Stalinist repressions in Azerbaijan were repressions carried out in the Azerbaijan SSR from the late 1920s to the early 1950s that affected not only the top leaders of Azerbaijan, but also the clergy, intellectuals, wealthy peasants, and the urban elite. Methods of repression included shooting, arresting, sending to labor camps, and deporting the population to other regions of the USSR. People suspected of counter-revolutionary activity, espionage, anti-Soviet propaganda, or obstructing the nationalization of their property were persecuted.
Repression reached its peak during the Great Purge, which was carried out by the NKVD under the direction of higher authorities. This period coincided with the leadership of Mir Jafar Baghirov, who ruled Azerbaijan for 20 years. In Soviet literature, his name is often mentioned in connection with the mass repressions that occurred in the 1930s, as he was typically the main initiator of the repressions that took place in the republic in 1937–1938. However, literature written during and after Perestroika has not yet clearly reflected the extent of Baghirov's responsibility for these events. Swedish political scientist Svante Cornell referred to him as the "Azerbaijan's Stalin", while Russian philosopher and historian Dmitri Furman called him the "Azerbaijani Beria".
Events before repressions The origins of repression can be traced back to the period when Stalin rose to power and began ruling the country alone. The complex party environment and the political, social, and economic difficulties that occurred in the first half of the 20th century led to people being accused of Trotskyism, nationalism, maliciousness, espionage, and other charges. The official ideological basis for Stalin's repressions was the concept of "strengthening the inter-class struggle in connection with the end of the construction of socialism," which was formulated by Stalin at the plenum of the Central Committee of the CPSU held in July 1928.
However, there are differing perspectives regarding the causes of the Great Purge. For instance, party veteran Nemtsova, a survivor of Stalin's camps, expressed her views in a 1988 interview with Ogoniok magazine. She was convinced that the repressions of 1937-1938 were orchestrated by White Guards and gendarmes who had infiltrated the NKVD in Moscow and Leningrad.
Stalin's rise to power
Lenin's illness intensified the struggle between factions within the Communist Party. At the top echelons, there was a ruthless struggle for succession. Within the Politburo, Joseph Stalin, Grigory Zinoviev, and Lev Kamenev formed a "troika" against Leon Trotsky. After Trotsky's defeat, Stalin turned against his former allies in the troika. In 1926, Trotsky, who rejected Stalin's theory of socialism's victory in one country, joined forces with Grigory Zinoviev and Lev Kamenev to form a united opposition. In 1927, several events occurred that led to the beginning of Stalin's repressions. In May, England broke off diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union, and on June 7, Soviet ambassador Pyotr Voykov was assassinated by a monarchist in Warsaw. As there were still a small number of monarchists and white guards in the opposition camp, they were the first to face repression. The killing of Voykov led to the complete destruction of monarchist and white guard cells throughout the USSR. England's "threat of war" prompted further action against intra-party rivals and dissidents. That summer, the NKVD arrested monarchists, white guards, landowners, merchants, priests, and churchmen in the main grain-growing regions. This allowed Stalin to break Bukharin's group's resistance and pass a decision to remove Lev Trotsky and Grigory Zinoviev from the Central Committee as "spies of the united opposition".
Situation in Azerbaijan Before the revolution, two Muslim social-democratic parties were formed in Azerbaijan: Hummet, which would later split into Bolshevik and Menshevik wings, and the Adalat party, founded by southern Azerbaijani immigrants. Competing with them were the liberal Musavat and the Islamist Ittihad party. The differences between members of the Musavat and Hummet parties were more related to their origins and social status than their worldviews. Almost all members of Hummet were peasants, impoverished gentlemen, oil workers, or Iranian immigrants. They were united by the education they received in Russian-Tatar schools and religious schools, and the party's membership grew through acquaintances, relatives, and relationships of dependence. During the civil war, members of Hummet's Bolshevik wing passed through Astrakhan, while the Menshevik wing operated illegally in Baku. Members of this wing were also represented in the Musavat-dominated Azerbaijan parliament.
In 1920, Hummet, Adalat, and the Baku committee of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP) united under the name of the Azerbaijan Communist Party. According to Olga Shatunovskaya's testimony, there was a struggle between two groups: nationalist communists led by Nariman Narimanov and internationalists fighting against previous traditions. The leaders of Musavat's right wing emigrated to foreign countries, while members of its left wing were allowed to exist. Despite the disintegration of the Musavat party and some members taking an oath of loyalty to the new government, Musavatism's ideas did not disappear. Some Musavat members held important positions in Baku city councils and educational institutions. Even though Ittihad announced its dissolution, it remained influential for a long time.
