Azerbaijan publishes plan of functions to be held in 2023 marking "Year of Heydar Aliyev"

The year 2023 has been declared to be “The Year of Heydar Aliyev” to honour the late president and commemorate the year of his 100th birthday. President Ilham Aliyev signed the relevant documents confirming this notion in September and disclosed a plan on November 28 for governmental events and functions to be held throughout the year marking this occasion.

The official website of the head of government has published the plan, which includes the organization of informative films, exhibitions, conferences, charity and sports events as well as the publishing of books which are all aimed to introduce the wider public to the life, achievements and facts on the former president.

The plan also notes on the holding of international conferences, forums, music events as well as the viewing of films and shows on Heydar Aliyev’s life in foreign media outlets.

Caliber.Az recalls, that Heydar Aliyev was born on May 10, 1923 in the city of Nakhchivan.

He was studying architecture at the Azerbaijan Industrial Institute (present Azerbaijan State Oil and Industrial University) in Baku, but the outbreak of World War II prevented him from completing his education.

After working for several years in various governmental positions in Nakhchivan, he was sent to work at state security bodies in May 1944.

After graduating from the USSR State Security Committee's (KGB) Senior Staff Training School in Leningrad (present St. Petersburg) in 1949-1950, Heydar Aliyev was appointed as department head at the State Security Committee of Azerbaijan SSR in 1950.

For twenty-two years, he had been a member of the Supreme Soviets of the USSR and Azerbaijan SSR.

From 1974 to 1979, he held the post of first deputy chairman of the USSR Council of Ministers.

In 1976, Heydar Aliyev was a candidate for the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, and was elected as its member in December 1982 and then appointed as First Deputy Chairman of the Cabinet of Ministers of the USSR.

In October 1987, in protest at the policy pursued by the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and personally by Secretary General Mikhail Gorbachev, Heydar Aliyev resigned from his posts.

The day after the bloody tragedy committed by the Soviet troops in Baku on the night of 19-20 January 1990, Heydar Aliyev made a statement at Azerbaijan`s Representative Office in Moscow demanding to punish the organizers and executors of the crime against the people of Azerbaijan. As a sign of protest against the hypocritical policy of the USSR leadership towards the conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh, he left the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in July 1991.

Having returned to Baku on 20 July 1990, Heydar Aliyev left for Nakhchivan two days later, where he was elected as a member of the Supreme Soviet of Azerbaijan and Nakhchivan Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic.

In May-June 1993, when Azerbaijan was at the verge of civil war and loss of independence, the people of Azerbaijan demanded to bring Heydar Aliyev to power. The leadership of Azerbaijan was forced to invite Heydar Aliyev to Baku. Consequently, Aliyev was elected as chairman of the Supreme Soviet of Azerbaijan on June 15, 1993, and took the office of the third President of the Republic of Azerbaijan on 24 June.

He served as the Head of the Government until 2003, having been re-elected in 1998. Having agreed to run for the presidential office in the 2003 elections, he later withdrew his candidacy in favour of Ilham Aliyev in connection with his own health problems.

On 12 December 2003, Heydar Aliyev died at Cleveland Hospital in the US and was buried at the Alley of Honours in Baku on 15 December.

He was awarded the former USSR Lenin Order five times, Order of Red Star, and numerous medals, received the title of the Hero of the Socialistic Labor twice, as well as high awards from different countries, and honorary titles from prestigious universities worldwide.