Guba, April-May 1918. Documented Pogroms of the Muslims

Files of the Ad Hoc Investigation Commission of the Democratic

Republic of Azerbaijan

Series published with the support of the

Heydar Aliyev Foundation and the Heydar Aliyev Center.

Roustamova-Tohidi, Solmaz

Guba, April-May 1918. Documented Pogroms of the Muslims.

Baku, 2013, 292 pages

The present edition is a concise version of The

Documented Pogroms of the

Muslims

Guba. April-May 1918

Collection of Files

, Baku, 2010, 552 pages. Published

with the support of the Ministry of National Security, the Republic of Azerbaijan.

Documents included in the collection were drafted and compiled by the Ad

Hoc Investigation Commission established by the Government of Azerbaijan in July

1918 with a view to examining the facts of violence, pogroms and loot towards

the Muslim residents and their property all over Transcaucasia as of the begin-

ning of World War 1. The present collection comprises records of

The Devastation

of the Town of Guba and Villages of Guba Uyezd Case.

The records shed the light

on tragic events of April-May in Guba Uyezd (name for administrative districts in

Czarist Russia) when more than 4 thousand civilians, women, children and elderly ones

among them, were brutally massacred, hundreds of villages, households, mosques

and public facilities leveled and plundered, assets of the Muslim population of the

Azerbaijani, Lezghin, Tat, Avar and other origins looted and destroyed. The three

sections of the book present witness testimonies of residents of the town of Guba

and adjacent villages of Guba Uyezd recreating the chronology of Muslims’ pog-

roms, verdicts by rural communities of the Uyezd with numbers of people slain and

slaughtered, the size of damages inflicted, the names of villages plundered and

devastated, etc. Revealing the details of criminal offences committed by the Arme-

nian militants, the records hereby provided clearly indicate that the events in Guba

were a part and parcel of large-scale action plans and operations by the Arme-

nian nationalists aiming at maximum possible decrease of the indigenous Muslim

population in all Azerbaijani regions viewed as potential territories for their desired

Armenian state.

The Collection also includes the historic essay re-edited by the author with

detailed reference information and photographs. The map of Guba Uyezd as of

1918 with special comments enclosed.

ISBN 978-9952-27367-0