26 Commissars Memorial


The 26 Commissars Memorial was a Soviet-era monument located in Baku, Azerbaijan, that paid tribute to the 26 Baku Commissars from the Baku commune. The commune was overthrown in 1918 and the commissars later executed near Krasnovodsk. The monument was constructed by sculptors I. Zeynalov and N. Mamedov, and architects G. Aleskerov and Alesker Huseynov, who eventually became a prominent politician in Azerbaijan. The remains of the Commissars were buried at the site of the memorial.

Description

The centre of this large square was a dramatic monument with a man coming out of the ground holding what was previously an "eternal flame". Hovering above him was a large stone circle that was once inscribed with the names of the slain commissars. All the wording on the monument was removed in the years after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, making the whole monument much more ambiguous.
The square has a quiet garden and is the location of the Turkish embassy and of the Akhundov National Library, Azerbaijan's main book repository.

Demolition of the 26 Commissars Memorial

On January 2009, the Baku authorities started demolition of the 26 Commissars Memorial, and the works were soon completed. The monument site itself had been fenced off since July 2008. The remains of the commissars were reburied at Hovsan Cemetery on 26 January 2009, with participation of Muslim, Jewish, and Christian clergy who conducted religious ceremonies.
The dismantling was opposed by some local left-wingers and by the Azerbaijan Communist Party in particular. It also upset Armenia as the Armenian public believed that the demolition and reburial was motivated by the reluctance of the Azerbaijanis to have ethnic Armenians buried in the center of their capital. Another scandal happened when Azerbaijani press reports claimed that during the exhumation only 21 bodies were discovered out of expected 26 and that "Shahumian and four other Armenian commissars managed to escape their murderers". This report was questioned by Shahumian's granddaughter Tatyana, now living in Moscow, who told the Russian daily Kommersant that:
It is impossible to believe that they weren’t all buried. There is a film in the archives of 26 bodies being buried. Apart from this, my grandmother was present at the reburial.