THE AZERBAIJANI PARLIAMENTARISM IN THE SOVIET EPOCH

The Parliament of the ADR decided ‘to transfer the power to the Bolsheviks’ after the intense deliberations on the ultimatum (demand) of the Central Committee of the AC (b) P and the Transcaucasian Regional Committee of the RC (b) P whilst besieged by the 11^th Red Army of Russia and facing the imminent military threat from the Russian Caspian Fleet. The resulting decision put a number of conditions to the Bolsheviks who had seized the power, such as preservation of the independence, the provisional nature of the government established by the Bolsheviks, and shaping of the future governance form of Azerbaijan by a new parliament that would be assembled in the nearest future.

The Formal Independence  

The Bolsheviks were not honouring the conditions they had accepted. The annexationist intentions of Russia veiled with the name of the revolution came out into the open on the very next day after the 28 April 1920 invasion. On that day, the Provisional Revolutionary Committee of Azerbaijan (the Military-Revolutionary Committee of Azerbaijan, the Azerbaijan Revolutionary Committee) formed by the decision of the RC (b) P was declared the highest body of state power in the Republic. That only the Azerbaijani communists – Nariman Narimanov (as chairman), Aliheydar Garayev, Gazanfar Musabeyov, Mirza Davud Huseynov, Hamid Sultanov, A. Alimov and Dadash Bunyadzade – had places in the Provisional Revolutionary Committee of Azerbaijan (PRCA) discharging the legislative function was merely meant to mislead the public. It did not take long before the local PRCA organs – the district, territory and rural revolutionary committees – were established. Whilst a supreme government authority, this organisation had in fact no real power and was not independent. The true power was in the hands of the AC (b) P CC, a country branch of the RC (b) P. To be precise, the true power rested with the Baku Bureau of the AC (b) P CC whilst the PRCA was a puppet controlled by the Muscovite masters and a means of bringing the people down on their knees.

Acting at the beck and call of the Bolshevik leaders wielding the working class interests that they had made their banner, the PRCA passed many radical laws building a legal base for the political and economic reforms as well as the Cultural Revolution, all waged in a rude and violent manner. The PRCA abolished the Azerbaijani national army (had its generals and officers shot), confiscated privately-owned lands and distributed them amongst peasants. It also nationalised the industries. A decree was issued about workers’ control over productions and about abolishment of social classes and civil titles. Administrative changes were carried out and a judicial reform was made.

Though the Azerbaijan SSR had formal independence, the Soviet Russia considered the country as its colony and traded in its lands shamelessly from day one. On 10 August 1920, Russia gave Armenia Azerbaijan’s Sharur-Dereleyez province unlawfully whilst Garabagh, Zanghezur and Nakhchivan were declared ‘disputed territories. Thus, Russia was flirting with Armenia with a view of pushing form with its sovietisation. Though it should be mentioned that in his telegrams to Moscow N. Narimanov protested strongly against the lands considered indisputably Azerbaijani prior to the institution of the Soviet Power having suddenly and for mysterious reasons been regarded as the disputed ones as well as against the auctioning-off of the lands of the Republic. Nobody heeded him, however. It was all cut and dried in Moscow. Later on, Zanghezur was divided in two parts and attached to Armenia forcibly. Armenians from Iran, Egypt, Turkey and Russia were moved to that territory while its Azerbaijani population were removed from the region in various ways. A corridor emerged between Azerbaijan and Nakhchivan in this way. Also during those years, the highland part of the Gazakh District – the Dilidjan Area – was handed over to Armenia in defiance of the will of the Azerbaijani people.

Obviously, the independence of Azerbaijan was but formal in nature and Russia would not reckon with it; what is more, Russia was attempting to liquidate even that formal independence left by taking steps to take Azerbaijan over after an ostensibly lawful fashion. The Azerbaijan SSR left its military and economic independence under the military-economic alliance treaty with the Soviet Russia on 30 September 1920. Naturally, the relevant legislative activity was discontinued in the Republic.

The bitter struggle between the members of the PRCA having broken up into the right and left forces constituted one of the characteristic features of the committee. Whilst the left wing led by M. D. Huseynov and A. Garayev were the hard-liners advocating the Jacobin style of implementing socialist reforms and implementing the policies on nationalisation, religion and class enemies, the right wing under Nariman Narimanov did not wish to see the errors made during the revolutionary reforms in the Soviet Russia to be repeated in Azerbaijan. They did not want confiscation of the property of minor bourgeoisie and mid-level peasants; neither would they have the experience of the nationalisation of small industrial enterprises and of trade. The Narimanov wing demanded a respectful attitude to the religion, customs and traditions of the people. Moscow took this conflict between the right and the left in the PRCA up as an opportunity to send its henchman round. That was how Sergo Ordjonikidze was appointed the political leader of the PRCA in November 1920.

