Students of Azerbaijan Democratic Republic abroad

[2] Notable Republic students include Ahmed Rajabli, Aslan Vezirzade, Ashraf Aliyev, Samandar Akhundov and Teymur Aslanov.

Many, however, were repressed in the Great Purge by the People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs (NKVD) in the 1930s on charges of spying for Germany and supporting the restoration of Azerbaijan's independence.

[3][4] On 1 September 1919, the Parliament of the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic decided to allocate seven million rubles from the state treasury to the Minister of Public Education for the project.

[5] When discussing this bill in mid 1919, there were controversies in parliamentary factions over sending students from wealthy families abroad.

[2] One of the selected students was repressed by the NKVD after returning Azerbaijan said: "There was a proposal to send young men from wealthy families to study, but the student committee created at that time, headed by Mammad Gulu Ganja, supported the candidacies of poor families in need of state support".

The speakers wished the students success in their studies and encouraged them to apply their acquired knowledge to the prosperity of their homeland upon their return.

[6] During their journey, the students were warmly welcomed at stops en route, including Kurdamir, Hajiqabul, Yevlakh and Ganja.

[1] The specialists traveled from Baku to Batumi, then Istanbul, Trento, Rome, Paris, Basel and finally to Berlin.

Interrogation records of former German university graduates arrested in the 1930s indicate neither Russia nor England were among the countries where students studied.

During an interrogation by the NKVD, one of the ADR's envoys Ashraf Aliyev, stated: "In Germany, we were allocated as follows: 10-12 of us were in Berlin, 13-15 were in the Duchy of Baden, and 7, including myself, arrived in Freiburg.

The organization was headquartered in Berlin and had branches in educational institutions in cities including Darmstadt, Freiburg and Leipzig.

The invasion led to moral upheavals, a change in political power and the suspension of scholarships from a special fund created by the ADR parliament.

The amount of the scholarship the Soviet embassy in Berlin began to issue from the budget of the Azerbaijan SSR was approximately $30.

[2] At first, money was received irregularly, and with the relocation of the chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of Azerbaijan SSR Nariman Narimanov to work in Moscow, the situation worsened.

In his autobiography, Ashraf Aliyev wrote about this period of his life: "In my free time (during holidays) I worked (almost 18 months) in mines, industries and factories in Saxony, Hanover, Ruhr,[Rhine and Alsace".

After the occupation of France by Germany, Atamalibeyov lived in Berlin, where he worked in the Committee of the Red Cross and played an important role in rescuing captured Azerbaijani soldiers during World War II.

[citation needed] Adil Muganli, who studied at the Faculty of Medicine of Leipzig University, did not return to Azerbaijan.

[citation needed] Many students from Azerbaijan, after completing their studies, decided to return and start working for their country.

[2] According to researcher Mammad Jafarov, these people, who left independent Azerbaijan and lived in Europe for 5–10 years, began to compare capitalist ways of managing with Soviet ones, and came to the idea of the need for a passive or active struggle against the existing system.

[2] Graduate of Dresden Polytechnic Institute Yusuf Agasibeyli, from 1931 worked in Ganja as the chief mechanic at an oil refinery.

Graduate of the Mining Institute of Freiburg, Ashraf Aliyev, became the director of the drilling office of the Kaganovichneft, and in 1932 he was awarded the Order of Lenin.

[2] Samandar Akhundov, who also graduated from the Mining Institute of Freiburg, worked as an executive in the heavy industry section of the State Planning Committee of the Azerbaijan SSR.

Mahish Safarov, a graduate of the Technical Institute of Darmstadt, returned to Azerbaijan in 1926 and worked as a German teacher at the Pedagogical College of the People's Commissariat for Education.

[14] Iskenderbek Sultanov, who graduated from the Charlottenburg Polytechnic Institute in 1929, returned to the USSR in 1933 and worked at the "Electrorazvedka" trust of Azneft.

Among those who succeeded are Technical Institute of Darmstadt graduates Huseyn Shikhiev and Mamed Efendiyev, who returned to Baku in 1927 and left the USSR in 1930.

[2] According to the analysis of archival materials about the repressed, in the 1930s, citizens of the republic were suspected of dissent and espionage to some degree if they were connected with Germany or knew at least one person of German nationality in Azerbaijan.

In 1937, he was involved in the second case as an active member of the rebel organization, whose goal was to overthrow Soviet power in Azerbaijan and separate it from the USSR.

[2] On 18 October 1937, Teymur Aslanov was arrested, accused of participation in a nationalist rebel organization and espionage activities in favor of German intelligence, and was sent to a camp in Siberia.

Makhish Safarov was arrested by the NKVD in 1936, and only in 1957, after appealing to the Supreme Court of the USSR with a request to reconsider the case, he was rehabilitated.

Among them was Ali Rza Atayev, who graduated from the University of Leipzig, and after returning home in 1925, he went from assistant professor of the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology of the Azerbaijan Medical Institute to professor and head of the obstetric and gynecological clinic of the Azerbaijan Institute for Advanced Medical Studies, and in 1929 he received Doctor of Medicine degree.