THIRTY-FOUR YEARS FROM AZERBAIJAN'S CENTURIES OF HISTORY

For almost 40 years, Azerbaijan has been established as a secular and progressive nation - thanks to its prominent leader Heydar Aliyev. Before then, everyone knew of the oil city of Baku and its ethnic group of Bakuvians, but only a small minority knew that the city was in Azerbaijan. Furthermore, in the USSR, all residents of the Caucasus were known as Georgians.

When he came to power in Soviet Azerbaijan, in 1969, he literally broke new ground to release the republic's latent potential by conducting both economic and socio-cultural reforms with the strategic aim of enhancing Azerbaijani self-esteem and creating a qualitatively new image for the Land of Fire.

And he succeeded: all he dreamed about came true - and in an incredibly short space of time.

This was when his contemporaries realized that, to great people, the Motherland is not only the land of their birth, but also an opportunity they are allocated to undertake great works and help their land to flourish.

When Heydar Aliyev came to power, Azerbaijan was a remote province with low economic prospects, to which the centre paid little attention. He instituted reforms. He formed a government of tasks, goals and results.

The process of transforming Azerbaijan into a different kind of country began.

Grand plans and large-scale projects were soon realized in the form of new residential developments, industrial enterprises, water reservoirs, landscape gardening, recreation centres and cultural and educational facilities.

His top priority was the transformation of Azerbaijan into a self-sufficient country with an advanced scientific and technological sector.

He managed to accomplish for his country in 15 years what others could not have achieved in many centuries.

I have tried to illustrate with charts (see picture) how much, and in how short a time, performance in the areas of energy supply and the construction of homes, roads, communications and water supply has improved.

With hindsight it is clear that, as early as the 1970s, Heydar Aliyev was paving the way for a new Azerbaijan in the 21st century.

The period from 1970-1985 went down in the history of Soviet Azerbaijan as the most brilliant period of construction in the country's history. Important structural changes were being made in the republic's economy.

New, advanced sectors of the economy were created, more than 300 industrial facilities were brought into operation, the Soviet Union's only supplier of household air conditioners and Europe's largest deepwater jackets factory were built.

The shipyards and a huge fleet of oil tankers, much larger than that of any other of the littoral states on the Caspian Sea, were built on Heydar Aliyev's initiative.

At the same time Azerbaijan became the most advanced agricultural republic, with well-developed cotton and vine-growing industries.

Social policy was aimed at bridging the gap between urban and rural areas and sought to improve conditions for those living in the rural areas.

Within the Soviet Union, Azerbaijan became a leader in many sectors of the economy.

Azerbaijan produced 350 kinds of products and exported them to 65 countries.

The Azerbaijan of that period resembled a giant construction site.

Baku's skyline and that of the district centres changed dramatically.

Heydar Aliyev's acumen and vision saw him attach special attention to the development of the railway infrastructure. This simplified contact between the capital and the republic's regions.

For example, the Baki-Balakan line brought the north-western province of the country closer to the capital and the line to Xankandi planned closer ties to Nagornyy-Karabakh and enhancement of opportunities for the ethnic Azeri population there.

To me, these are not mere statistics indicative of a massive breakthrough into the future. As a schoolchild, I observed this process not only in the news reports of large-scale transformation, but also by listening to my father, who worked as the chief engineer of the production and processing equipment department of Construction Trust No 4 of the Azerbaijani Ministry of Industrial Construction, which was in charge of all industrial construction projects in Baku.

Everyone in our family knew by heart the names of the projects from which father used to come home very late at night.

There was the air conditioning factory, the deepwater jackets factory, the sparkling wines plant, Novobakinskiy oil refinery, with its catalytic reformer units, electric desalination and vacuum pipe stills, the railway station, the footwear factory, the stadium now called Safa, and so on.

I will never forget how tired he was when he came home, although his eyes gleamed with the realization that he was a participant in the revolutionary transformation of the country. Once he said, just after stepping over the threshold on his return home, that if Heydar Aliyev were allowed to work for another 10-15 years, the country would have a golden future.

And although fate decreed otherwise, I want to stress first that, after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Azerbaijan was the second most developed of the former Soviet republics, was self-sufficient and was also the only republic to be debt-free at the time of independence.

And second, Heydar Aliyev managed to stop the civil war which broke out after the confusion of the perestroika and post-perestroika period and to restore the foundations of modern, independent Azerbaijan.

Heydar Aliyev lived in Naxcivan during the last two years of Soviet rule and for the first few years of independence. He was busy building the Bridge of Hope to Turkey and used to visit the border under fire - in short, every hour of his schedule was devoted to saving the autonomous district from foreign aggression, starvation and paralysis.

