The brutal destruction of Russians by the Turko-Tatars in 1918

In 1917, after Lenin’s coup, Russian troops began to leave the front line, which stretched from the Black Sea to Lake Urmia, and rushed home to Russia, where the Bolsheviks promised them “land, bread, and peace.”

The Muslim National Committee of Ganja decided to disarm the Russian military units retreating from the Turkish front and arm the newly formed national regiments with acquired weapons and ammunition.

On January 5, 1918, a 10,000-strong Musavat horde, consisting of criminal elements, including those specially released from prisons for this purpose (Aslan bey Safikyurdinskiy, Khadat bey Rustambegov) in Shamkhor, Dalyar, Khachmas, Agstafa, Gandzak, and Yevlakh suddenly attacked the Russians echelons and brutally killed thousands of soldiers.

Pogroms, accompanied by rape and torture, which lasted eight days…

The Russians quickly forgot about these bloody events (in Russian historiography there are only fleeting references to the massacres of January 1918).

Moreover, two years later, in 1920, in April, the Russian-Turkish-Tatar honeymoon began, the purpose of which was the Armenians who had just recovered from the greatest disasters.

Already in May 1920, Russian-Tatar military units invaded the Republic of Armenia without declaring war and occupied Artsakh.

by Arshaluis Zurabyan