After the discovery of the oil fields, Baku became a special place, where various economic and political interests of international coalitions, industrial clans and leaders were concentrated and clashed. VK begins publishing chapters from the book by Ismail Agakishiev "History of the Baku Oil Industry and the Second Oil Boom (second half of the 19th century - beginning of the 20thcentury.)". The book presents a historical analysis of the emergence and current state of the Azerbaijani oil industry.
A special unit in the historiography consists of memories by major government officials and leaders of the oil industry. One of them is Nikolai Konstantinovich Baibakov. He was a deputy chairman of the Council of Ministers and the People's Commissar of the oil and gas industry during the Great Patriotic War. In his book, Baibakov writes: "The special role in the achievement of our Great Victory belongs to the workers of the oil industry, without whose selfless work it would have been impossible to win the Second World War, not by chance called “the war of engines."
Many reviews and research papers are devoted to today's energy problems of the Azerbaijani sector of the Caspian Sea. Most of these works are written by political scientists, and the general problems of the Caspian region are covered precisely from a political point of view. It is no secret that many of the articles published in print and electronic media are custom-made and therefore often do not reveal deep historical, political and economic reasons for the solutions to various questions. Often the causes of events are omitted. All this leads to confusion and poor coverage of recent historical events. Against this background, analysis of the literature is very urgent. However, it is time for more in-depth and unbiased consideration of Caspian energy issues in scientific literature. Research should objectively present all the major events of the time, and reveal more deeply the causes of problems that arose during the implementation of energy projects.
Igor Zonn, Doctor in Geography, is the author of numerous works on the problems of the Caspian Sea, including energy issues. These are "Caspian Memorandum" (1997), "The Caspian: Illusion and Reality" (1999), "Three Centuries of the Caspian Sea" (2001), and "Encyclopedia of the Caspian" (2002). He is also an editor of the newsletter "Bulletin of the Caspian Sea." In his book "Essays on the History of the Caspian Sea" (2005) Zonn considers the history of the Caspian Sea from the ancient period to the present day. The evolution of the research on this region and the stages of development of the Caspian’s information field are presented in chronological order. The book, "U.S. Strategy in the Caspian Region ("Big Game 2 ")," written in collaboration with S.S. Zhiltsov, reveals the evolution of the U.S. administration's energy strategy in the Caspian region and Central Asia at the present stage. The authors analyze the reasons for the high interest of the U.S. and the largest oil companies in Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and Azerbaijan. Naturally, the main reason is the hydrocarbon reserves located within their territories. The authors explain why the U.S. government evaluates the situation in the countries of the Caspian region as stable and prosperous. In their view, such distorted assessments correspond to the U.S.’s desire to attract investment in these countries.
Contradictions in the authors’ statements are surprising. How can one create an illusion for attracting investments if, as noted by the authors themselves, these countries indeed have large reserves of hydrocarbons? It is well known that the major oil companies in Russia and in the West, who have signed contracts with companies in these countries, produce millions of tons of oil in the region. It is also surprising that the book was published not in 1993, when the projects existed only as ideas and a large number of oil and gas was not mined in the region, but in 2003, when oil contracts brought multi-million dollar revenues to all the Caspian countries and provided an economic breakthrough and stability. The governments of these states were able to direct oil revenues to address the backlog of economic and social problems. The book "Geopolitics of the Caspian Region" (2003), authored by S.S. Zhiltsov, I.S. Zonn and A.N. Ushkov, also addresses the pressing problems of geopolitics in the Caspian region. Special attention is given to development of U.S. policy in the region during several decades, to the U.S. desire to gain a foothold there and play "first fiddle."
A fundamental work is the book by Doctor of Political Science I. G. Aliyev "Caspian Oil in Azerbaijan." It examines the political and economic development of the Caspian region. The book (published in 2003) is based on a large number of protocol and information materials. Aliyev examines the origins and development of the factors which had a significant impact on the situation in the region. Based on solid documentation, the author examines one of the most pressing problems of the region - the status of the Caspian Sea. The work is written in the best traditions of political science.
