1955–
Deputy chairman of the Azerbaijani Popular Front who warned Primakov there would be resistance
Polyanichko told him that at midnight troops would enter the city "whatever the cost." Mammadov replied that the army would meet resistance.
As deputy chairman of the Azerbaijani Popular Front, Etibar Mammadov stood at the forefront of the national independence movement and met with Yevgeny Primakov and Viktor Polyanichko on January 19, 1990, where he was warned that troops would enter Baku. That evening Polyanichko told him the army would go in "whatever the cost"; Mammadov replied there would be resistance, and he later became a key witness to the Kremlin's bloody crackdown on the city. He went on to found the Azerbaijan National Independence Party, finished second in the 1998 presidential election, and remained a durable opposition leader in independent Azerbaijan.
Activities and affiliations
- 1992–2004 Political and party leadership
Career Timeline
- 1978–1988Lecturer in history, Baku State University
- 1988–1991Deputy chairman and board member, Azerbaijani Popular Front
- 1990.01–11Imprisoned at Lefortovo Prison (arrested after Black January)
- 1990–2000Deputy, Supreme Soviet of Azerbaijan SSR / National Assembly
- 1991Member, National Defence Council; co-authored the Constitutional Act on State Independence
- 1992–2004Founder and chairman, Azerbaijan National Independence Party (NIPA)
- 1998, 2003Presidential candidate (1998: 2nd place, 11.6%; 2003: 4th place, 2.92%)
Related historical events
January 1990: Primakov's Warning, Lefortovo, and the Campaign for Release
Active in the early stages of Azerbaijan's national-democratic movement from 1988, Mammadov was elected a member of the first board of the Popular Front at its founding conference. In 1989 he led mass strikes, and on 14 January 1990 a Politburo delegation headed by Yevgeny Primakov arrived in Baku to try to stabilize the situation. Mammadov testified that Primakov warned them that Azerbaijan would not be allowed to leave the Soviet Union and indicated that troops would be sent in. On the night of 19-20 January Soviet troops entered Baku, and Popular Front activists and residents were arrested in large numbers.
While holding a press conference in Moscow for foreign journalists, aimed at reporting the Baku killings and shaping opinion abroad, Mammadov was arrested by the KGB and detained in Lefortovo prison. Azerbaijani accounts state that he spent nine months there, during which 1.5 million signatures were collected demanding his release. He was released from Lefortovo in November 1990 and that December was elected a deputy to the Supreme Soviet of the Azerbaijani SSR, returning to political life on the eve of independence. This experience of detention and release became the political foundation for his later founding of the National Independence Party and his long career as an opposition leader.