Campaign to give Nizami the status of a national Azerbaijani poet

Allegations of Nizami as an ethnic Turk until the end of the 1930s

In 1903, the Azerbaijani publicist and enlightener Firidun Kocharlinsky in the book "Literature of the Aderabei Tatars" called the poet "a Tatar from Elisavetpol " (until the 1930s, Azerbaijanis were called "Tatars" ^[11] ) ^[12] . According to the Soviet orientalist A. E. Krymsky , Kocharlinsky’s constructions were based on the assumption of Johann Sherr that Nizami’s mother was a Ganja Azerbaijani, contrary to the testimony of the poet himself, that his mother was Kurdish ^[13] .

Kocharlinsky cites Nizami as an example of an Azerbaijani poet who wrote in Persian in view of the general borrowing by the Azerbaijanis of religion, language and literature from the Persians . At the same time, Kocharlinsky, referring to the general opinion, produced Azerbaijani literature from the first then-known Azerbaijani poet, Vagif (XVIII century) ^[12] .

The American historian Yu. L. Slezkin also mentions that in 1934 a representative of the Azerbaijani delegation at the First Congress of Writers of the USSR called Nizami a Turk from Ganja ^[3] .

The situation in science by the end of the 1930s

The view of Nizami as a representative of Persian literature was dominant in world oriental studies. The same opinion was maintained until the end of the 1930s by Soviet orientalists. According to encyclopedic dictionaries published in Russia ^{[14] [15] [16] [17] [18]} , Nizami is a Persian poet and a native of the city of Qom in central Iran (this fact was subsequently questioned, and modern scholars are inclined to think that he was born in Ganja ) ^[19] . So, the Brockhaus and Efron Encyclopedic Dictionary reports (the author of the article is Agafangel of Crimea ):

the best romantic Persian poet (1141-1203); a native of Kumsky, but wears the nickname “Ganjavi” (Ganja), because he spent most of his life in Ganja (now Elizavetpol) and died there ^[20] .

Similarly defines the poet and the Encyclopedia " Britannica " 1911:

Persian poet, born in 535 Hijra (1141 according to R.H.). His homeland, or, in any case, his father’s abode, was in the highlands of Kuma, but since he spent almost all his days in Ganja in Arran (now Elizavetpol), he is known as Nizami from Ganja, or Ganjavi ^[21] .

Reasons for revising Nizami status

The ideological needs of Soviet Azerbaijan in the 1930s

According to V. A. Shnirelman , after the abolition of the Transcaucasian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic in 1936, the newly formed independent Azerbaijan SSR needed a special story that would allow, on the one hand, to distance the republic from Shiite Iran in order to avoid suspicions of counter - revolutionary pan - Islamism , and with the other is to dissociate Azerbaijanis from the rest of the Turks (against the background of the official struggle against pan-Turkism ). At the same time, Azerbaijanis were in dire need of evidence of their own autochthony, since being ranked as “alien peoples” created a direct danger of deportation . The result was the creation of the Department of History of Azerbaijan at the Faculty of History of Azerbaijan State University and the rapid "Azerbaijanization" of historical heroes and previous historical and political entities in Azerbaijan ^[1] .

Yu. L. Slezkin notes that at that time in the defined republics, efforts to build national cultures of the titular nations were doubled. According to the national line of the CPSU (b) , all the titular nations should have the “Great Traditions,” which, according to Slezkin, should be invented if necessary so that all national cultures, except Russian, become equal ^[3] .

George Burnutyan considers Nizami’s reckoning among Azerbaijani poets ( Rudaki - to Uzbek poets, Rumi - to Turkish poets) in the context of the general policy of weakening the connection of Turkic peoples with Islam and instilling in them a sense of pride in their glorious, albeit fictional, national identity ^[22] .

Anniversary Campaigns of the Late 1930s

In the second half of the 1930s, during the establishment of the values ​​of “Soviet patriotism” ^[4] , anniversaries of the Union- wide scale were organized: Russians - the 100th anniversary of the death of A. S. Pushkin and the 750th anniversary of “ Words on Igor's Campaign ” (1938) ) - and national, including in the Transcaucasian republics: the 1000th anniversary of the Armenian epic “ David Sasunsky ” (1939, the epic took shape by the 10th century ^[23] ) and the 750th anniversary of the Georgian classical poem “The Knight in the Tiger Skin ” (1937 year). To confirm equal status with other Caucasian republics, Soviet Azerbaijan needed to hold a jubilee comparable in scope ^[10] . As part of this all-Union anniversary campaign, preparations began for the 800th anniversary of the birth of Nizami as the great Azerbaijani poet ^{[1] [6]} .

