Musavat leader who headed the Azerbaijani National Council that declared the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic in 1918
Born near Baku in 1884, he founded Hummet, a Muslim social-democratic organization, in 1904. He took part in the Iranian Constitutional Revolution in 1909, and after returning to Baku in 1913 he became the chief of Musavat. As head of the Azerbaijani National Council he declared the independence of the Azerbaijan Republic on 28 May 1918. After the republic fell in 1920 he directed resistance until his arrest, but because he had once hidden Joseph Stalin from the police he was released and taken to Moscow. He escaped to Finland in 1922, lived in exile in Turkey, Poland and Romania, and died in Ankara in 1955.
Career timeline
1904Founded Hummet
1909–1911Iranian Constitutional Revolution; co-founded the Democrat Party of Persia
1913Joined Musavat and became its chief
1918Head of the Azerbaijani National Council; declaration of independence
1920Arrested, released and sent to the Commissariat on Nations in Moscow
The KGB general who rose from Baku to the Kremlin and founded independent Azerbaijan
F. D. Bobkov, first deputy KGB chairman, asked him after three years: "What have you managed to achieve?" Aliyev replied: "I can guarantee only one thing — in the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Azerbaijan, no one takes bribes."
An Azerbaijani who served 28 years in Soviet state security, Aliyev rose from KGB chairman to First Secretary of the Azerbaijan Communist Party in 1969. Under Brezhnev, he drove rapid economic growth in the republic, expanding grape, oil, and cotton production, and became one of the few non-Slavs to reach the post of First Deputy Chairman of the USSR Council of Ministers and full Politburo member in 1982. Returning to Azerbaijan as it descended into civil war after the Soviet collapse, he became president in 1993, stabilized the country, and signed the 'Contract of the Century' for Caspian oil development, securing his legacy as the founder of independent Azerbaijan.
Career timeline
1944–1967KGB Azerbaijan SSR: operative, head of counterintelligence, deputy chairman
1967–1969Chairman, KGB under the Council of Ministers, Azerbaijan SSR (Major General)
1969–1982First Secretary, Central Committee, Communist Party of Azerbaijan
1976–1982Candidate member, Politburo CPSU → full member (1982)
1982–1987First Deputy Chairman, USSR Council of Ministers (machine-building, light industry, transport, culture, education)
The pan-Turkist dissident who became Azerbaijan's first democratically elected president
On a November 1992 visit to Ankara he visited Atatürk's grave at Anıtkabir and wrote in the memorial book that he was a soldier of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk.
Azerbaijani politician, born 24 June 1938 in Kalaki, Nakhchivan, died 22 August 2000 in Ankara. Trained in Arabic philology at Baku State University, he took a Candidate degree in history in 1969, was known from the 1970s as a Turkist and anti-communist, and was arrested in January 1975 by the State Security Committee, serving until July 1976 at the Qaradagh stone quarry. A founder and chairman of the Popular Front from 1989, he organized a National Defence Council in January 1990 in the crisis that culminated in the anti-Armenian Baku pogrom and Black January. Elected president in June 1992, he was ousted in June 1993 amid Karabakh defeats and Huseynov's revolt; Heydar Aliyev succeeded him. He returned to Baku in 1997 and led the opposition until his death.
Career timeline
1957–1962Entered the Arabic philology department, Faculty of Oriental Studies, Baku State University in 1957; graduation dated 1962 in the Azerbaijani account, conflicting with a 1957 graduation given in an English account
1963–1964Worked as a translator in Egypt
1968–1975Lecturer in the History of Asian and African Countries, Baku State University → arrested January 1975 by the State Security Committee, held until July 1976 at the Qaradagh stone quarry
1976–1992Researcher, then senior researcher and department head, Institute of Manuscripts, Azerbaijan Academy of Sciences, until 16 July 1992
1989–1992Chairman, Azerbaijani Popular Front
1990.01Organized and chaired the National Defence Council in Baku on 12 January 1990
1992–1993President, Republic of Azerbaijan. Elected 7 June 1992, took office 17 June; formally stripped of the office by referendum on 29 August 1993
1997–2000Leader, Azerbaijani Popular Front Party (in opposition). Returned to Baku on 30 October 1997 and led it until his death
The last Soviet leader caught between a renewed union and independence
He supported a new union treaty from the view that the federation should exist for the republics.
