Stepan Shahumyan: Great Armenian & Revolutionary

Natarian
Sep 18, 2013
10 min read

"My father taught me about many heroic Armenians that I would have never learned about in the pro-Tashnag (history revisionist) Armenian school I attended. The last conversation I ever had with him was about this man. Shahumyan was a bad ass, he basically ran Baku. Armenians shouldn't forget that Stepanakert is named after him." - A.N

Stepan Gevorgi Shahumyan (Armenian: Ստեփան Գեւորգի Շահումյան; Russian: Степан Георгиевич Шаумян, Stepan Georgevich Shaumyan; October 1, 1878 - September 20, 1918) was a Bolshevist Russian communist politician and revolutionary active throughout the Caucasus. 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.

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 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.

Throughout his revolutionary life, he went by several aliases including "Suren", "Surenin" and “Ayaks." 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 anti-Bolshevik forces on September 20, 1918.

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.

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 the Russian 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.

The Baku Commune

Early Problems

Following the October Revolution (which was centered in Saint Petersburg/Petrograd and Moscow, and thus had little effect on Baku), Shahumyan 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 Tashnags.

In late March, the Turkish army expanded its military campaign on the Caucasian front. Encouraged by its successes, the Musavatists stepped up their anti-Soviet work. They made preparations to seize Baku, hoping to form their own regime under the protection of the Turkish intervention. The Musavatists entered into an alliance with counter-revolutionary forces in Dagestan. They also enlisted the support of the Georgian Mensheviks and the "Transcaucasian Sejm". Azerbaijani anti-Soviet forces and part of the Savage Division launched an offensive against revolutionary forces in the counties of Shamakhi, Lenkoran, and Mugan. At the same time, the Transcaucasian Sejm sent a train to the Hajigabul station and began to threaten Soviet Baku, at which a skirmish took place with the Soviet guard detachment, resulting in several casualties.

Muslim forces in Baku raised a rebellion against the Baku Commune. In the morning of March 31, Azerbaijanis opposed to the Bolshevik disarming of Savage Division held protests in Baku, demanding to arm the Muslims. The Azerbaijani Bolshevik organization Hümmet attempted to mediate the dispute by proposing that the arms taken from the Savage Division are transferred to the custody of the Hümmet. Shahumyan agreed to this proposal. But on the afternoon of March 31, when Muslim representatives appeared before the Baku Soviet leadership to take the arms, shots were already heard in the city and the Soviet commissar Prokofy Dzhaparidze refused to provide arms and informed the Hümmet leadership that "Musavat had launched a political war".

On the morning of April 1, 1918, the Committee of Revolutionary Defense of Baku's Soviet issued a leaflet which said:

In view of the fact that the counterrevolutionary Musavat party declared war on the Soviet of Workers', Soldiers', and Sailors' Deputies in the city of Baku and thus threatened the existence of the government of the revolutionary democracy, Baku is declared to be in a state of siege.

The Baku Soviet's Committee of Revolutionary Defense issued a proclamation early in April explaining the events and their causes. The statement found an anti-Soviet character of the rebellion and blamed Musavat and its leadership for the events. The Soviet's statement asserted that there was a carefully laid out plot by Musavat to overthrow the Baku Soviet and to establish its own regime:

The enemies of Soviet power in the city of Baku have raised their head. The malice and hatred with which they viewed the revolutionary organ of the workers and soldiers began recently to overflow into open counterrevolutionary activities. 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 Tiflis, 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.

According to various sources, cited by Armenian historian Kh. Dadayan, during the March revolt against the Baku Commune, up to 2000 on the Muslim side and up to 1200 on the Soviet and Armenian sides were killed.

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.

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. 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. However, if Shahumyan accepted British aid, this would have been the exact foothold in the Caucasus they needed to conduct their anti communist, imperialist ambitions.

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. 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."

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.

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." 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.

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." A new government headed primarily by Russians, known as Central Caspian Dictatorship (Diktatura Tsentrokaspiya) was formed, as British forces under General Thompson occupied Baku the same day.

