Nariman Narimanov

Early years

Nariman Narimanov was born on 14 April (2 April O.S.) 1870 in Tiflis, Georgia, then part of the Russian empire into an ethnic Azerbaijani family. The Narimanov family were middle-class merchants and were able to send their son to the Gori Teachers Seminary, from which he graduated. He went on to attend medical school at Odessa University, graduating in 1908.

As a young man Narimanov gained notice as a writer in Azerbaijan even before the revolution of 1905-1907, publishing novels which advocated the abandonment of tired customs and religious superstitions. He simultaneously taught school in the Gizel-Adjal, Tiflis Province, where he became closely acquainted with the hard life of the local peasantry. Narimanov was one of the first activists of young Turkic literature. He translated into Turkic Gogol's Inspector and wrote a large number of plays, stories, and novels; the most well-known among them is the novel Bahadur and Sona (1896) and a historical trilogy Nadir-shah (1899).

In 1902, at the age of 32, Narimanov entered the Medical Department of Novorossiysk University, from which he graduated in 1908.

During the 1905 Revolution, Narimanov joined the Bolshevik party took an active part and led the student movement in Odessa. He subsequently became one of the organizers of the Social Democratic Party. For these activities Narimanov was arrested in 1909 and sentenced to five years of internal exile in Astrakhan .

Political career

After the October Revolution of 1917, Nariman Narimanov became the chairman of Azerbaijani social democratic political party Hummet (Endeavor), forerunner of the Communist Party of Azerbaijan. He did not run for election on the Hummet slate, however, and was thus not a member of the Baku Soviet during the brief reign of the Baku Commune of 1918. He was appointed People's Commissar of National Economy by the Baku Soviet, however.

Following the fall of the Baku Soviet, Narimanov managed to escape the city to Astrakhan, thereby avoiding the grim fate of the 26 Baku Commissars. He was there appointed chief of the Near East Division of the People's Commissariat of Foreign Affairs of Soviet Russia, later moving to a position as Deputy People's Commissar in the Commissariat of National Affairs. Narimanov was an advocate of national autonomy within a federated Soviet structure and is widely viewed as being instrumental in the July 1919 decision of the Politburo to recognize Azerbaijan as an independent Soviet Republic.

In 1920, Narimanov was appointed the chairman of Azerbaijani Revolutionary Committee (Azrevkom) and, shortly thereafter, the Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars' (Sovnarkom) of the Azerbaijani Soviet Republic. In April and May 1922, took part in Genoese Conference as a member of the Soviet delegation. In 1922, was elected the chairman of the Union Council of Transcaucasian Federation. On 30 December 1922, the first session of the Central Executive Committee of the USSR elected Narimanov as one of the four chairpersons of the Central Executive Committee of the USSR.

In April 1923, Narimanov was elected a candidate to the members of Central Committee of RKP(b) (Russian Communist Party of Bolsheviks). The charismatic moderate nationalist clashed with Joseph Stalin's close associate Sergo Ordzhonikidze, who led the Communist Party in Transcaucasia. As a result of this conflict, Ordzhonikidze had Narimanov transferred to posts in Moscow to remove him from the scene of action in the Caucasus region.

Death and legacy

Narimanov died in bed of a heart attack on 19 March 1925. He was 54 years old at the time of his death. His remains were cremated and his ashes buried in Kremlin Wall Necropolis.

Leon Trotsky called his death as the second biggest loss for the Eastern world after Lenin. Sergo Ordzhonikidze described Narimanov as "the greatest representative of our party in the East".

During the Ezhovshchina of the late 1930s, Narimanov was posthumously denounced along with all other members of Hummet for their alleged nationalism. This action was reversed following the liberalization which followed the death of Joseph Stalin in 1953 and Narimanov was again celebrated as a leading figure in the history of Azerbaijani communism, though in 1959, official CCCPSU policy was still to downplay Narimanov's role and stress that of Shaumian within the Azerbaijani context. It was only in 1972 that he was fully rehabilitated within his homeland.

Narimanov was survived by his wife Gulsum and by his son Najaf, who joined the Red Army in 1938 and graduated from the Kiev Higher Military Radio-Technical Engineering School in 1940. He became a member of the Communist Party in 1942. During the Great Patriotic War, he was a commander of a tank division and took part in the Battle of Stalingrad and the Battle of the Dnieper before being killed in action near Volnovakha in Ukraine.

After his death, many streets, centers were named after Narimanov.