The Soviet Past in the Azerbaijan Memorial Culture: from Denial to Use

Abstract. The article deals with the images of the Soviet past in the Azerbaijan memorial culture. The subject of the study are the monuments in honor of the Soviet Union and republican leaders, from V.I. Lenin to I.V. Stalin and from N.N. Narimanov to G.A. Aliyev, who are associated with the main events in the Azerbaijan history in 1920–1991. The monuments to the Baku commune, as the first experience of establishing Soviet power, which occupied one of the leading places in the memorial culture of Soviet Azerbaijan, monuments to victims of political repression, monuments of the events and participants of the Great Patriotic War are in the focus of the research. The author notes the dynamics of the attitude towards the Soviet memorial heritage in Azerbaijan in the 1990s–2000s: from its dismantling to instrumentalization. The negative attitude towards the Soviet past was expressed in the destruction of most of the monuments to Soviet leaders, the Baku commune and other memorial objects. However, some of the Soviet monuments have been preserved, including those dedicated to the participants of the Great Patriotic War. Large-scale memorialization of the life and work of G.A. Aliyev contributes to a positive assessment of the last Soviet decades. The Armenian-Azerbaijani contradictions and their consequences have had and will continue to have a significant impact on the memorial policy of the republic.

Keywords: Republic of Azerbaijan, Azerbaijan SSR, Baku commune, historical memory, memorial culture, Soviet past, politics of memory.