Azerbaijan celebrates 102nd anniversary of National Leader Heydar Aliyev

May 10 marks the 102nd anniversary of the birth of national leader Heydar Aliyev.

As Caliber.Az recalls, Heydar Alirza oglu Aliyev was born on May 10, 1923, in the city of Nakhchivan. After graduating from the Nakhchivan Pedagogical Technical School in 1939, he studied at the Faculty of Architecture of the Azerbaijan Industrial Institute (now the Azerbaijan State Oil Academy). The outbreak of the war did not allow him to complete his education.

Since 1941, Heydar Aliyev worked as the head of a department in the People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs of the Nakhchivan ASSR and in the Council of People's Commissars of the Nakhchivan ASSR. In 1944, he was assigned to work in the state security agencies. From that period, Heydar Aliyev served in the state security system, and starting in 1964, he held the position of Deputy Chairman, and from 1967 — Chairman of the Committee for State Security under the Council of Ministers of the Azerbaijan SSR. He was awarded the rank of Major General. During these years, he received special higher education in Leningrad (now Saint Petersburg), and in 1957, he graduated from the Faculty of History at Azerbaijan State University.

At the July plenary session of the Central Committee of Azerbaijan’s Communist Party in 1969, Heydar Aliyev was nominated for the position of the party’s First Secretary and became the leader of the republic. Later, in December 1982, Heydar Aliyev was elected a member of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, appointed First Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR, and became one of the leaders of the Soviet Union.

In October 1987, Heydar Aliyev resigned from his positions in protest against the policies pursued by the Politburo of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and personally by General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev. In response to the bloody tragedy carried out by Soviet troops in Baku on January 20, 1990, Heydar Aliyev made a statement the next day at the Azerbaijani Representation in Moscow, demanding that the organisers and perpetrators of the crime against the Azerbaijani people be brought to justice. In protest against the two-faced policy of the USSR leadership regarding the acute conflict situation that had arisen in Karabakh, he left the ranks of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in July 1991.

Returning to Azerbaijan in July 1990, Heydar Aliyev first lived in Baku and then in Nakhchivan. That same year, he was elected a deputy of the Supreme Soviet of Azerbaijan. From 1991 to 1993, he served as Chairman of the Supreme Assembly of the Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic and as Deputy Chairman of the Supreme Soviet of the Republic of Azerbaijan. At the founding congress of the New Azerbaijan Party held in 1992 in the city of Nakhchivan, Heydar Aliyev was elected Chairman of the party.

In May–June 1993, amid a severe governmental crisis that threatened civil war and the loss of independence, the Azerbaijani people demanded that Heydar Aliyev be brought to power. The leaders of Azerbaijan at that time were forced to officially invite Heydar Aliyev to Baku. On June 15, 1993, he was elected Chairman of the Supreme Council of Azerbaijan, and on July 24, by resolution of the Milli Majlis (Azerbaijani Parliament), he began exercising the powers of the President of the Republic of Azerbaijan.

On October 3, 1993, as a result of a nationwide vote, Heydar Aliyev was elected President of the Republic of Azerbaijan. On October 11, 1998, in elections held amid high public participation, he was re-elected as the president of the republic, receiving 76.1 per cent of the vote. Heydar Aliyev, who had agreed to run in the presidential elections scheduled for October 15, 2003, later withdrew his candidacy due to health problems.

On December 12, the national leader of Azerbaijan, President Heydar Aliyev, passed away at the Cleveland Clinic in the United States of America.

By Sabina Mammadli