Simple Like the Truth: Heydar Aliyev

Here are a few of my favorite Heydar Aliyev photos so far. Here he is with son Ilham, the current president, appearing to levitate.

The Heydar Aliyev Museum in Ganja had tons of photos. Here he is with his daughter and the Clintons…

… and on the La-Z-Boy with the family:

He hates Mondays like the rest of us:

In the official presidential bookshop in Baku…

… you can buy an oil painting of the great man for 65 manat, about $80: Not sure why they stuck it on this low shelf behind the counter, though.

And in Ganja, they’ve apparently decided that there are not enough massive pictures, so they were installing another when I was there:

And finally, my favorite, again from the Ganja museum:

Comments

[Zuru]

Yeah, gorgeous pics. I´m seriously thinking of getting the 80$ canvass for a wedding present

BTW, have you already realised that both presidents of Armenia and Azerbaijan come from their respective exclaves, N.Karabakh and Nakhichevan?

[Azer]

Heydar Aliyev is the greatest son of Azerbaijan of all times. I can't even picture to myself for a second what Azerbaijan would be like today if the saviour didn't return 14 years ago. He pulled Azerbaijan from a shithole which at that time was probably worse than Mugabe's Zimbabwe today. The war, 1 million refugees, land progressively being occupied with Russia's unfair meddling, inflation rate of 1700%, leveled to the ground infrastructure, treacherous gangster groups selling Karabakh and fighting for a position at the political top didn't discourage him to come back and save his nation that was on the verge of a complete disappearance.

There is a great American website about Azerbaijan - azer.com. The magazine's editor Betty Blair who personally interviewed Heydar Aliyev a few times, says that during the Cold War in Washington people likened him to a Hollywood star among the sleepy members of the Politburo.

Feeling hurt and betrayed by the whole of Politburo for the sake of which he sacrificed all his life, the first thing Heydar Aliyev said after returning to power in 1993 was: 'Our new Politburo is no longer in Moscow, it's in Washington.'

When Bill Clinton met him for the first time in Washington, he described his impression about the former Muslim First Deputy Prime Minister of the USSR by saying: 'After talking for 20 minutes with Heydar Aliyev, for a moment I thought he was the president of the United States and I was the president of Azerbaijan.'

Today, the problem is that some odious government officials, who can't think of any other ways to please the current President, continue using outdated Brezhnev techniques of putting billboards in every corner of the street. New generations don't need to be bombarded by these photos. They go online and find everything about the father of their nation on Wikipedia. I strongly believe that one day most of these pictures will be brought down. The question is - why create so many pictures in the first place to bring them down later. Heydar Aliyev doesn't deserve that. He will remain at least in my heart as a saviour and father of my nation, whose genius the history hasn't yet had enough time to prove.

By the way, on the second picture from the top, it's not his wife. That's his daughter.

[phyek]

Welcome to authoritarianism. As someone who is also from Azerbaijan, I disagree with the person above. The Aliyev clan is mimicking the cult of personality of "Ataturk" to a higher degree. While I cannot speak for a nation of 8 million, I'm confident that many Azeris did not trust Heydar Aliyev and do not they trust his son, who like his corrupt father, came to power through illegitimate means. The country is plastered with their faces and everything renamed in their honor because anyone that dares to speak against them (and their embarrassing posters and propaganda) is intimidated through violence. If the current regime is overthrown, those posters will likely come down.

[Josh]

Azer, thanks for the correction re: the daughter, I fixed that.

And to my other readers: he and Phyek more or less encapsulate the two poles of opinion I've encountered in Azerbaijan re: Heydar Aliyev. It's a complicated subject, and one I will get into more later...