The Deceitful Soviets

The political independence of Azerbaijan was completely formal in nature already. They started organising a representative governance system to create the illusion that the power belonged to the people. Though Russia had followed up the destruction of the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic with the declaration of the Soviet Power institution in the country, the first things to emerge starting in September 1920 were the Committees of the Poor. That made manifest the absence of conditions that would favour creation of the Soviets in Azerbaijan. The decisions that the Soviets were imposing from on high as well as such undemocratic measures as the suffrage limitation, to mention but one, resulted in the worker and peasant deputy Soviets being ‘elected’ on the ground in the spring of 1921. As many as 1,400 rural Soviets consisting of 30,000 deputies were organised around the Republic. In the urban Soviets, one out of a thousand people was elected; the rural Soviet’s attainment was one in five thousand. Elected in this way, the 10^th All-Azerbaijan Congress of Soviets started up in May 1921.

The election of mostly poor and, quite naturally, untrained and illiterate Communist workers and peasants as parliament members facilitated the orchestration of the parliament from the top. The power of the Soviets was given a legal status in the country with the adoption of the first Constitution of the Azerbaijan SSR. The PRCA was disbanded and replaced with the newly-incepted All-Azerbaijan Congress of Soviets that would normally function as a supreme power body for several days upon election while the Central Executive Committee of Azerbaijan (the CEC with Mukhtar Hajiyev for its first speaker) was made up of the members elected by the congresses in order to function between them. The elections to the CEC of Azerbaijan acting, in its new format and make-up, as a legislative, administrative and controlling body, were multi-layered ones. First, the members of the all-Azerbaijani Congress of Soviets, a supreme governing body, were elected. Then, the Congress would elect the Central Executive Committee that was a legislative body. After that, the latter would elect members of its presidium. The Central Executive Committee of Azerbaijan consisted of 75 members and 25 candidate members; the presidium was 13-strong and, it could be safely said, included all the party leaders.

The All-Azerbaijan Congresses of Soviets were held in the following sequence during 1921-1937:

I All-Azerbaijan Congress of Soviets - 6-19 May 1921;
II All-Azerbaijan Congress of Soviets - 28 April-03 May 1922;
III All-Azerbaijan Congress of Soviets - 25 November-01 December 1923;
IV All-Azerbaijan Congress of Soviets - 10-16 March 1925;
V All-Azerbaijan Congress of Soviets - 18 March 1927;
VI All-Azerbaijan Congress of Soviets - 1-9 April 1929;
VII All-Azerbaijan Congress of Soviets - 19-25 January 1931;
VIII All-Azerbaijan Congress of Soviets - 11-17 January 1935;
IX  All-Azerbaijan (extraordinary) Congress of Soviets - 17 November 1936-; 10-14 March 1937

However, the Bolsheviks set about cancelling what little had been left of Azerbaijan’s independence to their political ends. So, the three South Caucasian republics (Azerbaijan, Georgia and Armenia) were bundled up in one state called the Federative Union of the Socialist Soviet Republics of the Transcaucasia (the FUSSRT) on 12 March 1922. As it that was not enough, Russia, concerned about the remnants of Azerbaijan’s independence, replaced the FUSSRT with the Transcaucasian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic (the TSFSR) at the 1^st Transcaucasian Congress of Soviets on 10 December 1922, that is, less than nine months later. The emergence of the TSFSR commanding the centralised legislative and executive organs landed another crushing blow on the independence of Azerbaijan. There were 175 delegates from Azerbaijan taking part in the 1^st Transcaucasian Congress of Soviets on 10-13-го December 1922 where the Central Executive Committee of the Transcaucasia (150 members and 50 candidates) was elected.

The Creation of the SSR

The Central Executive Committee of the Transcaucasia resolved, together with Russia, Ukraine and Belorussia, to incept the USSR. The decision incepting the USSR and made at the 1^st All-Union Congress of Soviets in Moscow on 30 December 1992 put an end to the independence of Azerbaijan. Though retaining several attributes of state styled after those of the USSR, namely, a flag, an emblem, an anthem and a constitution, the Azerbaijan SSR stopped being an international law subject and became a de jure colony of the Bolshevik Russia. The supreme state power belonged to the Congress of Soviets and, in between the congresses, to the congress-elected Central Executive Committee in the USSR. The accession of Azerbaijan as a part of the TSFSR to the USSR led to the Azerbaijani CEC losing any kind of formal independence because it found itself in direct subordination to the CECs of the Transcaucasia and the USSR.