Nizami's Declaration as Azerbaijani Poet

A. O. Tamazishvili notes that the announcement of Nizami as an Azerbaijani poet was carried out on his 800th birthday ^[10] . Victor Schnirelman indicates a more accurate date: 1938 ^[1] .

Analyzing the sequence of events, Tamazishvili comes to the conclusion that initially the idea of ​​recognizing Nizami as an Azerbaijani poet arose from the first secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party (Bolsheviks) of the Azerbaijan SSR, M. D. Bagirov . Having persistent anti-Iranian convictions and being a patriot of Azerbaijan, he considered Nizami's Persian identification to be ideologically unacceptable. However, in the late 1930s, the solution of this issue went beyond the competence of figures of the republican level. In addition, an attempt to write Nizami into Azerbaijanis could be regarded by the Union government as nationalistic; one could also expect objections from scholars, especially the strong Leningrad oriental school ^[10] .

In 1937, the USSR planned to issue an “Anthology of Azerbaijani Poetry”. Nizami’s poems were not included in her original version ^[24] . However, on August 1, the Baku Worker newspaper published a note stating that work on the anthology was completed and it included Nizami’s poems, contrary to all the efforts of “enemies of the people” who “did everything to make the anthology look as skinny and frail as possible” ^{[ 25]} .

To justify the inclusion of Nizami in Azerbaijani poets, the argument was cited by the orientalist Yu. N. Marr (son of academician N. Ya. Marr ), who in 1929 stated that Nizami was his own for the Caucasus and that his poetry was highly respected in Azerbaijan, than in Persia ^[26] . According to Tamazishvili, Yuri Marr did not claim that Nizami was an Azerbaijani poet, but he was the only one who could rely on supporters of this view of Nizami. In addition, the “rays of glory” of his father, who in those years had great authority in academic and party circles, fell on Yuri Marr. Later in Azerbaijan, it began to be argued that academician N. Ya. Marr took part in the revision of "the provisions of bourgeois oriental science that distort the image of the Azerbaijani poet" ^[10] .

In the same year, the Institute for the History of Language and Literature of the Azerbaijan Branch of the USSR Academy of Sciences started preparing for publication of Nizami's works ^[27] .

On April 5, 1938, a decade of Azerbaijani art was held in Moscow, to which the “Anthology of Azerbaijani Poetry” was published in Baku, edited by poet Vladimir Lugovsky with verses by Nizami translated by Konstantin Simonov . In the preface to the publication it was said: “Among the Azerbaijani poets of the XII century, the image of Nizami majestically rises” ^[28] . On the opening day of the decade, the Truth editorial said:

Even in the era of feudal lawlessness, the Azerbaijani people gave birth to the largest artists. The names of Nizami, Khakani, Fizuli of Baghdad compete in glory with the famous Persian poets Saadi and Hafiz. And Nizami, and Khakani, and Fizuli were ardent patriots of their people, who served foreign aliens, only obeying force ^[29] .

On April 18, 1938, Pravda placed the editorial “The Triumph of Azerbaijani Art”, in which the same three poets — Nizami, his contemporary Hagani Shirvani and Fizuli Baghdadi — were called spokesmen for the “rebellious, courageous and angry soul” of the Azerbaijani people, “fiery patriots of their people” champions of freedom and independence of their country ” ^[30] .

Azerbaijan was aware that the result can only be achieved with the involvement of orientalists - primarily from Leningrad. The most active part in this process was taken by the orientalist E. Б. Bertels , who earlier called Nizami a Persian poet, but in early February 1939 published an article in the Pravda article “The brilliant Azerbaijani poet Nizami” ^[31] - according to Tamazishvili, ordered ^[10] .

According to I.K. Luppol , the reference to “Truth” by Nizami was a directive to the action for the Academy of Sciences:

If six months ago a “basement” about Nizami appeared in Pravda, if the party’s body already placed a basement about Nizami in the Soviet Union, this means that every conscious resident of the Soviet Union should know who Nizami is. This is an indication to all decision-making organizations, all instances of republican, regional, district scale, and here the Academy of Sciences must say its word without violating its high scientific dignity in this matter ^[32] .

