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10.04.2013

HOW TO CREATE A NATION: A TASK OF FORMATION OF THE AZERBAIJANI IDENTITY IN THE 20TH CENTURY

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Haykaram Nahapetyan
Correspondent of the Public TV Company of Armenia in the US

A well-known in the Soviet period definition of Azerbaijan’s capital Baku as an “international city” is still fresh in the memory of people from the post-Soviet territory. In Soviet Baku different big national and religious communities lived which was characteristic for pre-Soviet, tsarist period as well. In 1913 in his article “Marxism and National Issue” Stalin called Baku “a mosaic of nations”.

But the formulation “international” may also have concealed subtext; in fact international also means “non-Azerbaijani”. International image of Baku begins from a historic evolution through which the Apsheron region had passed. The point is that the process of the formation of the Azerbaijani nation which began in the 20th century and lasted up to the end of the century, according to some criteria, has not been finished yet. Correspondingly, Soviet Baku could not be Azerbaijani city due the simple reason that the notion “Azerbaijani” had been in an unaccomplished state of “fermenting”.

The first capital of the declared in 1918 Musavatist Azerbaijan was Gyanja which became a capital after the declaration of independence on May 28, 1918, and not Baku. And Musavatist rule was spread over the regions adjoining Gyanja taking into consideration the fact that in the South and West Armenia and Artsakh were situated, in the East (at the distance of 150km from Gechi to Baku) were the regions controlled by revolutionary Stepan Shahumyan. Baku where Armenian and Christian population much prevailed over the Muslim one could never be a capital of Musavatist Azerbaijan. It is hard to say what would have been the status of Baku in the Soviet Union if in November 1917-September 1918 leader of Baku Commune Stepan Shahumyan had managed to repel the attacks of the Muslim army under the command of Young Turk Nuri Pasha for just one more month. Nuri captured Baku on September 15 and according to the point 11 of the Mudros Armistice signed on October 30 the Ottoman army began its retreat from the Caucasus, Kars and Ardahan. Moreover, it had been known about the retreat of the Ottomans back in September; the assistant of Aram Manukyan and governor of Yerevan Arsho Shahatuni wrote that after visiting Yerevan in September the commander of the Turkish garrison of Kars Halil Pasha told about it in a secret conversation to Aram1. Thus, the Turkish army captured Baku in the last period of its stay in the Caucasus.

History does not have a conjunctive mood but it complies with a definite logic. It seems quite natural that if Nuri Pasha had not reached the Apsheron, later the peninsula would have become not Azerbaijan but a part of a Soviet Russia as a physical continuation of Dagestan, taking into consideration the fact that at the spot the Baku Commune which was of pro-Russian orientation acted; by the way only one of 26 commissars was a Muslim. No less important would have been the fact that Russia also needed the oil and had dominated at Apsheron for more than a century.

Thus, in May-September 1918 the Young Turk leaders outlined the borders of a “melting pot”-laboratory where in the next 100 years the nation called “Azerbaijanis” had to be cast.

Let us go to 1939. In ethnic aspect Stalin’s GULAG was just as variegated as the Soviet Union, and since 1934 People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs (known as NKVD) had prepared for the authorities the annual reports on the ethnic picture of the inmates. Till 1939 (!) no ethnonym “Azerbaijani” could be found in the reports. There were even Japanese and Koreans but no Azerbaijanis2.

Russian historian Victor Zemskov in his series of articles on “GULAG: Historical and Sociological Aspect” published in 1991 presented the ethnic composition of the citizens living in GULAG and other detention facilities. The attached table, taken from the researcher’s articles, clearly shows that for the first time the term “Azerbaijani” appeared in these lists in 1940 and while speaking about previous years Zemskov mentioned – “no information about Azerbaijanis”, and added that before 1939 Azerbaijanis were registered under the column “other nations”.

