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Azerbaijan The Cultural Renaissance
In the second half of the nineteenth century and in the early
twentieth century, Azerbaijan underwent a cultural renaissance
that drew on the golden age of the eleventh to the thirteenth
centuries and other influences. The patronage of the arts and
education that characterized this movement was fueled in part by
increasing oil wealth. Azerbaijan's new industrial and commercial
elites contributed funds for the establishment of many libraries,
schools, hospitals, and charitable organizations. In the 1880s,
philanthropist Haji Zeinal Adibin Taghiyev built and endowed
Baku's first theater.
Artistic flowering in Azerbaijan inspired Turkic Muslims
throughout the Russian Empire and abroad, stimulating among other
phenomena the establishment of theaters and opera houses that
were among the first in the Muslim world. Tsarist authorities
first encouraged, then tolerated, and finally used intensified
Russification against this assertion of artistic independence.
Several artists played important roles in the renaissance.
Mirza Fath Ali Akhundzade (also called Akhundov; 1812-78), a
playwright and philosopher, influenced the Azerbaijani literary
language by writing in vernacular Azerbaijani Turkish. His plays,
among the first significant theater productions in Azerbaijan,
continue to have wide popular appeal as models of form in the
late twentieth century. The composer and poet Uzeir Hajibeyli
(1885-1948) used traditional instruments and themes in his
musical compositions, among which were the first operas in the
Islamic world. The poet and playwright Husein Javid (1882-1941)
wrote in Turkish about historical themes, most notably the era of
Timur.
Under Soviet rule, Azerbaijani cultural expression was
circumscribed and forcibly supplanted by Russian cultural values.
Particularly during Stalin's purges of the 1930s, many
Azerbaijani writers and intellectuals were murdered, and ruthless
attempts were made to erase evidence of their lives and work from
historical records. Cultural monuments, libraries, mosques, and
archives were destroyed. The two forcible changes of alphabet in
the 1920s and 1930s further isolated Azerbaijanis from their
literary heritage. Never completely extinguished during the
Soviet period, however, Azerbaijani culture underwent a modest
rebirth during Khrushchev's relaxation of controls in the 1950s,
when many who had been victims of Stalin's purges were
posthumously rehabilitated and their works republished. In the
1970s and 1980s, another rebirth occurred when Moscow again
loosened cultural restrictions. Under Aliyev's first regime,
publication of some mildly nationalist pieces was allowed,
including serialization of Aziza Jafarzade's historical novel
Baku 1501.
In the late 1980s, Gorbachev's policy of
glasnost
(see Glossary) energized a major movement among Azerbaijani
writers
and historians to illuminate "blank pages" in the nation's past,
such as Azerbaijani resistance to tsarist and Soviet power and
Stalin's crimes against the peoples of the Soviet union. Reprints
of Azerbaijani historical and literary classics became more
plentiful, as did political tracts on topics such as Azerbaijani
claims to Nagorno-Karabakh.
Data as of March 1994
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