The Shamkhor Massacre When a particularly large and militant group of Russian soldiers began to move along the railroad away from the front in January, 1918, the Military Council of Nationalities decided to disarm them.

In January 1918 a large crowd of Azeris halted a Russian troop train travelling along the Tbilisi–Baku rail line and demanded the handover of all military equipment on board. The refusal by the soldiers on board to comply then led to the train being stormed, and close to 1000 people died in the fighting that followed, in what became known locally as the 'Shamkhor massacre', with the Azeri attackers gaining vast amounts of war material as a direct consequence

In January 1918 the rush to seize arms from the Russians led to a large-scale clash, the "Shamkhor Massacre." The Azerbaijanis, who in this case acted with the approval of the Tiflis authorities, anxious to prevent arms from passing eventually into Bolshevik hands, intercepted a troop train at the Shamkor station on the Tiflis-Baku rail line. When the soldiers refused to surrender their equipment the Azerbaijanis attacked, and close to a thousand lost their lives in the fighting. This tragic incident, which the Azerbaijanis regarded as their baptism under fire, gained them vast quantities of war materiel while provoking shock and fury among the Baku Bolsheviks

In the city of Baku a Bolshevik-dominated soviet had emerged after the October Revolution. This Baku Soviet dispatched aid to the beleaguered Russians on the Terek, but was frustrated when the Muslims of Azerbaijan took advantage of the Revolution to from their own provisional government and a Muslim militia under a political party called Musavat. In December 1917 the Azerbaijanis declared solidarity with the Dagestanis and began to disarm the thousands of Russian troops who had abandoned the War and were crossing Azerbaijan on their way back to Russia. In January 1918 unit of the new Azerbaijani national army, including a regiment of the "Savage" Division killed up to 1,000 Russians on a troop train who resisted this disarming. This "Shamkhor" incident was followed by organized attacks on Russians throughout Azerbaijan. The Baku Soviet took the lead in a counter-offensive, the clashes escalating steadily until March 31, when, at the instigation of the Baku Soviet, the Armenian Dashnak militia suddenly joined the struggle and fell upon the Muslims of Baku, who were a minority in the city. Up to 3,000 of the Muslim population were killed, in partial repayment for the Young Turk genocide of Armenians in Anatolia in 1915