| Armeno-Tartar massacres | |||||||
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A Cossack military patrol near the Baku oilfields, ca. 1905. |
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The Armenian–Tatar massacres (also known as the Armenian-Tartar war and the Armeno-Tartar war and more recently, the Azeri-Armenian war[1]) refers to the bloody inter-ethnic confrontation between Armenians and Azerbaijanis (at the time commonly referred to as "Tatars")[2][3] throughout the Caucasus in 1905–1907.[4][5][6]
The massacres started during the Russian Revolution of 1905, and claimed hundreds of lives. The most violent clashes occurred in 1905 in February in Baku, in May in Nakhichevan, in August in Shusha and in November in Elizavetopol, heavily damaging the cities and the Baku oilfields. Some violence, although of lesser scale, broke out also in Tbilisi.
According to professor Firuz Kazemzadeh, "it is impossible to pin the blame for the massacres on either side. It seems that in some cases (Baku, Elizavetpol) the Azerbaijanis fired the first shots, in other cases (Shusha, Tiflis) the Armenians."[7] The clashes were not confined to the towns, and, according to Swietochowswki, citing Armenian sources 128 Armenian and 158 Azerbaijani villages were destroyed or pillaged,[8] while the overall estimates of lives lost vary widely, ranging from 3,000 to 10,000, with Azerbaijanis suffering higher losses.[9]
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According to van der Leeuw clashes started in early February 1905 over the killing of a Tatar schoolboy and shopkeeper by Armenians.[10] 126 Tatars (Azeris) and 218 Armenians were killed during four days of fighting in Baku.[11]
After the Baku clashes, the Moslem communities in the Nakhichevan district began smuggling in consignments of weapons from Persia. By April the murder of Armenians there began to assume alarming proportions and they applied to the Russian authorities for protection. However, Villari describes the district's governor as "bitterly anti-Armenian", and the vice-governor in Yerevan as an "Armenophobe".[12]
On the 25th May, acting on a prearranged plan, bands of armed Tartars attacked the market area in the district capital, the town of Nakhichevan, looting and burning Armenian businesses and killing any Armenians they could find. About 50 Armenians were murdered and some of the shopkeepers were burnt alive in their shops. On the same day, Tartar villagers from the countryside began attacking their Armenian neighbours. Villari cites official reports mentioning that out of a total of 52 villages with Armenian or mixed Armenian-Tartar populations, 47 were attacked, and of that 47, 19 were completely destroyed and abandoned by their inhabitants. The total number of dead, including those in Nachichevan town, was 239. Later, in a revenge attack, Armenians attacked a Tartar village, killing 36 people.
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