WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:03.799 welcome back to the deep dive today we are opening 00:00:03.799 --> 00:00:08.220 a file on a man who i think for many of us in 00:00:08.220 --> 00:00:10.740 the west history has kind of relegated to the 00:00:10.740 --> 00:00:13.099 footnotes but if you were living in the soviet 00:00:13.099 --> 00:00:15.599 union this man was an absolute titan i mean they 00:00:15.599 --> 00:00:17.980 called him the caucasian lenin yeah cities were 00:00:17.980 --> 00:00:20.539 named after him statues and town squares the 00:00:20.539 --> 00:00:23.480 works but if you really dig into the archives 00:00:23.480 --> 00:00:28.219 into the actual telegrams and memoirs from 1918, 00:00:28.399 --> 00:00:30.899 you find a story that is so much darker. And 00:00:30.899 --> 00:00:33.179 infinitely more complex. Infinitely. Way more 00:00:33.179 --> 00:00:35.679 than the Soviet textbooks ever let on. We are 00:00:35.679 --> 00:00:38.520 talking about Stepan Shamian. And honestly, before 00:00:38.520 --> 00:00:40.340 we started researching this, I knew the name, 00:00:40.340 --> 00:00:42.759 but that was about it. Right. But the more you 00:00:42.759 --> 00:00:44.579 read, the more you realize his fingerprints are 00:00:44.579 --> 00:00:46.960 just... all over the history of the 20th century. 00:00:47.159 --> 00:00:50.560 We've got imperial spies, a lethal rivalry with 00:00:50.560 --> 00:00:53.140 Joseph Stalin, and a revolution happening in 00:00:53.140 --> 00:00:55.479 one of the most chaotic places on Earth. It really 00:00:55.479 --> 00:00:57.899 is a story about the collision of empires. You 00:00:57.899 --> 00:01:00.859 have the Russian, the Ottoman, the British, all 00:01:00.859 --> 00:01:03.600 fighting over one specific thing. Baku oil. Baku 00:01:03.600 --> 00:01:06.099 oil. And sitting right in the middle of that 00:01:06.099 --> 00:01:09.620 powder keg is Stepan Shamian. So let's set the 00:01:09.620 --> 00:01:11.560 mission for this deep dives. We're not just looking 00:01:11.560 --> 00:01:14.379 at a biography here. We want to unpack how an 00:01:14.379 --> 00:01:17.019 intellectual, a guy who quoted German philosophers, 00:01:17.420 --> 00:01:19.959 ended up presiding over one of the grisliest 00:01:19.959 --> 00:01:23.099 ethnic massacres of the Russian Civil War. And 00:01:23.099 --> 00:01:26.939 how 90 years later, his grave became a, well, 00:01:27.079 --> 00:01:29.939 a crime scene in a modern geopolitical conflict. 00:01:30.120 --> 00:01:33.120 It is such a wild timeline. It is. But to understand 00:01:33.120 --> 00:01:35.340 why Shamian matters, you have to get the setting. 00:01:35.629 --> 00:01:37.909 The Caucasus in the early 20th century wasn't 00:01:37.909 --> 00:01:40.310 just a frontier. It was the prize. It was like 00:01:40.310 --> 00:01:42.950 the Wild West, but with, you know, oil derricks 00:01:42.950 --> 00:01:45.209 and ancient blood feuds. OK, so let's start with 00:01:45.209 --> 00:01:47.170 the man himself, because when I hear Bolshevik 00:01:47.170 --> 00:01:49.750 revolutionary, my mind usually pictures a, you 00:01:49.750 --> 00:01:51.670 know, a hardened street fighter, someone rough 00:01:51.670 --> 00:01:53.930 around the edges. Yeah. Shaman doesn't fit that 00:01:53.930 --> 00:01:56.549 mold at all. Not even close. He was born in 1878 00:01:56.549 --> 00:02:00.030 in Tiflis, what we now call Tbilisi, into a family 00:02:00.030 --> 00:02:01.989 of cloth merchants. So they were comfortable. 