The March Days or March Events () was a period of inter-ethnic strife and clashes which led to the death of about 12,000
Azerbaijani
Azerbaijani may refer to:
* Something of, or related to Azerbaijan
* Azerbaijanis
* Azerbaijani language
See also
* Azerbaijan (disambiguation)
* Azeri (disambiguation)
* Azerbaijani cuisine
* Culture of Azerbaijan
The culture of Azerbaijan ...
[: "The results of the March events were immediate and total for the Musavat. Several hundreds of its members were killed in the fighting; up to 12,000 Muslim civilians perished; thousands of others fled Baku in a mass exodus."] and other Muslim civilians that took place between 30 March – 2 April 1918 in the city of
Baku and adjacent areas of the
Baku Governorate
The Baku Governorate, known before 1859 as the Shemakha Governorate, was a province ('' guberniya'') of the Caucasus Viceroyalty of the Russian Empire, with its center in the booming metropolis and Caspian Sea port of Baku. Area (1897): 34,400 ...
of the
Transcaucasian Democratic Federative Republic
The Transcaucasian Democratic Federative Republic (TDFR; (), (). 22 April – 28 May 1918) was a short-lived state in the Caucasus that included most of the territory of the present-day Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia, as well as pa ...
.
Facilitated by a political power struggle between
Bolsheviks
The Bolsheviks (russian: Большевики́, from большинство́ ''bol'shinstvó'', 'majority'),; derived from ''bol'shinstvó'' (большинство́), "majority", literally meaning "one of the majority". also known in English ...
with the support of the
Armenian Revolutionary Federation (Dashnaktsutiun) on one side and the Azerbaijani
Musavat
The Müsavat Party ( az, Müsavat Partiyası, from ar, مساواة ''musāwāt'', ) is the oldest existing political party in Azerbaijan. Its history can be divided into three periods: Early Musavat, Musavat-in-exile and New Musavat.
Early Musa ...
Party on another, the events led to rumours of a possible Muslim revolt
[Firuz Kazemzadeh. Struggle For Transcaucasia (1917—1921), New York Philosophical Library, 1951.][Tadeusz Swietochowski. Russian Azerbaijan, 1905—1920: The Shaping of a National Identity in a Muslim Community. Cambridge University Press, 2004. , 9780521522458, pp 116—118]The truly tragic turn of events came after acceptance of the ultimatum, when the Dashnakist allies of the Bolsheviks took to looting, burning, and killing in the Muslim sections of the city
on the part of Bolshevik and Dashnak forces