“First years of independence were hard for us”

Azerbaijan celebrated the anniversary of restoration of its independence on October18. Azerbaijani MP, member of parliamentary committee for science and education professor Asaf Gadjiev told a VK correspondent about Azerbaijan’s hard route to independence and sovereignty.

- How did Azerbaijan win its independence?

- The independence of Azerbaijan was restored on the 18th of October 1991. The first Azerbaijani Democratic Republic was founded in 1918, but it existed only for 23 months. On the 28th of April 1920 Soviet power was established in Azerbaijan. After the collapse of the USSR, 15 new states emerged on the world’s map, but Azerbaijan was the only one to have a serious territorial problem – I mean, Nagorno-Karabakh. In fact, at the moment of regaining independence Azerbaijan was already at war with Armenia. 20% of Azeri territory is still occupied and we have more than a million refugees since that war.

The very first years of independence were hard for us. The ‘People’s Front’ came to power in the wake of democratization, but only to demonstrate that inexperienced people can’t handle governing a state. As a result of their rule the Azerbaijani economy collapsed completely. Such events as the declaration of an independent Talish-Mugansk also had their impact.

Azerbaijan was facing a civil war when, in 1993, the republic was headed by Heydar Aliyev. Since then, Azerbaijan’s economy has undergone gradual restoration. In 1994 the ‘contract of the century’ was signed. It was pretty hard: we were pressured by different powers; some were accusing us of bluffing, when in fact there was no oil in Azerbaijan, as they said. Nevertheless, the contract was signed and later we also sealed an agreement on Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline construction. The pipeline was eventually completed – and that surprised many sceptics. But it turned out that we had much more oil than this pipeline could handle.

Today Azerbaijan is one of the most developed post-Soviet states. It is a developing country, but its growth rates often exceed those of developed countries. The new budget for 2012 will soon be discussed by the parliament, and they say it exceeds 20 billion dollars. This figure doesn’t seem to be so huge by itself, but Azerbaijan’s population is only 9 million people. And the budget was only 2 billion dollars 10 years ago, so in 10 years it grew ten times larger.

- And what is the basis for this economic miracle?

- Our former President Heydar Aliyev and our acting President Ilham Aliev created a timely strategy for the development of Azeri society. Of course, oil and gas play a great role in our state’s development, but that’s not all. Just recently our President said that our goal is to turn our oil asset into human resources. That means the development of modern technologies and sciences are top priority. In the whole world the level of a state’s development depends on three factors: natural resources, industry and human resources.  In the USA and Canada the human resources factor constitutes 76% of the countries’ success, industry – 19%, and natural resources – only 5%. Unfortunately, today in Azerbaijan natural resources play the main part in the country’s economy. But there’s considerable progress in the area of information technologies, Azerbaijan is one of the most rapidly developing countries of the post-Soviet space in this area.

Azerbaijan plans to launch its own satellite by the end of 2012 in order to monitor the natural resources and ecology of our country. Are there any other smaller countries of the world that have their own satellites? I’ve never heard of them.

- If we go back 20 years, what factors played the main role in the USSR's disintegration?

- First of all, its excessive centralization. Secondly, the economy was totally subjected to ideology, and all its achievements were merely faked. Thirdly, the Soviet Union exported raw materials and played little attention to creating an infrastructure. And finally, the Union’s isolation policy. If at the beginning of the 20th century isolation resulted in an economical miracle in Japan, at the end of the same century the same factor led to the collapse of the Soviet Empire.

However, there were positive moments in the USSR: education and science. The USSR spent a great deal of resources to these ends. But there was no strict accountability. It’s different in today’s Azerbaijan – all who receive money from the budget have to present corresponding results.

Another factor that contributed to the USSR’s collapse was the fact that it almost didn’t accommodate the right to private property. But this is an important factor for attracting foreign investments. And an economy needs investments to develop. However, today’s Azerbaijan has sufficient internal funds.

To be continued

Interview by Ramin Naziev, Baku, exclusively to VK