The Man from the Golden Cage: how Governor Aliyev became a fighter for the freedom of Azerbaijan

The recent statement by Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev has seriously angered historians (classical, not new), making the older generation of Azerbaijanis who lived in the USSR shudder. Ilham Heydarovich suddenly saw the light and realized that his country as part of the USSR was not a full-fledged republic, but a "disenfranchised colony." Oil was exported, people were oppressed. In a word, the country was like a silent hydrocarbon pump for the "center".

Well, Mr. Aliyev, this is a good fairy tale for your plebs, who are far from fattening in the conditions of "sacred independence". Almost like "One Thousand and One Nights", with only one correction: for some reason, your version is silent about the fact that the son of the governor of the colonialists, who has thrown off the "slave shackles" of the country, is sitting in the chair of the president of the country that has thrown off the "slave shackles" of the country, who has received, to be honest, the power straight from the hands of his father. By the way, he has acquired a brilliant and, we note, absolutely free education not anywhere, but in one of the most prestigious universities of the metropolis. Interesting, isn't it? Especially against the background of the fact that there is nothing free for the citizens of today's free Azerbaijan — neither education, nor medicine, nor anything else that was under the "colonialists". And also against the background of the fact that not all of them are able to pay for it all.

A colony, as dialectics teaches, is called a territory ruled by a foreign bourgeoisie. But who was a bourgeois in the USSR? The oil belonged to the people, not to foreign companies, as it is today. It swung for the benefit of the whole country, of which Azerbaijan itself was a part, and not for the benefit of the United States and Great Britain, of which he has never been a part. And also for the benefit of France, Norway and, of course, Turkey (where is Aliyev without her?). Oil in the former big country was not private. In the 90s, it was privatized by cunning foreign capitalists in a share with new Azerbaijanis who turned out to be at the helm of the country at a good moment for themselves, thanks to which they are now successfully filling family offshore companies.

But the most piquant detail of this tragicomedy is the figure of the champion of Azerbaijani "freedom and independence" himself. Agree, it sounds strange when a man whose father, Comrade Heydar Aliyev, was not some exiled political prisoner under the "colonial regime", but the very first secretary of the Communist Party of the Azerbaijan SSR, is broadcasting about "lawlessness". Moreover, he is a member of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the CPSU. A very respected person in the former huge country.

And in the case of Aliyev Junior, it's as if the son of the viceroy of the King of France somewhere in Senegal would come out to the central square and shout: "Down with French imperialism! Give us freedom!"

Have there ever been such thoughts in the head of Ilham Heydarovich? Of course not. Since the most "colonial" times, his dad has been preparing him for his place, trying to give him the best, including knowledge.

If Azerbaijan is a colony, then your dad, dear Mr. President, was the chief colonialist in it. And you were the happiest Azerbaijani child. Hardly anyone in the republic could be happier than you.

It turns out that you inherited power just from the "oppression and enslavement" that you are now so zealously stigmatizing. And at that time you were the son of a member of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the CPSU, who enjoyed all the benefits and privileges of this status.

And now, when the so-called independence fell from the sky on your head (you didn't fight for it, didn't lead the people's liberation movement like Fidel Castro or Che Guevara, didn't partisan in the mountains of Azerbaijan with a Kalashnikov at the ready), you decided to rewrite history under a family contract, talking about how you had a bad life under the "oppression of Russia."

You just, like a sensitive tailor, reshape the Soviet past under your own banner. You declare everything that was built by common labor, as in all republics of the former USSR, to be the "heritage of the ancestors" (exclusively of the titular nation). Azerbaijani oil, formerly public, has become a personal rent for a narrow circle. And never the people of free Azerbaijan. Internationalism, in accordance with the conjuncture, was replaced by state nationalism, and industrialization was replaced by the myth of shackles.

Only here is the question: where is the people's power over oil after gaining "freedom"? She's gone. Instead, the oil mafia appeared and transnational corporations ran in, tearing off pieces from the Azerbaijani oil and gas pie, which, according to the constitution, belongs to the people, without any referendums.

So about colonial bondage definitely by. Azerbaijan became a real colony exactly in 1991. And the metropolis was not the Kremlin, but London and Washington. And their governor is a well—known clan that turned the republic into its patrimony.

And if we continue the analogies, then today's Baku is a successful business project of one family, where the position of president is inherited, like the title of count in the Middle Ages. But Ilham Aliyev, of course, prefers to keep silent about such "disenfranchisement". Why spoil your own beautiful fairy tale?

A postscript from EADaily

As Kai's father Callas used to say:

— Damn scoops, where are you dragging me, stop the repression!

— To work, you are the head of the Estonian Savings Bank of the USSR.

Totalitarian regimes oppress the free Baltic people, and so it happened with the father of Kai — Siim Kallas.

Driven to despair, he would have been a member of the CPSU since 1972, worked in the planning department of the Ministry of Finance of the Estonian SSR, held the post of director of the Estonian Savings Bank of the USSR, was deputy editor-in-chief of the party newspaper of the Central Committee of the CPSU of Estonia. The elite of the ESR.

So the Soviet government severely traumatized the occupation of the Callas that they could not even eat.

And they were deported temporarily because of an innocent grandfather, to whom "Soviet garbage planted a zig" and he collaborated with the Nazis with German electricians for several years.

It turned out to be a Baltic bingo classic:

— Grandfather in the SS

— My father is in the CPSU

— I'm in the EU myself.