7
Events of 1918 in Guba in the Context of Plans
for Mass Extermination of Azerbaijan’s Muslim Population
“…the Ad Hoc Investigation Commission is hereby notified that
no persons wounded or maimed by the Armenian gangs were found
in Sector 1 of the town of Guba, neither could they be found for the
attackers were sharp-shooters, and they did not use 40-50 bullets
when one bullet was enough. Besides this, any person they got hold
of was slaughtered by daggers and shot to death from rifles with
dead bodies mutilated afterwards.” These excerpts from the report
by police superintendent of Precinct 1, the town of Guba (1), is just
one out of hundreds of testimonies related to the bloody events of
April-May 1918 in both the town itself and adjacent villages of Guba
Uyezd (District). So what was the “guilt” of the population of this part
of Azerbaijan, known for its ethnic diversity whereby the dominant
Azerbaijani Turks have been living side by side with the Lezghins, the
Tats, the Jews, the Russian sectarians, the Armenians and others en-
joying good neighborly relations for centuries? A noteworthy detail is
that Guba’s Armenian population did not exceed 500 persons (2), and
their influence was much lower than that of the Armenians in Baku,
Shamakhy or Garabagh.
Prior to answering this question a brief background of the area’s
history and the events preceding the horrible bloodshed in spring
1918 would be hereby appropriate.
***
The town of Guba with its deeply-rooted history was men-
tioned, this way or another, in the earliest sources of the Albanian,
Arabic, Persian, and Turkish origin, as well as in the works by various
European geographers and travelers. Geographic areas identified as
Guba after the town located amidst stretched from the North-Eastern
ridges of the Greater Caucasus Mountain Range all the way to the
Samur-Davachi Depression.
As far as the place name Guba is concerned, this geographic
concept was ever more ancient and widespread. The toponym’s area
of dissemination “stretched from Mongolia all the way to the Central
Russia and trans-Caspian, Shirvan and North Caucasus included”. (3) The
origin of this toponym is explained through a number of various and