The Centre was waging an anti-Azerbaijani policy even though representatives of Azerbaijan contributed to the work of all those legislative bodies and even occupied elevated positions within them. It went quite as far as the high-ranking Azerbaijani Communists expressing their displeasure. The Secretary of the CC of the AC (b) P Eyub Khanbulagov accused Moscow of excessive interference with the Soviet party work in Azerbaijan, defacing the Republic, moving in Russian settlers and oppressing the local personnel in 1924. Having protested such a policy, he was discharged from his senior post and evicted from the party during the same year. The co-chairman of the USSR Central Executive Committee Nariman Narimanov boldly unveiled the unfair attitude towards Azerbaijan in his famous letter ‘On the History of Our Peripheral Revolution’ that he addressed to the CC of the RC (b) P and Stalin. N. Narimanov wrote that the fate of Azerbaijan had been made the responsibility of the Dashnaks. As many as 24 villages of the Mehri-Jabrayil district and 1,065 acres of land in the Lowland Zanghezur were given to Armenia in 1927, and in 1929, 13,000 acres of Azerbaijani lands – the villages of Nuvedi, Tugut and Yernazir and 9 villages in Nakhchivan as well as the areas between Gaimagli and Kurumuzlu (228.9 acres) followed – pursuant to the decisions of the Transcaucasian CEC in each case. As regards the Azerbaijani delegates in the legislative bodies of the Transcaucasia and the USSR alike, they were not able to put up effective opposition to the breach of the sovereign rights of the Republic.

The emir-style administration taking root also affected the work of the legislative power. The law-making protecting the then current political and economic system and streamlining the judicial one was accelerated considerably. The V All-Azerbaijan Congress of Soviets passed the second Constitution of Azerbaijan SSR in March 1927. Modelled after the Constitution of the Soviet Russia, it reflected the forcible changes already made in the political and economic organisation of the Republic. The legislative body entered a new phase by enacting that new constitution at the XI Extraordinary Congress of the Soviets of Azerbaijan in 1937.

The Supreme Council

The legislative body of Azerbaijan was reformatted in accordance with the newly adopted Constitution in that it was made the Supreme Council of the Republic. But that was not merely a format change: rather, it was now determined ‘upstairs’ who the MPs were going to be, who was to be elected, how many factory workers, collective farmers, public servants, women, youth and independents had to be in the parliament and so forth. Of the 310 MPs elected directly to the first-convocation Supreme Council of the Azerbaijan SSR on 24 June 1938, 88 were collective farmers and 115 intelligentsia and public services – with 72 of those women. The Supreme Council could not function effectively while the Communist Party had taken hold of all the state functions and took a hostile stance towards any political initiative.

That was why the Azerbaijanis elected to the representative legislative bodies could not raise their voices in 1937-1938 and in the years that followed against the destruction of the academic, cultural and political elites of the Republic, the blow to the national gene pool and the transfer of more and more lands to Armenia. On the contrary, the Supreme Council of the Azerbaijan SSR approved, acting under the pressure applied from on high, on 7 May 1938 a protocol on giving Armenia 2,000 hectares of land in the Lachin, Gubadli, Kalbajar and Gazakh provinces. Still, the ordinary people and the rural communities resisted such a decision and did not let go of their lands. On 7 May 1960, the Presidium of the Supreme Council of the Azerbaijan SSR reaffirmed that notorious decision of 7 May 1938 but Mr Heydar Aliyev who rose to power shortly afterwards did not allow it to be carried out.

The Wise Leader

Heydar Aliyev, once elected the First Secretary of the CC of the CP of Azerbaijan, began the steps to use what limited opportunities were there for the good of the people and to promote the national and spiritual reawakening without attracting attention to his actions. Acting with a tremendous foresight, the wise leader aimed the work of all the state authorities and of the parliament at fulfilling the policy of economic, social and cultural progress and the national reawakening. Being a party leader, he also did vast state work as a member of the Supreme Council of the USSR (the VIII-IX convocations), deputy chairman of the Supreme Council’s upper house – the Soviet of the Union (the IX convocation) and a member of the Supreme Council of the Azerbaijan SSR (the VII-X convocations) and of the latter’s presidium. It was at his suggestion that the USSR leadership – the CC of the CPSU and the USSR Council of Ministers – passed the five important resolutions of tremendous significance for the economic development of Azerbaijan. Each of them had to do with allocating substantial finances from the Union’s fund towards the costs of the progress of Azerbaijan’s people’s economy. The staff policy of Azerbaijan let the legislative body ensure that the most able and deserving people would be elected to it – just as was the case in all the other areas. Much energy was injected into the work of the Supreme Council; new permanent commissions were formed, and steps were taken to ensure that they operate efficiently. The Parliament of Azerbaijan passed dozens of laws building a legal foundation for the economic and cultural advancement of the Republic. Heydar Aliyev was the originator of the important undertakings meant to strengthen the legal basis of the legislation in the Republic.