The role of I.V. Stalin

On April 3, 1939, the Pravda issue was published with an article by the Ukrainian poet Mikola Bazhan , in which he talked about his meeting with Stalin:

Comrade Stalin spoke of the Azerbaijani poet Nizami, quoted his works in order to break the groundlessness of the statement that, say, this great poet of our brotherly Azerbaijani people should be given to Iranian literature only because he supposedly wrote most of his poems in Iranian language. Nizami in his poems himself claims that he was forced to resort to the Iranian language, because he was not allowed to address his people in his native language. It was precisely this place that Comrade Stalin quoted, embracing with the ingenious scope of his thought and erudition everything outstanding that was created by the history of mankind ^[33] .

Walter Kolartz points out that the final verdict in favor of the point of view of Nizami as the great Azerbaijani poet, who opposes the oppressors, but is forced to write in a foreign language, was delivered specifically by Joseph Stalin . Nizami should not have belonged to Persian literature, despite the language of his poems ^[5] .

On April 16, Pravda published a poetic message to Stalin from representatives of the Baku intelligentsia ( Samed Vurgun , Rasul Rz , Suleiman Rustam ) with gratitude for the "return" of Nizami to Azerbaijan:

Owners of our Nizami, appropriating the singer, strangers,
But the nests twisted by the singer in the hearts of appreciation are strong.
You returned his verses to us, returned his greatness.
With the immortal word you illuminated the pages of the world about him ^[34] .

Nevertheless, as Tamazishvili notes, Bertels never in a single publication mentioned the role of Stalin in the issue of “repatriation” of Nizami; also about the role of Stalin is silent in Russian publications, including the publication of Azerbaijani authors ^[10] . However, in Azerbaijan itself, the role of Stalin in the Nizami issue was repeatedly emphasized. So, in 1947, Ali Ibragimov , deputy chairman of the State Planning Commission of the Azerbaijan SSR (since 1970 chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Azerbaijan SSR), described the role of Stalin in the development of the study of the literary heritage of Nizami:

The question of studying Nizami’s work on a large scale in the sense of exploring the multifaceted and rich heritage of his era was started by scientists of the Soviet Union in 1939 after our great leader, Comrade Stalin, was an expert in history in general, the history of the peoples of the Soviet Union in particular, in a conversation with writers, he spoke about Nizami and cited his works. After that, the scientists of the Soviet Union, having received a bright and deep in their scientific correctness attitude, launched an exceptionally large work in the field of research on the creativity of Nizami and his era ^[35] .

Nizami - “poet returned to Azerbaijan”

During the anniversary celebrations it was repeatedly noted that it was the Soviet government and Stalin personally who "returned" Nizami to the Azerbaijanis. So, in 1940, as part of a decade of Azerbaijani literature in Moscow, the leading Azerbaijani poet Samed Vurgun made a report in which he emphasized that Stalin returned to the Azerbaijani people his greatest poet Nizami, who was wanted to be taken away by “vile enemies of the people, Musavatist nationalists, Pan-Turkists and other traitors only because he wrote most of his works in Iranian language ” ^[36] .

On September 22, 1947, Pravda published an article by Nizami, Deputy Chairman of the Union of Writers of the USSR Nikolai Tikhonov :

It is known that Nizami wrote his poems in Farsi. This fact has been used more than once by the enemies of the Azerbaijani people, bourgeois historians, Iranian nationalists, to proclaim Nizami an Iranian poet, as if he had nothing to do with his homeland - Azerbaijan. But this blatant lie will not deceive anyone ^[37] .

At the September anniversary events of 1947 in Baku, the Secretary General of the Union of Writers of the USSR Alexander Fadeev was even more categorical:

If there were no Soviet power, the greatest genius of the Azerbaijani people, even the Azerbaijani people would not know the genius of all mankind Nizami ^[38] .

Nevertheless, as Tamazashvili notes, by the end of Stalin’s life, the version of his role in Nizami’s “return” is coming to naught, as “further shameless exploitation of it could no longer give anything, and Stalin’s dubious laurels in the field of baseline did not attract him, more in the post-war years ” ^[10] .