00:02:02.290 --> 00:02:05.500 But his lineage. This is interesting. It actually 00:02:05.500 --> 00:02:08.280 goes back to Armenian nobility. Nobility. The 00:02:08.280 --> 00:02:11.379 Meleks of Meghri, yeah. So he had status, and 00:02:11.379 --> 00:02:13.699 he had a serious education. He wasn't radicalized 00:02:13.699 --> 00:02:15.719 in a factory. He was radicalized at university. 00:02:16.080 --> 00:02:18.180 He went to the Riga Polytechnic Institute, right. 00:02:18.240 --> 00:02:20.400 He did, until he got expelled for politics, as 00:02:20.400 --> 00:02:22.199 you do in those circles. But then he went to 00:02:22.199 --> 00:02:24.229 the Humboldt University of Berlin. He actually 00:02:24.229 --> 00:02:26.389 graduated from the philosophy department in 1905. 00:02:26.669 --> 00:02:28.949 So while other revolutionaries are robbing banks 00:02:28.949 --> 00:02:32.270 for the party, Shamian is in German cafes debating 00:02:32.270 --> 00:02:35.689 dialectics. Exactly. And he's mixing with the 00:02:35.689 --> 00:02:38.810 absolute heavyweights of European Marxism. He 00:02:38.810 --> 00:02:41.729 knew Lenin. He knew Martov. He was there in London 00:02:41.729 --> 00:02:44.349 at the famous Second Party Congress. Oh, the 00:02:44.349 --> 00:02:46.930 big one. The moment the party splits. The moment 00:02:46.930 --> 00:02:48.969 it splits into Bolsheviks and Mensheviks. Yeah. 00:02:49.520 --> 00:02:51.819 And Shamian, he picked his side immediately. 00:02:52.080 --> 00:02:54.639 He was a Bolshevik through and through. An ideologue. 00:02:54.719 --> 00:02:58.159 But, and this is so key, when he returns to the 00:02:58.159 --> 00:03:00.860 Caucasus to organize, he isn't operating in a 00:03:00.860 --> 00:03:04.060 vacuum. He runs headfirst into a young Georgian 00:03:04.060 --> 00:03:06.599 revolutionary named Koba. Better known to history 00:03:06.599 --> 00:03:09.460 as Joseph Stalin. Right. And reading about their 00:03:09.460 --> 00:03:12.460 dynamic, it was not a buddy comedy. It seems 00:03:12.460 --> 00:03:14.560 like they genuinely could not stand each other. 00:03:14.759 --> 00:03:17.139 Didn't like each other. Yeah. Is putting it very 00:03:17.139 --> 00:03:20.460 mildly. It was a shark tank. Shamian was the 00:03:20.460 --> 00:03:23.860 theoretician, the writer, the guy leading the 00:03:23.860 --> 00:03:26.539 intellectual charge. Stalin was the enforcer, 00:03:26.539 --> 00:03:29.319 the organizer. But the tension just boiled over 00:03:29.319 --> 00:03:31.840 in this one incident in 1909 that really tells 00:03:31.840 --> 00:03:33.759 you everything. Oh, this stood out to me. So 00:03:33.759 --> 00:03:36.520 Shamian gets arrested by the Tsarist police. 00:03:36.659 --> 00:03:40.080 It's May Day, 1909. Correct. He was hiding in 00:03:40.080 --> 00:03:42.900 a safe house. Eventually, his employer helps 00:03:42.900 --> 00:03:45.620 get him released. But as soon as he's out, Shamian 00:03:45.620 --> 00:03:48.800 points the finger directly at Stalin. openly 00:03:48.800 --> 00:03:50.539 accused him of being a police agent. Which is 00:03:50.539 --> 00:03:52.439 a death sentence in those circles. I mean, you 00:03:52.439 --> 00:03:54.340 do not just throw that accusation around. It's 00:03:54.340 --> 00:03:56.819 a suicide mission. So what was his logic? His 00:03:56.819 --> 00:03:59.770 logic was brutal and honestly pretty sound. He 00:03:59.770 --> 00:04:01.469 reasoned that Stalin was the only other person 00:04:01.469 --> 00:04:03.550 who knew the address of that safe house. So if 00:04:03.550 --> 00:04:05.550 the police found him. Koba must have tipped them 00:04:05.550 --> 00:04:08.310 