The Baku military expedition of general l. Densterville and l. Bicherakhov's detachment in the first half of 1918

The article examines the events of the spring and early summer of 1918. The withdrawal of Soviet Russia from the war with Germany and Turkey, the sovereignty of the Transcaucasian provinces of the former Russian Empire and the atomization of power in Baku led to unusual military combinations in the ongoing events of the First World War. Political uncertainty led to the fact that various «fragments» of the Russian Caucasian army sought support from their usual allies, the armed forces of the Entente bloc, in the fight against Turkish aggression, while the Bolshevik government, after the conclusion of the Brest Peace, sought opportunities to overcome internal contradictions that turned into a Civil war in most territories of the state. The events in Baku in the first half of 1918 were extremely revealing and contradictory, when the Bolshevik Baku commune faced three hostile external forces: Turkish aggression in Transcaucasia, British troops trying to prevent the Turks from seizing economically strategic Baku, and the anti-Bolshevik movement that had begun in Russia. Military-political alliances between various forces during this period are characterized by rare arbitrary justifications and show the limits of «realpolitik» in Transcaucasia.