And Azerbaijan, which he built as a result of the titanic efforts listed above, had prepared itself for a sovereign life by the adoption of the Constitutional Act on the Independence of the Azerbaijani Republic in autumn 1991.

The social and humanitarian projects of the country's leader, likewise, were full of energy and reforms. Heydar Aliyev was the only leader of a republic under the totalitarian Soviet regime to help strengthen the national identity and pride of the nation.

He created a centre of national revival of sorts in the form of the Azerbaijani Soviet Encyclopedia; he built new universities and retrieved from oblivion the forgotten names of people of culture, arts, architecture and the military.

It is enough to recall the ceremony of the reburial in Naxcivan of the ashes of poet Huseyn Cavid, who was persecuted and exiled to Siberia, would suffice. Heydar Aliyev spared no effort to restore the annals of heroism and glory of the Azerbaijanis. A monument was erected, upon his initiative, near Mount Sapun, Crimea, to the thousands of Azerbaijanis who died on the battlefields of the Great Patriotic War. He insisted on erecting a monument to Nariman Narimanov, not only in Baku, but also in Ulyanovsk, to remove the brand of "nationalist" from his name throughout the entire Soviet Union. Before Heydar Aliyev, many Azerbaijanis did not even suspect, when they saw Narimanov's tomb, that their countryman lay there; they thought that he was an ethnic Tatar.

A man of broad education and excellent military qualifications, Heydar Aliyev valued good teams of professionals.

And, most importantly, he set and achieved targets to train the military officers of the principal ethnic group.

He took under his wing a project to send youth to the higher aviation schools and aimed to train ethnic Azerbaijanis for the Cosmonaut Training Centre.

And he would have achieved this goal if the Soviet Union had not collapsed. Among the national leader's huge achievements was the Azerbaijanization of the republic's KGB.

He was one of those gifted minds who are able to draw conclusions from the lessons of history.

Who knows how many Azerbaijani talents would have been saved from repression had the Azerbaijani KGB not been dominated by out-and-out Dashnaks [members of the Dashnaktsutyun Armenian Revolutionary Federation].

Heydar Aliyev attached great importance to education because he saw how it enhanced the republic's prospects of development.

As early as in the Soviet period, thousands and thousands of young Azerbaijanis were sent to 150 leading universities of the Soviet Union. Today, many of them form the core of independent Azerbaijan. At the same time, about 800 students are sent annually to various cities to learn specialised professions. This project was based on the philosophy of development of a nation which seeks integration into the international community.

It was also back then that he began to lay a foundation for the development of the Azerbaijani intellectual elite by merging national experience and high educational standards.

In 1982, he was elected a member of the Politburo and was appointed first deputy chairman of the USSR Council of Ministers.

He supervised 22 ministries of the huge Soviet state for four years.

His associates were amazed by the range of his competence: in the fields of machine-building, light industry, transport, culture and education.

Bosses in the different sectors of the economy used to seek permission to work under Heydar Aliyev's supervision. Former Russian Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin said of Aliyev: "Now that was a real man. If he says no, he explains why. And if he says yes, he will keep his promise."

Under his leadership, the USSR carried out educational reform, built the Baykal-Amur trunk railway, which was called the route of the century and major changes were made to the work of artistic unions and cultural organizations.

However, Aliyev did not become oblivious of Azerbaijan's interests when he began work in his senior Soviet post.

He not only knew what had to be done, but also how it could be achieved in a given situation. This is why the Soviet leadership saw him as a crisis manager and assigned him the most difficult tasks. And, in 1990, he was the first to make an announcement about the crisis within the Soviet Communist Party.

Heydar Aliyev came up against the suppression of the democratic movement in Baku and filed a note in protest in withdrawing from the party.

This was an international sensation. This was the first time a member of the Soviet political elite had publicly demonstrated solidarity with the people and not with the Communist machine.

He resigned, moved to his native Naxcivan and once again did the impossible. He came out of political retirement and once again climbed the Olympus of political power.

In contrast to his colleagues in the Politburo, he remained relevant and ruled a sovereign country until his death.

Chaos reigned in Azerbaijan in those years. Heydar Aliyev prevented a civil war, achieved a ceasefire and restored the ruined economy.

When he came to power in independent Azerbaijan, Heydar Aliyev re-shaped the priorities for economic development.

