Stepan Shahumyan
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| Stepan Shahumyan | |
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Commissar Extraordinary for the Caucasus
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| Born | November 25, 1895 Tiflis, Russian Georgia |
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| Died | September 20, 1918 Krasnovodsk, Russia |
| Political party | Communist Party of the Soviet Union |
| Occupation | Politician, revolutionary |
Stepan Shahumyan (Armenian: Ստեպան Շահումյան; Russian: Степан Георгиевич Шаумян, Stepan Georgevich Shaumyan; October 13, 1878-September 20, 1918) was an Armenian and Bolshevist Russian communist politician and revolutionary active throughout the Caucasus.
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[edit] Biography
[edit] Revolutionary beginnings
Born to a cloth merchant in Tiflis/Tbilisi, at the time part of Imperial Russia, Shahumyan studied at the Saint Petersburg Polytechnical University and the Riga Polytechnical Institute, 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, Shahumyan 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 Social Democrats 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 Imperial Army. Shahumyan escaped just as the February Revolution of 1917 began. Though he had had limited participation in the Revolution itself, Shahumyan 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, which came under pressure from the Provisional Government due to its rather provocative content.
[edit] Baku Commune and Central Caspian Dictatorship
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. In March 1918 the leaders of Baku Commune attempted to disarm local Muslim forces, while leaving armed all other political forces in the city, which resulted in armed confrontation between the Bolshevik forces, supported by the Armenian nationalist Dashnak militants, and Muslim militia. After the defeat of Muslim forces, the Dashnaks massacred as many as 3,000 to 12,000 Muslims in Baku in revenge for the Armenian Genocide.[1][2] Less than six months later, in September 1918 Enver Pasha's Ottoman-led Army of Islam, supported by local Azeri forces, recaptured Baku and subsequently killed an estimated 10,000 to 20,000 ethnic Armenians in retaliation.[3][1]
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. A new government, known as Central Caspian Dictatorship (Diktatura Tsentrokaspiya) was formed, and British forces under General Thompson occupied Baku the same day.
[edit] Arrest, escape, and death
On July 31, the 26 Baku Commissars attempted the evacuation of Bolshevik armed troops by sailing over the Caspian Sea to Astrakhan, but the ships were captured on August 16 by the military vessels of the Central Caspian Dictatorship. The Commissars were arrested and placed in Baku prison. On August 28, Shahumyan and his comrades were elected in absentia to the Baku Soviet.
A group of Bolsheviks headed by Anastas Mikoyan broke into the prison and freed Shahumyan on September 14. 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.
[edit] Legacy
Throughout the Soviet Union's existence, the town of Khankendi in the Nagorno-Karabakh region of the Azerbaijan SSR was renamed Stepanakert, after Shahumyan. In Azerbaijani records, it retains the form Khankendi, while Nagorno-Karabakh authorities still refer to it as Stepanakert. The city of Dzhalal-Ogly in the Armenian SSR was also renamed, in Shahumyan's honor, Stepanavan — a name it has retained in post-Soviet Armenia.
Levon Shahumyan, Stepan Shahumyan's son, was the assistant editor-in-chief of the Soviet Encyclopedia at the beginning of the 1970s.
[edit] References
- ^ a b Michael P. Croissant, The Armenia-Azerbaijan Conflict: Causes and Implications, Praeger Publishers, 1998, p.14-15 ISBN 0-275-96241-5
- ^ (Russian) Michael Smith, Azerbaijan and Russia: Society and State: Traumatic Loss and Azerbaijani National Memory
- ^ Human Rights Watch, "Playing the 'Communal Card': Communal Violence and Human Rights"