off. That is cold. It's cutthroat. Now, the accusation 00:04:08.310 --> 00:04:10.789 was never proved. And, you know, officially, 00:04:10.870 --> 00:04:13.770 Shamian accepted Stalin's denial. They kept working 00:04:13.770 --> 00:04:16.269 together for years. But it just highlights the 00:04:16.269 --> 00:04:19.569 atmosphere, the paranoia. And it tells you Shamian 00:04:19.569 --> 00:04:21.949 wasn't afraid to confront the most dangerous 00:04:21.949 --> 00:04:24.410 men in the room. OK, let's fast forward a bit. 00:04:24.680 --> 00:04:27.240 World War I is raging. The Russian Empire is 00:04:27.240 --> 00:04:29.980 collapsing. The Tsar is overthrown. Then the 00:04:29.980 --> 00:04:34.040 Bolsheviks seize power. But Baku, Baku is a long, 00:04:34.060 --> 00:04:36.639 long way from Petrograd. It is. And it's the 00:04:36.639 --> 00:04:39.139 jewel in the crown because of the oil. So after 00:04:39.139 --> 00:04:41.240 the October Revolution, Lenin needs a man to 00:04:41.240 --> 00:04:44.779 hold it. And he appoints Shamian as the Commissar 00:04:44.779 --> 00:04:47.360 Extraordinary for the Caucasus. Extraordinary. 00:04:47.360 --> 00:04:50.139 Great title. It sounds impressive, but his actual 00:04:50.139 --> 00:04:52.959 position was incredibly precarious. He ends up 00:04:52.959 --> 00:04:54.939 leading what's called the Baku Commune. But unlike 00:04:54.939 --> 00:04:56.920 in Moscow, where the Bolsheviks had this iron 00:04:56.920 --> 00:04:59.899 grip, Baku was a mess. Shulman did not have a 00:04:59.899 --> 00:05:02.920 majority. To govern, he had to form this very 00:05:02.920 --> 00:05:05.240 fragile coalition. Right. He's working with left 00:05:05.240 --> 00:05:07.540 socialist revolutionaries, Mensheviks, and then 00:05:07.540 --> 00:05:09.879 there's this other group, the Dashneks. We really 00:05:09.879 --> 00:05:12.040 need to unpack who they were. Yeah, the Dashnaks 00:05:12.040 --> 00:05:14.680 are crucial to what happens next. They were the 00:05:14.680 --> 00:05:17.759 Armenian Revolutionary Federation. Yeah. Nationalists. 00:05:17.819 --> 00:05:20.500 Okay. Their whole goal was the defense and liberation 00:05:20.500 --> 00:05:22.579 of the Armenian people, specifically from the 00:05:22.579 --> 00:05:26.040 Ottoman Empire. So ideologically, they were totally 00:05:26.040 --> 00:05:28.660 incompatible with Shomian. He's a Bolshevik internationalist. 00:05:28.680 --> 00:05:31.459 He wants class war. And the Dashnaks are fighting 00:05:31.459 --> 00:05:34.699 an ethnic struggle. Exactly. But Shomian, the 00:05:34.699 --> 00:05:37.470 Bolshevik. Gets in bed with them. Why? Out of 00:05:37.470 --> 00:05:40.589 pure desperation. He had no troops. The Bolsheviks 00:05:40.589 --> 00:05:43.589 had maybe 6 ,000 reliable soldiers in a city 00:05:43.589 --> 00:05:46.009 that was about to just explode. The Dashnets 00:05:46.009 --> 00:05:48.750 had the manpower. And that desperation, that 00:05:48.750 --> 00:05:52.050 leads us to the March days of 1918. This is the 00:05:52.050 --> 00:05:54.170 turning point. And honestly, it's the darkest 00:05:54.170 --> 00:05:56.589 part of this whole story. This is where the intellectual 00:05:56.589 --> 00:05:59.129 meets a brutal reality. It all started with a 00:05:59.129 --> 00:06:02.350 single spark. In March 1918, a ship called the 00:06:02.350 --> 00:06:05.189 Evelina arrives in Baku. This wasn't a warship. 