MILITARY LEADER

In any army in the world there are officers who are in their element when they are fighting in a war. They were born to win honours on the battlefield. "To live is the military" [to live is to fight], to quote the writer Rudyard Kipling. One such person is the outstanding military commander, one of the founders of the Azerbaijan national army, Lieutenant-General Samad-bay Mehmandarov. He appears to have waited almost a quarter of a century for some military action, to get to the top as a military leader. He first got people talking about his talent as a commander during the Russian military's campaign in China in1900-1901. He fought in Port Arthur on the fronts of the First World War. He was awarded the highest rank, that of full artillery general.

Putting the enemy to flight

The future general was born in Lankaran where his father, Mirza Sadig-bay was forced to move from Susa [Shusha] at the beginning of the 1840's owing to his transfer to the position of Mugan district police station. In 1873 he enrolled at the Konstantinov Military College, whose students were called cadets [junkers]. 

When he graduated from the college in 1875, with the rank of ensign [in the tsarist army], Mehmandarov was dispatched to the First Turkestan Artillery Brigade. While he was serving in that subunit he fought in the battles in Kokand khanate. It was here that he received his first award, the Order of St. Svyatoslav, 3rd degree, for the "hardships and deprivation he had suffered during the campaign against the Matchin mountain people."

In May-December 1904 Samad-bay Mehmandarov took part in the Russo-Japanese war, including in the defence of Port-Arthur. He received a distinction in the 1904 campaign with the award of the military title of major general and the Order of St. George. The facts - his promotion in rank and the presentation of the award for his participation in the Russo-Japanese war - were highly significant, since Russia was defeated by the Japanese in that war. Mehmandarov was taken prisoner and some generals were prosecuted for surrendering Port Arthur.

From the beginning of the First World War Samad-bay Mehmandarov was appointed commander of the 2nd Caucasus Cavalry Corps which was operating on the South-Western front. In September 1914 he had already been awarded the Order of St. George Third Degree for managing to get his division's brigade across the river Wisla under heavy enemy fire, and succeeded in standing firm with that brigade on the left bank of the river, repulsing a number of attacks by the German guards' corps, inflicting serious bayonet attacks with his units and himself going over to the offensive, in spite of the fact that his brigade was coming under heavy fire from literally all sides" ("Kavkaz" newspaper, Tiflis).

In January 1915 S. Mehmandarov was awarded the Order of St. Vladimir Second Degree, with a sword and in February he was presented with the St. George weapon studded with diamonds. The St. Petersburg newspaper "Russkiy Invalid" ["Russian Invalid"] wrote: "His Highness Most Gracious the Emperor has presented the following awards for distinction in combating the enemy to the following: former head of the 21st infantry division, currently commander of the army corps, Lieutenant-General Samad-bay Sadig-bay Mehmandarov for pursuing the defeated German army corps outside Ivangrad on 9 and 10 October 1914 and came up against the superior Austrian forces along the line of the Polichno-Bogushinskiy forest; the German army was were hastening to seize the flank of our military forces, but with a number of bayonet incursions and a decisive offensive, personally being present among the troops on the ground, clearly putting his own life in danger repeatedly, he stopped the enemy advance and sent it into flight with a single strike at its flank.

On 11, 12 and 13 October 1914, he rebuffed the repeated attempts of the enemy's superior forces, causing the enemy great losses as they went round the right flank of our troops, and forcing the enemy to hastily retreat all along the front. Moreover, in a single day, 11 October 1914, we took prisoner one staff officer, 16 senior officers, 670 lower-ranking officers and one machine-gun." In 1915 he was made general of the artillery. With the victory of the revolution in 1917 General Mehmandarov, like all the tsarist military leaders, was removed from command of the corps by the Bolshevik soldiers. He returned to Baku some time later.

A competent general

After the proclamation of Azerbaijan's independence in May 1918 a serious need arose to defend the country's territorial integrity. This difficult task could only be resolved by setting up its own armed forces. The Defence Ministry was established on 1 November 1918. Prime Minister Fatali Xan Xoyski was appointed defence minister. General Samad-bay Mehmandarov was appointed his aide, i.e. his deputy.

