After the discovery of 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.
Personification in explaining the insolubility of certain issues was closely associated with mass repressions that swept the country in 1937-1938. Repressions spread also in the oil industry, including the oil industry of Azerbaijan. At that time it was very easy to explain the problems of oil industry by intentional sabotage actions of certain employees - professionals and workers. Gutin, a veteran of the revolutionary movement, said at the meeting with the managers of the "Embaneft": "During our conversation in Moscow, Comrade Kaganovich told me that we should not explain why the well gives so little oil, but should produce more." Kaganovich interrupted his speech: "This is inaccurate. I support all explanations that can increase the production of oil."1 This remark essentially meant that it was unnecessary to find the cause of problems. All failures could be entirely written off at this time on malice. Shortly after Gutin was arrested. At that time almost all the main figures in the oil industry of Azerbaijan were arrested and then shot. Among the party members and workers of the oil industry, repressed in 1937 and 1938, we find the names of heads of trusts A. Peterson, S. Borets, S. Slutsky, E. Ginzburg, M. Narimanov, D. Akhundzade, A. Krylov, as well as leading experts on oil V. Mahnov, A. Akopov, G. Mashtakov and others. Mass repressions of managers and professionals were means of accusing certain people in failing to solve the impossible tasks. However, despite many problems, the Soviet Union succeeded to increase oil production year after year.
By 1938, the actual production of oil in the country reached the 30.2-million-ton mark and about 22 million tons were produced in the Baku oil region (about 70% the country's total oil production). By the beginning of World War II Baku remained the main center of production of oil and oil products in the Soviet Union. This determined its special place in the strategic plans of the powers that entered the war. The development of the oil industry was the major focus of the industrial complex of Azerbaijan in 1930s. And, although the oil industry was not the only industry which was developing at that time in the republic, the oil complex constituted the main industrial potential of the republic, occupying the main place. Significant changes took place, not only in oil production, but also in the development of adjacent fields such as petroleum engineering and petrochemical industry. The development of the oil sector led to significant changes in the social structure of the population. Due to the growth of number of workers in the city, especially workers in the oil industry, the urban population increased rapidly.
The population of the republic's capital Baku was close to 600 thousand people. Baku became the fourth largest city in the Union. High growth rates of industrial development led to an influx of workers and engineers to Azerbaijan from outside the country. It affected the ethnic composition of the population. In 1939, 44% of the Azerbaijani population were not native Azerbaijanis. The number of non-Azerbaijanis was especially high in Baku. By the end of the 1930s Azerbaijanis constituted only 19% of the workers of Baku. The working class of the republic was greatly represented by Russians, Armenians, Tatars and Lezgins. At the same time, the proportion of Azerbaijani workers was also clearly increasing. If before the Revolution the majority of workers in Azerbaijan were temporary migrants or seasonal workers from Persia (South Azerbaijan), then in the Soviet times they were migrants from rural areas of Azerbaijan.
Big changes have occurred in the professional environment in general and the oil industry in particular. In those years the Azerbaijani Industrial Institute became one of the main centers of the country for teaching oil professionals. Back then many of those who in the future were to lead important domestic sites of the oil industry studied there. Among them one should mention first of all the future ministers of oil and gas industry of the USSR: N. Baibakov, M. Yevseyenko and N. Shashin. It was during these years that the Azerbaijani national technical intelligentsia was formed.
In the oldest district of Baku worked such major managers of production as A.P. Serebrovskiy, M.V. Barinov, G.B. Agaverdiev, A. Peterson and F.A. Rustambekov. Among the leaders there were not many
Azerbaijanis. But by the end of the 1930s, thanks to the wide scale of the program to train professionals at universities and colleges and the special attention paid to the training of national staff, whole groups of Azerbaijani experts appeared, who in the future were to become leading specialists of the oil industry.
The role of Baku's oil industry in the victory of the Soviet people in the Second World War has always occupied a special place in the history of the Soviet oil industry. And there is a natural reason for that. There is no doubt that one of the main reasons for the outbreak of the war were the claims of Nazi Germany to its allies about the acquisition of energy resources, especially oil-bearing regions in Europe. In 1945, the German minister of weapons and military industries, Albert Speer, confessed during interrogation that "the demand for oil, no doubt, was the primary motivation for the decision to invade Russia." 1 The main proponent of the Second World War - Germany - perhaps as no other country was interested in acquiring oil resources. Hitler's mad plans to rule the world could not leave behind the desire to replenish the meager resources of oil through the subordination of other countries. In 1939, the oil production on the territory of the Reich amounted to only 805 thousand tons. This amount was obviously not enough to conduct a war in contemporary conditions and over large areas. Even the occupation of a number of European countries in 1939 and 1940 and the mastering of their oil reserves and the establishment of control over the oil fields of Romania, an ally of Germany with annual oil production of 5.5 million tons, could not satisfy the growing appetite of the aggressor.
