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Soviet Union [USSR] Azerbaydzhanis
The early inhabitants of the present-day Azerbaydzhan Republic
were a mix of different people, as the country had endured many
invasions since the sixth century B.C. Until the ninth century
A.D., however, the Iranians were dominant. The large migration of
Turkic tribes into the area between the tenth and twelfth
centuries, and their subsequent mixing with the indigenous
population, led to the creation of the Azerbaydzhan people. With
time, the Turkic element became culturally dominant except in
religion. Unlike most Turkic Muslims, who were Sunni, most
Azerbaydzhanis became Shia Muslims akin to the Muslims of Iran.
From the eleventh to the early nineteenth century, Azerbaydzhan was
almost continuously under Iranian control. In 1724 Peter the Great
annexed the Baku and Derbent regions of Azerbaydzhan, but Iran
regained them a dozen years later. Russian presence became
permanent in the first half of the nineteenth century, when
Azerbaydzhan was divided between Iran and Russia.
At first, Russian control of Azerbaydzhan had little effect on
the life of the people. In fact, the rise of Azerbaydzhan national
consciousness in the late nineteenth century was influenced more by
the changes within Turkey and Iran than by the political and social
events in imperial Russia. Rapid development of the oil industry,
the growth of such industrial centers as Baku, and the influx of
Slavs into Azerbaydzhan at the turn of the century, however, drew
Azerbaydzhanis closer to Russia. A secularized elite, modeled on
the Young Turks, came into being. It soon split between a
relatively urban Marxist faction and an Islamic faction closely
tied to the rural areas of Azerbaydzhan. In 1918 the more rightist,
Islamic faction formed an independent republic with the help of the
Turkish army. The short-lived independence of the Azerbaydzhanis
came to an end in 1920 when the Red Army invaded and established a
communist regime, which helped turn Azerbaydzhan into a Soviet
republic.
Although Soviet rule was accompanied by repressive measures,
tight political control, and collectivization, the Azerbaydzhan
Republic grew industrially and economically. Another result of
Soviet rule was the dramatic rise in literacy. In 1927 only 31.9
percent of the deputies in the Baku soviet were literate. By 1959
some 97 percent of the entire population of the Azerbaydzhan
Republic was literate, according to Soviet statistics.
The most populous of the three major nationalities in the
Caucasus region, the Azerbaydzhanis have important characteristics
that distinguish them from the other two nationalities. Being
Muslim and of Turkic origin, they differ ethnically and culturally
from the Armenians and Georgians. Also, they are separated by a
long international border from fellow Azerbaydzhanis in Iran with
whom they share their origins, culture, language, and religion.
Occupying the southernmost part of the European Soviet Union, the
Azerbaydzhan Republic includes the Nakhichevan' Autonomous
Republic, which is separated from the rest of the Azerbaydzhan
Republic by the Armenian Republic, and the Nagorno-Karabakh
Autonomous Oblast, which is populated mostly by Armenians.
Like other Muslim groups in the Soviet Union, the
Azerbaydzhanis have demonstrated a remarkable population growth
since the 1950s. In 1989 the Azerbaydzhanis numbered almost 6.8
million. Some 5.8 million of them lived in the Azerbaydzhan
Republic, where they made up 83 percent of the population. The
largest national minorities within the borders of the Azerbaydzhan
Republic were Russians and Armenians, who together made up about 11
percent of the population. About 37 percent of the Armenians in
Azerbaydzhan resided in the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast,
where they constituted 77 percent of the population. The number of
Russians living in the Azerbaydzhan Republic in 1989 was slightly
larger than the number of Armenians.
Azerbaydzhanis speak a Turkic language that belongs to the
southern branch of Altaic languages. Originally the language
developed from a mixture of languages spoken by the Iranian and
Turkic tribes living there. It became a literary language late in
the nineteenth century when the Azerbaydzhan intelligentsia
popularized literature written in their native language. In 1922
Soviet officials replaced the original Arabic alphabet, first with
the Latin alphabet and then in 1937 with the Cyrillic alphabet.
According to the 1989 census, about 97.6 percent of the
Azerbaydzhanis in the Soviet Union regarded the Azerbaydzhan
language as their native tongue.
In 1987 the Azerbaydzhan Republic was among the least urbanized
republics, with only 54 percent of its population living in urban
areas. Large cities included the capital, Baku, with a population
of over 1.1 million, Kirovabad with 270,000, and Sumgait with
234,000.
The level of Azerbaydzhan education was high. Azerbaydzhanis
ranked fifth among the nationalities in the number of students in
institutions of higher education per thousand people, but they
ranked eighth in their share of scientific workers. In 1979
Azerbaydzhanis were seventh in CPSU membership.
Data as of May 1989
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