Vezirov was a Soviet party leader to the bone

Baku/11.01.22/Turan: On January 10, Abdurrahman Vezirov, the former first secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Azerbaijan, died at the age of 91 in Moscow. Vezirov was buried in Moscow at the Troekurovsky cemetery.

Vezirov served as the head of Azerbaijan during the critical period - 1988-89. - the period of aggravation of the Karabakh conflict and the beginning of the national movement in Azerbaijan. He is considered guilty of blind submission to Moscow and the loss of control over the situation in Nagorno-Karabakh. All this led to a political crisis in Azerbaijan.

The entry of Soviet troops into Baku on January 20, 1990 prevented the fall of the communist regime in Azerbaijan, but this led to mass deaths of civilians and repressions against activists of the national liberation movement. The main culprit of the incident is considered Vezirov, against whom a criminal case was initiated. Since January 1990, he has lived in Moscow.

Was Vezirov a traitor? Is he guilty of the events that took place in Azerbaijan during his reign?

Political observer Ilham Ismail answers these and other questions in the "Difficult Question" program.

According to him, Vezirov was a Komsomol leader, communist, Soviet statesman, first secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Azerbaijan (in fact, the leader of the country) at a critical period for the country. He led the country for only 1.5 years - from May 21, 1988 to January 20, 1990.

Ilham Ismail believes that the criteria with which we treat Vezirov today are wrong, since he was not the leader of an independent state.

“I repeat, Vezirov was a Soviet statesman. He was the first secretary of the Central Committee of the Komsomol (Lenin Communist Youth Union) of Azerbaijan, the secretary of the Central Committee of the Komsomol (All-Union Lenin Communist Youth Union), the first secretary of the Kirovabad city (now Ganja)  committee of the Communist Party of Azerbaijan, the head of the industry department of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Azerbaijan, the Consul General of the USSR in Calcutta (India), the USSR ambassador to the Kingdom of Nepal, the USSR ambassador to Pakistan, he also had some experience in public administration. However, Vezirov’s Azerbaijani  was very  poor, and it was considered one of his shortcomings,” Ilham Ismayil said.

According to the observer, when Vezirov arrived in Azerbaijan, "perestroika" began.

“Everything was no longer the same as in the days of Brezhnev. In addition, the country has been going through the twists and turns of the Karabakh problem for the fourth month already. Representatives of the former leadership did not fail to take advantage of this problem against Vezirov. But the situation in the country was already extremely tense - the arrival of refugees from Armenia seriously aggravated the situation and the Sumgayit events had already taken place,” Ilham Ismayil recalled, adding that the tension continued to grow in November 1988, it intensified even more. Although in 1989 relative calm reigned for some time, at the end of the year there was another wave of refugees from Armenia. But Vezirov continued to wait for instructions from Moscow as before.

“Vezirov,  as a Soviet leader was alien to the idea of ​​Azerbaijan’s independence. Actually, all of Vezirov's predecessors followed all Moscow's instructions in the same way as Vezirov," Ilham Ismail said.