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The Soviet Union and the Construction of Azerbaijani National Identity in the 1930s

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Harun Yilmaz*
Affiliation:
Faculty of History, University of Oxford, UK

Abstract

Although the titular nation of the Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic was Turkic speaking and had strong cultural and historical ties with Iran, the Soviet regime constructed a national identity that was divorced from its Turkic and Iranian past. The current literature cannot provide the exact period when this construction was put forward and generally argues that the Azerbaijani identity was artificially created as part of a broader “divide-and-rule” policy that was applied to all the Turkic nations in the Soviet Union. However, this thesis by itself does not explain why this change from a Turkic identity to an Azerbaijani one happened seventeen years after the Bolsheviks assumed power in Baku, and its simple causation makes it sound more like a conspiracy theory, which had a certain popularity in the Cold War era, than a scholarly argument. By presenting a broader view, the paper explains why and when the national identity in Soviet Azerbaijan was altered from Turkic to Azerbaijani. It argues that there were many factors that induced the Bolsheviks to take this extraordinary step in 1937. In fact, the change in defining national identity in Azerbaijan was a result of a combination of developments in the 1930s in Turkey, Iran, Germany, and the Soviet Union. The article concludes that these developments left Soviet rulers no choice but to construct an independent Azerbaijani identity.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © 2013 The International Society for Iranian Studies

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Footnotes

I am profoundly grateful to Professors Edmund Herzig, Bruce Grant, Houchang Chehabi, and Jenny White for their suggestions and encouragements. I would like to present this work to Sevgi Yilmaz.

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54 ARPİİSPİHDA, 1-14-35-21/22, April 16/17, 1937. ARPİİSPİHDA, 1-14-35-22, April 16/17, 1937.

55 ARPİİSPİHDA, 1-14-35-19/24, April 16/17, 1937.

56 ARPİİSPİHDA , 1-14-33-17, January 1938.

57 Ashin and Alpatov relate these purges, especially the arrest of Akhundov, to the struggle between the groups of Bagirov and Akhundov. F.D. Ashnin and V.M. Alpatov, “Delo professora B.V. Choban-Zade,” Vostok 5 (1998): 126. On the purges and bibliographies of Turkologists in Azerbaijan, see Ashnin, F.D., Alpatov, V.M. and Nasilov, D.M., Repressirovannaia tiurkologiia (Moscow, 2002).Google Scholar

58 ARPİİSPİHDA, 1-74-453-330, January 4, 1937.

59 ARPİİSPİHDA, 1-74-457-7, January 28, 1937. The list of the scholars in the higher institutions occupying various positions included Gasanbekov, Chichikalov, Nikolaev, Tikhomirov, Khuluflu, Billiarli, Bukshpan, Tagi-Zade, Choban-Zade, Azim Gasanov, Tagi Shakhbazov, Rizabeili, V. Mustafaev, Gubaidullin, P. Guseinov, Vanandetsi. Parallel to the purge of the scholars in the higher institutions, the cadres in the Narkompros AzSSR were also purged more than once. ARPİİSPİHDA, 1-14-7-79, April 17, 1937.

60 Ashnin and Alpatov, “Delo,” 127.

61 Ashnin et al., Repressirovannaia, 88–93.

62 Ibid., 110–19, 125–30.

63 Gubaidullin stayed in Kazan, Tatarstan until 1936. His return to Baku must be related to his involvement in this project. Similarly, Zifel'dt-Simumiagi moved from Tbilisi to Baku in December 1935. The time of their return to Baku before the resolution of the Central Committee of the VKP(b) on the Zhdanov commission, and the resolution of the AKP(b) on Azerbaijani history suggests that they were informed by the project of writing national history for Azerbaijan in December 1935. For the time of their return to Baku see Kerimova, Iz istorii, 357, 389.

64 ARPİİSPİHDA, 1-74-416-18, 19, 87, March 15, 1936.

65 ARPİİSPİHDA, 1-74-427-58, June 6, 1936.

66 ARPİİSPİHDA, 1-74-427-59, June 21, 1936.

67 ARPİİSPİHDA, 1-74-433-316, August 11, 1936.

68 ARPİİSPİHDA, 1-74-444-168, October 22, 1936.

69 A Soviet term used for the young appointees, who were trained, nurtured in the first two decades of the Soviet rule. For the biographies of the editors of the new history Isag Dzafarzade, Aleksei Klimov and Zelik Iampol'skii, see Kerimova, Iz istorii, 372–3, 416–17, 541.

70 Dzhafarzade, I., Klimov, A.A. and Iampol'skii, Z.I., eds., Istoriia Azerbaidzhanskoi SSR uchebnik dlia 8 i 9 klassov (Baku, 1939).Google Scholar

71 Dzhafarzade et al., Istoriia Azerbaidzhanskoi, 4; on language, 14–15.

72 “Dekada azerbaidzhanskogo iskustva,” Bakinskii Rabochii, April 5, 1938, 1.

73 The dekada was organized April 6–16, 1938. “Dekada,” Bakinskii Rabochii, April 18, 1938, 2.

74 This anecdote was conveyed to me by Emeritus Prof. Süleyman Aliyarlı of Baku University in 2007.

75 V.V. Bartol'd, “Mesto Prikaspiiskikh Oblastei v Istorii Musul'manskogo Mira,” in Bartol'd, Sochineniia, ii/1: 656.

76 Conquest, R., ed., The Politics of Ideas in the USSR (London, 1967), 89.Google Scholar

77 A similar gap can be observed in Tatar and Chuvash case, after 1944, when to construct a link between Tatars and the Golden Horde was forbidden by the Central Committee of the VKP(b). For this issue see Shnirelman, V.A., Who Gets the Past?, 7, 22–4.Google Scholar

78 Khronika,Istorik Marksist 3 (1939): 213.Google Scholar

79 Istoriia Azerbaidzhana kratkii ocherk (Baku, 1941)Google Scholar.

80 Ibid., 17–19.

81 Ibid., 17–19.

82 Ibid., 19.

83 Ibid., 21–31.

84 Ibid., 31.