (Caucasus peoples and Persians) perished in the hostilities. Focusing on the Events as an exercise of power and violence, I argue that the establishment of the Baku Commune (like the later formation of the multi-national Soviet Union) was indivisible from these circumstances of national and sectarian war. Drawing from Azerbaijani sources long-suppressed by the Communist regime, I recount some of the key contexts, mechanics, and legacies of the Events. As an elucidation of the facts, this study sets out to help historians calibrate their interpretations, better weigh the nature of Soviet power, and refine what we usually term “Armenian” or “Azerbaijani” aggression. These peoples were not preternaturally disposed to violence. Suffering was not the exclusive province of either community. Rather, political strategies have drawn them into cycles of violence and bonds of recrimination that have recurred sporadically into the present day.