First Secretary of the Baku Party Committee who blocked buses from entering Baku, shifting the violence to Sumgait
“I realized that it was a pogrom. I ordered all roads to the city blocked from these settlements. The order was executed. The buses went to Sumgait.”
A Soviet and Azerbaijani party and state official who rose through the construction sector to become First Secretary of the Baku City Party Committee in 1983. In February 1988, as buses carrying Azerbaijani refugees expelled from Armenia converged on Baku, he ordered the city's access roads blocked; the measure kept violence out of Baku but diverted the bus convoys to Sumgait, where the pogrom erupted days later. After the dissolution of the USSR, he served as the first president of independent Azerbaijan's football association (1992–2003), steering the country into UEFA and FIFA membership.
Activities and affiliations
Career Timeline
- 1975–1977First Deputy Minister of Rural Construction, Azerbaijan SSR
- 1977–1981First Deputy Chairman, State Planning Committee, Azerbaijan SSR
- 1981Deputy Chairman, Council of Ministers, Azerbaijan SSR
- 1981–1983Secretary for Construction, Central Committee, Communist Party of Azerbaijan
- 1983–1988First Secretary, Baku City Party Committee
- 1989–1990Chairman, State Committee for Industrial Safety and Mining Supervision
- 1990–1991Secretary for Industry, Central Committee, Communist Party of Azerbaijan
- 1992–2003President, Association of Football Federations of Azerbaijan (AFFA)
Related historical events
February 1988: the Decision to Seal Off Baku and Its Consequences
On 20 February 1988 Musayev was recalled to Baku from a holiday in Kislovodsk. He found the city tense and later recalled that "someone was clearly provoking people, propaganda was working at full strength." That same evening, under his pressure, the Baku city party committee decided to restrict entry into the city, and volunteer patrols armed with wooden staves walked the streets watching the Armenian quarter.
According to his account, hundreds of Azerbaijanis displaced from Armenia had been arriving in Baku since mid-February and were housed in settlements on the Absheron peninsula; buses were sent there each morning and carried them into the city. Rather than going to party and government offices, the refugees went to workers' and students' dormitories and inflamed the crowds with stories of the persecution they had suffered in Armenia. Concluding that a pogrom was imminent, Musayev ordered all roads from these settlements into the city blocked; the buses turned toward Sumgait.
The consequences run both ways. According to Thomas de Waal, the city authorities' timely action may have delayed at least two attempted pogroms, yet Musayev merely moved the site of the explosion to Sumgait, thirty kilometres away. As a precaution he also barred entry to Baku for the thousands of workers who commuted daily from Sumgait and settled Azerbaijani refugees from Armenia in the two villages of Fatmai and Sarai on Sumgait's outskirts. Once Baku had calmed, Sumgait boiled over: the pogrom of 27-29 February 1988 left at least 30 dead. Musayev himself described the measure as an attempt to prevent large-scale bloodshed.
Interpretations of cause and responsibility diverge. Musayev believed outsiders had incited the crowd, and some researchers point to the central authorities' slow response to the nationalities crisis. It has also been argued that the Soviet state security apparatus stood behind the events, but no firm conclusion has been established.