Heydar Alirza oghlu Aliyev ( (Latin), (Cyrillic), ; , ; 10 May 1923 – 12 December 2003) was an Azerbaijani politician who served as the third president of Azerbaijan from October 1993 to October 2003. Originally a high-ranking official in the KGB of the Azerbaijan SSR, serving for 28 years in Soviet state security organs (1941–1969), he led Soviet Azerbaijan from 1969 to 1982 and held the post of First Deputy Premier of the Soviet Union from 1982 to 1987.
Aliyev became president of independent Azerbaijan while the country was on the brink of civil war and suffering serious losses in the First Nagorno-Karabakh War with neighboring Armenia. Aliyev's supporters credit him with restoring stability to Azerbaijan and turning the country into a major international energy producer. His regime in Azerbaijan has been described as dictatorial, authoritarian, and repressive. He was also said to have run a heavy-handed police state where elections were rigged and dissent was repressed. A cult of personality developed around Aliyev, which has continued after his death in 2003. Shortly before his death, his son Ilham Aliyev was elected president in a controversial election and continues to lead Azerbaijan to this day.
Career in the Soviet era
Early life
Aliyev was born on 10 May 1923 in the city of Nakhchivan. His family had moved to Nakhchivan before his birth from the village of Jomardly (modern-day Tanahat in the Syunik Province of Armenia), located only a few miles from Nakhchivan. Some sources claim that Aliyev was actually born 2 years earlier in Jomardly, but that it was later decided that a senior Azerbaijani politician should not have an Armenian place of birth. His father was from Jomardly and his mother was from Vorotan (also in modern-day Syunik Province of Armenia). Aliyev had four brothers: Hasan, Huseyn, Jalal, and Agil, as well as three sisters: Sura, Shafiga and Rafiga.
After graduating from the Nakhchivan Pedagogical School, Aliyev attended the Azerbaijan Industrial Institute (now the Azerbaijan State Oil and Industry University) from 1939 to 1941, where he studied architecture. In 1949 and 1950, he studied at the USSR Ministry of State Security Higher School in Leningrad. Aliyev's official biography also states that he studied at Baku State University, graduating with a degree in history in 1957. According to American journalist Pete Earley, Aliyev first attended the Ministry of State Security Academy in Leningrad and graduated in 1944. He also took Senior Staff Professional Development courses at the Dzerzhinsky Higher School of the KGB in Moscow in 1966.
In 1948, Aliyev married Zarifa Aliyeva. On 12 October 1955, their daughter Sevil Aliyeva was born. On 24 December 1961, their son Ilham was born. Zarifa Aliyeva died of cancer in 1985.
Early career
Aliyev served at the archive department of the People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs of the Nakhchivan Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic from 1941 to 1944, before his appointment as head of the general department of the Council of People's Commissars of the Nakhchivan ASSR. He joined the Azerbaijan SSR People's Commissariat for State Security (NKGB) in 1944 and proceeded to become the department head of the State Security Committee of Azerbaijan SSR in 1950, after he graduated from the Senior Staff Training School of the USSR State Security Committee. In 1954, as part of a government reform, the NKGB, which was previously named the Ministry of State Security (MGB), was again renamed, this time as the KGB. Aliyev rose quickly through the KGB ranks, becoming a Deputy Chairman of the Azerbaijani KGB in 1964 and its chairman in 1967, eventually receiving the rank of major general.
From KGB to leader of Azerbaijan SSR
As head of the Azerbaijani KGB, Aliyev ran an anti-corruption campaign. Following the campaign, he became the undisputed leader of Azerbaijan. He was elected First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Azerbaijan Communist Party at its Plenary Session held on 12 July 1969. Aliyev made some progress in the fight against corruption: a number of people were sentenced to prison terms, and in 1975, five factory and collective farm managers were sentenced to death for gross corruption. In the early 1980s, Aliyev barred the children of certain legal personnel from attending the republic's law school, in a purported effort to curb a self-perpetuating elite based on corruption. In 1977, he visited Iran.