00:06:05.529 --> 00:06:07.290 It was carrying Azerbaijani soldiers who were 00:06:07.290 --> 00:06:10.029 coming to attend a funeral. A funeral. But the 00:06:10.029 --> 00:06:12.509 Baku commune, Shamian's government, they decide 00:06:12.509 --> 00:06:15.670 to disarm them. Yes. They demanded the soldiers 00:06:15.670 --> 00:06:18.389 hand over their weapons, which, given the tension 00:06:18.389 --> 00:06:20.730 in the city, was like lighting a match in a gas 00:06:20.730 --> 00:06:23.850 station. So the Muslim population was furious. 00:06:24.329 --> 00:06:27.149 Furious. They gathered at a mosque, demanding 00:06:27.149 --> 00:06:29.670 the rifles back. Now, the sources say there was 00:06:29.670 --> 00:06:32.250 an attempt to stop this from blowing up. Okay, 00:06:32.290 --> 00:06:35.579 so someone tried to mediate. Right. The Azerbaijani 00:06:35.579 --> 00:06:38.139 Bolshevik organization, called HUMMET, tried 00:06:38.139 --> 00:06:40.579 to broker a deal. They said, let us take custody 00:06:40.579 --> 00:06:42.959 of the weapons. And Shamian actually agreed. 00:06:43.120 --> 00:06:45.339 He tried to de -escalate. So he didn't want a 00:06:45.339 --> 00:06:48.399 war, not at first. No. But before the transfer 00:06:48.399 --> 00:06:50.839 could happen, shooting started. It's unclear 00:06:50.839 --> 00:06:54.240 who fired first. It almost always is. But the 00:06:54.240 --> 00:06:57.000 Soviet commissar, Prokofy Japaridze, immediately 00:06:57.000 --> 00:06:59.939 blamed the Musavat Party, the Azerbaijani nationalists. 00:07:00.060 --> 00:07:02.350 He claimed they'd launched a political war. And 00:07:02.350 --> 00:07:04.589 once the shooting starts, Shamian makes a choice 00:07:04.589 --> 00:07:07.089 that changes everything. He knows his 6 ,000 00:07:07.089 --> 00:07:10.050 Bolsheviks can't win, so he unleashes the Dashnaks. 00:07:10.290 --> 00:07:13.230 He does. He invites about 4 ,000 Armenian nationalist 00:07:13.230 --> 00:07:15.529 troops to join the fight under the Soviet banner. 00:07:15.769 --> 00:07:18.790 He essentially deputized an ethnic militia to 00:07:18.790 --> 00:07:21.250 fight a political battle. And the result was 00:07:21.250 --> 00:07:25.040 predictable. Tragically so. The Dashnaks didn't 00:07:25.040 --> 00:07:27.160 care about Soviet power. They saw an opportunity 00:07:27.160 --> 00:07:29.699 to settle scores with the Azerbaijanis. So it 00:07:29.699 --> 00:07:31.639 stopped being a battle and it just turned into 00:07:31.639 --> 00:07:34.420 an ethnic massacre. Horrific. We are talking 00:07:34.420 --> 00:07:38.139 about looting. burning, killing civilians. The 00:07:38.139 --> 00:07:40.339 estimates of the dead range from 3 ,000 up to 00:07:40.339 --> 00:07:43.300 12 ,000 Azerbaijanis and other Muslims. What 00:07:43.300 --> 00:07:45.899 gets me is Shamian's reaction to this. He doesn't 00:07:45.899 --> 00:07:48.000 deny it happened. We have a quote from him, and 00:07:48.000 --> 00:07:50.120 he admits the participation of the national forces 00:07:50.120 --> 00:07:52.819 gave the war, quote, the character of an ethnic 00:07:52.819 --> 00:07:55.939 massacre. But then he says this line. We were 00:07:55.939 --> 00:07:58.160 going for it deliberately. We were going for 00:07:58.160 --> 00:08:02.000 it deliberately. It is a chilling, chilling line. 00:08:02.279 --> 00:08:04.779 It's devastating. He justified it. He said the 00:08:04.779 --> 00:08:07.420 Musavat intended to overthrow Soviet power and 00:08:07.420 --> 00:08:09.360 that securing the government was worth the cost. 00:08:09.579 --> 00:08:12.339 But it just destroys that image of him as the 00:08:12.339 --> 00:08:14.819 peaceful intellectual. It shows how the violence 00:08:14.819 --> 00:08:16.800 of the civil war just completely consumed him. 00:08:16.920 --> 00:08:19.279 When the chips were down, he chose terror to 00:08:19.279 --> 00:08:22.180 stay in control. So the commune wins the battle, 00:08:22.300 --> 00:08:24.920 but at a horrific cost. And now they're completely 00:08:24.920 --> 00:08:28.740 isolated. And by mid -1918, they have a massive 00:08:28.740 --> 00:08:32.039 new problem. The Ottoman Army of Islam is marching 00:08:32.039 --> 00:08:34.700 on the city. This is the geopolitical squeeze. 