The Voice of Mirza Xazar

March 31 - A century-long Day of Sorrow

Azerbaijan By Adil Baguirov, Ph.D.

In Azerbaijan, the March 31 is known as the Day of Genocide of Azerbaijanis, referring to the tragic events that started on March 30, 1918, and continued until April 1.

It is widely recognized, that the 20th century is the most violent, vicious and turbulent 100 year period of history, indeed known as the Century of Genocides.

It has been estimated, that some 200 million people have died due to the inhumanity of men towards each other. The word “genocide”, coined only after the WWII, has forever entered our daily lexicon, to give the legal definition to the worst crimes against humanity, massacres, slaughters and ethnic cleansing. Certainly, genocide represents a policy, a campaign carried out against a group of people over a period of time and consisting of otherwise seemingly isolated massacres and bloodshed.

In Azerbaijan, the March 31 is known as the Day of Genocide of Azerbaijanis, referring to the tragic events that started on March 30, 1918, and continued until April 1. A Yale University history professor F. Kazemzadeh, in one of the first comprehensive scholarly studies of the region in the US, wrote: “This three-day massacre by Armenians is recorded in history as the “March Events” and thousands of Muslims, old people, women and children lost their lives” (“The Struggle for Transcaucasia”, New York, 1951, p. 69).

Another distinguished professor of history at the University of Louisville, was even more blunt: “From 30 March to 1 April 1918, the Tatars [as Azerbaijanis were sometimes called] were attacked. Almost half of the Muslim population of Baku was compelled to flee the city.… Between 8,000 and 12,000 Muslims were killed in Baku alone.…” (Justin McCarthy, “Death and Exile. The Ethnic Cleansing of Ottoman Muslims 1821-1922”, Darwin Press, Princeton, NJ, 1995, p. 214).

“The truth is that the Armenians, under the guise of Bolshevism, rushed on the Muslims and massacred during a few frightful days more than 12,000 people, many of whom were old men, women, and children,” – continues Kazemzadeh. “The March Events, as this episode became known to history, touched off a series of massacred all over Azerbaijan. Brutalities continued for weeks…. Every Azerbaijani whom the Dashnak bands could catch was killed. [T]he “civil war” degenerated into a massacre, the Armenians killing Muslims irrespective of their political affiliation or social and economic position.”

For more scholarly accounts of the events, one might turn to the books by Tadeusz Swietochowski, professor of history at Manmouth University (“Russia and a Divided Azerbaijan”, Columbia University Press, 1995), or Michael Smith, professor of history at Purdue University (“The Russian Revolution as National Revolution: Tragic Deaths and Rituals of Remembrance in Muslim Azerbaijan (1907–1920),” Jahrbucher fur Geschichte Osteuropas, vol. 49, 2001).

However, some estimates put the number of massacred Azerbaijani victims in this particular event as high as 30,000. There are a multitude of other references, shocking us with the extent of the mass-murder of the days: from the founder of the Soviet state, Vladimir Lenin, where he briefly mentions the March 1918 events, by saying that the commissar S.Shaumyan, an ethnic Armenian leader of the Bolshevik and Dashnak forces, and the chief architect of the genocide throughout Azerbaijan, “turned Baku into an Armenian operated henhouse [slaughterhouse]”, to a letter from a British officer serving in Baku during the massacres of 1918 to his Whitehall superiors in which he refers to “river of blood” flowing down the streets and bodies dumped from ships into the Baku Bay by Armenians.

In his recent book, researcher R.Mustafayev writes that on August 31, 1918, for the first and last time the Armenian government itself has declared that only in one year Armenians killed 400 thousand Azerbaijanis, 120 thousand Georgians, 15 thousand Turks and others – all just in South Caucasus. In spite of the fact that government of Armenia has probably reduced the statistical data, this self-incriminating evidence bears a lot of weight (“Crimes of Armenian terrorist and bandit formations against the humanity {XIX-XXI centuries}”, Baku, 2002).

In reference to various attempts to downplay or even conceal the slaughter, Kazemzadeh notes, “No matter how obvious historical facts may be, there are always means of twisting them to suit a particular theory. The March Events are exactly such case. The facts are generally known, - there are enough of them to satisfy the most exacting historian, - and yet there is hardly a book which gives an impartial account or an objective evaluation of the great massacres.”

