AN ANTHEM TO FREEDOM

When the warrant was issued to find the necessary number of traitors and conspirators, they were immediately found, because the plan had to be fulfilled, otherwise you might find yourself in their ranks.

The NKVD [People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs] staff hardly ever had any genuine evidence, so any case had to be fabricated according to well-practised scenario. It started with a biography; in the past many people, (especially the intelligentsia) had something for which they could be grabbed; some people had relatives who had emigrated and some people had been involved in setting up the ADP [Azerbaijan Democratic Republic] in the pre-soviet period. At the end of the 1930s the latter circumstance could be regarded as a death sentence, especially if you did not distinguish yourself for a passionate love of the new authority afterwards. Then they would "pick up" someone who knew you, more often than not a colleague or an ordinary party member, and would subject him to a "hard-hitting interrogation", during which he was prepared to say anything about you he liked just to get out of the mess he was in.

After that, they would get down to you, an honest talented person who did not desire to become involved in the all-round denunciations of people. Your name was Musviq, Huseyn, Cavad, and Ruhulla Axundov. An annual, quite official plan of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) for you was 1,500. Every year there became fewer of you - of the scientist, the writer, the poet, the artiste, the artist. In a 1937 case, the writer, poet, and translator Ahmad Cavad was registered as No. 1112. That was at the beginning of July, which means that Stalin's instructions had almost been carried out by the middle of the year.

Turkey and the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic

Ahmad Cavad was born in the village of Seyfali in Samkir administrative district in Ganja province. After receiving primary education in the local Muslim school, he continued his education in a charity society school and then at Ganja theological seminary where he studied Arabic and Farsi, eastern literature, after which he became a teacher.

His career was a troubled and typical one for an intellectual whose activity happened to be in the 1930s. The difficult situation in which Turkey found itself at the start of the 20th century seriously troubled the poet Ahmad Cavad, so together with Abdulla Saiq, he became a volunteer soldier in the ranks of the "Caucasus Voluntary Unit" set up in Istanbul. During the First World War, as a member of the Society of Mercy helping orphans and refugees, A. Cavad became extremely active in Kars, Erzurum, Batumi and other towns and regions, sending his articles and correspondence to the Baku newspapers and writing verses in snatches.

In 1914, in Turkey's Grand National Assembly a march was played with the words of the Cavad's well-known poem "Cirpinirdi Qara Deniz" ("The Black Sea Raged") which became unprecedentedly popular. Even today they refer to it as the second national anthem of the Turkish Republic. His first book "Goshma" was published in Baku in 1916. Starting in 1918, from the time the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic came into being, he became a member of the "Musavat", actively becoming involved in public life in the country, writing verses singing of independence, the tricolour flag of Azerbaijan, creating the text of Azerbaijan's national anthem. Cavad was also actively involved in setting up the Azerbaijan University. In 1919, his new book "Dalga" ["Wave"] came out.

The Soviet years 

After the Sovietisation of Azerbaijan, A. Cavad engaged in pedagogical activity. In the 1923-1925 period he was groundlessly arrested twice. In the following years he graduated from the higher pedagogical institute in Baku and in 1930 he moved to Ganca where he continued to work as a lecture, professor, and head of department in the Institute of Agriculture. A. Cavad was a lyric poet, who had a subtle grasp of all the shades of his native language, skilfully recreating the feelings and ideas of his contemporaries in simple images ("The Wounded Bird"). At the same time, he also created civic-type verses ("To the Azerbaijani Flag", "The Englishman", "Hey, Warrior", "The Turkish Army", "To the Victims"), which were included in the book "The Wave". They sounded like a summons to battle in the name of a lofty patriotic idea, like the war-cry of a person for whom the defence of the republic, the people, his native flag is the highest embodiment of the doing one's duty. 

In 1934, he became a member of the Union of Writers of Azerbaijan, but as an "old Musavat member" he was subjected to persecution. During the 1930s A. Cavad experienced the burden of accusations that he had not paid sufficient attention to subjects singing of "Soviet activity". In spite of the persecution and accusations, A. Cavad kept on writing and created such lyric poems as "Dastan about cotton", "The Kura", "Maiden Singing", "Goy-gol" and others.

In 1934, A. Cavad returned to Baku, worked as editor in the translation department of the "Azernasr" publishing house. In 1935-1936 he was head of the documentary film department at the "Azerbaijanfilm" studios.