Literature on the oil in Azerbaijan can be divided into two groups. The first one consists of a series of studies of Azerbaijani historiography, where economic and political issues related to oil are considered. The second group is devoted directly to problems of hydrocarbons. The work by one of the best scholars, a great erudite with an encyclopaedic knowledge, Eldar Rafik ogly Ismailov (History Department graduate, postgraduate and doctoral student of Moscow State University), entitled "Authority and the People (post-war Stalinism in Azerbaijan, 1945-1953.)", published in 2003 in Baku as a monograph, can be attributed to the first group of literature. In it, Professor Ismailov covers the most important events in Azerbaijan in the early post-war years. On the basis of archival documents, he shows the harsh living conditions of the Baku oil workers in those years. For the first time in the historiography, the topic of of the Republican elite that was in power at that time is covered in detail and political characteristics are given to many managers. The author provides a portrait of the First Secretary of Azerbaijan, M.D. Bagirov, who had outstanding organizational skills and was awarded six Orders of Lenin for the Republic over-fulfilling the plan of providing the front and the rear with oil.
According to E.R. Ismailov, Bagirov was a child of his time and a patriot of Azerbaijan. He sincerely believed in the cause of Lenin and Stalin and was a supporter of the accession of South Azerbaijan to North Azerbaijan. But it is also known that he controlled completing the lists of well-known oil workers who were to be repressed for not fulfilling the unrealistic plans for oil production in the post-war years.
The author’s data on the center’s management of the oil industry is interesting. Problems of development of the oil industry since the 1920s were within the sphere of influence of the Baku Party organization. Moscow considered this party cell as its foothold in the Republic and gave the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Azerbaijan the role of governing body outside of Baku. The outcome of the center’s policy was the fact that, until 1933, the functions of the first persons in the Central Committee and the Baku Committee of the Communist Party of Azerbaijan were performed not by Azeris, but by those sent from Moscow. Since the 1930s up to the end of the war, M. D .Bagirov subordinated the Baku Committee and the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Azerbaijan and became the sole leader of the republic. But after the war the situation started slowly returning to its previous state.
The second monograph by E. R. Ismailov, a continuation of the discussed book, was published in 2006. The book "Azerbaijan in 1953-1956: The First Years of the Thaw", the first in the historiography, investigates a special period in the country’s life, which in Soviet historiography is called “the thaw." The author succeeded in uncovering the basic laws of this complex phenomenon. Together with the processes taking place in the higher echelons of the republic’s power structures, the study focuses on the development of Azerbaijan's oil industry. The work is based on the archival materials of Russia and Azerbaijan. A real "best seller" could be a description of a book by another famous scholar, Dzhamil Gasanla, "The USSR - Iran: Azerbaijani Crisis and the Beginning of the Cold War, 1941-1946", published in Moscow in 2006. This book investigates little-known pages of Soviet-Iranian relations in the 1940s. After examining the unique and previously unknown material and documents from the archives of Russia, the U.S., Azerbaijan, and Georgia, the author comes to a startling conclusion: the "cold war" started not with Europe, but in Azerbaijan. It was the Soviet-American crisis, caused by the desire to control Iranian oil, as well as issues of accession of South Azerbaijan, then a part of Iran, to North Azerbaijan, then an integral part of the Soviet Union, that marked an irreconcilable conflict between the Allies and formed the basis for the subsequent confrontation between East and West. The author reveals the causes of disagreements between the Allies started from mid-1944. Since then, it was precisely the struggle for Iranian oil that became a reference point of the conflict between the Soviet Union, on the one hand, and the U.S. and Britain on the other. The Soviet leadership was unwilling to accept a reduction of Baku's oil reserves and wanted to participate in oil production in northern regions of Iran, making use of Soviet troops being in South Azerbaijan. The Soviet leadership supported the national liberation movement of the Azerbaijani people, led by S. D. Pishavari. However, the threat of the atomic bomb on the part of U.S. President Truman forced Stalin to withdraw his troops from the territory of Iran's South Azerbaijan.
A monograph by R. S. Mustafazade "The Two Republics: Azerbaijani-Russian Relations in 1918-1922" (Moscow, 2006), which addresses important issues of the formation and development of Azerbaijani-Russian relations, is also of interest. In the context of the economic problems, a lot of attention is paid to the fight for Baku's oil between different states. A special place in the historiography on modern Azerbaijan is the study by S.I. Chernyavsky "Azerbaijan: The Choice of Course" (Moscow, 2003). This book is written by a prominent Russian diplomat who has witnessed the events he describes. Based on extensive factual material, the book discloses the first actions of independent Azerbaijan in the post-Soviet space. The author investigates the results of the activity of the first three presidents of the Azerbaijani Republic. The second chapter, among other foreign policy issues, analyzed the role of the oil strategy in strengthening the country's independence and the main components of the "energy diplomacy", such as the development of the legal status of the Caspian Sea in the context of regional security and the role and significance of the policy of diversification in determining pipeline routes.