There is no ethnonym Azerbaijani in a well-known Brockhaus and Efron Encyclopedic Dictionary in the Russian Empire (late 19th-early 20th century). In his article “Marxism and National Issue” Koba-Jugashvili-Stalin had mentioned Caucasian Tatars for 11 times but he had never written “Azerbaijani”3. In his appeal to the Muslims of the East on November 22, 1917 Lenin did not mentioned Azerbaijanis either; he wrote about the “Turcoman and Tatars of the Caucasus”4. In the same period in the American press Azerbaijan was called Tartars: The New York Times in its article “Says Baku Armenians face extermination” used “arar”5 variant. The White guard General Anton Denikin in his memories called Musavatist Azerbaijan an artificial country starting from its name6.

In 1926 the first population census was held in the Soviet Union. Among the registered nationalities there were no “Azerbaijanis” either. According to the population census there were such nationalities as the Yakut, Mordvinians, Buryat, Vainakhs, Permyaks but no “Azerbaijanis”. In the official census data book “The Transcaucasia in Figures” no Azerbaijani ethnonym can be found. On January 21, 1936 while receiving the delegation of the Soviet Azerbaijan in Kremlin Vyacheslav Molotov enumerated the ethnicities living in Azerbaijan “Russians, Armenian and Turcoman”. The Head of the Soviet Government did not know the word “Azerbaijanis” at that time. “Not only Russian, Armenian and Turcoman capitalists but also foreigners profited from the well-known Baku oil. Under the tsar rule Azerbaijan and its Turkic population lived depressed”, - said the Chairman of the Sovnarkom (prime-minister) of the USSR7. The words of the Minister of Heavy Industry of the USSR Sergo Ordjonikidze at the meeting with the party leaders Midjafar Badirov and Hussein Rakhmanov are remarkable: “Today I recollect with horror the episode when in May 1920 we entered Shushi. This wonderful Armenian city was thoroughly demolished. We saw the bodies of women and children in the wells”. Ordjonikidze’s words were cited by “Edibiyat Gazeti” newspaper published in February of the same year in Baku8,

It should be mentioned that at the meeting with the Muslim delegation Ordjonikidze clearly called Shushi Armenian town-fortress. Hence, in speech Ordjonikidze used word “Azerbaijani” and in the same sentence he spoke about the “Turcoman of Azerbaijan”. In fact “Azerbaijani” at this stage meant the “inhabitant of Azerbaijan”, but it did not show an ethnicity, just like words “Caucasian” and “Asian” had no ethnic meaning.

Since 1939 the transitional period when at different state levels in the USSR the Azerbaijanis had been referred as ethnos, meanwhile in some institutions the notion “Azerbaijani” had not even been used yet, had been initiated. As it was mentioned there was no ethnonym “Azerbaijani” in NKVD reports in 1939, but at the same time in the population census for the same year, unlike the one of 1926, there were Azerbaijanis. Such a colliding situation had lasted for about 10 years.

In particular, while speaking about the 1944 and 1947 statistics Zemskov mentioned that the number of Azerbaijanis in GULAG is several times lower than the number of the Armenians and Georgians. Azerbaijanis and Turcomen were Turkic speaking peoples and the statisticians of GULAG registered most of the inmates as the Turcomen”9.

The process of formation of a new ethnos was triggered by the collapse of the Transcaucasia Socialist Republic in 1937. Thus, Azerbaijan became a Union republic which, unlike Georgia and Armenia had nod had a history and for which a separate history had to be composed. For example in the same period (1938-1941) it suddenly turned out that medieval poet Nizami is an Azerbaijani. During his life and over the following 800 years no sources had managed to set his nationality. Nizami in his poetry never wrote about Azerbaijan and Azerbaijanis, though, as the researcher and journalist Aris Kazinayn noticed, at least in one of his quatrains he mentioned Armenia:

Passed the desert, rode towards the other desert,

Hurried to Armenia – a mounted valley10

The Soviet historiography stated that the Persians bereaved the Azerbaijanis of the poet and the Baku branch of the Academy of Science of the USSR re-developed the medieval history approximately in the same way as they did it with the history of Artsakh and Armenia. In the late 1930s when the relation between the USSR and Turkey deteriorated it became undesirable to call Azerbaijanis “Turcoman” and Stalin decided to invent new and different name for the Turcoman-Tatars of the Caucasus. Thus, in the late 30s the youngest nation on the planet – Azerbaijanis, was born.