00:08:35.320 --> 00:08:38.679 Shamian is in Baku, surrounded. The Ottomans 00:08:38.679 --> 00:08:42.039 want the oil and the commune is desperate. Yes. 00:08:42.059 --> 00:08:44.559 This is where the British enter the chat. The 00:08:44.559 --> 00:08:47.399 British Empire also eyeing the oil and they definitely 00:08:47.399 --> 00:08:49.159 don't want the Ottomans to have it. Exactly. 00:08:49.159 --> 00:08:51.399 So the Dashnaks and the Mensheviks and the commune 00:08:51.399 --> 00:08:54.120 start saying, hey, we need help. Let's invite 00:08:54.120 --> 00:08:56.159 the British forces under General Dunsterville 00:08:56.159 --> 00:08:59.019 to help us defend the city. But Shamian had his 00:08:59.019 --> 00:09:01.279 orders from Moscow. Strict orders from Lenin. 00:09:01.610 --> 00:09:04.549 No imperialist aid. To a Bolshevik, the British 00:09:04.549 --> 00:09:07.100 were just as bad as the Ottomans. He refused 00:09:07.100 --> 00:09:09.320 to budge. And this leads to this incredible scene 00:09:09.320 --> 00:09:11.399 at Shamian's house. He has a meeting with the 00:09:11.399 --> 00:09:13.559 British vice consul, a man named Ronald McDonald. 00:09:13.879 --> 00:09:16.259 It sounds like something from a spy novel. It 00:09:16.259 --> 00:09:18.940 really is a clash of world views. McDonald goes 00:09:18.940 --> 00:09:21.700 to Shamian's home to persuade him. He says, look, 00:09:21.820 --> 00:09:23.659 General Dunsterville doesn't want to take over. 00:09:23.799 --> 00:09:26.360 He just wants to help fight the Turks. He's trying 00:09:26.360 --> 00:09:28.580 to be pragmatic. And Shamian isn't buying it 00:09:28.580 --> 00:09:31.299 for a second. Not for a second. He asks McDonald, 00:09:31.379 --> 00:09:34.100 is your general coming to turn us out? And then 00:09:34.100 --> 00:09:36.659 he delivers this line. And you really believe 00:09:36.659 --> 00:09:38.740 that a British general and a Bolshevik commissar 00:09:38.740 --> 00:09:41.559 would make good partners? No. So why was he so 00:09:41.559 --> 00:09:43.759 stubborn? Did he think help was coming from Russia? 00:09:44.100 --> 00:09:47.539 He did. He was convinced Bolshevik reinforcements 00:09:47.539 --> 00:09:50.259 were sailing down the Caspian. He'd been sending 00:09:50.259 --> 00:09:52.620 telegrams promising they could hold out, but 00:09:52.620 --> 00:09:56.600 warning they needed backup. The tragedy is, those 00:09:56.600 --> 00:09:59.360 reinforcements weren't coming. It was a massive 00:09:59.360 --> 00:10:02.080 miscalculation. So the clock runs out. July 26, 00:10:02.480 --> 00:10:06.539 1918. The Baku Soviet holds a vote and the Bolsheviks 00:10:06.539 --> 00:10:10.620 lose. They're outvoted 259 to 236. The majority 00:10:10.620 --> 00:10:12.639 wants to bring in the British. Shamian realizes 00:10:12.639 --> 00:10:15.779 it's over. His support has collapsed. So he announces 00:10:15.779 --> 00:10:17.580 the Bolsheviks are withdrawing from the Soviet 00:10:17.580 --> 00:10:20.279 and from the city. And his exit line is so dramatic. 