Initially, the Revolutionary Committee of the Azerbaijan SSR and the Council of People's Commissars of Azerbaijan SSR were dominated by Muslims, who were referred to as nationally oriented communists. Despite Muslims having a majority in the Central Committee and the Presidium, Russian and Armenian communists had significant influence in the Central Committee in the early 1920s. According to German historian Baberowski, Moscow's influence arose through Grigory Kaminsky and Alexander Yegorov, and later through Sergei Kirov, who headed the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Azerbaijan for 7 years (1921–1926). However, Russian historian A. Kirillina does not accept Sergey Kirov as Moscow's "vicegerent" because Nariman Narimanov was the main leader in the republic at that time. The Baku Presidium could not implement its decisions without the consent of the Transcaucasian State Committee and the Caucasus Bureau, which played a coordinating role between the Moscow Central Committee and the Azerbaijan party organization. The Baku city committee of the party was dominated by Russians and Armenians, while Muslim communists were mainly represented in district party committees and state offices. From the first half of the 1920s, Stalin began to worry about the mood among the main figures (elites) of national parties. In his letter to Lenin in 1922, he noted:
Localization of the apparatuses began during Nariman Narimanov's period, who did it without the support of the Moscow party apparatus. However, to prevent future threats from nationally oriented communists, Moscow started nationalization and indigenization in the second half of 1923. Along with Mirsaid Sultan-Galiev, Turar Ryskulov, Filipp Makharadze, Budu Mdivani, Nariman Narimanov was also one of the prominent representatives of nationally oriented communists. However, in 1923 he fell into disrepute and his supporters were persecuted. According to Yusif Gasimov's memoirs, in the second half of the 1920s, a struggle for leadership in Azerbaijan began between two groups. On one side were Ruhulla Akhundov, Habib Jabiyev, Huseyn Rahmanov, Muzaffar Narimanov, and G. Farajzade. On the other side were Gazanfar Musabekov, Sultan Majid Afandiyev, M. Garayev and Yusif Gasimov.
After the assassination of Sergei Kirov, from 1926 to 1929, the first secretary of the Communist Party of Azerbaijan was entrusted to a secretariat consisting of Aliheydar Garayev, Huseynbala Agaverdiyev (from 1927 his position was held by Yusif Gasimov), and Levon Mirzoyan. After being informed about the arbitrariness and nepotism of the party leadership in Azerbaijan, Stalin began to purge the party leadership in 1929. Aliheydar Garayev, Levon Mirzoyan, Yusif Gasimov, and others were fired from their posts. From September 1929 to February 1930, there was no leadership in Azerbaijan. After eliminating the leading officials in Baku, Stalin supported Levon Mirzoyan and Aliheydar Garayev and started changing the secretaries of the district committees. As a result of the mixing of Azerbaijani party leaders, a mixed network of personal connections was destroyed. Internal party intrigues and quarrels continued during the period of Nikolai Gikalo and Vladimir Polonsky, the leaders of Azerbaijan's next party organizations. As a result, in 1933, Stalin appointed Mir Jafar Baghirov to lead Azerbaijan instead of Polonsky.
Political repressions between 1930–1936 On December 1, 1934, Sergei Kirov, the head of the Leningrad Regional Committee of the CPSU, was shot and killed by Leonid Nikolayev, an unemployed man, in the Smolny Palace in Leningrad. Stalin used this murder as a pretext to eliminate the opposition leaders of the 1920s and 1930s. He accused Grigory Zinoviev and Lev Kamenev of being complicit in the assassination and ordered the investigation of the "Zinoviev trail" despite the objections from the NKVD.
In the first few months following Kirov's murder, the repressive campaign in Azerbaijan had not yet reached serious proportions. However, some measures had been taken. At the proposal of the Central Committee of the Azerbaijan SSR, the Politburo decided to deport 87 golchomags, who were considered incorrigible anti-Soviet elements and former heads of large capitalist enterprises. The families of golchomags who had fled to other regions of the union were also deported, along with the confiscation of their property from the territory of the Azerbaijan SSR, to prison camps.
In the spring of 1936, a group of former Trotskyists working in the field of humanitarian sciences were arrested in Baku. Subsequently, the "nationalists" were also arrested. Among them was Ahmad Trinich, a publicist of Albanian origin who had hostile relations with Mir Jafar Baghirov. He was the first to be arrested. In April of that year, during a meeting of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Azerbaijan SSR, Baghirov presented a letter, either found or fabricated, that contained Trinich's request for protection from the Musavat parliament in 1918. As a result, Trinich was expelled from the party and arrested. During the investigation, he committed suicide by swallowing a button. However, the first major wave of arrests in Azerbaijan occurred in the autumn and primarily targeted dissidents within the Bolshevik party, members of neo-Bolshevik parties, and those suspected of disloyalty to Stalin's rule.
In November, the NKVD arrested dozens of prominent communists, accusing them of Trotskyism, dissension, and espionage. Among those arrested was Bagirov's personal secretary, Nikishov, who was accused of being a "Musavat agent" and "terrorist". Several other notable individuals were also expelled from the party and arrested, including Balabey Hasanbayov, the rector of Azerbaijan State University; Ibrahim Eminbeyli, the director of Azernashr; well-known ethnologists and professors Alexander Bukshpan and Nikolayev; Orbelyan, a member of the Supreme Court; and Veli Khuluflu, the chairman of the League of Militant Atheists. At the end of the year, Baghirov wrote to Stalin, stating that:
During this period, rebel groups emerged among villagers, such as those in the Ali-Bayramli district. The entire male population of Ali Bayramli was accused of preparing for a counter-revolutionary coup and subsequently subjected to repression.