In the early twentieth century there was a community in Baku made up of Polish, German, and Russian immigrants for whose needs the Church of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary was built in 1912. Two other smaller churches were built throughout the second half of the nineteenth century: in Qusar, where a hussar regiment made up of ethnic Poles had been quartered, and in Zagatala where participants of the 1863 January Uprising had been exiled. In 1916, the number of Catholic church mass attendees in Baku was over 2,500. The arrival of Bolsheviks in 1920 put an end to religious freedoms. In the early 1930s, on the orders of the Stalinist government, the small community's only priest Stefan Demurov was executed. In 1931, the communist authorities demolished the church in Baku. The church in Qusar fell in disuse after the transfer of the hussar regiment in 1918, as few Poles remained in the town. Its building is currently used as an art gallery. The church in Zagatala is now private property.