March 31, 2025 marks 107 years since one of the most tragic and sorrowful events in Azerbaijan’s history — the genocide committed in March 1918 by Armenian Dashnaks with the support of the Bolsheviks against the peaceful Azerbaijani population. These horrifying events left a deep scar in the national memory of the Azerbaijani people and have forever been remembered as an act of unprecedented brutality and ethnic hatred.
On the night of March 30, 1918, a massacre began in Baku, during which, over the course of just a few days, approximately 20,000 Azerbaijanis were brutally killed — among them women, children, and the elderly. From March 30 to April 2, armed groups of the Baku Soviet, composed of Bolsheviks and Armenian Dashnaks led by Stepan Shaumyan, carried out large-scale ethnic cleansing. Places of worship were burned, architectural monuments destroyed — including the world-renowned architectural treasure, the “Ismailiyya” building — and Baku’s largest mosque, “Taza Pir,” was shelled with artillery. According to estimates, property belonging to the civilian population was confiscated in the amount of over 400 million manats.
However, the tragedy extended far beyond the capital. On March 31, 1918, Dashnaks carried out a massacre in 53 villages of the Shamakhi district, killing 8,027 Azerbaijanis, including 2,560 women and 1,277 children. In the Guba district, more than 16,000 civilians were slaughtered in 162 villages. The brutal attacks also spread to Lankaran, Mughan, Nagorno-Karabakh, Zangezur, Nakhchivan, Iravan, and other regions, where thousands of villages were destroyed and tens of thousands of Azerbaijanis were murdered.
On July 15, 1918, the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic (ADR) established an Extraordinary Investigation Commission to document and investigate the mass killings. Based on extensive documentation, the Commission submitted detailed reports to the government. In 1919, the ADR parliament officially declared March 31 as the Day of the Genocide of Azerbaijanis. However, after the fall of the ADR, Soviet authorities attempted to erase the memory of these events. It was only after the restoration of Azerbaijan’s independence that historical justice began to be restored.
On March 26, 1998, national leader Heydar Aliyev signed the presidential decree “On the Genocide of Azerbaijanis”, officially giving political and legal recognition to these tragic events.
In connection with the 107th anniversary of the tragedy, Azerbaijan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs issued an official statement, which reads:
“March 31 — the Day of the Genocide of Azerbaijanis — is a day on which we solemnly honor the memory of tens of thousands of innocent Azerbaijanis who were brutally murdered by radical Armenian groups. These mass killings were part of a systematic policy of ethnic cleansing and genocide against Azerbaijanis. According to the admission of the Caucasus Extraordinary Commissioner — Stepan Shaumyan, an Armenian by nationality — 6,000 armed soldiers of the Baku Soviet and 4,000 militants of the Dashnaktsutyun party carried out systematic massacres under the guise of fighting counter-revolutionaries, targeting peaceful Azerbaijanis in Baku, Shamakhi, Guba, Karabakh, Shirvan, Nakhchivan, Iravan, and other regions. In Guba alone, more than 16,000 people were killed and 167 villages destroyed.”
The statement emphasizes that the destruction of mosques, cultural monuments, and cemeteries stands as stark evidence that these crimes were fueled by deep ethnic and religious hatred.
Also today, the President of the Republic of Azerbaijan, Ilham Aliyev, and the First Vice-President, Mehriban Aliyeva, paid tribute to the memory of the genocide victims by sharing official messages on their social media accounts.
