March Days

This article is about the 1918 inter-ethnic clashes and Bolshevik takeover attempt in Baku. For Polish student and intellectual protests of 1968, see 1968 Polish political crisis.

March Days
Part of the Armenian-Azerbaijani War and the Southern Front of the Russian Civil War

Azerbaijani victims in Baku
Date30 March – 2 April 1918
Location
Baku Governorate, Transcaucasian Commissariat
Result
Belligerents
Bolsheviks
Armenian Revolutionary Federation		 Musavat Party
Caucasian Native Cavalry Division
Commanders and leaders
Stepan Shahumyan Mahammad Amin Rasulzade
Strength
Bolsheviks
6,000 regular troops, Russian Fleet gunboats[1]
Dashnaks
4,000 militiamen[1]		 10,000 troops and militiamen[1]
Casualties and losses
2,500 Armenians[2] 3,000[3]-12,000 Azerbaijanis and other Muslims[4][a]

The March Days or March Events (Azerbaijani: Mart hadisələri) was a period of inter-ethnic strife and clashes which took place between 30 March – 2 April 1918 in the city of Baku and adjacent areas of the Baku Governorate of the Transcaucasian Commissariat.[5][6]

Facilitated by a political power struggle between Bolsheviks with the support of the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (Dashnaktsutiun)[7][8][9] on one side and the Azerbaijani Musavat Party on another, the events led to rumours of a possible Muslim revolt[10][11][12][13] on the part of Bolshevik and Dashnak forces[14][15] and the establishment of the short-lived Baku Commune in April 1918.[16]

Most historic sources and accounts interpret the March events in the context of civil war unrest,[17][18][7][19][20] while contemporary Azerbaijani sources officially refers to the March Days as a genocide.[21][22] These were followed by the September days where 10,000 ethnic Armenians were massacred by Army of Islam and their local Azerbaijani allies upon capturing Baku.[23][24]

  1. ^ a b c Cite error: The named reference Hopkirk was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  2. ^ a b (Pasdermadjian 1918, pp. 193)
  3. ^ a b Cite error: The named reference altstadt86 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  4. ^ a b Smith 2001, p. 228: "The results of the March events were immediate and total for the Musavat. Several hundreds of its members were killed in the fighting; up to 12,000 Muslim civilians perished; thousands of others fled Baku in a mass exodus."
  5. ^ "New Republics in the Caucasus". The New York Times Current History. 11 (2): 492. March 1920.
  6. ^ Michael Smith. "Pamiat' ob utratakh i Azerbaidzhanskoe obshchestvo/Traumatic Loss and Azerbaijani. National Memory". Azerbaidzhan i Rossiia: obshchestva i gosudarstva (Azerbaijan and Russia: Societies and States) (in Russian). Sakharov Center. Retrieved 21 August 2011.
  7. ^ a b De Waal, Thomas (2010). The Caucasus: An Introduction. Oxford University Press. p. 62. ISBN 978-0-19-539976-9. In the so called March Days of 1918, Baku descended into a mini-civil war, after the Bolsheviks declared war on Musavat Party and then stood by as Dashnak militias rampaged through the city, killing Azerbaijanis indiscriminately
  8. ^ Suny, Ronald Grigor (1993). The revenge of the past:nationalism, revolution, and the collapse of the Soviet Union. Stanford University Press. pp. 41–42. ISBN 0-8047-2247-1.
  9. ^ Buttino, Marco (1993). In a collapsing empire:underdevelopment, ethnic conflicts and nationalisms in the Soviet Union Volume 28. Feltrinelli Editor. p. 176. ISBN 88-07-99048-2. Violence increased during the Civil War, with massacres of Azeri Turks – by the combined forced of Armenian Dashnaktsutiun party and the Bolsheviks
  10. ^ Firuz Kazemzadeh. Struggle For Transcaucasia (1917—1921), New York Philosophical Library, 1951.
  11. ^ "Азербайджан и Россия. Общества и государства". old.sakharov-center.ru.
  12. ^ Tadeusz Swietochowski. Russian Azerbaijan, 1905—1920: The Shaping of a National Identity in a Muslim Community. Cambridge University Press, 2004. ISBN 0-521-52245-5, 9780521522458, pp 116—118

    The truly tragic turn of events came after acceptance of the ultimatum, when the Dashnakist allies of the Bolsheviks took to looting, burning, and killing in the Muslim sections of the city
  13. ^ World and Its Peoples: The Middle East, Western Asia, and Northern Africa. Marshall Cavendish. 2006. p. 786. ISBN 0-7614-7571-0. Muslims in Baku revolted in March 1918, but their uprising was suppressed by the city's Armenians
  14. ^ De Waal, Thomas (2003). Black garden: Armenia and Azerbaijan through peace and war. NYU Press. p. 100. ISBN 0-8147-1945-7. When in March 1918, Azerbaijanis revolted against the Baku Commune, Armenian Dashnaks and Bolshevik troops poured into the Azerbaijani quarters of the city and slaughtered thousands
  15. ^ Suny, Ronald Grigor (1993). The revenge of the past:nationalism, revolution, and the collapse of the Soviet Union. Stanford University Press. p. 42. ISBN 0-8047-2247-1. After crushing a Muslim revolt in the city, the Bolshevik-led government, with its small Red Guard, was forced to rely on Armenian troops led by Dashnak officers
  16. ^ Cronin, Stephanie (2004). Reformers and revolutionaries in modern Iran: new perspectives on the Iranian left. Psychology Press. p. 91. ISBN 0-415-33128-5. After the 'March Days', the Bolsheviks finally came to power and established their famous Baku Commune in April 1918
  17. ^ Shahumyan, Stepan (1959). Letters 1896–1918. Yerevan: State Publishing House of Armenia. pp. 63–67. On one side were fighting the Soviet Red Guard; the Red International Army, recently organized by us; the Red Fleet, which we had succeeded in reorganizing in a short time; and Armenian national units. On the other side the Muslim Savage Division in which there were quite a few Russian officers, and bands of armed Muslims, led by the Musavat Party... For us the results of the battle were brilliant. The destruction of the enemy was complete... More than three thousand were killed on both sides
  18. ^ Cite error: The named reference :0 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  19. ^ Cite error: The named reference rgsunycommune was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  20. ^ Croissant, Michael (1998). The Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict: causes and implications. Greenwood Publishing Group. p. 14. ISBN 0-275-96241-5. The oil-rich city of Baku had emerged as a stronghold of Bolshevism shortly after the October Russian Revolution, and friction between the Bolsheviks and the pan-Turkic Musavat party sparked a brief civil war in March 1918
  21. ^ Decree of President of Republic of Azerbaijan about genocide of Azerbaijani people, March 1998
  22. ^ "PACE Written Declaration, "Recognition of the genocide perpetrated against the Azeri population by the Armenians", Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, Doc. 9066 2nd edition, 14 May 2001". Archived from the original on 7 June 2007.
  23. ^ Hovannisian, Richard G. (1967). Armenia on the Road to Independence, 1918. Berkeley: University of California press. p. 227. ISBN 0-520-00574-0.
  24. ^ Croissant, Michael P. (1998). The Armenia-Azerbaijan Conflict: Causes and Implications. London: Praeger. p. 15. ISBN 0-275-96241-5.


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