Stepan Georgiyevich Shaumyan

Shahumyan developed his own position on the national question out of the multi-ethnic reality of the Caucasus, and in autumn 1913 he debated the issue directly with Lenin by correspondence. Shahumyan favoured making Russian the official state language and leaned toward regional self-government rather than national-territorial autonomy; he also held that the right to self-determination encompassed the right to federation and autonomy. Lenin replied in a long letter on 23 November (6 December) 1913, rejecting an official language as "a stick that drives people away from the Russian language," insisting that autonomy was necessary for all parts of Russia, and arguing that the right to self-determination meant nothing more than the right to secede. The exchange was a serious theoretical confrontation between two Bolshevik thinkers, and Lenin closed his letter with "I am willing to take advice (ich lasse mich belehren) from comrades who have studied the question more deeply and for a longer period." (An expression of intellectual respect for Shahumyan.) Shahumyan held to his views thereafter: when he led the Caucasus Bolshevik organization in 1917, he proposed three national autonomous territories in Transcaucasia and envisioned a federative relationship with Russia.

On 25 April 1918, as Lenin's Commissar Extraordinary for the Caucasus, Shaumian assumed the chairmanship and foreign affairs portfolio of the Baku Council of People's Commissars, also known as the 'Baku Commune.' The coalition government included Bolsheviks, Left SRs, Mensheviks, and Dashnaks. Its first decrees nationalized the oil industry, introduced the eight-hour day, reformed the courts, and proclaimed land confiscation. Yet the oil-rich city immediately faced a triple crisis: the severing of food supply lines from the North Caucasus produced a famine threat; Enver Pasha's Ottoman Army of Islam advanced through the Caucasus; and armed tension between the Bolsheviks and the Azerbaijani nationalist Musavat party exploded in the March Days (30 March–2 April), an ethnic conflagration that left thousands dead. Shaumian, with Dashnak armed support, disarmed Musavat forces, but the violence shattered Armenian-Azerbaijani coexistence in the city beyond repair. The Commune repelled an Ottoman assault in June, yet food shortages and war exhaustion eroded its base. On 25 July, when the Soviet majority voted to invite British troops, Shaumian resigned. The Commune dissolved on 31 July, replaced by the Centro-Caspian Dictatorship. Shaumian fled with the other commissars across the Caspian Sea. On 20 September anti-Bolshevik forces captured and executed them. They became known as the 26 Baku Commissars.