Other Arguments

The formation of the Azerbaijani ethnos was completed mainly by the end of the 15th century ^[39] . However, the "territorial principle" was one of the fundamental ideologies of "Soviet nationalism", extending also to history. The national concept in the USSR provided for the extrapolation of 15 Soviet republics back to the past. In particular, this concept distinguished Azerbaijani literature from Persian literature, recording Nizami in Azerbaijani poets on the basis that he lived in the territory that later became part of Soviet Azerbaijan ^{[4] [5] [40] [41]} . So, Bertels, as evidence of the Azerbaijani identity, Nizami used the argument about the methodological incorrectness of attributing to Iran the whole complex of Persian literature, regardless of the place of its creation and the ethnicity of the author ^[42] .

Azerbaijani commentators interpreted a number of places in Nizami's poems as an expression of the author’s Turkic ethnic identity ^{[43] [44]} .

A prominent political figure in Azerbaijan at the beginning of the 20th century, the founder of the Musavat party , Mammad Emin Rasulzadeh did not mention Nizami in one of his works published in 1922. For him, the first great Azerbaijani poet was Fizuli . And only in 1949 did he publish the work “Azerbaijani poet Nizami”, in which he wrote: “Despite the false idea, Nizami, in our opinion, is an Azerbaijani poet ... When researching the works of Nizami it is clear that he is far from Farcan nationalism, full of love of Turkic, connected with the environment and conditions of Transcaucasia, constantly busy with worries about the historical fate and geopolitics of the country, and thus he, of course, is a poet of Azerbaijan ” ^[45] .

Nizami's 800th Anniversary Celebration

In May 1939, a special committee was created under the Council of People's Commissars of the Azerbaijan SSR to prepare and conduct the 800th anniversary of the "great Azerbaijani poet Nizami", scheduled for 1941 ^[46] . In the fall, the “Anthology of Azerbaijani Poetry” comes out, the plans for the release of which were announced earlier. In the preface to the anthology, arguments have been cited proving that Nizami is an Azerbaijani poet, including with references to Yu. N. Marra , who was described as a leading Soviet Iranian, and also referred to the “special decision on the anniversary of Nizami,” in which The Institute of Oriental Studies of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR "firmly and resolutely recognized the great Azerbaijani poet in Nizami . " In the works of Nizami, "genuine pictures of the life and life of the Azerbaijani people" were recorded ^[44] . The Azerbaijani authors explained the absence of any research on Nizami in Azerbaijan by the machinations of "vile agents of fascism, bourgeois nationalists, great-power chauvinists" who "did everything possible to hide from the Azerbaijani people the legacy of his great son, the poet Nizami" ^[47] .

The Great Soviet Encyclopedia of the 1939 edition also called Nizami an Azerbaijani poet (the author of the article is Eugene Bertels , who before that referred Nizami to Persian poets) ^[48] . An article in the official Soviet encyclopedia completed the process of revising Nizami's nationality in Soviet oriental studies ^[10] . After 1940, Soviet scholars and encyclopedias recognized Nizami as an Azerbaijani poet ^{[49] [50] [51] [52] [53]} . A different point began to be regarded as a gross political error ^[54] .

In December 1939, Bertels published an article entitled “Preparing for the Nizami's Anniversary” in Literary Newspaper , where, in particular, he especially noted Nizami’s description of the utopian country of universal happiness (at the end of the poem Iskander-name ). Bertels presented this description in anticipation of the emergence of the Soviet Union ^[55] .

Nizami's works were translated into Azerbaijani (all of them were published in Azerbaijani translations between 1941 and 1947 ^[56] ).

The anniversary celebration, scheduled for autumn 1941, was postponed due to the war , although the anniversary meeting was held, in particular, in October 1941 in the Leningrad Hermitage during the blockade . With the end of the war, the campaign resumed. In May 1945, the Nizami Museum was opened in Baku, in one of the halls of which the words spoken by Comrade Stalin about Nizami as a great Azerbaijani poet who was forced to resort to the Iranian language because he was not allowed to refer to his people in their native language ” ^[57] . The main part of the exhibition consisted of paintings on the plots of Nizami's works. Despite the lack of authentic portraits of Nizami, the central picture of the exposition was the artistic image of the poet's work by the artist Gazanfar Halykov , which met Bagirov's requirements. Since the 1960s, this image has become canonical for Azerbaijani textbooks, and Gazanfar Halykov is recognized in modern Azerbaijan as the creator of the artistic image of Nizami ^{[6] [58] [59]} .

