Azerbaijan marks the 88th anniversary of the birth of its National Leader, Heydar Aliyev.
Heydar Aliyev was born in Azerbaijan’s Nakhchyvan on May 10, 1923. He studied at the Azerbaijani State Oil Academy in 1939.
He worked at the people’s commissariat of interior affairs of Nakhchyvan in 1941 and the council of people’s commissars of Nakhchyvan. He started work in state security structures in 1944. Aliyev became the deputy head in 1964 and became chairman of the State Security Committee of the Council of Ministers of Azerbaijan in 1967. He became a general-major. He had a special graduation at Saint-Petersburg and graduated from the history section of Azerbaijani State University in 1957.
Aliyev was elected the Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Azerbaijan in July 1969. He became a member of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in December 1982. He was appointed as the deputy head of the Soviet Council of Ministers. Aliyev was a member of the Supreme Council of the USSR for 20 years and deputy chairman of the council for 5 years.
He resigned in October 1987 in protest against the policy of the Politburo of the Central Communist Party of the Soviet Union and the Secretary general Mikhail Gorbachev.
Heydar Aliyev spoke out against Soviet forces after the tragedy on January 20, 1990. He left the party in July 1991 in protest against the policy of the USSR and the crisis in Nagorno-Karabakh.
He returned to Azerbaijan in July 1990. Aliyev lived in Baku and became a member of the Supreme Council of Azerbaijan. He was the deputy head of the Nakhchyvan Parliament and deputy head of the Azerbaijani Supreme Council in1991-1993. He became the leader of the Yeni Azerbaijan Party in 1992.
Heydar Aliyev became the head of the Supreme Council of Azerbaijan on June 15, 1993. The parliament appointed him as the president on July 24.
He was elected as president on October 3, 1993. He received 76.1% of the vote at the elections on October 11, 1998. He did not take part in the elections on October 15, 2003, due to health problems.
President Heydar Aliyev died at a US hospital in Cleveland on December 12.
Heydar Aliyev was awarded the Order of Lenin four times, the Order of the Red Star once and Hero of the Socialist Labor twice.
Aliyev was awarded the supreme order of Ukraine, the Yaroslav Mudry order, in Kiev on March 27, 1997.
On 13 April 1999, President Heydar Aliyev was awarded the supreme order of Turkey, the "Peace Premium of Atatürk" order.
On 3 April 2003, he was elected professor and authorized member of the Academy of Safety of the Russian Federation, and was subsequently given the premium of Y.V.Andropov.
On 10 May 2003, he was decorated with the order of Saint Apostle Andrey Pervozvanny, which is the supreme order of Russia.
