EMIGRANT AGAINST HIS WILL

The history of Azerbaijan has seen a period, the beginning of the 1920s, when a very large part of the intelligentsia left the country. One of them was Ceyhun Hacibayli. Unfortunately, up to the 1990s, our country knew almost nothing about this man. However, many knew that Uzeyir Hacibayli once had a younger brother. The thing is that Ceyhun Hacibayli was one of the founders of the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic along with people like Mammad Amin Rasulzada, Ahmad Agayev, Alimardan Topcu-basov and Mahammad Hasan Hacinski. From a young age, Ceyhun was engaged not only in the theatre, but also in social activities in his native Susa. He studied the culture of his country and wrote articles in Russian and Azerbaijani for the newspapers Kaspiy, Irsad and Taraqqi. He was an editor of the Russian-language Baku newspaper Azerbaijan. In those years, the newspaper was engaged in enlightenment and promotion of culture. Its heyday was in the 1918-20, when the newspaper was the leading publication in the young democratic country. Curiously, the second editor in it was Uzeyir Hacibayli. This phase of his life, as well as the fact that he knew the founding fathers of the republic was carefully concealed by Uzeyir bay from the public, since he could have been reported to the authorities.

Emigration

In the first years of Soviet rule, many of the best people of our state were forced to emigrate. They left mainly for Istanbul and Paris. In most cases, entrepreneurs of noble origin emigrated to Istanbul, while educated and open-minded compatriots ended up mostly in Paris.

Paris emigrants had very different ideas, but the main thing that united them was hostility to the Soviet government, which they regarded as an occupying regime. The first such defectors were our diplomats, who arrived in Paris to attend the Paris Peace Conference to confirm new borders as a result of the First World War. The head of the mission was Topcubasov, and it also included other prominent public figures, including Ceyhun Hacibayli.

The mission had one task - the recognition of the existence of the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic and its borders. In Paris, our Azerbaijani delegation presented three memorandums: on the independence of Caucasian Azerbaijan with a description of its borders and a map; on the economic condition and finances with an economic map; on the ethnic composition of the population of Azerbaijan with diagrams and ethnographic map.

The documents were prepared in accordance with all standards, and as a result, on 12 January 1920, the Supreme Council of the Allied Powers unanimously decided to recognize the de facto independence of Azerbaijan. This decision allowed the Azerbaijani government to significantly expand the geography of its foreign policy. New horizons opened up for the young country. But a tragedy struck: in April 1920 the Bolsheviks took Baku. And diplomats with evidence of the existence of the republic turned into political emigres overnight.

Thus, Ceyhun Hacibayli ended up in the first wave of emigration, which was followed by a second one. During the 1920s, the Paris Azerbaijanis were joined by a large group of compatriots - the intelligentsia, the military, the bourgeoisie, as well as students studying in Western Europe and Turkey.

Paris Azerbaijan

In the 1920s Paris was quickly overgrown with neighbourhoods of immigrants from former tsarist Russia. They supported each other - opened companies, found jobs and helped those who came without money. Natives of Azerbaijan became a special treasure trove of different culture for Paris intellectuals.

We must say that in the late summer of 1919, the France-Caucasus committee was set up in Paris. The French diplomat and orientalist Edmond Hippeau was elected president of the committee. French orientalists maintained close contacts with representatives of the local intelligentsia. Under the auspices of the mission, the Azerbaijan newsletter, of which the writer and orientalist Lucien Bouve was a file editor, was published until May 1920. Before the fall of ADR, three books about the country were published: "The Caucasian Republic of Azerbaijan", "Economic and Financial Situation of Azerbaijan" and "The Anthropological and Ethnic Composition of the Population of the Azerbaijan Republic". At the end of 1919, the prestigious journal Revue du Monde Musulman published an article by Ceyhun Hacibayli, who was also an advisor to the Azerbaijani mission at that time, "The First Muslim Republic". Based on unique primary sources, it reviewed the history, geography and economic development of Azerbaijan.

When the young country fell to communist forces, our compatriots created the Association of Azerbaijani Emigres headed by Alimardan Topcubasov. For many years, the association published books about the history and culture of Azerbaijan. Ceyhun Hacibayli took an active part in many of them. He translated poems of Azerbaijani poets Vidadi, Nabati and Qasimbay Zakir into French. In addition, Hacibayli wrote many articles about the Azerbaijani language and history, as well as poets of the East - "Hafez Shirazi", "Life of Ferdowsi" and "Azerbaijani poetesses".

Back in Baku, Hacibayli began his major study, which he published later in Paris. It was called "Babak and the Ancient State of Arran". Another of his works is "History of Baku and Barda". But the main work in the field of linguistics - "Karabakh Dialect and Folklore" - was published in 1934 in Paris in Revue des deux Mondes.

Attempt to return

Perhaps there is nothing that unites people like emigration. Hacibayli and his friends - writers, scientists and linguists - kept in touch with each other and often gathered home together. And most importantly, they worked very hard. It is well known that life in a foreign country mobilizes forces.

And, perhaps, the most difficult and significant thing done in those years was the organization of a performance. In 1925, Hacibayli and several of his friends organized the staging of his brother Uzeyir's operetta "Arsin Mal Alan" at Theatre Femina in Paris. It was very different from what we know from the old film, as Ceyhun used the music and libretto of 1918, which Uzeyir reworked twice subsequently.

In addition, many fragments of the operetta were restored from memory. By the way, we have to say here that Ceyhun, like all his close relatives, had also received music education in addition to traditional education. And, of course, from childhood (in Susa) he was involved in the productions of his older brother. Therefore, he knew the music and the active part of the operetta well enough.

Of course, he was homesick. Apparently, in 1956 Hacibayli attempted to return to Azerbaijan. Firstly, all of a sudden he wrote the work "The intellectual potential in the USSR", which spoke of the struggle against clericalism in the Soviet Union. The theme was not typical of him before. And three years after that, the Munich Institute for the Study of the USSR published this and other works of Hacibayli under the collective headline "Anti-Islamic propaganda and its methods in Azerbaijan".

That 1956 was a period of de-Stalinization in the USSR also speaks in favour of the fact that it was a kind of attempt to return. And Hacibayli, who studied the Soviet Union from aside, could not fail to notice it and apparently interpreted the events as the beginning of reform. In addition, at the time when these works were written, Hacibayli was 65 - an age when many are thinking anxiously about death in a foreign land.

However, in the USSR, alas, these "signals" were not accepted, and his works went unnoticed for the country. Ceyhun Hacibayli was destined to remain on Paris soil forever - thousands of miles from home, which he loved and of which he wrote all his life.