Free work

Baku State University

Имя: Сабина

Фамилия: Ахмедова

Факультет: История

Специальность: Учитель Истории

Группа: TM027

Курс: 1

Урок: Английский язык

Учитель: Фарзалиева Ирада

Название работы: The history of Azerbaijan

After a series of wars between the Russian Empire and Iran, the treaties of
Golestān (Gulistan; 1813) and Turkmenchay (Torkmānchāy; 1828) established a
new border between the empires. Russia acquired Baku, Shirvan, Ganja,
Nakhichevan (Naxçıvan), and Yerevan. Henceforth the Azerbaijani Turks of
Caucasia were separated from the majority of their linguistic and religious
compatriots, who remained in Iran. Azerbaijanis on both sides of the border
remained largely rural, though a small merchant class and working class
appeared in the second half of the 19th century. As Baku became the major
source of oil for Russia, tens of thousands of Iranian, Armenian, and Russian
workers streamed to the Abşeron Peninsula in search of employment, and
Russian economic and political influence could be felt in both parts of
Azerbaijan. As the source of employment and the home of the nascent
Azerbaijani intelligentsia and revolutionary movement, Baku radiated its
influence in Iranian Azerbaijan as well as north of the Aras (Araz) River. No
specifically Azerbaijani state existed before 1918, and, rather than seeing
themselves as part of a continuous national tradition, like the Georgians and
Armenians, the Muslims of Transcaucasia saw themselves as part of the larger
Muslim world, the ummah. They were referred to as “Tatars” by the Russians;
the ethnonym Azerbaijani (azarbayjanli) came into use in the prerevolutionary
decades at first among urban nationalist intellectuals. Only in the Soviet period
did it become the official and widely accepted name for this people.

Incorporation into the Russian Empire provided a new outlet for educated
Azerbaijanis, some of whom turned from their religious upbringing to a more
secular outlook. Prominent among the early scholars and publicists who began
the study of the Azerbaijani language were ʿAbbās Qolī Āghā Bāqıkhānlı
(Bakikhanov), who wrote poetry as well as histories of the region, and Mīrzā
Fatḥ ʿAlī Ākhūndzādeh (Akhundov), author of the first Azerbaijani plays.
Though eventually these figures would be incorporated into a national
narrative as predecessors of the Turkic revival, a variety of conflicting impulses
stimulated early Azerbaijani intellectuals—loyalty to the tsarist empire, the
continuing influence of Persian culture, and a longing for Western learning.
Although no single coherent ideology or movement characterized the
Azerbaijani intelligentsia, by 1905 a growing number of writers and journalists
adopted the program of the nationalist intellectual ʿAlī Bay Huseynzadeh:
“Turkify, Islamicize, Europeanize” (“Turklashtirmak, Islamlashtirmak,
Avrupalashtirmak”).
The town of Baku, which by 1901 produced more than half of the world’s
output of petroleum, was complexly segregated, with Russians and Armenians
in the central part of the town and Muslims clustered in distinct districts. As
social resentments festered, particularly in times of political uncertainty, ethnic
and religious differences defined the battle lines; bloody clashes between
Azerbaijanis and local Armenians took place in 1905 and 1918. A hierarchy of
skills, education, and wages placed Muslims on the bottom and Christians at
the top. By virtue of a quota on non-Christian representation and a system of
suffrage based on property holdings, the Baku city duma (legislative council)
remained in the hands of wealthy Armenians and Russians. Azerbaijanis
remained on the fringe of the labour movement and were indifferent to or
ignorant of the aspirations of both their socialist and nationalist intellectuals.
None of the small parties and political groups that arose after 1905
commanded much of a following beyond the intelligentsia, though Musavat
(“Equality”), founded in 1911 and led by Mehmed Emin Rasulzadeh, proved
most enduring. Anxiety about the Armenian “threat,” a perception of their
own distance from and hostility to this privileged element within their midst,
and a feeling that Azerbaijanis were connected in important ways to other
Muslims, particularly Turks, became part of an Azerbaijani sense of self.

With the Bolshevik victory in the Russian Revolution of 1917 and the
withdrawal of Russian troops from the Caucasian front during World War I
(1914–18), Azerbaijani leaders joined Armenians and Georgians in a brief
experiment in Transcaucasian autonomy (February to April 1918). An even
briefer attempt at unity in an independent federative republic of Transcaucasia
(April to May) fell apart, and finally three separate independent republics were
established. Azerbaijan was declared an independent state on May 28, 1918,
but Baku remained in the hands of a communist government, assisted by local
Armenian soldiers, who had put down a Muslim revolt in March. Allied with
the advancing Turkish army, in September 1918 the Azerbaijani nationalists
secured their capital, Baku, and engaged in a massacre of the Armenians.
However, even as they secured control of Baku, the Azerbaijani nationalists
were faced with a mixed population of Russian, Armenian, and Muslim workers
who had undergone a long socialist and trade-unionist education. Among the
peasantry on whom they depended, national consciousness was still largely
absent, and the nationalists were never fully secure in Baku, where Bolshevism
had deep roots. With the end of World War I, the Turks withdrew; they were
replaced by the British, who remained until August 1919. The fragile republic
received de facto recognition from the Allies on January 15, 1920, but when
the Red Army marched into Baku in April 1920 there was little resistance.