Nonetheless, revelations directly from Armenian sources abound, with the most typical self-confession being: “I killed Muslims by every means possible. Yet it is sometimes a pity to waste bullets for this. The best way is to gather all of these dogs and throw them into wells and then fill the wells with big and heavy stones, as I did. I gathered all of the women, men and children, threw big stones down on top of them. They must never live on this earth” (A. Laloyan, “Revolutsionniy Vostok” (Revolutionary East), No 2-3, Moscow, 1936. Quoted from Richard Hovannisian, “Armenia on the Road to Independence”, Berkeley, 1967, p. 41-42). Additional accounts could be found from Agop Zahoryan, Mikael Kaprilian, Ohanus Appressian, Sahak Melkonian, K. S. Papazian, and Leonard Ramsden Hartill, to name a few.

“As the Armenians found support among the Reds (who regarded the Tartars [Azerbaijanis] as a counter-revolutionary elements) the fighting soon became a massacre of the Tartar population” (W. E. D. Allen and Paul Muratoff, “Caucasian Battlefields”, Cambridge University Press, 1953, p. 481).

Writes the Rear-Admiral Mark L. Bristol, U.S. High Commissioner (Ambassador) in Istanbul, “While the Dashnaks [Armenian extremist party] were in power [1918-1920] they did everything in the world to keep the pot boiling by attacking Kurds, Turks and Tartars [Azerbaijanis]; by committing outrages against the Moslems; by massacring the Moslems; and robbing and destroying their homes. During the last two years the Armenians in Russian Caucasus have shown no ability to govern themselves and especially no ability to govern or handle other races under their power” (U.S. Library of Congress, “Bristol Papers,” General Correspondence Container #34). The Rear-Admiral continues, “I have it from absolute first-hand information that the Armenians in the Caucasus attacked Tartar (Muslim) villages that are utterly defenseless and bombarded these villages with artillery and they murder the inhabitants, pillage the village and often burn the village” (“Bristol Papers”, General Correspondence: Container #32: Bristol to Bradley Letter of September 14, 1920).

After the proclamation of the Azerbaijani Democratic Republic (ADR) on 28 May 1918, the “March Massacre” was investigated into by the Government. In 1919 and 1920, the ADR observed 31 March as a national day of mourning. This was the first attempt to make a political assessment of the policy of genocide against Azerbaijanis and of the occupation of the Azerbaijani lands for over a century.

Being unable to commemorate the tragedy during the Soviet years, the March 31 has been re-established in 1998, exactly 80 years after the bloodbath, to commemorate not just that particular massacre, but the policy of genocide carried out since the 19th century and throughout the entire 20th century, with the final act being the Khojaly Massacre (see BT op-ed, http://www.bakutoday.net/view.php?d=2945

The official position of Azerbaijan is that close to a million Azerbaijanis have been massacred in the 20th century as the result of Armenian genocidal campaign. This makes for a total of 2,5 million Azerbaijanis, Turks, Kurds, Georgians and other people who fell victim to the Armenian policies of cleansing the Caucasus for the creation of their state, which was supposed to stretch from the Black sea to the Caspian to the Mediterranean.

Today, Azerbaijan takes serious steps on the path of researching and preventing genocide, educating and outreaching about the history of extermination of its population. The basis is the March 26, 1998 presidential decree re-designating March 31 as the official day of commemoration, on the top of already separately commemorated recent tragedies, such as the Khojaly Massacre (February 25-26) and Black January (January 19-20). Next step has been the recently initiated process of collection of the relevant documents for pursuing the case in the court of The Hague. Moreover, a declaration has been circulated and signed in the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), entitled “Recognition of the genocide perpetrated against the Azeri population by the Armenians” (PACE Doc. 9066 2nd edition, Written Declaration No. 324, 14 May 2001).

Aside from the obligation by the Azerbaijani state to carry on the political assessment of the policy of genocide against Azerbaijanis and of the occupation of the lands, the genocidal campaign can stop only after the Armenian aggression is stopped and all the currently illegally occupied lands of Azerbaijan are liberated.

Adil Baguirov is the founder of Zerbaijan.com -- Virtual Azerbaijan Resources (VAR) website (since 1995), Come.to/Khojaly -- first Khojaly Commemoration Website (since 1997), Habarlar-L Caspian Distribution List, Yeni Dostlar Network, and a frequent contributor on Azerbaijan-related matters. Javid Huseynov, a co-administrator of Habarlar-L and Yeni Dostlar, as well as a Ph.D. candidate, also contributed to this article.

