Stepan Shahumyan

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Stepan Shahumyan
Soviet leader Stepan Shahumyan.
Commissar Extraordinary for the Caucasus
Born	October 13, 1878(1878-10-13) Tiflis, Russian Georgia
Died	September 20, 1918 (aged 39) Krasnovodsk, Soviet Russia
Political party	Communist Party of the Soviet Union
Children	Three
Residence	Baku, Azerbaijan
Occupation	Politician, revolutionary

Stepan Gevorgi Shahumyan (Armenian: Ստեփան Գևորգի Շահումյան; Russian: Степан Георгиевич Шаумян, Stepan Georgevich Shaumyan; October 13, 1878 - September 20, 1918) was a Bolshevist Russian communist politician and revolutionary active throughout the Caucasus.^[1] Shahumyan was an ethnic Armenian and his role as a leader of the Russian revolution in the Caucasus earned him the nickname of the "Caucasian Lenin", a reference to the leader of the Russian Revolution, Vladimir Lenin.^[2]

Although the founder and editor of several newspapers and journals, Shahumyan is best known as the head of the Baku Commune, a short lived committee appointed by Lenin in March 1918 with the enormous task of leading the revolution in the Caucasus and West Asia. His tenure as leader of the Baku Commune was marred with numerous problems including ethnic violence between Baku’s Armenian and Azerbaijani populations, attempting to defend the city against an advancing hostile Turkish army, all the while attempting to spread the cause of the revolution throughout the region. Unlike many of the other Bolsheviks at the time however, he preferred to resolve many of the conflicts he faced peacefully, rather than with force and terror.^[3]

Throughout his revolutionary life, he went by several aliases including "Suren", "Surenin" and “Ayaks."^[1] As the Baku Commune was voted out of power in July 1918, Shahumyan and his followers, known as the twenty six Baku Commissars abandoned Baku and fled across the Caspian Sea. However, he, along with the rest of the Commissars, was captured and executed by British-allied anti-Bolshevik forces on September 20, 1918.

Contents 1 Early life 2 Revolutionary beginnings 3 The Baku Commune 3.1 Early problems 3.2 Coup plots 3.3 Expulsion 4 Arrest and death 5 Legacy 6 References 7 Further reading

[edit] Early life

Shahumyan was born in Tiflis, Georgia which at the time was part of Russian Empire, to a family of a cloth merchant. He studied at the Saint Petersburg Polytechnical University and the Riga Technical University, where he joined the Russian Social Democratic Party in the 1900. In 1905 he graduated from the philosophy department of Humboldt University of Berlin.

[edit] Revolutionary beginnings

He was arrested by the Tsarist government for taking part in student political activities on campus, and exiled back to Transcaucasia. After 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.

Upon returning to Transcaucasia, Shahumyan became a teacher, and 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. The strike was crushed by Imperial Army and Shahumyan was arrested and sent to prison. He escaped just as the February Revolution of 1917 began. Though he had limited participation in the revolution itself, Shahumyan was elected President of the Baku Soviet (council), due to his prior experience with the worker's movement in Baku. He also edited the newspaper Bakinsky Rabochy, which was under pressure from the Provisional Government due to its provocative content.

[edit] The Baku Commune

[edit] Early problems

Following the October Revolution (which was centered 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 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.^[4][5] 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.^[6][4]

The Bolsheviks clashed with Dashnaks and Mensheviks over the involvement of British forces, which the latter two welcomed. In either case, Shahumyan was under direct orders from Moscow to refuse aid offered by the British.^[7] However, he understood the consequences of not accepting British aid, including a further massacre of Armenians by the Turks. Major Ranald MacDonell, a seasoned diplomat and the British vice-consul of Baku, was tasked by his superiors in attempting to persuade Shahumyan to revise his position.^[8]

