Czarist Empire in 1917. Located in eastern
Transcaucasia, about the Caspian Sea, Azerbaidjan's capital was the city
of Baku, famous for its oil-fields. Oil had transformed Baku into an
industrial centre on Western lines, with a large working population of
mixed Asiatic and Russian origin. Playing upon the nascent
class-consciousness of this urban proletariat, the Bolshevik agents made
a _coup d'etat_ in the spring of 1920, overthrew the nationalist
government, and, with prompt Russian backing, made Azerbaijan a Soviet
republic. The usual accompaniments of the social revolution followed:
despoiling and massacring of the upper and middle classes, confiscation
of property in favour of the town proletarians and agricultural
labourers, and ruthless terrorism. With the opening months of 1920,
Bolshevism was thus in actual operation in both the Near and Middle
East.[303]

Having acquired strong footholds in the Orient, Bolshevism now felt
strong enough to throw off the mask. In the autumn of 1920, the Soviet
Government of Russia held a "Congress of Eastern Peoples" at Baku, the
aim of which was not merely the liberation of the Orient from Western
control but its Bolshevizing as well. No attempt at concealment of this
larger objective was made, and so striking was the language employed
that it may well merit our close attention.

In the first place, the call to the congress, issued by the Third
(Moscow) International, was addressed to the "peasants and workers" of
the East. The summons read:

"Peasants and workers of Persia! The Teheran Government of the Khadjars
and its retinue of provincial Khans have plundered and exploited you
through many centuries. The land, which, according to the laws of the
Sheriat, was your common property, has been taken possession of more and
more by the lackeys of the Teheran Government; they trade it away at
their pleasure; they lay what taxes please them upon you; and when,
through their mismanagement, they got the country into such a condition
that they were unable to squeeze enough juice out of it themselves, they
sold Persia last year to English capitalists for 2,000,000 pounds, so
that the latter will organize an army in Persia that will oppress you
still more than formerly, and so the latter can collect taxes for the
Khans and the Teheran Government. They have sold the oil-wells in South
Persia and thus helped plunder the country.

"Peasants of Mesopotamia! The English have declared you