URL: http://www.bakutoday.net/view.php?d=8480

The Political-Ideological Doctrine of the Musavat Party in the Early Twentieth Century

Aydin Balayev

The Musavat party was a leading force in the liberation struggle of the Azeri nation in the early twentieth century, and to a great extent determined the political course of the national movement. Musavat was distinguished from other parties by the mixed social character of its membership, which was a reflection of the common national character of the party. In addition to representatives of the intelligentsia and medium-level people, it also included a significant stratum of working people and peasants and petty and medium bourgeoisie. M.E. Rasulzade, the indisputable leader of the party, emphasized at its second congress Musavat’s common national character and added, “our party is a people’s, but not a class party.”
The party recognized the division of the society into different social classes and groups, but at the same time came out in favor of their partnership and cooperation. This tenet of the party’s philosophy was afterwards reflected in Musavat’s theory of national solidarity. According to this theory, “the harmony of the interests of society and the individual” and “universal welfare” must provide the basis for cooperation. Leaders of the party declared that only “a Government which protects the interests not only of one privileged class but also of the entire population can be regarded as an authentic national Government.” This idea was aimed at achieving the consolidation of diverse social groups in the struggle for national liberation.

The party opposed the nationalization of enterprises and believed that “the full abolition of property in modern society will inevitably lead to the loss of personal initiative among people. With the loss of this factor the world will be deprived of variety and wealth, the development of social life will fall behind, people will again acquire primitive qualities and the world movement will be broken. But at the same time the party leadership stated that property should be protected only to the extent that it benefits the entire society.”

The idea of federalism was one of the basic principles of the party’s political program. The party favored the independent existence of each nation but also demanded close ties between these independent units on the basis of the principle of world federation. The party’s adherence to the idea of federalism is confirmed by the fact that after proclaiming the independence of Azerbaijan, the Musavat leaders forwarded the proposal on the confederation of the Caucasian states. A special resolution of the party’s second congress to this effect pledged: “To recognize the consolidation of the Caucasian republics into a free union of the Caucasian Confederation as desirable and urge the entire Caucasian democracy as well as the Governments of neighboring republics to promote the realization of this idea.”

The ideology of the Musavat party was a synthesis of the ideas of national liberation of the East with the democratic concepts of the West. Reflecting common human values and taking into consideration the historical and cultural traditions of the Azeri nation, Musavat’s leaders worked out their own concept of national development, which in the end, as they planned, would have promoted Azerbaijan’s membership within the family of civilized and developed countries of the world.

The idea of the Turkic community was another basic element of Musavat’s ideology. The idea developed in the nineteenth century when virtually all Turkic nations were in a position of colonial dependence on the European powers. The idea of the Turkic community derived mostly from the commonality of language as well as the shared culture and historical fates of theTurkic nations. The existence of such an idea was a manifestation of the national awakening of the Turkic nations. In its initial formulation, which Rasulzade called a “romantic pan-turanism,” the ideology envisaged the creation of a unified state of Turkic nations. However, events soon showed that this plan was not to be.

Nevertheless “romantic pan-turanism,” challenging colonialism on one side and on the other, the religious-Islamic ideology which at that time dominated the Turkic world, played its progressive role. The masses of the Turkic nation were revolutionized and actively embraced the struggle for national determination and independence.

By the early twentieth century, the time of the emergence of the national movement in Azerbaijan, the period of “romantic pan-turanism” has been already passed. By the way, this movement, which never acquired the form of a concrete political program, did not attract Musavat’s leaders. Rasulzade wrote that it”...was easy to understand that a movement with very contradictory tendencies certainly could not be successful in building the democratic structure of the new Azeri society, which was rising from the ruins of the feudal Middle Ages.”

The process of forming the Azeri nation assured a place for the idea of the Turkic community in the national ideology. Relations of ethnic kinship also played a decisive role in the political life of the Azeri nation. The leaders of Musavat proposed establishing relations between the Turkic nations not on the basis of their tribal identities, but on the basis of the interests of each nation. They renounced a unified Turkic state but maintained that only common interests in the struggle for national liberation and the consolidation of the forces of separate Turkic nations in this struggle could lead to the establishment of active contacts among them. Therefore, this was not a manifestation of panturkism, but rather a joint struggle for real and concrete national ideas.

M.E. Rasulzade stated that, “the leaders of the Musavat party were opposed to romantic pan-turanism.” “Panturanism,” he said, “is a utopia like Lenin’s communism and Magomed’s paradise.” The party recognized a community of national and cultural interests among all Turkic nations, but it regarded their union in a single state as impossible. It above all sought to achieve the liberation of Turkic nations and their transformation into independent states.

Musavat’s ideologists recognized Turkism not as a political, but as a “scientific-philosophical-aesthetic movement” which is a method of struggling for the cultural unification of the Turkic nations. “We are Narodniks in policy and Turkists in Culture!” stated M.E. Rasulzade.