In March 1937, A. Cavad was awarded the first prize for a translation into Azeri of the poem "The Man in the Tiger Skin" by [the Georgian poet] Shota Rustaveli. He also translated into Azeri works by the poets Aleksandr Pushkin, Maksim Gorkiy and Ivan Turgenev. He also translated works by European classics such as William Shakespeare, Francois Rabelais and Knut Hamsun. He was however soon expelled from the Union of Writers and arrested as a "counter-revolutionary".

Unbending

The case of Ahmad Cavad may be called one of the most scandalous, although that is more like a comparison of bad with worse. The fact is that the so-called investigators did as a rule try to "beat out" the evidence they needed and make it that at the last court hearing the arrested person himself said everything that was required of him. But Cavad did not allow himself to be "taunted". It can be seen from the documents, that, worn out, he would have gone back on his word, but at the last moment he found the strength within himself. And then the protocol of the trial was completely fabricated. In the subtle personal case of "arrested suspect 1112", a carbon copy document is presented, in which his surname had been only been entered in the necessary places. 

The evidence of a witness of this court, a certain A. Akhundov (also repressed but a survivor the camps) is cited in the rehabilitation document. "In the room in the Azerbaijan People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs, where Matulevich was sitting, every 5-20 minutes three armed people brought in a prisoner, with a commandant walking behind him holding a revolver. The accused had no rights whatsoever; the court proceedings as such did not exist. There they asked the surname and took them out…" 

So, a person who had translated Shakespeare, Tolstoy, Rustaveli and Gamsun, was only permitted to pronounce his name.

But that was in October 1937, and before that the poet had been tortured. His wife, who was also arrested and, like him, imprisoned in Bayil prison, later recalled: "During my imprisonment in Bayil prison, when the lunch was being served, I met Maria Sergeyevna who used to come to our house to do the cleaning. She told me that my husband had been taken into the prison sick bay with his head bandaged and a high temperature… This means that he was beaten and taunted…"

The family's fate

"As the wife of a traitor, Sukriya Suleyman qizi Axundzada was arrested and imprisoned in a mixed prison in the city of Baku.., Her sons Aydyn - 16 years, Tukay - 14 years and Yilmaz - two years, were sent to an orphanage of the People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs. Axundzada's flat was searched for arms, valuables and literature. The remaining property was confiscated and handed over to the state." This was the decision of the local State Security Directorate made on 27 October. As prescribed in the decision, she was sent into exile in Kazakhstan "by the first departure stage".

She ended up in a correctional labour camp in the town of Akmolinsk, where all those registered in the decision spent eight years. The fate of that family is indeed a tragic one. It is impossible to read other documents without shuddering. Torn away from her children, the mother wrote them letters (as did thousands of other mothers who found themselves in that situation). The letter that Shukriyya khanum wrote to Beria in which she insisted on her own and her husband's innocence is striking. She writes: "I have four sons, of whom two are fighting for their motherland on the fronts of the Great Patriotic War [Second World War]. Both have been wounded, but, after they recovered. they returned to fronts. My oldest son, Lieutenant Niyazi Axundzada , is in the Leningrad sector and has been awarded the Order of the Red Banner for his services in the military. Lieutenant Aydin Axundzada  is in the Kharkov sector and has been awarded the Order of the Red Star for his services in the military…"

She did not know that Beria, who was at that time secretary of the Communist Party of Georgia, was personally responsible for the repressions in Azerbaijan. This only became known relatively recently when old archives were declassified. In July 1937 (when Ahmad Cavad was arrested), Beria sent Stalin a note in which he assured him that a nationalist plot was being hatched in Transcaucasia. Naturally, Beria did not heed the entreaties of the wife of a poet and the mother of heroes of the Great Patriotic War (who had fought as volunteers), and Shukriyya khanim remained in prison right to the end of the war. But then she was banned from living in Baku and forced to move to Shamkir district. It was not until 18 years after the tragic death of her husband that the family managed to be completely rehabilitated. But then not only Beria met his fate, facing the firing squad, but the NKVD "investigators", a certain Tsinman and Klementich who had condemned the poet. 

Naturally, our great fellow countryman Ahmad Cavad was not a conspirator at all. He can only be reproached for fervently supporting the young republic before the revolution, for being a member of the "Musavat" party, and for not writing about the achievements of communism, but about our native land, during the years of Soviet power. And therefore it is quite natural and symbolic that it is precisely his words that should resound in the national anthem of today's Azerbaijan.