[23][24] Following the February Revolution, a Special Transcaucasian Committee, including Armenian, Azerbaijani and Georgian representatives, was established to administer parts of the South Caucasus under the control of the Russian Provisional Government.

The Baku-based Musavat dominated the Muslim National Councils (MNCs), a representative body which eventually formed the first Parliament of the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic (ADR).

Mammad Hasan Hajinski chaired the Temporary Executive Committee for the MNCs, while Mammed Amin Rasulzade, Alimardan Topchubashev, Fatali Khan Khoyski and other prominent political figures were among the 44 Azerbaijani delegates to the Sejm.

[27] When a large group of Russian soldiers withdrew from the Ottoman front line in January 1918, the head of the council, Georgian Menshevik Noe Ramishvili, ordered their disarmament.

[29] In response to this call, by early March 1918, a large number of Armenians had gathered in Baku, joining a group of 200 trained officers accompanied by General Bagradouni and the ARF co-founder Stepan Zorian (Mr.

According to Richard G. Hovannisian, a secret annex to the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk obligated the Bolsheviks to demobilize and dissolve ethnic Armenian bands on territories previously under Russian control.

The Bolsheviks grew increasingly concerned about the emerging Transcaucasian Federation, and in the given situation, had to choose between Musavat and ARF in the struggle to dominate Transcaucasia's largest city.

At the beginning of 1918, Germany transferred General Friedrich Freiherr Kress von Kressenstein from the Sinai and Palestine Campaign to establish the German Caucasus Expedition with the aim of capturing Baku.

[36] When the staff of the disbanded Caucasian Native Cavalry Division arrived in Baku on 9 March 1918, the Soviet immediately arrested its commander, General Talyshinski.

On 27 March 1918, fifty former Caucasian Native Cavalry Division servicemen arrived in Baku on this ship to attend the funeral of their colleague Mamed Tagiyev, son of a famous Azerbaijani oil magnate and philanthropist, Haji Zeynalabdin Taghiyev.

[38][39][3] Other sources claim that [notes 3] Azerbaijanis were alarmed by the growing military strength of the Armenians in Baku, and called for the help of the Caucasian Native Cavalry Division units in Lenkoran.

Eventually these newcomers were disarmed by a stronger Bolshevik force, but when more units of the Caucasian Native Cavalry Division arrived on 1 April, in MacDonell's words, "the Baku cauldron boiled over".

[42] On the morning of 31 March, Azerbaijanis opposed to the Bolshevik disarming of the Caucasian Native Cavalry Division held protests in Baku, demanding to arm the Muslims.

[1] In Balakhany and Ramany districts of Baku, the majority of Muslim workers stayed at their places and avoided the battles, while the peasants were not moved to join the anti-Soviet rebels.

[19] Left-wing Muslim leaders, including those of SRs and Hümmet Party, such as Narimanov, Azizbekov, Bunyat Sardarov and Kazi-Magomed Aghasiyev, supported the Soviet forces[45] During the battles, Bolsheviks decided to use artillery against the Azerbaijani residential quarters in the city.

[5] The Azerbaijani delegation to the 1919 Paris Peace Conference provided the following interpretation of the March Days: In that bloodthirsty episode, which had such fatal effects upon the Muslims, the principal part was played by the Armenians, who were then in Baku, clustering as elsewhere around their nationalist party [ARF]...

Enormous crowds roamed the streets, burning houses, killing every pass-by who was identified as an enemy, many innocent persons suffering death at the hands of both the Armenians and the Azerbaijanis.

On 1 August 1918, the Baku Commune was replaced by the Centrocaspian Dictatorship, which desperately invited a 1000-strong British expeditionary force led by General Lionel Dunsterville to the city.

This proved a futile effort and, in the face of an overwhelming Ottoman-Azerbaijani offensive, the Dunsterforce fled and the Caucasus Army of Islam entered the Azerbaijani capital on 15 September 1918.

[6] While in the aftermath of the tragic events, Musavat used them to foster a national memory of pain, its leader M. E. Rasulzade provided an analysis which seems to reflect the essence of witness accounts.

In Rasulzade's view, Bolsheviks and their supporters sought to diminish Musavat's influence among Azerbaijani masses for a long time, and Muslim elites felt frustrated and powerless in face of this pressure.

Text of the 1998 Presidential decree describes the March events as follows: Taking advantage of the situation following the end of the First World War and the February and October 1917 revolutions in Russia, the Armenians began to pursue the implementation of their plans under the banner of Bolshevism.

The appearance of the staff of the Savage Division, headed by the unmasked Talyshkhanov, the events in Lenkoran, in Mugan, and at Shemakha, the capture of Petrovsk by the Daghestan regiment and the withholding of grain shipments from Baku, the threats of Elisavetpol, and in the last few days of Tbilisi, to march on Baku, against soviet power, the aggressive movements of the armored train of the Transcaucasian Commissariat in Adzhikabul, and, finally, the outrageous behavior of the Savage Division on the steamship Evelina in shooting comrades—all this speaks of the criminal plans of the counterrevolutionaries grouped mainly around the Bek party Musavat and having as its goal the overthrow of Soviet power.

This rising, instigated by the Musavat, set the Tartar and Turkic population, led by their reactionary bourgeoisie, against the Soviet, which consisted of Russians with support from the Armenians.

[67] Consequently, when the Russian Army broke up, the Armenians preserved their discipline against all attempts of the Bolsheviks, and were the only force upon which the Allies could count in southwestern Asia during the last year of the war.

However, when Soviet leaders reached out to ARF for assistance against the Azerbaijani nationalists, the conflict degenerated into a massacre with the Armenians killing the Muslims irrespective of their political affiliations or social and economic position.

[74] On 31 December 2010, Governor Jim Gibbons of the U.S. State of Nevada proclaimed 31 March as Remembrance Day of 1918 massacres of Azerbaijani civilians in what became the first such recognition by the U.S. government institution.

We are delighted by your firm and decisive policy; do unite with it a most cautious diplomacy, which is doubtlessly made necessary by the present most difficult situation, and we shall win.The difficulties are unfathomable; up to now we have been saved by the contradictions and conflicts and the struggle among imperialists.

Be able to use these conflicts; now it is necessary to learn diplomacy.Best wishes and greetings to all the friends.Peter Hopkirk:alarmed by the growing military strength of the Armenians, to which British support had undoubtedly contributed, the Baku Muslims had secretly sought help from their co-religionists elsewhere.

Eventually the newcomers were disarmed by a stronger Bolshevik force, but when more units of the Savage Division arrived on April 1, in MacDonell's words, "the Baku cauldron boiled over".