Azerbaijan Republic Thirty Years Ahead of UN

Baku / 28.05.19 / Turan: By the 101st anniversary of the establishment of the Azerbaijan Republic (APR), Moise Becker, leading researcher at the Institute of Human Rights of the National Academy of Sciences of Azerbaijan, presented his monograph "The National Policy of Azerbaijan at the beginning of the 20th century (on the example of the Jewish community)". Unlike many books on the APR published in Azerbaijan (another name was confirmed in the press - Azerbaijan Democratic Republic - ADR), Becker"s book is valuable not for repeating well-known phrases about the significance of the APR-ADR in the development of a secular Azerbaijani state, but for actual archival materials that demonstrate what has been said.

M. Bekker on the documents he discovered shows the effectiveness of the laws of the APR on multiculturalism and the multinational state in which the infringement of the rights of a citizen on a national basis caused punishment in the form of hard labor for up to six years!

The author quotes many interesting documents relating to the life of the Jewish community and individual figures of Jewish nationality in the APR. In the Azerbaijan People's Republic, Jewish and Zionist organizations were freely created and acted, the names of which and the scope of their activities are described in detail in the book, citing archival documents. For example, the Jewish National Council paid attention to bigamy. At a meeting of the Council on June 26, the case in Petrovsk was discussed and it was decided that bigamy was not in line with the spirit of the Jewish religion and was a shameful phenomenon for cultural nations, which should be brought to the attention of all Jewish communities.

In order to pull the local Jewish communities up to the European cultural level, the "cultural commission of the Caucasus district committee of the Zionist organization" decided to create a Jewish teacher"s institute in Baku to train national teachers for the schools of Mountain Jews and Caucasian Jews."

The author traces the professional biography of a Jewish teacher named Movsha-Aron Iserovich Nekrich in 1918-1920 and during his life in the USSR, giving orders about his appointments to posts. "There is a clear difference in attitudes towards teachers. In the APR educators were not called to the army! (In Soviet times, the teacher Nekrich received a subpoena for conscription - Ed.). Another curious fact - before the establishment of Soviet power Nekrich bore the name that he received at birth, and after 1920 he suddenly became Moses and already without Aron, M. Becker noted.

The comfortable existence in Azerbaijan somewhat blunted the feeling of solidarity with their fellowmen peculiar to the Jews. Therefore, on June 13, 1919, the note Shameful Page appeared on the pages of the Azerbaijan newspaper. It said: "The other day, the Baku Jewish National Council organized a rally-protest against pogroms in Poland, Galicia and Ukraine in the state theater ...." G. Igla (Glahenhauz) devotes an article in the Jewish newspaper Kavkazher Vohenblat, which reveals the attitude of Baku Jewish bourgeoisie and graduated intellectuals to the great tragedy of the Jewish people.

The Independence Act, adopted by the National Council on May 27, 1918, proclaimed: "The Azerbaijani People"s Republic guarantees within its borders civil and political rights to all citizens without distinction of nationality, religion, social status or gender. The APR will give all the peoples inhabiting its territory a wide scope for free development. "

A similar declaration of rights was also in the Soviet Constitution of the Azerbaijan SSR. But in the Soviet years, the population of Azerbaijan was forcibly evicted from Azerbaijan by ethnicity - the Azerbaijani Germans were taken to Central Asia. Azerbaijanis were massively evicted from the Armenian SSR twice to liberate the territories in which the Kremlin settled Armenian repatriates.

In the book by M. Becker, an appeal of the Chairman of the National Council of the APR Mammad Emin Rasulzadeh to the people is cited:

- Citizens of Azerbaijan! Let us throw aside hostility and strife, which brought us all only grief and misfortune. History has predetermined all of us to live together. We will build our life on reasonable human principles, and we will love and respect each other in order to alleviate the difficulties of the newly beginning life, and to be worthy of a free life. All citizens of Azerbaijan, without distinction of religion and nationality, sons of the same homeland, should shake each other"s hands in order to better arrange their lives within the common homeland, in order to work together for their happiness and a better future.

Especially great responsibility falls on the Azerbaijani Turks, who constitute the vast majority of the population of Azerbaijan. Therefore, they should be inspired by great tolerance, bear more burdens and go to sacrifice," M.E. Rasulzadeh addressed the people.

The national policy of the APR was 30 years ahead of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights adopted by the UN General Assembly on December 10, 1948. The provisions underlying the state structure of the APR, after 71 years, became the main articles of the Constitution of the modern Azerbaijan Republic.

Becker's monograph will be translated and published in English. In February 2019, we reported that M. Bekker was completing the preparation for printing of the first volume of the monograph Jews in the Ethnic Mosaic of Azerbaijan. -0-