Stepan Shahumyan
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Stepan Shahumyan (Armenian Ստեպան Շահումյան; * 13 October 1878, † 20 September 1918), also known as Stepan Georgevich Shaumyan (Russian Степан Георгиевич Шаумян) was an Armenian communist politician and revolutionary.
[edit] Revolutionary beginnings
Born to a cloth merchant in Tiflis/Tbilisi, at the time part of Imperial Russia, Shaumyan studied at the Saint Petersburg and Riga Polytechnics, where he joined the Russian Social Democratic Party in the latter in 1900. In 1905 he graduated from the Philosophy department of Berlin University.
Arrested by the Tsarist government for taking part in student political activities on campus, he was exiled back to his native Transcaucasia. Escaping from his exile, Shaumyan went to Germany, where he met with other exiles from the Russian Empire, notably Julius Martov, Vladimir Lenin and Georgi Plekhanov.
Returning to Transcaucasia, Shahumyan became a teacher, and also the leader of local socialists in Tiflis, as well as a prolific writer of Marxist literature. At the 1903 Congress, he sided with the Bolsheviks. By 1907 he had moved to Baku to head up the significant Bolshevik movement in the city.
In 1914, he led the general strike in the city, being sent to prison after it was fiercely crushed by the army. Shahumyan escaped just as the February Revolution of 1917 began. Though he had had limited participation in the Revolution itself, Shaumyan was elected President of the Baku Soviet due to his prior experience with the worker's movement in Baku. He also edited the newspaper Bakinsky Rabochy (Baku Worker), which came under pressure from the Provisional Government due to its rather provocative content.
[edit] After the October Revolution
See the article:
Following the October Revolution (which was centred in Saint Petersburg/Petrograd and Moscow, and thus had little effect on Baku), Shaumyan was made Commissar Extraordinary for the Caucasus and Chairman of the Baku Council of People's Commissars. The Government of the Baku Commune consisted of an uneasy alliance of Bolsheviks, Left Socialist-Revolutionaries, Mensheviks and Dashnaks. When German and Ottoman Empire forces invaded the Caucasus in March 1918, Muslims rose up against Bolshevik rule in Baku. The revolt was crushed by united forces of pro-Russia parties and local Dashnaks, following fierce fighting during which allegedly tens of thousands of Muslims would have perished ( see the "March Days"). Azeri historians lay blame for the massacre on the Dashnaks and on Shahumyan's supposed inspiration or tacit condonation.
The Bolsheviks clashed with Dashnaks and Mensheviks over the involvement of British forces, which the latter two welcomed. On July 26, 1918, Bolsheviks were clearly outvoted in the Baku Soviet and were forced out of power. New government, so called Diktatura Tsentrokaspiya ("Central Caspian Dictatorship") was formed and British forces under General Thompson occupied Baku the same day.
On July 31, the 26 Baku Commissars attempted the evacuation of Soviet armed troops by sailing over the Caspian Sea to Astrakhan, but the ships were captured on August 16 by the military vessels of anti-Soviet Diktatura Tsentrokaspiya. Shahumyan and his comrades were arrested and placed in Baku prison. On August 28, Shahumyan and other Baku Commissars were elected in absentia the members of Baku Council. On September 14, a group of Bolsheviks headed by Anastas Mikoyan broke into the prison and freed Shahumyan. He and the other commissars boarded a ship to Krasnovodsk, where upon arrival he was promptly arrested by British troops, and on the night of September 20, executed by a firing squad.
The region and the city in Nagorno-Karabakh are named after him.
