The Sumgait party boss handed a flag and photographed at the head of the mob
Left isolated by the crowd, the republic flag thrust into his hands, Muslimzade walked where the mob led him; the scene was filmed and sent to the Party Central Committee.
A Komsomol careerist who rose to first secretary of the Sumgait city party committee, he was the party official who faced the crowd at the outset of the February 1988 Sumgait pogrom and, in attempting to calm it, found himself handed an Azerbaijan SSR flag and photographed leading the march. Muslimzade later maintained that he was steering the column away from the Armenian district toward the sea, but the tail of the procession splintered into groups that fanned out into Armenian neighbourhoods. Dismissed from all posts and expelled from the party days after the pogrom, he became both a scapegoat for the violence and an enduring symbol of the party's loss of control.
Activities and affiliations
Career Timeline
- 1971–1974Instructor, Press Department, Ministry of Communications, Azerbaijan SSR; secretary, 26 Baku Commissars District Committee, Komsomol
- 1974–1978Head of Komsomol Organisations Dept, CC Komsomol of Azerbaijan; Chairman, Committee of Youth Organisations; instructor, Organisational-Party Work Dept, CC CP Azerbaijan
- 1978–1985First Secretary, Central Committee of the Lenin Komsomol of Azerbaijan
- 1985–1988First Secretary, Sumgait City Committee, Communist Party of Azerbaijan
- 1989–1991Vice-President, Azerbaijan Association of Joint Ventures and International Unions
- 1991People's Deputy, Supreme Council of the Republic of Azerbaijan