The campaign was crowned with celebrations held in Baku in May 1947 ^[10] .

The Role of Nizami's National Identity in Soviet Culture

In accordance with the “territorial principle”, Nizami, as a native of the future Azerbaijan SSR, turned out to be to some extent a “poet of the Soviet Union”, and the memory of him was exploited by ideology precisely in this capacity ^[5] . According to Sergey Panarin, in the USSR, research in the field of oriental literatures was guided by what changes these literatures and, in general, oriental peoples in general thanks to socialism . An analysis of literary works did not allow such conclusions to be drawn, therefore, researchers clutched at disparate historical facts - such as the birthplace of a particular author. As a result, authors who wrote exclusively in Arabic or Persian were “appropriated” by the Soviet republics in order to create the impression that the best part of the pre-Soviet cultural heritage of the peoples that once constituted a single civilization was created within the borders of the future USSR. Soviet propaganda proposed the following scheme: Nizami wrote in Farsi , but was born and lived in the territory of the future Azerbaijan SSR, he reflected the aspirations of the Azerbaijani people and foresaw the bright future of the USSR. Since he foresaw this not as a foreigner, but as an Azerbaijani, he was twice great. Therefore, Azerbaijanis can be considered the “chosen” builders of socialism - because they foresaw a bright future and gave the world a progressive poet-prophet. Panarin notes that this was not related to the true national revival of the Azerbaijani people, but was a purely ideological initiative ^[8] .

Cultural Consequences of the Campaign

According to Tamazishvili, the attribution of Nizami to Azerbaijani poets, and his work to the achievements of Azerbaijani literature, became "the main revolutionary result of this" anniversary "campaign for Russian science ^[10] . In Azerbaijan, the recognition of Nizami as "his" poet led to the appearance of a whole stream of works of art: the poet Samad Vurgun wrote the drama Farhad and Shirin (1941), the composer Fikret Amirov wrote the symphony Memory of Nizami (1947), Kara Karaev in 1947— In 1952 he created a number of musical works based on the works of Nizami (the ballet “ Seven Beauties ” and the suite of the same name, as well as the symphonic poem “Leyli and Majnun”), Afrasiyab Badalbeyli wrote the opera “ Nizami ” (1948), in 1982 the movie was released " Nizami ." Monuments to the poet were erected in Ganja (1946) and Baku (1949; the author of both is Fuad Abdurakhmanov ). In 1985, the Nizami Ganjavi metro station opened in Baku with mosaic panels illustrating Nizami's poems (author - Mikail Abdullaev ), the central street of the city is named after Nizami. In 1947, the Nizami mausoleum was built in Kirovabad in the place where, according to legend, the poet’s grave was located.

Tamazishvili notes that, despite the fact that not scientific research, but a priori allegations led to the conclusion that the poet was national, nevertheless, the Soviet multinational culture benefited from this conclusion. Nizami's poems have been translated into Azerbaijani and Russian. The Presidium of the USSR Academy of Sciences included in the work plan for 1938 the writing of a scientific monograph on "the life and work of the great Azerbaijani poet Nizami." An active part in promoting Nizami’s creativity was taken by Eugene Bertels , who led a group critical of translating Nizami’s Khamsa cycle of poems and published the book “The Great Azerbaijani Poet Nizami in 1940. The Age - Life - Creativity ”, adapted to the ideological standards of its time ^[60] . Accompanied by the politicized anniversary campaign and largely thanks to it, having significantly increased in volume, there was a translation, research and publishing work, important both politically and culturally. According to Bertels, by 1948 a new science was created in the USSR - the baseline knowledge, and the works written about Nizami over the past decade "are many times superior to what Western Europe could write in a century and a half." A politicized analysis of Nizami's work in the USSR suggested that the poet could dream of a communist society, which provoked Bertels' protests in 1947. One of the main outcomes of the anniversary campaign and the recognition of Nizami as an Azerbaijani was the widespread popularization of Nizami's work in the USSR ^[10] .