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. On September 14, amid the confusion as Baku fell to Turkish forces, Shahumyan and his fellow commissars either escaped or were released. In the most widely accepted version of events a group of Bolsheviks headed by Anastas Mikoyan broke into the prison and released Shahumyan. He and the other commissars then boarded a ship to Krasnovodsk, where upon arrival he was promptly arrested by anti-Bolshevik elements led by their commandant, Kuhn. Kuhn then requested further orders from the "Ashkhabad Committee", led by the Socialist Revolutionary Fyodor Funtikov, about what should be done with them. Three days later, the British Major-General Wilfrid Malleson, on hearing of their arrest, contacted Britain's liaison-officer in Ashkhabad, Captain Reginald Teague-Jones, to suggest that the commissars be handed over to British forces in Meshed to be used as hostages in exchange for British citizens held by the Soviets. That same day, Teague-Jones attended the Committee's meeting in Ashkabad which had the task of deciding the fate of the Commissars. For some reason Teague-Jones did not communicate Malleson's request to the Committee, and later claimed he left before a decision was made and did not discover until the following day that the committee had eventually decided to issue orders that the commissars should be executed. On the night of September 20, Shahumyan and the others were executed by a firing squad in a remote location between the stations of Pereval and Akhcha-Kuyma on the Trans-Caspian 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 not concern themselves with the issue. The telegram that was sent told the authorities holding the commissars to dispose of them "as they sought fit." Nevertheless, Malleson expressed his horror when he learned upon the ultimate fate that had befallen the commissars.

Reburial

On January 2009, the Baku authorities’ demolition of the 26 Commissars Memorial commemorating the 26 Baku Commissars began and was soon completed. It upset Armenia as the Armenian public believed that reburial is motivated by the reluctance of the Azerbaijanis (because of the Nagorno-Karabakh War) to have ethnic Armenians buried in the center of their capital. Another scandal happened, when Azerbaijani press reported that only 21 bodies were found buried in the park, as "Shahumian and four other Armenian commissars managed to escape their murderers". It was quashed by Shahumian’s granddaughter Tatyana, now living in Moscow, who told the Russian Daily Kommersant it was nonsense:

“It is impossible to believe that they weren’t all buried. There is a film in the archives of 26 bodies being buried. Apart from this, my grandmother was present at the reburial.”

Legacy

Following Shahumyan's death, the Soviet government depicted him as a fallen hero of the Russian revolution. 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.

"And today we say with pride and love, that the great son of Armenian people Stepan is also the son of Azerbaijani people, all people of Transcaucasia, all multinational and united Soviet people". Heydar Aliev, the leader of Soviet Azerbaijan (BEFORE the Armenian-Azerbeijan War had commenced when relations were stable).

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 Azerbeijan restored the pre-Soviet name of the town, Khankendi, while Nagorno-Karabakh authorities still refers to it as Stepanakert. 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. Streets in Lipetsk, Yekaterinburg, Stavropol and Rostov-on-Don (Russia), an avenue in Saint-Petersburg are named in Shahumyan's honour. A statue of him erected in 1931 also exists in Yerevan, the capital of Armenia.

Places named after Shahumyan

Armenia

Stepanavan, Lori
Shahumyan, Ararat
Shahumyan, Armavir
Shahumyan, Lori
Shahumyan, Yerevan

Azerbaijan

Shaumyan, Goygol (The name has almost certainly been changed)
Aşağı Ağcakənd, Goranboy (formerly Shaumyan, a disputed area claimed by the de facto Nagorno-Karabakh Republic)
Şaumyanovka (The name has almost certainly been changed)

Russia

Shaumyan, Krasnodar Krai
Shaumyan, Stavropol Krai
Shaumyan, Adygea

Nagorno-Karabakh

Stepanakert, the capital of the de facto Nagorno-Karabakh Republic
Shahumian, a disputed area including Aşağı Ağcakənd, partially outside the de facto Nagorno-Karabakh Republic, in Azerbaijan

Georgia