Another remarkable fact of accelerated and artificial evolution of the Azerbaijani ethnos in the 20th century is the Azerbaijani alphabet. At the end of the 19th century and at the beginning of the 20th century the Caucasian Tatars used Arabic alphabet which was also used in the Musavatist and Soviet Azerbaijan till 1929. That is why there were Arabic letters on the national emblem of the USSR – Azerbaijani variant of “Workers of the World, Unite!” slogan. Today’s state flag of the Azerbaijan where eight point star is pictured against the background of a red stripe, was taken from the Musavatists. The symbol of eight points star in reality meant the eight Arabic letters of a word “Azerbaijan” (أذربيجان). The president’s web site (president.az) reveals the meaning of the three colors on the flag but there are no explanations concerning the eight point star11. There is nothing about the eight point star in the Azerbaijani Law on Flag. While mounting one of the highest flags in the world, Azerbaijan, most probably, did not want to remember about its not so distant Arabic-language past.

Processing of the Azerbaijani language in Latin letters was initiated under Musavat rule and it was partially put forth in late 20th (1929). In 1933 and 1938 the Latin alphabet underwent changes and since 1939 the Cyrillic alphabet (which was changed twice in 1946 and 1958) had been used. In 1991 Azerbaijan passed to the Latin alphabet again and in 1992 it was changed once more, in particular, letter Ə was added – it is the first letter in the word “Əliyev” (the surname of the founder of the Apsheron dynasty of rulers).

Thus, the Azerbaijani alphabet had been changed 8 times in 65 years, on average once in eight years. This is really worthy achievement for the Guinness Book of World Records.

It is remarkable that the Azerbaijanis from Russia still use Cyrillic alphabet; they publish newspapers, particularly in Dagestan.

The expression of Svante E. Cornell, the author of “Azerbaijan since Independence” book, made on December 13, 2011 at John Hopkins University is remarkable. While turning to the ambassador Yashar Aliyev he asked” “Who are you – Azerbaijanis, Azeris or Turks?” Embarrassed ambassador answered after a short pause: “Azerbaijanis”.

The fact that the author of a book about Azerbaijan and Azerbaijanis could not understand whom is he dealing with is more than eloquent.

1 Meetings of Halil Pasha with Aram, Yerevan, 1991, p. 504 (in Armenian)

2 Zemskov V.N. “GULAG: Historical and Sociological Aspect”, 1991, N6, p. 17, Table 5 (in Russian)

3 Stalin I.V. Marxism and National Issue, Prosveshenie, 1913, NN 3, 4, 5 (in Russian)

4 Lenin and Tatar Issue (in Russian) http://www.islamrf.ru/news/culture/legacy/12382/

5 “Says Baku Armenians face extermination”, The New York Times, 03.05.1920.

6 Anton Denikin, Sketch Book of the Russian Revolt. Head 18, p. 234 (in Russian)

7 Molotov joldasьn nitqi, Эдэбиjjaт гэзэтти, 08.02.1936, N2, (52).

8 Orconikidze joldasьn nitqi, Ibid.

9 Zemskov V.N. “GULAG: Historical and Sociological Aspect”, 1991, N7, p. 4 (in Russian)

10 Aris Kazinyan, Poligon “Azerbaijan” p. 160. Yerevan, 2011 (in Russian)

11 http://archive.president.az/browse.php?sec_id=53&lang=ru.


“Globus” analytical journal, #3, 2013

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