Stepan Shaumyan
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Stepan Shaumyan (? 1878 - 20 September, 1918) was an Armenian politician and revolutionary.
Born to a cloth merchant in Tbilisi, Georgia, Shaumyan studied at the Petrograd and Riga Polytechnics, where he joined the Russian Social Democratic Party in the latter in 1900. In 1898-1902, studied in St. Petersburg and Riga Polytechnic Institutes. In 1905 he graduated from the Philosophy department of Berlin University.
Arrested by the Tsarist government for taking part in student politics on the campus, he was exiled back to his native Caucasia.
Escaping from his exile, Shaumyan went to Germany, where he met with other exiles from the Russian Empire, notably Julius Martov, Vladimir Lenin and Georgi Plekhanov.
Returning to Caucasia, Shaumyan became a teacher and also the leader of the local communists in Tbilisi, as well as a prolific writer of pro-Marx literature. At the 1903 Congress, he sided with the Bolsheviks. By 1907 he had moved to Baku to head up the significant Bolshevik movement in the city.
In 1914, he led Baku General Strike, which was fiercely broken by the Tsar's army, and Shaumyan was sent to prison.
He escaped just as the February Revolution of 1917 began. Though he had had limited participation in the Revolution itself, Shaumyan was elected President of the Baku Soviet due to his prior experience with the worker's movement in Azerbaijan. He also edited the newspapers Bakinsky Rabochy (Baku Worker), which came under pressure from the Provisional Government due to its somewhat provocative content.
Following the October Revolution (which was centred in Petrograd and Moscow and thus had little effect on Azerbaijan) Shaumyan was made Commissar Extraordinary for the Caucasus and Chairman of the Baku Council of People's Commissars.
Just following the Revolution, and just as British, American and other Western armies invaded Russia, in 1918, Baku Muslims rose up against their atheist Bolshevik leaders. Outnumbered, Shaumyan and 25 other commissars fled the city.
They attempted to escape with Red Army troops by sea to Astrakhan, but the ships were captured on August 16 by the White Army. Shaumyan and the others were arrested and placed in Baku prison. On September 14, Red Army soldiers broke into the prison and freed Shaumyan. He and the other commissars boarded a ship to Krasnovodsk, where upon he was promptly arrested by British troops, and on the night of September 20, executed by firing squad.