Battle of Baku

The Battle of Baku was a battle in World War I that took place between August–September 1918 between the Ottoman–Azerbaijani coalition forces led by Nuri Pasha and Bolshevik–Dashnak Baku Soviet forces, later succeeded by the British–Armenian–White Russian forces led by Lionel Dunsterville and saw briefly Soviet Russia re-enter the war. The battle was fought as a conclusive part of the Caucasus Campaign, but as a beginning of the Armenian–Azerbaijani War.
In 1917, the Russian Caucasus Front collapsed following the abdication of the Tsar. On 9 March 1917, the Special Transcaucasian Committee was established to fill the administrative gap in areas occupied in the course of the war on the Caucasian front by the Russian Provisional Government in the Transcaucasia. This administration, which included representatives of Armenian, Azerbaijani and Georgian groups, did not last long. In November 1917, the first government of the independent Transcaucasia was created in Tbilisi and named the Transcaucasian Commissariat following the Bolshevik seizure of power in St. Petersburg. On 5 December 1917, this new "Transcaucasian Committee" gave endorsement to the Armistice of Erzincan which was signed by the Russians with the command of the Ottoman Third Army. Russian soldiers mainly left the front and returned to their homes. A number of Russian troops left for the Persian Campaign, contrary to the rules of the Armistice. General Nikolai Baratov remained in Hamadan and at Kermanshah, a Russian colonel named Lazar Bicherakhov remained with 10,000 troops. Both forces were supplemented by British liaison officers.

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