In his book "Mamed Emin Rasulzade (1884-1955)" (Moscow, 2009), Aidyn Balayev examines the life of one of the brightest representatives of the political history of the XX century Azerbaijan. M. E. Rasulzade was the founder of the ideology of Azerbaijanism, which served as the theoretical basis for Azerbaijani statehood in May 1918. The author pays special attention to the activities of M. E. Rasulzade in 1917-1920. During these years, being one of the recognized leaders of the Azerbaijani people, he identified the strategic line of the national movement and virtually led the process of the conception and formation of the Azerbaijani Democratic Republic, the first democratic republic not only among the Turkic peoples, but also in the Muslim world. The book, entitled "Azerbaijan Democratic Republic" (Moscow, 2008), includes articles on the 90th anniversary of the first Azerbaijani republic. The publication pays great attention to the oil policy of the ADR.
Among the books on former Soviet countries, works by a member-correspondent of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Doctor in History, Prof. Efim Iosifovich Brewer, have a special significance. He is a prominent expert in the field of the socio-economic history of Russia and former socialist countries, the founder of the Department of History of the near abroad within the History Department of Moscow State University and of the Department of Post-Soviet countries in the Russian State Humanitarian University. His monograph "Post-Soviet Space: an Alternative to Integration" (St. Petersburg, 2008) is devoted to one of the most interesting and pressing problems of the former Soviet Union - the integration of former Soviet republics which once belonged to a single state of the USSR. The author analyzes the conditions and processes of integration and disintegration, examines the areas of cooperation between Russia and the former Soviet countries and assesses the problems of integration processes. This monograph highlights the problems of modernization of post-Soviet economic space on three levels - national, regional and global. Globalization imposes new stringent economic requirements on the newly-formed independent countries. Modernization of economic systems in relation to these requirements becomes their main strategic goal.
The monograph by A. Kazantsev, "’Big’ Game with Unknown Rules: World Politics and Central Asia" (Moscow, 2008) analyzes the structure of international relations established in Central Asia in 1991-2008 and its impact on regional politics of the world's largest states. The studied problems are interesting for us due to the fact that most of the countries of Central Asia are part of the Caspian region. The author examines the impact of uncertainty in international relations in different regions of the world and analyzes peculiarities of the policies of all leading players of the region (Russia, the U. S., CIS countries, China, Turkey, Iran, India, Pakistan and other states) in 1991-2008. He also reveals the complex dynamics of clashes of interests or, alternatively, co-operation of external players in the region. Particular attention is given to energy policy.
The great interest in this aspect is presented by the book "Strengthening Capacities: The Caspian Five" (Moscow, 2009). In fact, this is the report of independent experts from Azerbaijan, Iran, Kazakhstan, Russia and Turkmenistan on topical issues of the Caspian region. The experts have developed an agreed position. In their view, the welfare of each of these five countries depends on the state of affairs in the region. For external players the Caspian Sea is a means to solve their problems, often unrelated to the interests of the peoples of this region. The authors believe that in the five-sided format of the Caspian Sea cooperation there is the possibility to find a solution that would be equally beneficial to all countries of the region and ensuring the conditions for the rational and efficient development of Caspian resources. Of particular importance is the creation of the Caspian Economic Cooperation Organization (OKES) - an intergovernmental structure capable of uniting Azerbaijan, Iran, Kazakhstan, Russia and Turkmenistan, which would have a very positive economic and political significance for the region.
Among the works devoted to the world oil market as a whole, a fundamental research by the world-renowned expert on petroleum issues, Daniel Yergin, "Extraction: World History of the Struggle for Oil, Money and Power "(Moscow, 1999) stands out. The author reveals the complex relations between the global oil industry and international politics. D. Yergin shows how oil has become one of the determining factors in the development of the world economy and how it will continue to play a key role in the future. The book is divided into five parts, each of which covers a certain stage of the process of conversion of oil from minor natural resource into the most powerful tool of the struggle for world domination. A large place is devoted to the role of the Soviet Union, which D. Yergin considers to have been destructive. At the same time, the author acknowledges that the policy of the Kremlin leadership in many ways defined the situation in the world oil market, because for a long time the Soviet Union was the largest oil-producing state and had great political prestige and influence in the world. The author predicts the possibility of ethnic conflict and other shocks in the country, which will inevitably affect both the country’s oil industry and the global oil market. The book examines the events that took place in the world oil market during the period from 1853 to the 1990s. Analyzing the oil industry of the 19th - early 20th century, the author focuses on the fields in the U.S., while the oil fields of Baku are clearly devoted little space. The Middle East countries have long been and remain the richest oil reserves in the world. A lot of works reflect the problems of the oil industry in these countries.