Thanks to the leader's oil strategy, the agrarian and industrial nation became an industrial and agrarian one and embarked on the road to independent development. The "Contract of the Century" marked the beginning of the country's accession into Eurasian and, eventually, European civilization.

The implementation of global energy projects in prospecting and extracting hydrocarbons gave Azerbaijan a dynamic economy and the status of a regional power. It is worth thinking for a moment in this respect about the extremely difficult conditions in which Heydar Aliyev managed to win the trust of large multinational corporations.

After all, not long before 20 September 1994, the country had been on the verge of civil strife and was enshrouded in the flames of war.

In just a year to a year and a half, Aliyev eliminated all the gangs and established socio-political stability.

In May 1994 he achieved a cease-fire and, in September, the "Contract of the Century" was signed.

Achieving a positive response and the trust of major powers in those conditions was a task which only a person of Aliyev's stature could have accomplished.

Since then, the country has adopted new standards, developed a modern infrastructure, upgraded four large installations, drilled new wells, built gas pumping stations and repaired derrick barges.

More than 10,000 jobs have been created thanks to the oil contracts.

And most importantly, oil production is increasing and, for the first time in the history of Azerbaijan, we have managed to start selling crude oil internationally.

Ilham Aliyev, then vice president of the State Oil Company, played an important role in the preparation of the "Contract of the Century."  It is universally known that, thanks to his efforts and persistence, our delegation was able to find a way through the almost hopeless situations which arose during talks with foreign oil companies. Having adopted his father's mastery of political dialogue, he managed to expedite the process of signing the contract. The fact is that at one point, the talks effectively run into an impasse because of the undecided status of the Caspian Sea.

At a meeting in Houston, representatives of oil corporations said that the agreement could only come into legal effect once the status of the Caspian Sea had been decided. Ilham Aliyev visited Washington several times and persuaded the Americans to remove the clause on the status of the Caspian from the agreement. Thanks to that, the "Contract of the Century" became effective immediately after its signing. The oil contract made it possible to change the situation regarding democratic and economic reforms.

Today, the country is in transition from macro-economic stability to an active industrial policy. It is unprecedented for a country involved in military conflict to receive (in 2000) a credit rating of 'promising', and it has been upgraded annually ever since. This is just another testimony to the high degree of trust in the republic's potential on the part of international financial institutions.

Today, Azerbaijan is the world leader in terms of the pace of growth of GDP, the lowest rate of poverty in the CIS countries has also been achieved. The republic achieved this in just 14 years, which is an incredibly short period of time for a country which endures the aggression of its neighbour.

Heydar Aliyev managed to implement brilliantly his well-planned policy of cooperation with the world powers through the economic interests of major oil companies. The "Contract of the Century" has effectively opened the world to Azerbaijan and Azerbaijan to the world.

Because of this contract, we became a player in the geo-political arena and a link in the international chain of technology. Heydar Aliyev took the most important step from the perspective of democratic values: he laid a strong foundation for national solidarity.

He always focused on the atmosphere of trust between people and the state; he fought hard against corruption, made the government's work transparent, met with journalists regularly and was recognized as a friend of the press. The first constitution of sovereign Azerbaijan in the post-independence period was adopted under his leadership, he abolished censorship of the media, the first foreign investments were attracted into the country, many social problems were resolved and a democratic, rule-of-law state was built during his presidency.

In 1998, he was the first in the East to abolish capital punishment; Heydar Aliyev wanted to demonstrate to the world by doing so that statehood should rest on humanitarianism.

The national leader laid the foundations of a balanced foreign policy for Azerbaijan. Politicians all over the world consider his decisions examples of pragmatism and acumen.

In January 2000, Azerbaijan became a member of the Council of Europe. Heydar Aliyev delivered a speech from the platform of this respected international organization in the Azerbaijani language.  This was politically symbolic. He positioned Azerbaijan as a European country, but at the same time continually stressed the importance of the ideology of Azerbaijanism.

As a politician of international standing, he worked to strengthen the economic foundations of the entire Turkic world. The choice of route for the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline and the Baku-Akhalkalaki-Kars gas pipeline testify to this. When choosing the route, Heydar Aliyev also considered economic assistance to the friendly nation of Georgia. As a rational person, he realized that helping means giving a source of income.

Both in his style of leadership and way of thinking, the national leader was far ahead of his time. As a virtuoso grand master, he was victorious in seemingly hopeless political games. He was a brilliant strategist and subtle tactician. The world saw this once again when he asked the people to elect as the next president his friend, associate and son Ilham Aliyev. He thereby not only ensured stability in the country, but also guaranteed the succession to an unswerving political course.