00:10:20.679 --> 00:10:23.389 Oh, it is. With pain in our hearts and curses 00:10:23.389 --> 00:10:26.129 on our lips, we who had come here to die for 00:10:26.129 --> 00:10:29.190 the Soviet regime are forced to leave. Curses 00:10:29.190 --> 00:10:31.009 on our lips. You can just feel the bitterness. 00:10:31.230 --> 00:10:34.110 A new government takes over, the Central Caspian 00:10:34.110 --> 00:10:37.570 dictatorship, and the British move in. But it's 00:10:37.570 --> 00:10:39.870 too little, too late. The Ottoman army breaks 00:10:39.870 --> 00:10:42.169 the lines, and Shamian and his comrades, the 00:10:42.169 --> 00:10:45.139 famous 26th Commissars, they try to flee. And 00:10:45.139 --> 00:10:48.139 this is where the final tragic act begins. They 00:10:48.139 --> 00:10:50.279 get on ships to sail to Astrakhan, which was 00:10:50.279 --> 00:10:52.240 Bolshevik -held territory, but they don't make 00:10:52.240 --> 00:10:54.879 it. No, they're intercepted on August 16th by 00:10:54.879 --> 00:10:57.580 vessels from the new dictatorship in Baku. They're 00:10:57.580 --> 00:11:00.159 dragged back to prison. Okay, but then things 00:11:00.159 --> 00:11:02.779 get chaotic. The Ottoman army is entering the 00:11:02.779 --> 00:11:05.559 city. The British are pulling out. And amidst 00:11:05.559 --> 00:11:08.309 all this... Shamian gets a lucky break. He does. 00:11:08.549 --> 00:11:11.330 And Astas Mikoyan, another famous Bolshevik, 00:11:11.470 --> 00:11:13.470 manages to break into the prison and release 00:11:13.470 --> 00:11:16.190 them. They scramble onto a ship, the Turkmen, 00:11:16.330 --> 00:11:18.730 hoping to cross the Caspian to safety. But they 00:11:18.730 --> 00:11:21.990 don't land in friendly territory. No. And this 00:11:21.990 --> 00:11:24.789 is the final quest. The ship, either from lack 00:11:24.789 --> 00:11:28.110 of fuel or maybe treachery, takes them to Krasnovodsk, 00:11:28.149 --> 00:11:32.230 in modern -day Turkmenistan. The problem was... 00:11:32.429 --> 00:11:34.649 Krasnovodsk was controlled by anti -Bolshevik 00:11:34.649 --> 00:11:37.450 forces. Out of the frying pan, into the fire. 00:11:37.610 --> 00:11:39.690 Exactly. They were arrested immediately. And 00:11:39.690 --> 00:11:41.750 this is where the British controversy comes roaring 00:11:41.750 --> 00:11:44.009 back because the British were also operating 00:11:44.009 --> 00:11:45.850 in this area. Right. This is one of the most 00:11:45.850 --> 00:11:48.250 debated points of the whole story. It is. The 00:11:48.250 --> 00:11:50.610 British Major General, Wilford Mallison, he hears 00:11:50.610 --> 00:11:53.309 about the arrest. He contacts his liaison officer, 00:11:53.570 --> 00:11:56.850 Captain Reginald T. Jones, and Mallison suggests 00:11:56.850 --> 00:11:59.340 they shouldn't shoot the commissars. Instead, 00:11:59.539 --> 00:12:01.539 he wants to use them as hostages. A bargaining 00:12:01.539 --> 00:12:04.620 chip. Exactly. Swap them for British citizens 00:12:04.620 --> 00:12:07.039 being held by the Soviets elsewhere. It was a 00:12:07.039 --> 00:12:09.519 pragmatic move. So what went wrong? Why did they 00:12:09.519 --> 00:12:12.440 end up dead? Well, Teague Jones attends a meeting 00:12:12.440 --> 00:12:14.519 with the local anti -Bolshevik government deciding 00:12:14.519 --> 00:12:18.279 the prisoners' fate. But the message doesn't 00:12:18.279 --> 00:12:20.879 seem to get through. Teague Jones later claimed 00:12:20.879 --> 00:12:22.840 he left the meeting before a decision was made. 00:12:23.200 --> 00:12:24.860 That sounds convenient. Oh, I just stepped out 00:12:24.860 --> 00:12:26.879 for a minute and they decided to execute everyone. 