[edit] Coup plots

In mid-summer, MacDonell personally visited Shahumyan's home in Baku and the two discussed the issue of British military involvement in a generally amiable conversation.^[9] It was Shahumyan who first raised the specter of what British involvement would entail: "Is your General Dunsterville [the head of the military force awaiting orders to enter Baku] coming to Baku to turn us out?" MacDonell reassured him that Dunsterville, being a member of the military, was not claiming any political stake in the conflict but was merely interested in helping him defend the city. Unconvinced, Shahumyan replied "And you really believe that a British general and a Bolshevik commissar would make good partners....No! We will organise our own force to fight the Turk."^[10]

Shahumyan was under the impression that the Bolsheviks would soon be sending reinforcements from the Caspian Sea to assist him although the prospects of receiving such relief remained unlikely. He had sent numerous telegrams to Moscow extolling the fighting abilities of his Armenian units but warned that they too, would soon be unable to halt the advance of Enver's army. With this, MacDonell's and Shahumyan's conversation ended with the possibility of accepting British aid in exchange for complete Bolshevik control over the military force, terms the British could not immediately accept.^[11]

Relations between the Baku Commune and the British soon reached a turning point when Britain decided to reverse its support for Bolsheviks. Shahumyan's intransigence had cost him their support, as MacDonell was informed by a British officer on July 10: "the new policy of the British and French governments was to support the anti-Bolshevik forces....It mattered little whether they were Tsarist or Social Revolutionary."^[12] Over the past few days, numerous people had visited MacDonell, beseeching him with pleas of withdrawing British support for Shahumyan. Many of them claimed to be former Tsarist officers offering their service to rise against the Bolsheviks although MacDonell suspected most of them to be agents working on behalf of the Bolsheviks.^[13]

[edit] Expulsion

Finally, on July 26, 1918, the Bolsheviks were outvoted 259-236 in the Baku Soviet. Shahumyan's support had eroded and many of his key supporters abandoned him. Angered with the outcome of the vote, he announced that his party would withdraw from the Soviet and Baku itself: "With pain in our hearts and curses on our lips, we who had come here to die for the Soviet regime are forced to leave."^[14] A new government head primarily by Russians, known as Central Caspian Dictatorship (Diktatura Tsentrokaspiya) was formed, as British forces under General Thompson occupied Baku the same day.

[edit] Arrest and death

On July 31, the twenty six 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-allied anti-Bolshevik elements led by their commandant, Kuhn.

Kuhn deferred the fates of the commissars to General Wilfred Malleson, the head of second British military mission in the region. The commonly accepted version of events is that Malleson instructed Kuhn, by way of telegram, to send them to Meshed, where they could then be bartered for the release of two British officers.^[15] The telegram arrived too late as on the night of September 20, Shahumyan and the others were executed by a firing squad in a remote location along the Transcaspian Railway.

In 1956, the Observer published a letter written by a British staff officer who recounted a conversation he had had with Malleson, stricken with malaria at the time, on what was to be done to the commissars. Malleson replied that since the matter did not involve the British, then they should concern themselves with the issue. The telegram that was sent told the authorities holding the commissars to dispose of them "as they sought fit."^[16] Nevertheless, Malleson expressed his horror when he learned upon the ultimate fate that had befallen the commissars.^[17]

[edit] Legacy

Following Shahumyan's death, the Soviet government depicted him as a fallen hero of the Russian revolution.^[18] Shahumyan's close relationship with Lenin also increased the already heightened tensions between the British and the Soviets, who laid much of the blame on British complicity in the massacre.^[19]

Throughout the Soviet Union's existence, the town of Vararakn Khankendi in the Nagorno-Karabakh region of the Azerbaijan SSR was renamed Stepanakert, after Shahumyan. In 1992, Azerbaijan restored the pre-Soviet name of the town, Khankendi, while Nagorno-Karabakh authorities still refers to it as Stepanakert -- it is also the internationally recognized name for that city. 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. A statue of him erected in 1931 also exists in Yerevan, the capital of Armenia.

[edit] References

[edit] Further reading

• Suny, Ronald Grigor. The Baku Commune, 1917-18. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1972 ISBN 0-6910-5193-3
• Hopkirk, Peter. On Secret Service East of Constantinople: The Plot to Bring Down the British Empire. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001 ISBN 0-1928-0230-5