Political figure Heydar Aliyev: biography, features of activity and interesting facts

Aliyev Heydar Alirza oglu (born 10.05.23 in Nakhichevan, Azerbaijan - died 12.12.03 in Cleveland, USA) is an Azerbaijani statesman who for 30 years was one of the most influential politicians in the country as deputy and chairman of the Republican KGB, secretary of the republican The Communist Party and the repressive and authoritarian president of independent Azerbaijan.

Oil and Nagorno-Karabakh

Heydar Aliyev, whose biography ended at the age of 80, was the head of Azerbaijan from 1969 (with a short break) to October 2003 and was transformed from the party leader of the Brezhnev era in a statesman friendly to the West. The period of his reign was remembered by two events: the sale of Caspian oil (with the conclusion of the "Contract of the Century") and the conflict with Armenia over the disputed territory of Nagorno-Karabakh - an enclave within Azerbaijan with the majority of the Armenian population.

As president of an independent state, Aliyev cultivated the image of a reformer. Many, however, remember him as a person who led a country that did not respect human rights, where widespread corruption became official.

Heydar Aliyev: biography

Nationality is Azerbaijani. The son of the railway worker Aliyev was born in Nakhichevan, an Azerbaijani enclave in Armenia. He graduated from the Faculty of History, Baku State University, and later the Industrial Institute. Between 1941 and 1944, Aliev acquired a political grip on the post of senior Communist functionary in his hometown. At the beginning of his career, he miraculously managed to avoid being excluded from it after accusing him of sexual abuse with a margin of just one vote.

Aliyev earned his name and position in the KGB, climbing the service ladder of the Azerbaijan State Security Service for two decades before he became deputy head of the organization in 1964 and headed it three years later.

In 1969, Heydar Aliyev was appointed first secretary of the Communist Party of Azerbaijan. Biography of the head of the republic in 1982 was supplemented by an event about his promotion to full-fledged members of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the CPSU. Aliyev was quite cautious in dealing with his patron and became one of his closest allies. To Brezhnev's visit to Baku in 1982, for example, he built the palace solely for the personal use of the Secretary-General. The Soviet leader spent two nights there, after which the palace was closed.

Opal

The appointment of Mikhail Gorbachev to the post of Soviet leader in 1985 marked a sharp change in the political fate of Aliyev. Inflicted on the pages of the printed organ of the CPSU Central Committee "Pravda" for corruption during perestroika, he became one of the first victims - members of the old guard. In 1987, Gorbachev deprived him of his place in the Politburo and forced him to resign from his post as head of the Communist Party of Azerbaijan. It seemed that his career was over. Not long before that, Heydar Aliyev's wife died.

The biography of the politician again turned out to be connected with Nakhichevan - it was there, to his native city, temporarily Heydar and retreated. In 1990, with his political perceptiveness, Aliyev left the Communist Party, allegedly in protest against the events of Black January, when Soviet tanks entered Baku and many civilians were killed.

Independence

The return of the politician was accelerated by the rapid immersion of Azerbaijan in the state of internal chaos after independence in 1991 and the inability to achieve a quick victory in Nagorno-Karabakh. In 1992, Abulfaz Elchibey, head of the Popular Front, who headed the independence movement, became the first democratically elected president of the country, but turned out to be a weak leader.

The order was not restored, and Heydar Aliyev was invited to support the government in Baku. The biography of the politician again made a sharp turn. When in June 1993 Elchibey was forced to flee the capital after an attempted coup, Aliyev became acting president. He went to an agreement with the putsch to prevent a civil war, and was approved as the head of the country following a referendum in October of the same year.

Head of State

It was under Aliyev that the war in Karabakh grew into a bloody phase. When he came to power, the Armenians strengthened their positions in the occupied territory of Azerbaijan, but military operations were not conducted. In December 1993, Aliyev again began to conduct full-scale military operations, which lasted for 18 months. It was during this period that most of the 30,000 victims of the war died. As a result of the conflict, 750,000 Azerbaijanis were forced to leave their places of residence.

