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The Eurasian Politician - July 2004
Christian Jokinen, 15 July 2004: christianjokinen @ yahoo.com
Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan at the Caspian Sea, is called the "City of Winds". Once the fifth largest city of the Soviet empire, Baku is today the richest of the Caucasian capitals. Millions of dollars flow to the city, thanks to the oil wealth of the country. The oil boom that started in 1872 can still be seen in the streets of Baku. Wealthy oil barons built up luxurious villas around the old city center, just a short walk from the slums, where thousands of oil workers from all over the Russian Empire were living in poverty. There were also lots of Finns working at the oilfields of Baku, following the oil baron Alfred Nobel.
In the early 20th century, Baku was a cradle of labor unrest and revolutionary agitation. Here also a Georgian called Gayoz Nisharadze started his career as an agitator. His real name was Iosif Djugashvili, although later he became better known as Stalin. The forthcoming dictator, probably the most murderous in the world history, got his "revolutionary baptism of fire", in his own words, while working among the oil workers of Baku. They were a fruitful soil for the revolution to grow: there were often irregularities in the payments of wages by the oil companies, and the workers were tied up to their employers so that still in 1909 the oil companies had the right to prohibit marriage for their workers without the company's permission.
In spite of this, Stalin's job was not easy: the oil workers were an ethnically disunited crowd, and it was not easy to gather them under one Marxist organization. Besides, the local Muslim population of the country did not understand the tidings of communist propaganda. Stalin is also told to have learned the expertise of provoking "ethnic conflicts" in Baku, where the imperial Russian secret police, Ohrana, arranged pogroms between Armenians and Azerbaijanis, and against Jews. However, the activism of young Stalin was noticed by V. I. Lenin, who resided far away in Western Europe. Lenin read the articles Stalin had produced, which emitted fanatical devotion to the communist cause. The articles were also noticed by the detectives of the tsar's secret police, who arrested Stalin and deported him to Siberia.
Now in the beginning of the 21st century, winds of change are blowing in Baku. The supposedly eternal fire has been extinguished from the memorial of the commissars, and a job in an international oil company is now considered a lucky hit. Azerbaijan, which has been independent for 15 years soon, still lives a transitional period, with no certainty of the future orientation of the country. In linguistic and cultural terms, Azerbaijan is very close to Turkey. The tie of recent history still binds the country with Russia. Also the cultural tie with Iran is significant: the populations of the both countries belong to Shi'a Muslims, and besides, there are more Azerbaijanis living in Iran than in independent Azerbaijan. Although Shi'a Islam connects Azerbaijan with Iran, Azerbaijan challenges Turkey for the title of the most secular Muslim country in the world. As an example of the controversies between different influences, there is a statue, erected in the Soviet times, in front of an Iranian Bank, portraying a women just releasing herself from a hijab.
The succession of Heydar Aliyev's son Ilham Aliyev to presidency has brought somewhat questionable equilibrium to the domestic politics of Azerbaijan. In the center of Baku, one cannot avoid seeing the countless posters where Heydar and Ilham are looking each other, and below, there is a text saying: "We are the past, present, and future of Azerbaijan." However, Ilham's position is not completely indisputable. He does not have his father's authority, and several ministries are now rumored to function autonomously, ignoring the president's will. Corruption still flourishes, and the autocracy Ilham inherited from his father, may be slipping out of his hands. Democracy remains awaited, as the opposition leaders who criticized the last elections as fraud, are in prison, waiting for their trials.
Oilfields and pipeline plans have guaranteed, however, that President Aliyev has been able to trust in the superpowers' restraint in criticizing Azerbaijan's leadership. Europe and the US are afraid of unrest that could postpone the opening of the long-awaited Baku-Ceyhan pipeline, while Russia has been afraid of that criticism could push Azerbaijan to closer cooperation with the US and Europe.
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The author is a researcher of the Research Unit for Conflicts and Terrorism at the University of Turku. He visited Azerbaijan in June. The article was translated from Finnish by Anssi Kullberg.