Massacres of 1918 were caused by foreign states' struggle for control over Baku

On March 31, Azerbaijan marked the Day of Genocide of Azerbaijanis. The country paid tribute to the victims of the events occurred in the spring of 1918. According to the Baku authorities, in 1918, the armed forces of the "Dashnaktsutyun" Nationalist Party, supported by leaders of the Baku Soviet, committed mass killings and pogroms of civilians. The total number of victims was more than 30,000 people. On March 26, 1998, Geidar Aliev, the then Azerbaijani President, issued a decree to declare March 31 the Day of Azerbaijanis' Genocide.

According to Professor Musa Gasymov, Doctor of Historical Sciences and an Azerbaijani MP, the March massacre resulted from the exacerbation of the political struggle in the spring of 1918 for the control over oil-rich Baku.

"In the Baku Soviet, headed by Stepan Shaumyan, Bolsheviks entered into an agreement with the Armenian 'Dashnaktsutyun' Nationalist Party. Massacres of Azerbaijani population were organized to eliminate the social base for the 'Musavat' Party, which rapidly gained popularity among Muslims and which stood for the independence of Azerbaijan," Gasymly has told the "Caucasian Knot" correspondent.

According to Professor Djamil Gasanli, a historian, the massacres of Azerbaijanis committed in 1918 may be attributed to the concept of "genocide", which criteria were defined in the "Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide" adopted by the UN in 1948.

"That is, those massacres were occurred in a short time; they were committed with extreme cruelty and motivated by ethnic hatred," Djamil Gasanli believes.

Full text of the article is available on the Russian page of 24/7 Internet agency ‘Caucasian Knot’.