The legal codes were amended and expanded in the 1970s and the early 1980s. Azerbaijan passed the laws on the judicial system, health care, state notary services, public education, protection of the monuments of history and culture, the Council of Ministers and the Soviets of People’s Deputies as well as the land and labour codes, the Code of Administrative Offences, the Family Code and the Marriage Code. Heydar Aliyev would control timely and resolutely any encroachment upon the sovereign rights of Azerbaijan. The attempts of the Armenians became especially intense while the Constitution of the USSR adopted in 1977 was in the making; the question of the status of Highland Garabagh was only not tabled thanks to the categorical demands that Heydar Aliyev had put to the USSR leadership. The new Constitution of the Azerbaijan SSR drafted by the constitutional panel helmed by Heydar Aliyev and adopted on 21 April 1978 expanded the legal foundation for the preservation and development of the nation’s spiritual values including its language – inasmuch, that is, as the limited opportunities to hand at that time permitted. The Azerbaijani language was given the status of a state language. ‘Let Justice Prevail!’ were the words that Heydar Aliyev uttered then and that expressed the very essence of his work; they went on to become a slogan on the people’s tongue. The Parliament of Azerbaijan carried out the important work in the 1970s and the early 1980s of building a legal platform for the great construction done in the Republic. The remarkable successes achieved in the country in general and in the endeavours of the legislative body in particular were closely tied to the person of Heydar Aliyev, his multifaceted administrative talent and his excellent political and statehood activities. Regrettably, after he was nominated for elevated party and state posts in the USSR towards the end of 1982, the new leadership of the Republic and the MPs of the time did not prove to be in possession of enough strength and will to continue that work.

The then administration and parliament of Azerbaijan manifested the unpardonable passivity and indifference in the face of the Armenian separatism rearing its head in the country as well as of the actual aggression from Armenia on the brink of the collapse of the USSR in 1988. It got to the point where the Azerbaijani members of the top legislative body of the USSR were not objective to the decisions of the USSR administration condoning the Armenian separatists and clearly violating the sovereign rights of Azerbaijan. As for the Azerbaijani parliament, it only approved all those decisions. The Supreme Council of Azerbaijan that was elected in a state of emergency became a toy in the hands of the powers trying to keep intact the already disintegrating USSR. Meanwhile, the Azerbaijani lands were captured one after another and the Azerbaijanis were evicted from their own homes.

The Genius Saviour 

Heydar Aliyev who had returned to Nakhchivan to be by the nation’s side in those hard days was elected a member of the Supreme Council of the Azerbaijan SSR and the Supreme Council of the Nakhchivan AR. That started a new period in Heydar Aliyev’s work in the Azerbaijani statehood and in the struggle for independence. He called on the people to fight for their freedom to the end. When the conservative Parliament of Azerbaijan agreed to a referendum on keeping the USSR whole, the Supreme Majlis of Nakhchivan did not allow the referendum in the autonomous republic at the suggestion of MP Heydar Aliyev who had said, ‘Our salvation is not in a common union!’. The national statehood traditions began to be restored in the autonomous republic on the insistence of Heydar Aliyev, too. The wording ‘Soviet Socialist’ was erased from the name of the autonomous republic while the tricolour of the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic was adopted as a state flag, to which effect a legislative initiative was motioned in the Parliament of Azerbaijan. The Parliament of Azerbaijan, too, decided to rename the Republic and on the state flag (on 5 February 1991). The country regained independence with the Parliament passing the constitutional act on restoration of the national independence of Azerbaijan on 18 October 1991.

As a result of a deal between the authorities and the opposition, the Supreme Majlis of Azerbaijan passed the authority to the National Majlis consisting of 50 of its own members. The Parliament cancelled the procedure whereby chairman of the Parliament of the Nakhchivan AR was also deputy chairman of the Parliament of Azerbaijan; besides, they introduced an age limit for the presidency and so on. All those undemocratic moves were directed against Heydar Aliyev personally: he had been elected chairman of the Supreme Majlis of the Nakhchivan AR and commanded great respect from the people. They were trying to curb the political activism of the great leader in that manner.

The nation that had grown of political instability, anarchy and coups called upon its outstanding son, the chairman of the Supreme Majlis of the Nakhchivan AR Heydar Aliyev, to come back to power. Helpless in the face of the steepening crisis, the near brush with a civil war and the aggression from Armenia, the leaders of the Republic who had also fallen hostage to the situation of their own making had to join their voices in the demand of the Azerbaijani people, too. That was already the independent Parliament of Azerbaijan serving the national interests.