Last week the MSU Historical Faculty held a conference dedicated to the birth anniversary of the Azerbaijani national leader Heydar Aliyev. The experts discussed the personal role of Aliyev in the creation and development of today’s Azerbaijani state.
The dean of the MSU Historical Faculty Sergei Karpov opened the discussion by saying that Heydar Aliev is a person that ‘should be put on one list with such people as General de Gaulle, with people who truly reformed their states and contributed greatly to their prosperity’.
“We remember how in 1993 the tragic events that took place in Azerbaijan put the country on the brink of civil war. But Heydar Aliyev managed to prevent the tragedy due to his political experience, his influence, his intellect and his ability to negotiate with people of all possible political views. There were even foreign troops on Azerbaijani territory back then, Iranian and Turkish troops, so civil war was quite possible. But he managed to stop it in quite short a time: 3 years passed between 1993 and 1995, but the Azerbaijan of 1995 was quite a different country: there were legitimate elections; they had a fairly elected President. When he got elected he started the modernization policy right away. He signed a number of international contracts, organized an international summit in Baku, established table, and truly friendly relations with Russia when the two countries are always ready to help each other. While talking about Heydar Aliev I can’t omit his contribution to the development of the Moscow State University. When he was a Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR he had done a lot to support education and the most important educational establishments. Back then the management of the MSU met with him more than once, and he had done a lot to help them. So I think Heydar Aliev is a figure that connects our two countries”, Karpov said.
The Ambassador of Azerbaijan to Russia Polad Bülbüloğlu stressed that when Heydar Aliyev worked in Moscow, Heydar took up a very wide spectrum of issues, including humanitarian ones: “By the way, it is a historical fact that it is his signature that stands under the order for the Tretyakov Gallery's restoration. This venture was very hard at that time, it required a lot of resources, but still he decided to take it up. One could talk about this bright personality for a long while. Two periods of my life, artistic and diplomatic, are closely connected with this figure, as he headed the Azerbaijani Republic back in the late 60s, and I was starting my career as a singer back then. He granted us all the opportunities, allowed us to tour abroad… and you know that back then you couldn’t go abroad without the personal permission of the republic’s head. And not only abroad, but to Moscow as well. We had to coordinate all our tours with him. And he was very attentive to young artists, as he understood that they are the future of the republic. As for politics, I should say that in that epoch the notion of a ‘dissident’ appeared in the USSR. A lot of young writers, artists, even composers who wrote cacophonic music were accused back then, as they were not ‘in line’ with the official ideology. But it turned out that there were no dissidents in Azerbaijan. They’d once asked Heydar back in the Moscow Central Committee: “Why is everything so calm in Azerbaijan that there are not even any dissidents there?” And he replied: “We don’t look for them”. A catchy phrase. All the best Azeri writers of today – Onar, Elchin, Maksud and others – could be accused of being dissidents back then, as they wrote very topical stories and novels. They all could be ‘put to order’. But Heydar Aliyev always protected young talents, who are now the elite of Azerbaijan’s artistic community”.
According to the Russian State University for Humanities chancellor Yefim Pivovar, some of Aliyev’s achievements are still very important not only for Azerbaijan and Russia, but for the whole post-Soviet space and even beyond. “Only in Azerbaijan, thanks to Heydar’s efforts, is there a wide program of Russian language studies. This program is more extensive than even in the Slavic post-Soviet states. I have seen with my own eyes that there are still day-care facilities, schools and universities in Azerbaijan that teach their students in Russian. And these are not Sunday or Saturday schools, they are normal educational facilities. And the Russian diaspora in Azerbaijan by itself isn’t big today, only some 30,000 people… But there are many, many more Russian-speaking people in Azerbaijan. These schools and universities are meant for ethnic Azerbaijanis. A lot of post-Soviet leaders think that the Russian language is a threat to their national cultures, so it should be limited in every way possible. But Azerbaijan shows quite the opposite: Azerbaijani culture isn’t intimidated, but is promoted by the Russian language. Russian is a language of international communication not only in post-Soviet space, but even wider, so it nourishes the Azeri culture. You can speak Russian freely all over Azerbaijan, but that doesn’t intimidate Azerbaijani language and culture. And this combination is a viable solution for all post-Soviet space, but unfortunately it has been overcome by silence for a long time.
Aliyev’s services are undoubted. And the most important thing is that he managed to change a situation where no one in the world had ever heard of such a state as Azerbaijan to one where all the countries recognize Azerbaijan’s role in world politics – and all this is also thanks to the First President of a truly independent Azerbaijan”.