Ayaz Mutalibov was a politician who rose from the Soviet Azerbaijani bureaucracy to become the republic’s last Communist leader and its first president. At the 1991 Novo-Ogaryovo 9+1 talks, he supported a renewed union that would guarantee republican sovereignty, arguing that the federation should exist for the republics, and he took an active position on the status of autonomous republics. His government confronted the Nagorno-Karabakh war and mounting domestic struggles, which ultimately destroyed its political base. Ousted in 1992, he lived in exile in Moscow, returned to Azerbaijan in 2012, and died in Baku in 2022.
Career timeline
1964–1977Director of the Baku Refrigerator Factory, then general director of a state industrial combine
1977–1979Second secretary of the Narimanov District Party Committee in Baku
1979–1982Minister of Local Industry of the Azerbaijan SSR
1982–1989Chairman of the State Planning Committee and deputy chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Azerbaijan SSR
1989–1990Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Azerbaijan SSR
1990–1991First secretary of the Azerbaijan Communist Party and president of Soviet Azerbaijan
1991–1992First president of Azerbaijan
1992–2012Exile in Moscow after his ouster, followed by a return in 2012
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)
Musavat leader who headed the Azerbaijani National Council that declared the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic in 1918
Born near Baku in 1884, he founded Hummet, a Muslim social-democratic organization, in 1904. He took part in the Iranian Constitutional Revolution in 1909, and after returning to Baku in 1913 he became the chief of Musavat. As head of the Azerbaijani National Council he declared the independence of the Azerbaijan Republic on 28 May 1918. After the republic fell in 1920 he directed resistance until his arrest, but because he had once hidden Joseph Stalin from the police he was released and taken to Moscow. He escaped to Finland in 1922, lived in exile in Turkey, Poland and Romania, and died in Ankara in 1955.
Career timeline
1904Founded Hummet
1909–1911Iranian Constitutional Revolution; co-founded the Democrat Party of Persia
1913Joined Musavat and became its chief
1918Head of the Azerbaijani National Council; declaration of independence
1920Arrested, released and sent to the Commissariat on Nations in Moscow
Stalin-era party boss who ruled Azerbaijan for two decades
His statements at trial were said to have been only a few sentences, one of them: "What ruined me was my faith in Stalin."
First Secretary of the Azerbaijan Communist Party from 1933 to 1953, governing the republic for two decades. A former Cheka/GPU/OGPU chairman and People's Commissar of Internal Affairs, he led the mass repression of the republic's party, state and cultural cadres during the Great Terror, and was executed by shooting in May 1956 after Beria's fall.
Career timeline
1917Joined Bolsheviks (Mar 1917 or 1918 — disputed); deputy chairman, Quba Revolutionary Committee
1918–1920Russian Civil War: regimental commander, divisional military commissar, chairman of Revolutionary Military Tribunal
1921–1927Chairman of Cheka/GPU/OGPU and People's Commissar of Internal Affairs, Azerbaijan SSR
1929–1930Chairman of GPU/OGPU, Azerbaijan SSR (second term)
1932–1933Chairman, Council of People's Commissars, Azerbaijan SSR
1933–1953First Secretary, CC of Communist Party of Azerbaijan (20 yrs); concurrently First Secretary of Baku City Committee until 1950
1953Candidate member, CPSU Presidium (Mar–Jul); Chairman, Council of Ministers, Azerbaijan SSR
1954–1956Arrested Mar 1954; death sentence Apr 1956, shot in May 1956 (sources give 26 May or 7 May)
"Comrade Stalin, you were imprisoned by enemies, but I was imprisoned by our own."
Born to a Jewish oil worker's family in Baku, he rose from engineer to People's Commissar of Armaments in 1939. Arrested and tortured just before the war, he was summoned by Stalin after the German invasion and appointed Commissar of Ammunition, quadrupling shell production by war's end. After the war, he led the First Main Directorate alongside Kurchatov, building the administrative and industrial foundation of the Soviet atomic bomb project, and later oversaw hydrogen bomb development. He was one of the very few awarded the Hero of Socialist Labor three times.
Career timeline
1930sRises through defense-industry and armaments production administration
1941Arrested, then released after the war begins to return to ammunition production
1941–1945Ammunition commissar directing mass production of shells and munitions
1945–1953Handles atomic-bomb project administration in the First Main Directorate
after 1953Survives after Beria’s fall because of atomic-production expertise