Aliyev was ruthless towards his political opponents. He strengthened his power by placing his friends from Nakhichevan in key positions. Despite growing dissatisfaction with the government for its inability to find a lasting solution to the Nagorno-Karabakh problem or cope with the social and economic consequences of the war, despite the constant facts of official corruption, Aliyev was consistently able to distance himself from public discontent. In October 1998, the politician was reelected with 76% of the vote, although opposition groups and international observers questioned the legitimacy of the result.

Geopolitics

Aliyev had a trump card in the form of oil resources of the Caspian Sea, and he also had the ability to navigate in the extremely difficult geopolitical labyrinth of the Caucasus, which testified to his political insight. Relations with the US and Western Europe characterize the signing in 1997 of a contract with the International Petroleum Consortium, which provided Western companies with a huge stake in the Caspian Sea. Cooperating with foreign oil giants, primarily with British Petroleum, Aliyev also became one of the driving forces in the development of the Baku-Ceyhan pipeline, the purpose of which was to transport Caspian oil to the West via Georgia and Turkey.

This pipeline project has strengthened already strained relations with Moscow, but the head of Azerbaijan managed to avoid a complete break. Relations between the countries were at a low level during the presidency of Boris Yeltsin, but when the KGB pupil Vladimir Putin came to power in Russia, Heydar Aliyev, whose biography was also connected with this organization, managed to establish relations. Also, the politician focused on creating strong ties with Turkey. Relations with Iran, where about 14 million ethnic Azerbaijanians live, openly supporting Armenia, gradually came to naught during his reign.

Dynasty

Aliyev did not participate in the October 2003 elections, citing poor health. This was the first case of dynastic succession in the post-Soviet space, when his son Ilham was the president. The OSCE stated that the vote did not meet international standards, followed by riots.

Although Aliyev referred to his state of health, there was no evidence of a deterioration in his mental abilities. He remained to the end a sharp and astute figure.

12.12.03 the leader of the Azerbaijani people Aliyev Heydar Aliyev died. Biography of the policy was interrupted in the Cleveland clinic in the US. Heydar was buried in the Walk of Fame in Baku.

Heydar Aliyev: biography, family

In 1948, the future politician married Zarifa Aziz. On October 12, 1955, they had a daughter, Sevil, and on December 24, 1961, Ilham's son. The children outlived their father. His wife, a well-known ophthalmologist, professor, academician of the Azerbaijani Academy of Sciences, died of cancer in 1985.

The pro-Western dictator

The fact that the old KGB officer became extremely pro-British was largely due to the decisive role that the British Petroleum company acquired in Azerbaijan. The prospect of transforming the country's huge oil and gas reserves into the means of its development depends to a large extent on the pipeline through Georgia and Turkey, to which Russia was not enthusiastic.

A hundred years ago, Baku was the oil capital of the world, and part of the lost glory is being restored today. The discovery of new and larger reserves allowed Aliyev to achieve, at least for the capital, some degree of prosperity, accompanied by a tight containment of political dissent. And his son supported this impulse of economic progress.

Taking into account the extraordinary figure of the old Soviet school Aliev Heydar Alirza, his biography, containing at least half of what he knew, would make a significant contribution to our understanding of an era that seems far away.

Awards

Aliyev was awarded several orders and medals, international awards, was elected honorary doctor of higher education in many countries.

He was awarded the Order of Lenin five times, received the Order of the Red Star, many medals, as well as medals and orders of foreign countries. He was twice awarded the title of Hero of Socialist Labor.

In 1997, Aliyev was awarded the highest Ukrainian order of Yaroslav the Wise. In 1999, he received the Turkish Atatürk Peace Prize and the title of Honorary Professor of Moscow State University.

In 2003, Aliyev was elected professor and a full member of the Academy of Security, Defense and Legal Norms of the Problems of the Russian Federation. He received the Andropov Prize and the Order of St. Andrew.

In 2004 the Heydar Aliyev Foundation was established. The biography of a statesman, prepared by the Institute of History of the Academy of Sciences of Azerbaijan, was published in 2013.