The Azerbaijani Soviet Socialist Republic lasted 71 years. It was part of the
Transcaucasian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic from 1922 until 1936 and,
like Georgia and Armenia, it experienced considerable economic development,
urbanization, and industrialization. Although education in Azerbaijan was
promoted and Azerbaijanis were placed in positions of power, the republic was
tightly controlled by Moscow, especially during the years of Joseph Stalin’s rule
(1928–53) when M.A. Bagirov headed the Azerbaijani Communist Party.
Becoming a more urban, educated, and socially mobile society, Azerbaijan was
divided between more traditional, underdeveloped rural areas and the
cosmopolitan city of Baku. After the death of Stalin, the republic enjoyed
somewhat greater autonomy, and the national political and intellectual elites
flourished.

When conflict with the Armenians of the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous

Region within Azerbaijan broke out in February 1988, these elites provided the
leaders both for the oppositional Azerbaijan Popular Front and for their
communist opponents. Violent protests and interethnic clashes targeting both
Armenians and Azerbaijanis in the late 1980s, anti-Armenian pogroms in
Sumgait in 1988 and in Baku in 1990, as well as continual warfare between the
Azerbaijanis and the Armenians of Nagorno-Karabakh, led to military action by
Moscow against the republic in January 1990. With the dissolution of the
Soviet Union late the following year, the Republic of Nagorno-Karabakh was
declared; following a referendum indicating popular support for
independence, as well as an election in December, the republic’s
independence was officially proclaimed in the first days of 1992, a move
unrecognized by the international community. The full-scale conflict that
exploded between the Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh and the Azerbaijanis
shortly thereafter was finally halted by a 1994 cease-fire, which, though
periodically violated, largely managed to hold.

The Communist Party of Azerbaijan retained its power until 1992. After the
abortive coup against the Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev in Moscow in
August 1991, Azerbaijan declared itself independent, and the head of the
party, Ayaz Mutalibov, was elected its first president. In May 1992 the
Azerbaijan Popular Front overthrew Mutalibov and forced new elections, in
which its candidate, Abulfez Elchibey, emerged victorious on a platform of
separating from the Commonwealth of Independent States and maintaining
control over Nagorno-Karabakh. Elchibey was himself overthrown in June 1993
by Heydar Aliyev, a former KGB official and leader of the Azerbaijani
Communist Party who had adopted the rhetoric of Azerbaijani nationalism.
Over the next decade, the Aliyev government maintained control—reportedly
through intimidation of the press and opposition groups and through
manipulation of elections—but was unable to resolve the conflict over
Nagorno-Karabakh, despite numerous summit meetings between Aliyev and
Armenian leaders. Complicating the discussions was the 1992 declaration of
independence that had been issued by the self-proclaimed Republic of
Nagorno-Karabakh. The enclave held periodic elections thereafter, the results
of which were soundly rejected by Azerbaijan as illegal under international law.
In addition, the fighting in Nagorno-Karabakh resulted in the displacement of
substantial populations of both Armenians and Azerbaijanis, and, by the time
of the 1994 cease-fire, the Nagorno-Karabakh Armenians had expanded their
hold over Azerbaijani territory.
At the beginning of the 21st century, roughly one-seventh of Azerbaijan’s
territory remained outside its control, and significant populations remained
displaced, particularly in the case of the Azerbaijanis, many of whom also
remained displaced internally. Tensions were further inflamed in the late
1990s by the appointment of a former president of Nagorno-Karabakh to the
post of prime minister in Armenia; in Azerbaijan the move was largely viewed
as a deliberate provocation, and talks were hampered further. Relations were
also strained with Russia, which felt that the government in Azerbaijan was
doing little to stop Chechen rebels from operating out of Azerbaijani territory.
In the meantime, oil revenues in Azerbaijan began to soar, as new fields were
discovered and new contracts were signed with Western companies for their
exploitation. In 2003 the elderly Aliyev died and was succeeded by his son,
Ilham, whom Aliyev had been grooming for succession. Scandalized by the
apparent accession to power of a hereditary line, opposition political groups
staged a series of violent protests that failed to keep the younger Aliyev from
the presidency. During the course of his term, Aliyev directed income from the
boom in Caspian oil in part toward developing Azerbaijani military capacity,
which in 2006 was described as nearing the capability needed to challenge the
forces in Nagorno-Karabakh. That same year, Nagorno-Karabakh passed a
referendum approving a new constitution, and, in the year that followed, it
held its fourth round of elections. Though leadership in the disputed region
had hoped that such shows of democratic rule would support the territory’s
claim to sovereignty, neither Azerbaijan nor the remainder of the international
community recognized the region’s claims to independence. Efforts to resolve
the conflict continued, and in November 2008 Aliyev signed an agreement with
Armenian Pres. Serzh Sarkisyan that pledged to intensify the countries’ efforts
to settle the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.