After the Great Soviet Encyclopedia called Nizami an Azerbaijani poet in 1939 ^[48] , in later works he is described not only as the “crown of a galaxy” of 12th-century Azerbaijani poets, but as a link in a chain of ancient Azerbaijani literature that includes authors not only from the territory of the Azerbaijan SSR , but also from Iranian Azerbaijan ( Khatib Tabrizi , Abulgasan Ardebili ); Her first works are called the Medes of the Legends, recorded by Herodotus , and the " Avesta " of Zarathushtra , "reflecting the religious, philosophical, social and everyday views of the ancient Azerbaijanis" ^{[61] [62]} . This scheme dominated encyclopedias throughout the entire Soviet period ^[63] .

Bertels' attempt to move away from the ethnogeographic principle of identification

In 1948, Bertels made an attempt to abandon the territorial and ethnic approach in Iranian philology. He published the article "Literature in the Persian language in Central Asia", in which he proceeded from the idea of ​​the integrity of Persian literature, saying that he would understand as such all the works, "written in the so-called. “New Persian language”, regardless of the ethnicity of their authors and the geographical location where these works arose ” ^[64] .

Bertels' speech immediately turned him into an object of politicized criticism for the transition to the "erroneous positions of Western European Orientalists", bourgeois cosmopolitanism and a departure from the Marxist-Leninist view of the literature of the peoples of Central Asia and the Caucasus ^{[7] [10]} . In April 1949, at an open party meeting at the Institute of Oriental Studies dedicated to the fight against cosmopolitanism , it was announced that Bertels “helped spread the latest bourgeois-nationalist concepts about the imaginary superiority of Iranian culture over cultures of other countries neighboring Iran, especially when it comes to Soviet socialist republics of Central Asia and the Caucasus ” ^[7] .

Bertels tried to defend his position by declaring the methodological absurdity of classifying writers according to their ethnic or territorial affiliation ^[65] . However, after new accusations on the part of his colleagues in reactionary panirism and bourgeois cosmopolitanism, he was forced to admit his “major mistakes” ^[7] .

World Science

In modern literary criticism, the main point is that the 12th-century poet Nizami Ganjavi wrote in Persian and lived in Ganja , which at that time had a mixed population, mainly Persian, and was influenced by Persian culture ^{[66] [67]} . The only thing known about the ethnic roots of Nizami is that he is a Kurdish mother ^{[68] [69]} . Some researchers believe that his father came from the city of Qom in Central Iran ^[70] .

Outside the borders of the former USSR, Nizami is recognized as a Persian poet in the largest national and specialized encyclopedias, the Azerbaijani version is not considered in them. The same point of view is shared by many leading scholars of Persian poetry ^[71] .

Most scholars of Persian literature believe that Nizami is a typical representative of Iranian culture, which influenced the Islamic culture of Iran and the entire ancient world ^{[72] [73] [74]} .

Specialists in recent history, Tadeusz Sventohovsky and Audrey Altstadt , calling Nizami a Persian poet, at the same time believe that Nizami is an example of a synthesis of Turkic and Persian cultures ^{[75] [76]} . Criticizing the point of view of Altstadt, reviewers note that it broadcasts the ideological views of Soviet Azerbaijani researchers ^[77] . Shirin Hunter, who specializes in Islam, considers it a problem when Western scholars, including Altstadt, accept and legitimize the point of view of Azerbaijani scholars, including a number of medieval Persian poets in "Azerbaijani Turkic literature", in particular Nizami Ganjavi ^[78] . Lornejad and Dustzade, considering the concept of the synthesis of Turkic and Persian culture in the works of Nizami, note that there is no reason to believe that such a relationship exists ^[9] .

In 2012, a book by S. Lornejad and A. Dustzade “On the Politicization of the Persian Poet Nezami Ganjavi” was published in the Yerevan Orientalism series, which examined in detail the issue of identification and the politicization of Nizami, and received positive criticism from a number of famous orientalists ^[79] . Thus, Burnutyan notes that this work “not only debunk a lot of falsifications, but on the basis of a thorough study of Nizami’s works, he proves that Nizami was undoubtedly an Iranian poet.” Paola Orsatti ( Italian: Paola Orsatti ) believes that this book shows the historical failure of Nizami's attribution to Azerbaijani culture ^[9] . believes that such work is absolutely necessary, against the backdrop of the appropriation of Iranian heritage of the ancient and classical periods ^[80] .

Specialist in Persian literature, Rebecca Gould, notes that in most books on Persian literature published in Azerbaijan, the significance of Persian poets born in the Caucasus, such as Hagani Shirvani or Nizami Ganjavi, boils down to a project to increase ethnic prestige. The "nationalization" of classical Persian poets in a number of republics of the USSR, which fit into the general policy of national construction in Soviet times, became a subject of pseudoscience in post-Soviet states, paying attention exclusively to the ethnic roots of medieval figures, and political speculation ^[79] .

