History of Baku - Soviet Baku

Soviet Baku

In the spring of 1918, Russian interests in Baku were protected by the Baku Soviet of People's Commissars, who became known as the 26 Baku Commissars.

In February 1920, the 1st Congress of the Communist Party of Azerbaijan legally took place in Baku and made a decision about preparation of the armed revolt. On 27 April of the same year, units of the Russian 11th Red Army crossed the border of Azerbaijan and began to march towards Baku. Soviet Russia presented the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic with an ultimatum to surrender, and the troops entered Baku the next day. The city became a capital of the Azerbaijan SSR and underwent many major changes. As a result, Baku played a great role in many branches of the Soviet life. Since about 1921, the city was headed by the Baku City Executive Committee, commonly known in Russian as Bakgorispolkom.

On 8 February 1924, the first tram line and two years later the electric railway Baku-Surakhany—the first in the USSR—started to operate.

While being in Baku in May, 1925 Russian poet Sergei Yesenin wrote a verse "Farewell to Baku":

Farewell to Baku! I'll see you no more

A sorrow and fright are now in the soul

And a heart under the hand is more painful and closer

And I feel the simple word "friend" more distinctly.

However Yesenin returned to the city on 28 July of the same year.

Maxim Gorkiy wrote after visiting Baku: "The oil fields remained in my memory as a perfect picture of the grave hell. This picture suppressed all the fantastic ideas of depressed mind, I was aware of". Well-known—at that time—industrialist V. Rogozin noted, in relation with the Baku oil fields, that everything there was done "without counting and calculating". In 1940, 22.2 million tons of oil were extracted in Baku which comprised nearly 72% of all the oil extracted in the entire USSR.

In 1941, the trolley bus line started to operate in the city, meanwhile the first buses appeared in Baku in 1928.