Azerbaijan: a country looking to the future. Part 1

This year marks the 20th since the USSR's disintegration and the 20th anniversary of the CIS member-states' independence. It is a short time for History, but it’s a whole epoch from a human point of view. After the tragic collapse of the USSR, each of its ex-republics went its own way and had to ensure its citizens’ safety, as well as economic and social progress, on its own. There were no universal models for such development; some decisions had to be made almost by intuition. There was no time for proper planning or calculations. Each of the 15 new republics had to survive on its own.

Today, after 20 years of strife and evolution, we have a chance to evaluate the progress made by each of these countries and to compare the level of their success. The Azerbaijani Republic is undoubtedly one of the first ones in this rating. The progress made by this country is especially astonishing if we take the conditions in which the new state had to grow into account.

During the first years after the collapse of the USSR, the Azerbaijani economy and social services went through hard times. Certain territories were de facto seized by enemies; cities and villages were full of refugees who needed shelter and financial help, while the state budget was not at its best; GDP dropped 3 times compared to 1990 (and that is even lower that in Uzbekistan at this time). Among the ex-Soviet republics, Azerbaijan was outstripped only by Georgia, where the political developments were even more dramatic.

Even in the year 2004, which is considered to be problem-free, the GDP indicator did not reach the 1990 level (it rose to only 75% of this figure). The yea 2005 became a crucial point in Azerbaijani history, when the growth rates of its economy reached global standards. So the period 1994-2004 laid the foundations and patterns of the country’s future economic success.

What were the conditions that assured the present stable economic growth for Azerbaijan? First of all, it is the establishment of political stability. The election of the third Azerbaijani President, Heydar Aliev, was a definitive step towards attaining this stability. Heydar Aliev, who became a true national leader, made the unification of different forces within the country’s political elite his top priority. Without this unification different political clans were tearing the country apart, preventing the government from solving priority strategic problems.

The second important factor is the establishment of a clear economic development strategy that made the oil- and gas-processing sector the top priority. The so-called ‘Contract of the Century’ was signed in 1994, defining the country’s economic development strategy for decades to come. This contract assured a budget surplus and gave the government a solid basis for formulating economic development strategies. Thus it would not be a mistake to say that now the Azerbaijani economy is developing according to the plan drafted by Heydar Aliev in the early 1990s.

Another important factor is the creation of a new national elite. Heydar Aliev managed to encourage young talented people to return to Azerbaijan from Russia, where most of them received their education, and try themselves in politics at a time when their motherland needed young patriotic politicians the most.

Heydar Aliev was an excellent expert in the field of staff management: he always chose the right people for important positions and he knew how to motivate them.

Back then, the state did not have enough money to provide members of the state apparatus with high salaries, so those young people who chose to be bureaucrats were in a less profitable position than young businessmen. Nevertheless, these people were the ones to build the new Azerbaijani statehood.

And last but not least, there is the factor of the ideological solidarity of Azerbaijani society. Like the Kazakh national leader, Nursultan Nazarbayev, Heydar Aliev managed to pose clear common development goals before his people, by implementing the idea of strategic planning as the basis for stable development.

Alexey Vlasov, Ismail Agakishiev, exclusively to VK