Russia

After the collapse of the USSR, encyclopedias in Russian continue to be called the Nizami Azerbaijani poet ^{[81] [82] [83]} . The encyclopedia Krugosvet in an article on Azerbaijani literature (author - Chingiz Huseynov ) completely reproduces the origin of Azerbaijani literature from the Avesta, and the fact that poets of the X-XIII centuries wrote in Persian explains that it was “Persian language empire ” ^[84] . Other Russian experts again speak of Nizami as a Persian poet ^{[1] [6] [10] [85] [86]} .

In 2002, a monument to Nizami was erected in St. Petersburg, in the opening of which the presidents of Azerbaijan and Russia took part. Speaking at the unveiling of the monument, Russian President Vladimir Putin noted that there is "a very joyful, solemn event - we are opening a monument to the outstanding son of the East, the outstanding son of Azerbaijan, the poet and thinker Nizami" ^{[87] [88]} . Speaking about this monument, the head of the department of Iranian philology and the dean of the Oriental faculty of St. Petersburg State University, I. M. Steblin-Kamensky , describes Nizami’s description as an Azerbaijani poet as the fruit of nationalist tendencies and “outright falsification” ^[86] .

Azerbaijan

The political aspect of the issue of nationality of Nizami intensified after the transformation of the Azerbaijan SSR into the sovereign state of Azerbaijan ^[10] . According to Sergei Rumyantsev and Ilham Abbasov, in modern Azerbaijan, Nizami has firmly taken a place in the series of many other heroes and cultural figures from Dede Gorgud to Heydar Aliyev , who serve as an example for today's youth ^[89] .

In the introductory article to the three-volume collected works of Nizami, published in Baku in 1991, the doctor of philological sciences Rustam Musa oglu Aliyev describes the poet in this way:

Nizami is one of the brightest geniuses not only of the Azerbaijani people, but of all mankind. He is the rarest phenomenon in which all the best genetic qualities are concentrated - talent, intelligence, conscience, honor, insight and clairvoyance, primordially inherent in our people ^[90] .

The “History of Azerbaijani Literature” (Nizami Institute of Literature of ANAS , 2007) repeats the Soviet scheme, which takes Azerbaijani literature out of the Avesta ^[91] .

The version of Nizami as an Azerbaijani poet is justified:

• territorial affiliation of Nizami to Azerbaijan; at the same time, the state of Atabekov of Azerbaijan , under whose authority Nizami lived, is considered as an Azerbaijani national state. At the same time, the legitimacy of applying the concept of “Iran” to that era is denied due to the absence on the political map of a state with that name ^[92] ;
• allegations of Turkic ethnicity by Nizami ^{[92] [93] [94]} .

This view is dominant in Azerbaijan. In 2007, the “unacceptable” allegation of Talysh rather than Azerbaijani affiliation by Nizami was mentioned by the prosecution in the trial of Talysh national leader Novruzali Mammadov , accused of treason ^{[95] [96] [97] [98]} .

In 2011, speaking at the Azerbaijan Academy of Sciences , President Ilham Aliyev stated that no one in the world has any doubt that Nizami is an Azerbaijani poet, and that this can be very easily proved. Aliyev linked Nizami’s perception as a non-Azerbaijani poet with the fact that the Azerbaijani culture is so rich that other nations are attempting to ascribe it to themselves ^[99] .

No one has any doubt that Nizami Ganjavi is a brilliant Azerbaijani poet. The whole world knows this. But if there was a need to prove it to someone, then we can very easily do it. The memory of Nizami is dear to every Azerbaijani. The works of Nizami are, of course, an integral part of our national consciousness. As for the question that some forces want to ascribe these works to themselves or to appropriate them, then, unfortunately, we repeatedly encounter such phenomena. And the main reason for this is that Azerbaijani literature, Azerbaijani culture and art are so rich that other parties are trying to appropriate our national heritage.

According to the deputy director of the Institute of Caucasus Studies of ANAS for scientific work Zaur Aliyev, the original Nizami manuscripts proving his Turkic origin are stored in Matenadaran , inaccessible to Azerbaijani researchers ^[100] .