Aliyev is a legend of Azerbaijan – MK

Heydar Aliyev is the former president of Azerbaijan and a major statesman of the USSR, a community whose career lasted “from Joseph Stalin to Vladimir Putin.” On May 10, he would have turned 100 years old. Now the policy of Azerbaijan, begun under Heydar Aliyev, is being continued by his son Ilham. Moskovsky Komsomolets discussed with political scientists the details of the biography of this outstanding person.

In the history of the Azerbaijani people there is a special holiday – National Salvation Day, which is celebrated on June 15. It was on this day, when chaos and discord reigned in the country, and society was on the verge of civil war, that Heydar Aliyev returned to power.

Heydar Aliyev began his career in 1941 as an employee of the People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs of his native city of Nakhichevan, and in 1944 he moved to serve in the state security bodies of the Azerbaijan SSR. In this part of the biography, his life path is similar to the career of the current President of the Russian Federation, Vladimir Putin – both were experienced Chekists, respected by the leadership.

“Heydar Aliyev rose very high,” says Azerbaijani political scientist Fuad Akhundov. – In 1969, having headed Azerbaijan, he received the country as agrarian-industrial, and made it industrial-agrarian, developed many branches of industry. After the death of Leonid Brezhnev in 1982, Aliyev became a member of the Politburo and Nikolai Tikhonov, First Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR, oversaw more than a dozen ministries. It is significant that other ministers tried to get under his supervision, which speaks of the strength of his rule, and this is a significant phenomenon. People understood that he knew how to solve problems. In 1987, Mikhail Gorbachev dismissed him, and in 1993, when he was retired, the Azerbaijani people again called him to lead Azerbaijan as president. After the rule of the Popular Front, there was actually a civil war in the country. Speaking in chess terms, Heydar Aliyev got a losing game, but with systematic, the only right moves, he leveled the situation and returned it to normal.

– Do you think he could have stopped the collapse of the USSR if he had been in the place of Mikhail Gorbachev?

– Many high-ranking people in Moscow admitted that if not Gorbachev, but Heydar Aliyev had been elected to the presidency of the USSR, he would not have allowed the Soviet Union to collapse. Gorbachev himself tried to speed up his resignation, because he looked unprofitable against his background.

– How did Heydar Aliyev manage to achieve peace and prosperity in Azerbaijan, what was his ability to govern the country?

– His rule of the country began in the Soviet period. He did a lot for Soviet Azerbaijan: he made investments, brought in the best technologies, even Western ones, which was then a curiosity. The famous air conditioning plant in Baku, many chemical industry enterprises associated with oil refining are the result of his work. The republic developed and thundered throughout the Soviet Union. When he headed the country in 1993, when the people asked him, he began to conduct politics in new conditions. He ended the civil war, the war with Armenia, which had territorial claims.

– Does the current President of Azerbaijan, Ilham Aliyev, continue the course started by Heydar Aliyev, and what does it mean?

— Yes, Ilham Aliyev was always close to Heydar Aliyev, he was vice-president of an oil company, he was a deputy of the Milli Majlis, chairman of the Olympic Committee, and when the time came, he took over the baton, continuing to develop success with skill. The oil strategy, as well as the development of industry, led to the fact that a lot of money and investments flowed into the country. All this is a continuation of the policy of Heydar Aliyev, who laid the foundation for the development of Azerbaijan. He was a great authority, carried out reforms in the field of transport, his feat is especially famous – he passed the Baikal-Amur Mainline from beginning to end, which was put into operation in 1984, solving strategic issues in construction. When perestroika began, the Union was bursting at the seams, a single Soviet economy, a single political and cultural space was bursting at the seams. Heydar Aliyev did not allow any Russian school in Azerbaijan to be closed, he greatly appreciated our 200-year-old history united with Russia, our common cultural space, and believed that it should be developed. We can say that he bequeathed to President Ilham Aliyev not to let harm relations with Russia in all areas.

“Heydar Aliyev managed to achieve peace and prosperity in the territory of Azerbaijan for a long time, so he can rightfully be considered the founder of statehood in modern Azerbaijan,” he said. Russian political scientist Sergei Markov. – He managed to solve several important tasks that ensured the prosperity of the country. The first task that was solved was the rapid, outpacing development of Azerbaijan in the Soviet period, and he headed it for a decade and a half and during this period was able to ensure the flow of the federal union budget into the economy of Azerbaijan. The economy of the USSR largely depended on the distribution of the budget. It was necessary to find arguments in a dialogue with the Central Committee of the CPSU, the Council of Ministers of the USSR and the Politburo. Heydar Aliyev knew how to find these arguments and ensured the unprecedented growth of the Azerbaijani economy.

The second task was implemented after the collapse of the Union and the establishment of the independence of Azerbaijan. This period was very difficult, because radical and incompetent figures of the Popular Front were in power, in fact, there was a civil war in the country. Heydar Aliyev, arriving first in Nakhichevan and then in Baku, was able to stop it and ensure a stable government and political stability in the country as a whole, which served as the basis for development and prosperity.

The third task that has been solved is the end of the war with Armenia. Heydar Aliyev attracted the leadership of Russia to the negotiation process and was able to stop the hostilities with double pressure, military and diplomatic.

The fourth task that was solved by Heydar Aliyev was the construction of a socio-political system that expressed respect for both the traditional values ​​of the Azerbaijani people and Soviet values, and at the same time modern state and public institutions were created according to the European model. This system used the experience of Turkey and Russia and proved its effectiveness in the future.”