Another important component of the party’s ideology was the idea of the solidarity of Muslim nations and countries. Musavat’s leaders interpreted Islamic solidarity as interaction and mutual assistance in a joint struggle for a common goal: the national liberation of Muslim nations from the colonial yoke of European powers. All this shared nothing in common with panislamism, of which Musavat’s leaders were traditionally accused in Soviet historiography.

Musavat consistently adhered to secular ideas. The party favored the exclusion (or at least the limitation of the activities) of clerics from fields having no direct relation to the performance of religious rites. On the other hand, the party was prepared to use and did use religion as a method of political struggle for national independence. Knowing that the centuries-old religious prejudices of the nation could not disappear within one day, party leaders used Islamic phraseology in their public speeches as a means to promote the struggle for independence and appeal to the most backward segments of the population. The leaders of Musavat understood that the top ranks of the Muslim clergy were being absorbed within the apparatus of the tsarist autocracy, and that top religious leaders were being used by the regime as accomplices in suppressing even moderate manifestations of the ideas of national liberation.

The top clergy disdained the spiritual agencies that were concentrated in its hands, openly interfering in religious politics on the side of the most reactionary forces. Statements by clerics denouncing Musavat as an enemy of Islam testify to the fact. In this connection M.E. Rasulzade said at the Musavat’s first party Congress in October 1917, “When a person enters the mosque, he must forget policy, party and ideology and pray only to God. The clergy must not be engaged in politics at all and the mosque should be neutral in the political struggle.” The principle of separation of church and state in the Azerbaijan Republic, which was initiated by Musavat, confirms the party’s position. Religion was deemed a private affair, thus enabling Azerbaijan to become the first secular state in the Muslim East.

Characterizing the party’s attitude to pan-islamism, M.E. Rasulzade wrote in his work “About Panturanism”: “Historical experience has showed that by giving birth to the theocratic-clerical-reactionary movement on the one hand, and blocking the appearance of national ideology in the Muslim world on the other, panislamism has hindered the awakening of national self-consciousness in these nations, delays their progress and prevents them from becoming independent. Therefore, the process of awakening of national self-consciousness should be strengthened, because it a primary source of any progress, and only the presence of a realized national “I” can be the basis of national independence.”

Thus, based on Turkic and Islamic solidarity, the Musavat party consistently came out in favor of the national independence of Azerbaijan. Musavat was the first Azerbaijani political organization to forward this idea, and for that it incurred the merciless criticism of the right as well as the left forces. The right accused the party of undermining the fundamentals and independence of Islam by “slogans of Azerbaijanism.” The left parties reproached Musavat for demanding the independence of Azerbaijan which “promotes the creation of the Khan-bek Government” and a breakdown between the leaders of the party and a unified revolutionary front of the working people.

The leadership of Musavat was very well aware of the fact that a strong and independent state can be created in Azerbaijan only on the basis of democratic values. It is not accidental that the main slogans of the party were “freedom, independence and democracy.”

Musavat’s leaders believed that a necessary element of democracy is the principle of national equality. The pivotal principle of the national policy was that Azerbaijan is the common motherland of all citizens living on its territory irrespective of their nationality. Musavat’s parliamentary declaration stated: “...freedom of press, speech, conscience, assemblies, unions and all other civil and national rights should be ensured by the law. Azerbaijan must be a free country... There should not be sons and stepsons in Azerbaijan - Armenian, Russian, Jewish, Georgian, German, Polish and other nations must enjoy the rights of cultural -national autonomy pertaining to all citizens of the Azerbaijan Republic.”

The party leader M.E. Rasulzade stressed that “we are approaching our national aspirations, but our desire is not domination over other nations or suppression of other nations. Our ideal is to work quietly and happily and jointly with other nations, to be an equal member of the world community and to try to be a cultural and progressive nation.”

Accusations against Musavat’s leaders, who often stated that “the Russian revolution brought freedom to the Turks of Russia,” of harboring anti-Russian sentiments are also groundless. The core of the party’s policy with regard to Russia is well-reflected in the following words of M.E. Rasulzade: “We do not have hostility toward the Russian nation, on the contrary, we wish only the best. But at the same time we are enemies of Russian imperialism, which took us into its chariot using violence and prevents us from regulating of our life and developing our culture as we would like.” The above-mentioned facts testify to the fact that Musavat was a reformist, national-democratic party occupying a left-centrist position in the national movement.

