What Topchibashi wrote in emigration

By Vestnik Kavkaza

A presentation of the book “A.M. Topchibashi: Documents From Personal Archives 1903-1934” took place in Moscow in the Marina Tsvetayeva Museum. The digest includes documents from personal archives of the Soviet, and later Azerbaijani diplomat Ramiz Abutalybov who managed to gather unique materials on life of Russian and Azerbaijani emigrants in France. Since 1971 Abutalybov has been working in UNESCO.  It enabled him to bring valuable historic documents, art masterpieces to his motherland.

“The first part is about the years 1903-1917, years of Muslim participation in the work of the State Duma of the Russian Empire, the first, second, third andfourth Dumas. The documents are mainly dedicated to journeys, meetings of Ali Mardan Bey Topchibashi, who at the time was one of the leading lawyers in Russia, a graduate of St. Petersburg University. They, along with the Tartar and Central Asian Muslims, created a Muslim party "Union of Muslims of Russia." The first part is devoted to this and to the work of the Muslim faction in the State Duma of Russia. The second part is about the emigration. After 1920, Azerbaijani diplomats did not return home and remained in France. All the correspondence concerns the activities that they have carried out there, taking part in various international events to raise the awareness of the world community about the aggression on the part of Soviet Russia and the loss of independence. For 22 years these documents were kept in the state archive. I didn’t know what materials where in these documents. I brought 200 kg home and gave it to the archive,” Ramiz Abutalybov says. “Azerbaijanis have a proverb – only a jeweller can appreciate a gem. Our dear Salavat Iskhakov turned out to be such a jeweller. He is PhD (History), the senior scientist of the Russian History Institute of the RAS. He made his first compliment: “Ramiz, you’re sitting on treasure.” I didn’t know that it was a treasure. Thanks to Salavat I realized that this is a treasure. Thank you! He carried out great work. Salavat knows Russian history perfectly, especially its period connected with Muslims in the early 20th century. He has three big works. One is headlined “Russian Muslims and the Revolution of 1905”; the other is “Russian Muslims and the Revolution of 1917”; and the third is “The Civil War and Russian Muslims.” I think he is the best expert.”

Salavat Iskhakov, author of the book, leading researcher at the Institute of Russian History of the RAS, says: “The problem was that these documents are very difficult to work with. The materials were not written for publication; there are letters. notes, sketches, projects, drafts and so on, that is, materials that we call personal documents. And they are of great value. In these documents we can find amazing things about the historical reality, presenting it quite differently, not like in the books and articles that later historians write. Here we see the story through the eyes of these people. This is a great merit of Ramiz muallim, that helps restore these documents. And we with our modest possibilities will do it from a scientific point of view. Of course, it is quite difficult to restore the text and to understand the handwriting, because they wrote in a very peculiar way. Many times our colleagues helped us, because it was so hard to understand sometimes one word, I'll give you an example: I examined one page of a letter by Topchibashi for about a month, because it was a photocopy of the letter, which was kept in Paris. There are sticks, because his hand hurt, and he wrote with sticks. And the whole letter is written by means of these sticks. It turned out amazing, like some ancient manuscript. When we look at the text and do not understand it, we look at it again in a week, and some letter appears, the word becomes clearer and clearer. The document is several times over a period of time viewed by a specialist, and he gradually gets to know the information in the document just at the level of intuition. This word appears as an image. Many people have tried to make it out. Ramiz muallim knows that we restore the letters literally. Of course, this work is fascinating, the real work of an historian. Of course, I understand that at the same time we could be wrong somewhere, sometimes we do not understand something, but it is a science. Our problem was not to replace the Azerbaijani historians who are very well aware of all these things; we just wanted to help develop the database, the sources, so that the historians of Azerbaijan can enjoy our modest contributions, and to advance historical science.”

Ismail Agakishiyev, head of the Center for Caucasian Studies of the Russian State Humanitarian University, Associate Professor of the History Department of Moscow State University, states: “Hhistory begins with the sources. As life begins with the mother, history begins with the sources. Both Azerbaijani and Russian people are very lucky to have such a person. It became our heritage. This book will be required reading for many people.

“Our creative collaboration has led to the fact that several books have appeared. This book is a collection of documents that are in various archives, both in Moscow and in Baku, and in other places. This is the last book of the series. This is related to the fact that historians should look for new documents, and it is our duty to recreate the historical truth. In this sense, collections of documents are much more valuable than the studies, with all due respect to my colleagues and to the very work of the historian, I am a historian, but documents are a priceless thing, which will be recognized by our descendants, it is history that is passed down from generation to generation,” Salavat Iskhakov adds.