Activities and affiliations

What people did, and whom they served in that activity.

Activity

All 3 Legislature and state representation 2 Literature and arts 1

State, movement or organization

All 137 Soviet Union 11 French First Republic state institutions 1 International Workingmen's Association (First International) 1
All 3 affiliations by country

France

French First Republic state institutions 1

International organizations

International Workingmen's Association (First International) 1

Soviet Union

Soviet Union 11

Soviet institution line

All Culture and literary control 7 Formal heads of state 1 Foreign affairs 1 Central planning agencies 2

Literature and arts · Soviet Union · Formal heads of state people 1

Clear all

Nariman Najaf oglu Narimanov

Нариман Наджаф оглы Нариманов
Literature and arts Soviet Union Soviet Union Azerbaijan 1870–1925 ○ Heart attack

From Azerbaijani Enlightener to a Head of the Soviet State

When oil magnate Taghiyev tried to silence him at the 1906 Teachers' Congress, Narimanov renounced his scholarship and declared: "I will not be silenced for despicable metal while comrades shed blood against the tsarist yoke."

A teacher, physician, and writer, Narimanov opened a public reading room in Baku and produced some of the earliest works of Azerbaijani realist literature. After joining Hummet in 1905, he entered revolutionary politics, led the government of Soviet Azerbaijan from 1920, and later became a co-chairman of the USSR Central Executive Committee. His attempt to join national emancipation to socialism brought him into tension with centralizing nationalities policy; after his death in 1925, he was interred in the Kremlin Wall.

Career timeline
  • 1890Teacher in Kizil-Ajili village, Borchaly district
  • 1891–1902Teacher at Baku private progymnasium; founded and ran the 'Narimanov Reading Room' (1894)
  • 1895–1899Published plays and fiction incl. Bahadur and Sona (1896) and Nadir Shah (1899); translated and staged Gogol's The Government Inspector (1896)
  • 1905Joined the Muslim Social Democratic organisation Hummet
  • 1908Graduated from Novorossiysk University medical faculty, licensed physician
  • 1909–1914Arrested and exiled to Astrakhan for 5 years; practised medicine, organised Muslim theatre, chaired the Council of People's Universities
  • 1917Member of the Baku Bolshevik committee, editor of the newspaper Hummet
  • 1918Commissar for Municipal Economy, Baku Council of People's Commissars
  • 1919Head of the Near East Department, RSFSR People's Commissariat of Foreign Affairs
  • 1920–1922Chairman of the Azerbaijani Revolutionary Committee and Council of People's Commissars; concurrently People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs (1920–1921)
  • 1922Chairman of the Union Council, ZSFSR (Mar–Dec); member of the Soviet delegation to the Genoa Conference
  • 1922–1925Chairman of the USSR Central Executive Committee — one of the formal heads of the Soviet state
  • 1923–1925Candidate member, Central Committee of the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks)