Azerbaijan marks the 103rd anniversary of Heydar Aliyev’s birth

Today, May 10, Azerbaijan marks the 103rd anniversary of the birth of national leader Heydar Aliyev. 

Heydar Alirza oglu Aliyev was born on May 10, 1923, in the city of Nakhchivan, as Caliber.Az notes. After graduating from the Nakhchivan Pedagogical College in 1939, he studied at the Faculty of Architecture of the Azerbaijan Industrial Institute (now the Azerbaijan State Oil and Industrial University). The outbreak of the war prevented him from completing 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 the Council of People's Commissars of the Nakhchivan ASSR, and in 1944, he was sent to work in the state security agencies. From that period onward, he served in the security organs. Starting in 1964, he held the post of Deputy Chairman, and from 1967, he became Chairman of the Committee for State Security under the Council of Ministers of the Azerbaijan SSR, being 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 of Azerbaijan State University.

At the July Plenum of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Azerbaijan in 1969, Heydar Aliyev was nominated as First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Azerbaijan and became the leader of the republic. 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 connection with the bloody tragedy committed on January 20, 1990, in Baku by Soviet troops, Heydar Aliyev, speaking the next day at the Azerbaijani representative office in Moscow, issued a statement demanding punishment for the organisers and perpetrators of the crime committed against the Azerbaijani people. In protest against the hypocritical policy of the Soviet 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.

In July 1990, after returning to Azerbaijan, Heydar Aliyev first lived in Baku and then in Nakhchivan. In the same year, he was elected a deputy of the Supreme Council of Azerbaijan. In 1991–1993, he served as Chairman of the Ali Majlis (Supreme Assembly) of the Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic and Deputy Chairman of the Supreme Council of the Republic of Azerbaijan. At the founding congress of the New Azerbaijan Party held in 1992 in Nakhchivan, Heydar Aliyev was elected Chairman of the party.

When, in May–June 1993, as a result of a severe escalation of the government crisis in the country, there was a threat of civil war and the loss of independence, the Azerbaijani people demanded that Heydar Aliyev come to power. The then leadership of Azerbaijan was forced to officially invite Heydar Aliyev to Baku. On June 15, 1993, Heydar Aliyev was elected Chairman of the Supreme Council of Azerbaijan, and on July 24, by a resolution of the Milli Majlis, he assumed the powers of 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 voter turnout, he was re-elected President of the Republic of Azerbaijan, receiving 76.1 per cent of the vote. Heydar Aliyev, who had agreed to run in the presidential elections scheduled for October 15, 2003, withdrew from the race 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.