The building up of the Azerbaijani army took place in unbelievably difficult domestic and foreign political circumstances. These consisted of the refusal of the leading European states to recognise Azerbaijan's independence, their intervention in the state's internal affairs, the attempts by remnants of the Bolsheviks to set up independent states like the Mugan Republic in the south of Azerbaijan, and the attempts by the White Guards to restore the integrity of Russia. But the main difficulty was the Armenians' claims to [Nagornyy] Karabakh and Zangezur. All this dictated the need to set up battle-ready armed forces literally in the midst of the military operations,

The young republic was able to cope with the internal enemies. Both Lankaran and then Mugan were returned to the republic's lap without a single drop of blood being spilled. The Armenians were dealt a decisive defeat in Karabakh. But Azerbaijan did not manage to withstand the Bolshevik pressure from the north. The Azerbaijan Democratic Republic fell, after only existing for 23 months, and persecutions of eminent political and public figures and generals and simply those who did not sympathise with the communists followed. General Murad Girey Tlekhas, who occupied the post of governor general of the Baku military district in April 1920 was one of the regime's first victims. He was executed by firing squad a month after the Bolsheviks came to power.

Samad-bay Mehmandarov would have met the same fate, had it not been for the intervention of the chairman of the Council of People's Commissars, Nariman Narimanov. Narimanov literally tore Mehmandarov out of the hands of the staff of the security services' department of the Eleventh Red Army. His letter to Lenin on Mehmandarov's "feelings of sympathy", like those of Ali Aga Sixlinski, for the Bolsheviks and the advantage of using their experience and knowledge in setting up the Red Army saved the lives of both generals.

Public figure

Samad-bay Mehmandarov was not only an outstanding military leader, but he also took an interest in the pressing problems affecting rank and file Azerbaijanis and wrote in the press about ways of solving these problems. For example, we know of his arguments with the publicist Ahmad-bay Agayev regarding the reasons why Muslim development was hindered. "The reasons for the backwardness of Muslims" was published in the Tiflis newspaper "Kavkaz" in 1892.

When talking about the backwardness of Muslims, both Agayev and Mehmandarov had in mind how they lagged behind the West in a cultural sense.

In his articles devoted to the studies of the French scholar Bordot, A. Agayev wrote that the West is profoundly mistaken when it attributes the backwardness to Islam. In his view, the "traditional enmity" starting from the crusades and not the religion of Muslims was preventing a rapprochement between Muslims and Christians. Agreeing with Agayev in the first part of his assertion, S. Mehmandarov disputes the truth of the second part.

In his view, it was the Muslim clerics who had contributed considerably this backwardness by dividing up the world into "a Muslim and non-Muslim world" and thereby alienating Muslims and Christians who were mostly Europeans. Mehmandarov thought that the assertions of the clerics who believed that "love for those close to you meant love solely for Muslims" was mistaken and proposed rejecting this formulation of the issue.

Mehmandarov was against resolving disputes on the basis of religious laws. He pointed out that the laws gave one an idea of the extent of a country's mental and spiritual development and wondered how one could live according to the laws of the 7th century in the 19th century. The contradictions between Muslims and Christians would remain as long as the Muslims were guided by religious prejudices rather than by the "light of science and knowledge".

In these controversial articles the military leader also touched upon the issue of Muslim women acquiring an education. "Mothers are concerned with the education of children in Muslim families, but bringing up children means allowing them to develop their own individuality for themselves. What kind of feelings and thoughts can be instilled in Muslim women who have been humiliated and deprived of individuality for centuries?" In posing these questions, Mehmandarov called for "the Muslim woman to be 'removed from her current position and provided with the necessary reserves of knowledge and moral strength'".

"Muslims are not putting their daughters into educational establishments, solely because their daughters might become the objects of the immodest stares of strange men which horrifies them, but they would be willing to make concessions if special educational establishments were organised in which women could study." S. Mehmandarov saw conscription into military service for the young me of all the Muslim peoples in the empire as one of the ways of promoting the development of Muslims in Russia and their participation in the life of the state with equal rights.

"Whereas the Kazan Tatars are considered in Russia to be relatively well educated and developed, second to the Polish Tatars, one of the reasons for this is conscription into the army which these Tatars have been a part of for a long time now, he noted.

Taking into account the services of Samad-bay Mehmandarov, Azer-baijani President Ilham Aliyev has instructed that top-notch events be organised to mark the 160th anniversary of the outstanding military leader's birth.

The instruction states in particular that "Samad-bay Mehmandarov who exhibited great professionalism on the battlefield and endless loyalty to the rank of officer, has written unforgettable pages in the military chronicles of the Azerbaijani people. It is thanks to him that a national army was created when the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic was founded and thanks to his competent, purposeful military ability and his efficient organisation of security to ensure territorial integrity and the safety of the military in specific historical circumstances."