Study for 'The Execution of the Twenty Six Baku Commissars', 1925 (oil on canvas)

20th September 1918. Soviet officials later blamed the executions on British agents acting in the Baku area at the time. When Soviet rule was established in the whole Caspian area, Funtikov, the head of the Ashkhabad 'Directorate' responsible for the executions, was imprisoned. Funtikov put all blame for the executions onto Britain, in particular Teague-Jones. Funtikov was tried and shot in Baku in 1926. In 1919, and again in 1922, the Social Revolutionary lawyer Vadim Chaikin claimed these murders had been carried out under the direct orders of Teague-Jones. In November 1922 Teague-Jones produced a 1,500-word rebuttal of Chaikin's claims which was passed by the British Foreign Office to the Soviet Commissariat for Foreign Affairs. However, Chaikin's version of events was later endorsed by Trotsky and was upheld by Soviet historians until the collapse of the USSR.