Stalinist repressions in Azerbaijan
The complex party environment and the political, social, and economic difficulties that occurred in the first half of the 20th century led to people being accused of Trotskyism, nationalism, maliciousness, espionage, and other charges.
This allowed Stalin to break Bukharin's group's resistance and pass a decision to remove Lev Trotsky and Grigory Zinoviev from the Central Committee as "spies of the united opposition".
According to German historian Baberowski, Moscow's influence arose through Grigory Kaminsky and Alexander Yegorov, and later through Sergei Kirov, who headed the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Azerbaijan for 7 years (1921–1926).
Without our own will, we succeeded in cultivating real, systematic social-libertarians who demanded comprehensive freedom and regarded the interventions of the Central Committee of the Russian Communist Party as lies and hypocrisy by Moscow.
[13] After the assassination of Sergei Kirov, from 1926 to 1929, the first secretary of the Communist Party of Azerbaijan was entrusted to a secretariat consisting of Aliheydar Garayev, Huseynbala Agaverdiyev (from 1927 his position was held by Yusif Gasimov), and Levon Mirzoyan.
[19] In April of that year, during a meeting of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Azerbaijan SSR, Baghirov presented a letter, either found or fabricated, that contained Trinich's request for protection from the Musavat parliament in 1918.
Several other notable individuals were also expelled from the party and arrested, including Balabey Hasanbayov, the rector of Azerbaijan State University; Ibrahim Eminbeyli, the director of Azernashr; well-known ethnologists and professors Alexander Bukshpan and Nikolayev; Orbelyan, a member of the Supreme Court; and Veli Khuluflu, the chairman of the League of Militant Atheists.
[31] The next day, the Politburo of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine (b) issued a resolution regarding the determination of the troika's staff and the number limit of persons who would be subject to repression.
All regions of Nakhchivan ASSR in Azerbaijan, and Astara, Astrakhan Bazar, Bilasuvar, Jabrayil, Zangilan, Zuvand, Garadonlu, Garyagin, Lankaran and Masalli districts were included in this line.
[24] As a result, hundreds of employees of the Azerbaijan Caspian Shipping Company, mainly consisting of Russians, Jewish Armenians, and a few Azerbaijanis, were accused of counter-revolutionary activities and brought to trial.
On June 11, 1937, Marshal Mikhail Tukhachevsky and seven others (Iona Yakir, Ieronim Uborevich, Roberts Eidemanis, Boris Feldman, August Kork, Vitaly Primakov, Vitovt Putna) were brought before a secret trial with the participation of the Supreme Court of the USSR.
According to information available in May and June 1937, some Azerbaijani communists, including the commissar of public education Mammad Juvarlinski and Hamid Sultanov, tried to complain to Moscow about Mir Jafar Baghirov.
[61] Dadash Bunyadzade,[62] Sultan Majid Afandiyev,[63] Hamid Sultanov and his wife Ayna Sultanova,[64] Teymur Aliyev[65] Ruhulla Akhundov,[43] Huseyn Rahmanov, Chingiz Ildyrym, Mirza Davud Huseynov,[66] Mustafa Quliyev,[67] Aliheydar Garayev, Gazanfar Musabekov[68] and Isay Dovletov were also subjected to repression.
[70] Hamid Sultanov admitted that he, along with Ruhulla Akhundov, Sultan Majid Afandiyev, Gazanfar Musabekov, Ganbay Vazirov, Dadash Bunyadzade, G. Safarov, and Ayyub Khanbudagov, was a member of the "counter-revolutionary nationalist center".
On June 20, 1937, the "Communist" newspaper, Sunday No.141 (5069), published a commissioned article entitled "The remains of the enemy in literature should be exposed to the end": For many years, M. Mushfiq has openly or secretly opposed our socialist structure and continued his subversive activities.
Counter-revolutionaries such as Javid, Javad, and their disobedient student Mushfiq, who have been hiding under the guise of "Reconstruction" for a long time, have deceived us and lived on the literary front with false and deceitful promises.
[117] He was arrested on charges such as "maintaining counter-revolutionary connections", "engaging in friendly discussions with several Musavatists", and "gathering young poets with nationalist leanings around him and nurturing them in the spirit of Musavatism".
[122] During the plenum of the Central Committee of the Azerbaijan SSR on March 19–20, Mir Jafar Baghirov addressed the nationalist work led by Ruhulla Akhundov on the cultural front.
Other members included Sanjar Asfendiyarov, a professor and former director of the Moscow Institute of Oriental Studies; Aliyev, the Chairman of the Karachay-Cherkessia Province Executive Committee; Dagestan intellectual A. Takho-Godi; Gaziz Gubaidullin; and Bekir Chobanzade himself.
[137] Literary experts Salman Mumtaz, a writer, and Ali Nazem, a researcher at the Language and Literature Institute of the USSR Academy of Sciences' Azerbaijani branch, were sentenced to 10 years in prison.
[153] Agamir Mammadov, a scientific employee of the USSR Academy of Sciences' Azerbaijani branch and the director of the Azerbaijan State University-based library, was accused of "counter-revolutionary activity, pan-Turkism, and Trotskyism" and executed in 1938.
[156] Idris Hasanov's arrest was prompted by statements made by Bekir Chobanzade, Veli Khuluflu, and Abdulla Sharifov, the head of the department at the Azerbaijan Pedagogical Institute, as well as a letter written from his workplace.
He also worked from a position of loss in the training of teachers for Azerbaijan State Pedagogical UniversityOn June 2, 1939, Idris Hasanov was sentenced to eight years in a correctional labor camp due to his involvement in an anti-Soviet organization.
During the period of the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic (ADR) and the Soviet government, foreign guests, Turkish officers, and individuals like Dadash Bunyadzade and Köprülüzade would gather for musical evenings at her house.
Specifically, Stalin wrote: For your reference, the Esers had a significant presence in Saratov, Tambov, Ukraine, the army, Tashkent, and throughout Central Asia, including the power stations in Baku.
As per the decision of the Azerbaijani Communist Party Central Committee on November 20, 1934, Germans were required to completely sever ties with foreign, bourgeois-fascist organizations, stop receiving money and parcels from abroad.
Despite being provided with two meals a day and having two nurses and a doctor assigned to each echelon, the harsh conditions, scarcity of food and medicine, and cold weather led to many deported Germans, primarily the elderly and children, falling ill and dying during the journey.
[190] Stalin's letter, dated January 17, 1938, to Yezhov, the People's Commissar of Internal Affairs, includes the following excerpt: What measures have been implemented in response to the identification and arrest of Iranians in Baku and Azerbaijan?
[195]Another NKVD employee, Pavel Khentov, noted during his interrogation that: Baghirov would often remark, "So they were beaten less", when prisoners retracted their previous statements on the grounds that they had been subjected to beatings, or when they refused to testify at all.
In a letter written by the Procurator-General of the USSR, Roman Rudenko, to the Presidium of the Central Committee: During 1937-1938, Baghirov directed the Chekists, employing them to fabricate criminal cases, eliminate undesirables and honest Party-Soviet cadres, and administer widespread beatings to those arrested.
