Some Issues of the “Great terror” Problem in Azerbaijan Historiography

Abstract

The main purpose of writing this article is to assess, from the point of view of Azerbaijani historiography, the event known as the “Great Terror” that occurred in the Soviet Union in 1937–1938. The article, using the example of the Republic of Azerbaijan, examines this wave of repression carried out by the head of the USSR, Joseph Stalin, which entailed the murder of a large number of innocent people in all Soviet republics. In the course of the study, a number of questions are posed and attempted to be resolved. First of all, attention is paid to why and when repression occurs and how it begins. At the same time, the role played by the First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Azerbaijan, Mir Jafar Bagirov, during the repressions is revealed, as his influence on the events, how many people became victims of repressions, and so on. The answers to these questions allow us to fully understand the nature of the Great Terror event and get an idea of the current situation. The materials collected during the study were analyzed, and the results obtained were synthesized, taking into account cause-and-effect relationships. During the study, to obtain more objective results, the opinions of individual researchers are critically evaluated, and, if necessary, the inductive method is used. In particular, the use of the inductive method allows us to obtain a general conclusion from individual facts and fully determine the position of Azerbaijani historiography on this issue. To obtain an overall result, the work of researchers studying repression was classified as research conducted by historians, philologists, journalists, archivists, and relatives of the repressed. Since our scientific direction is in the historical aspect, preference was given to the works of historians, but works written in other directions, depending on the topic, were also involved in the research.