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Azerbaijan Russian Influences in the Nineteenth Century
In the nineteenth century, Russian influence over daily life
in Azerbaijan was less pervasive than that of indigenous
religious and political elites and the cultural and intellectual
influences of Persia and Turkey. During most of the nineteenth
century, the Russian Empire extracted commodities from Azerbaijan
and invested little in the economy. However, the exploitation of
oil in Azerbaijan at the end of the nineteenth century brought an
influx of Russians into Baku, increasing Russian influence and
expanding the local economy.
Although ethnic Russians came to dominate the oil business
and government administration in the late 1800s, many
Azerbaijanis became prominent in particular sectors of oil
production, such as oil transport on the Caspian Sea. Armenians
also became important as merchants and local officials of the
Russian monarchy. The population of Baku increased from about
13,000 in the 1860s to 112,000 in 1897 and 215,000 in 1913,
making Baku the largest city in the Caucasus region. At this
point, more than one-third of Baku's population consisted of
ethnic Russians. In 1905 social tensions erupted in riots and
other forms of death and destruction as Azerbaijanis and
Armenians struggled for local control and Azerbaijanis resisted
Russian sovereignty.
Data as of March 1994
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