00:12:27.080 --> 00:12:31.379 It does. It reeks of plausible deniability. And 00:12:31.379 --> 00:12:34.000 for decades, the Soviets claimed the British 00:12:34.000 --> 00:12:36.899 ordered the execution. The sources suggest it 00:12:36.899 --> 00:12:38.980 was probably more a mix of negligence and the 00:12:38.980 --> 00:12:41.159 fact that the local anti -Bolsheviks just really, 00:12:41.200 --> 00:12:43.610 really wanted these guys dead. So on the night 00:12:43.610 --> 00:12:46.690 of September 20, 1918, Shamian and the others 00:12:46.690 --> 00:12:48.929 are taken out. They were put on a train, taken 00:12:48.929 --> 00:12:50.769 to a remote location in the desert. They were 00:12:50.769 --> 00:12:52.889 ordered off the train and executed by firing 00:12:52.889 --> 00:12:57.110 squad. Stepan Shamian was 39 years old. And that 00:12:57.110 --> 00:12:58.750 should be the end of the story. He becomes a 00:12:58.750 --> 00:13:01.409 martyr. The Soviets build the statues. They rename 00:13:01.409 --> 00:13:03.870 the cities. Stepanakert and Nagorno -Karabakh 00:13:03.870 --> 00:13:06.769 is named after him. Right. And Anastas Mikoyan, 00:13:06.830 --> 00:13:09.309 who survived, he treated Shamian's children like 00:13:09.309 --> 00:13:11.909 his own. He kept that memory alive. Shamian, 00:13:11.950 --> 00:13:14.809 the perfect revolutionary hero, the Caucasian 00:13:14.809 --> 00:13:17.710 Lenin. But history doesn't stay buried. Let's 00:13:17.710 --> 00:13:20.610 jump forward 90 years to 2009. The Soviet Union 00:13:20.610 --> 00:13:23.490 is gone. Azerbaijan and Armenia have fought a 00:13:23.490 --> 00:13:26.370 brutal war. And the legacy of Shamian, an Armenian 00:13:26.370 --> 00:13:29.029 who ruled Baku, is suddenly very complicated 00:13:29.029 --> 00:13:32.210 in Azerbaijan. Complicated is putting it mildly. 00:13:32.269 --> 00:13:35.450 In January 2009, the Azerbaijani authorities 00:13:35.450 --> 00:13:39.250 decided to demolish the memorial to the 26 commissars 00:13:39.250 --> 00:13:41.250 in Baku. And during the demolition work, the 00:13:41.250 --> 00:13:44.370 Azerbaijani press drops an absolute bombshell. 00:13:44.509 --> 00:13:46.649 They reported that forensic experts had examined 00:13:46.649 --> 00:13:49.570 the remains and only found 21 bodies in the grave, 00:13:49.750 --> 00:13:53.070 not 26. Wait, five were missing? And the implication 00:13:53.070 --> 00:13:55.899 was? The implication was clear. Yeah. They suggested 00:13:55.899 --> 00:13:59.379 Shamian and four other Armenian commissars hadn't 00:13:59.379 --> 00:14:01.799 been executed at all, that they had escaped. 00:14:02.019 --> 00:14:05.460 So the theory was that the Caucasian Lenin secretly 00:14:05.460 --> 00:14:08.120 fled and lived out his life somewhere. That was 00:14:08.120 --> 00:14:10.059 the narrative being pushed. It fed right into 00:14:10.059 --> 00:14:12.179 the intense distrust between the two nations. 00:14:12.379 --> 00:14:14.820 The idea that the Armenian leaders had tricked 00:14:14.820 --> 00:14:16.740 their comrades and left them to die while they 00:14:16.740 --> 00:14:19.019 escaped to India or America was a conspiracy 00:14:19.019 --> 00:14:21.419 theory basically weaponized for a modern conflict. 