Reading about Baku in the early part of the century, the place seems hellish. 50% of the world's oil production in 1905 was in Baku -- the Rothschilds were there, the Nobels were there in enormous palaces. (The Bolsheviks seem to have been getting money from both, possibly from donations, possibly from protection rackets. Koba's boyz hunted down criminals that had stolen from their oil-baron funders.) At the same time life expectancy for workers in the oil industry was around 30. It was also completely corrupt and throughly ganglandized.
There was also an extremely brutal pogrom by Muslim Azerbaijanis against Christian Armenians there in 1905, killing 2000 people, and then revenge attacks by Armenians against Azerbaijanis a few months later.
Did you ever read Gorbachev's Perestroika: A New Thinking for My Country and the World, where he writes that people in the Caucasus are all peace-loving and affable? ;)
--- Russell Grinker <grinker at mweb.co.za> wrote:
> Some exciting things also happened in Baku:
>
> "I represent here the revolutionary workers of one
> of the great imperialist
> powers, the United States of America, which exploits
> and oppresses the
> peoples of the colonies.
Lyubo, bratsy, lyubo, lyubo, bratsy, zhit!
ËÞÁÎ, ÁÐÀÒÖÛ, ËÞÁÎ, ËÞÁÎ, ÁÐÀÒÖÛ, ÆÈÒÜ!
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