(http://ourworld.compuserve.com)

EURASIA INSIGHT AZERBAIJANIS IN IRAN: EXPERIENCING A CULTURAL REAWAKENING Brenda Shaffer 8/02/04 Print this article Email this article The collapse of the Soviet Union helped foment a cultural reawakening among ethnic minorities in Iran. As reform-minded President Mohammad Khatami proceeds with the democratization of Iran’s political institutions, he and his supporters must contend with both conservative clerics [See Eurasia Insight Archive] and restive minorities. Balancing the concerns of all parties involved promises to be a difficult task. Iran is a multi-ethnic society in which approximately 50 percent of its citizens are of non-Persian origin. Minority groups include Arabs, Azerbaijanis, Baluchis, Kurds and Turkmens. These ethnic peoples are particularly vulnerable to external pressures, since most of the non-Persian people are concentrated in the frontier areas and have ties to co-ethnics in adjoining states, including Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, Pakistan and Iraq. Azerbaijanis are the largest minority group, comprising up to one-third of Iran’s overall population of about 64 million. Indeed, the number Azerbaijanis in Iran is far greater than the 7 million in Azerbaijan proper. Many Azerbaijanis refer to most of northwest Iran as "south Azerbaijan." Within Iran, this region is divided into three administrative units: East Azerbaijan Province, West Azerbaijan Province and Ardabil Province, but many Azerbaijanis lives outside the northwestern provinces, especially in Tehran, where they comprise approximately half of the population of the city. The cultural rights and political activities of minorities were restricted under both the Pahlavi monarchy (1921-1979), and under the Islamic Republic (1979-present). Up until the establishment of the Pahlavi regime, the political leadership of Iran was mostly Azerbaijani-Turkic, and Turkic and Persian cultural elements both influenced the regime and the culture of the country. For much of the 20th century, Azerbaijanis were at the forefront of political activity in Iran. Major milestones include the 1920 Khiyabani-led revolt in the Azerbaijani provinces, and the establishment of the Autonomous Provincial Government in Azerbaijan (1945-46). The main city in the Azerbaijani provinces, Tabriz, was a center of the revolutionary activity that precipitated the fall of the Pahlavi regime, and Azerbaijani activists who rebelled against Ayatollah Khomeini effectively controlled Tabriz for over a month in December 1979. The Soviet collapse served as the catalyst for the cultural reawakening of Azerbaijanis in Iran. Research indicates that the establishment of the Republic of Azerbaijan in 1991 served as a stimulant for many Azerbaijanis in Iran to identify with the Azerbaijani ethnic group, though not necessarily with the new state itself. For instance, Iranian Azerbaijani university students have conducted a number of coordinated letter-writing campaigns calling for expansion of Azerbaijani rights within Iran. One of the most important developments affecting the collective identity of the Azerbaijanis in Iran was the widespread viewing of television programs from Turkey beginning in 1992. This seems to have produced important social consequences for the Azerbaijanis, whose language allows them to easily understand Turkish. Initially, the Iranian government, hoping to prevent a rise in cultural awareness of its Azerbaijani minority, adopted a policy of de facto support for Armenia in its war with Azerbaijan over control of Nagorno-Karabagh. Tehran acted in the belief that a weak Azerbaijani state would not serve as an attractive alternative Iranian Azerbaijanis. Subsequently, many Azerbaijanis in Iran, including elected representatives in parliament, exerted pressure on the Iranian government to alter its policy, achieving limited results. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, Iran’s northwestern provinces have developed into important trade hubs, establishing direct relations with economic partners. Thus, they have circumvented Tehran. This new status has led them to make demands for greater resources from the central government. So far. the rise in Azerbaijani cultural awareness has not fostered significant separatist sentiment. However, it has placed pressure on officials in Tehran to loosen their grip on power. Many Azerbaijani’s support greater cultural rights and decentralization of the decision-making process. President Khatami, in attempting to strentgthen his political power base, has appealed to ethnic minorities, offering the prospect of wider cultural latitude. In addition, the president has sought to enlist the support of regional elites in his struggle with the conservative establishment in Tehran. While these policies are useful in the short-term in building a power base, Khatami may find that ethnic minorities, once empowered, may not be accepting of secondary status in the future. The rise in Azerbaijani identity serves as a challenge to both center-periphery relations, and to official Persian-linguistic and cultural dominance in Iran. The matter of cultural rights has emerged as an important issue in the political arena of Iran with broad implications for ongoing stability. It appears that the post-Islamic Revolution regime will have to redefine the relations with the ethnic minorities, especially if it continues with its democratization agenda. Editor’s Note: Brenda Shaffer is a post-doctoral fellow at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government. Posted August 2, 2004 © Eurasianet