00:14:21.870 --> 00:14:24.289 But the family fought back on this. Oh, yeah. 00:14:24.750 --> 00:14:27.529 Shamian's granddaughter, Tatyana, who's a historian 00:14:27.529 --> 00:14:31.889 in Moscow, she completely rejected it. She pointed 00:14:31.889 --> 00:14:34.169 out that there's actual film footage in the archives 00:14:34.169 --> 00:14:37.870 of the 26 bodies being buried. Her grandmother 00:14:37.870 --> 00:14:40.269 attended the reburial. She called the escape 00:14:40.269 --> 00:14:42.570 theory impossible. And psychologically, it just 00:14:42.570 --> 00:14:44.110 doesn't fit the man we've been talking about. 00:14:44.210 --> 00:14:46.110 Exactly. This is a man who refused to compromise 00:14:46.110 --> 00:14:48.639 with the British to save his government. The 00:14:48.639 --> 00:14:50.500 idea that he would cut a secret deal to run away 00:14:50.500 --> 00:14:53.340 while his comrades were shot. It just contradicts 00:14:53.340 --> 00:14:55.039 everything we know about his character. It's 00:14:55.039 --> 00:14:57.799 just fascinating how a man who died in 1918 can 00:14:57.799 --> 00:15:01.080 still be a pawn in a conflict in 2009. That's 00:15:01.080 --> 00:15:03.720 the nature of symbols in this region. Shamian 00:15:03.720 --> 00:15:05.740 represents completely different things to different 00:15:05.740 --> 00:15:09.360 people. To the Soviets, a hero. To modern Azerbaijan, 00:15:09.820 --> 00:15:11.960 he's often seen as a villain because of the march 00:15:11.960 --> 00:15:14.720 days. To Armenians, he's a prominent historical 00:15:14.720 --> 00:15:17.320 figure, though his Bolshevik politics are... 00:15:18.139 --> 00:15:20.480 It really all circles back to that quote, doesn't 00:15:20.480 --> 00:15:22.600 it? We were going for it deliberately. He was 00:15:22.600 --> 00:15:25.299 a man of high education, a philosopher. But when 00:15:25.299 --> 00:15:28.779 push came to shove in the chaos of 1918, he oversaw 00:15:28.779 --> 00:15:31.700 a massacre to hold on to power. And that really 00:15:31.700 --> 00:15:33.620 is the tragedy of the Russian Revolution in the 00:15:33.620 --> 00:15:35.980 borderlands. It wasn't just class struggle. It 00:15:35.980 --> 00:15:39.419 was empire ethnicity survival. Shamian tried 00:15:39.419 --> 00:15:42.639 to walk this tightrope between his ideals and 00:15:42.639 --> 00:15:45.059 the brutal reality of the Caucasus. And in the 00:15:45.059 --> 00:15:47.539 end, he fell. And took the Baku commune down 00:15:47.539 --> 00:15:49.549 with him. We often think of these historical 00:15:49.549 --> 00:15:51.830 figures as inevitable, but his story is so full 00:15:51.830 --> 00:15:54.289 of what ifs. What if he had accepted British 00:15:54.289 --> 00:15:56.769 aid? What if Teague Jones had stayed at that 00:15:56.769 --> 00:15:58.750 meeting? It makes you wonder. It absolutely does. 00:15:58.990 --> 00:16:00.909 We're going to wrap it up there. A story of a 00:16:00.909 --> 00:16:03.309 man caught between empires, between ideologies, 00:16:03.370 --> 00:16:06.049 and ultimately between life and death in the 00:16:06.049 --> 00:16:12.850 desert. I believe you with a final thought. This 00:16:12.850 --> 00:16:16.169 one from the historian Ronald Grigor Suny. He 00:16:16.169 --> 00:16:19.070 noted that Shamian wanted to win power democratically 00:16:19.070 --> 00:16:22.009 and non -violently if a leader with those specific 00:16:22.009 --> 00:16:24.730 intentions could oversee something like the march 00:16:24.730 --> 00:16:27.929 days what does that tell us about the volatility 00:16:27.929 --> 00:16:31.789 of revelations can high ideals ever really survive 00:16:31.789 --> 00:16:34.470 the reality of a civil war that is the question 00:16:34.470 --> 00:16:37.309 think about that thanks for listening to this 00:16:37.309 --> 00:16:38.830 deep dive we'll see you next time