Mikayil Mushfig, an Azerbaijani poet: a victim of jealousy

МІКАЙЛ МУШФІГ, АЗЕРБАЙДЖАНСЬКИЙ ПОЕТ: ЖЕРТВА РЕВНОЩІВ

Після розпаду СРСР у 90-х роках були створені належні умови для перегляду та правової оцінки багатьох питань. На перший план вийшла також доля невинних жертв сталінських репресій 1937року. Протягом багатьох років поклоніння особистості та наступних десятиліть було небезпечно відкрито обговорювати такі питання. Хоча сталінський режим спричинив часткове або повне знищення десятків інтелектуальних сімей в Азербайджані у 1930-х роках, не було відомо, де вони були поховані після страти. Звичайно, відкриття цих могил може надати достатньо інформації про обставини, за яких ці люди були вбиті. Після страти обвинувачених представники місцевого самоврядування всіма силами намагалися приховати результати, щоб ці злочини залишались нерозкритими. Вони знали, що це може викликати підозру, ненависть і образу до соціалізму. До 2018 року також стверджувалося, що азербайджанський поет Мікаїл Мушфіг, який був репресований і страчений у результаті стрілянини у 1938 році у віці 29 років, був кинутий у Каспійське море. Однак через 83 роки колишній офіцер Народного комісаріату внутрішніх справ СРСР (ПКІА СРСР-НКВД) з'явився і зізнався, що він поховав поета під Баку після його виправдання у 1938 році. Його зізнання зруйнувало значну частину інформації, яка все ще існує в суспільстві. Стаття стосується припущень, про які нещодавно повідомлялося в азербайджанських ЗМІ щодо виявлення останків Мікайла Мушфіга. Він є наймолодшою жертвою сталінських репресій. З огляду на це у статті розслідуються та аналізуються короткі сліди життя Микаїла Мушфіга з багатьма чутками про його репресії та страту. Під час пошуку причин, чому Мікайла Мушфіга кинули в машину репресій і розстріляли, розглянуто деякі інші питання, такі як його великий внесок в азербайджанську літературу в роки правління Сталіна, тяжке становище членів його родини, спроби деяких інтелектуалів знищити життя інших, щоб врятувати себе, причини та ставлення людей до цього питання. Це також проллє світло на діяльність жахливих сталінських репресій в Азербайджані, в яких Микайїл Мушфіг був убитий, як і багато інших невинних людей, без розслідування звинувачень.

Ключові слова: репресії 1937року, Мікаїл Мушфіг, азербайджанська література, сталінський тоталітарний режим, жертва заздрості.

Problem statement

Mikayil Mushfig, an Azerbaijani poet, teacher and translator was born in Baku in 1908. He is an obvious example of Azerbaijani intellectuals, was shot in 1938. Because of his great contributions to Azerbaijani literature, he was considered “a king of future Azerbaijani poetry”. He had published 10 books for 11 years including numerous poems and translations (Huseynoglu, 2004: 6). In addition, “after his arrest on October 13, 1937, a large part of his collection was burned by M. Musta- fayev, N. Petrunin, employees of the State Security Department and Shevchenko, the chairman of the Central Executive Committee (CEC)” (Gurbansoy, 2008a: 18). Along with countless poems, translations, children's literature, Mikayil Mushfig had also dozens of ghazals. Almost all of them have disappeared or were deliberately burned. In 1932, “at the request of his friend Ali Huseynzadeh, the poet gave him a manuscript of a ghazal”. This ghazal, entitled “My dear love, sweet sesame seeds”, is the only ghazal survived by his friend. The manuscript was written in the Cyrillic alphabet (Gurbansoy, 2008b: 86).

Research analysis

Even today dark sides emerge at any investigation related to Mikayil Mushfig's execution by shooting. We are going to motivate following research questions in this article: What do the 1937s look like in the society and sources today? Why was he called an enemy of the people? Who was Mikayil Mushfig in reality? Is there any basis of the rumors about the discovery of the poet's grave, whose body is believed to have been thrown into the Caspian Sea? What happened to his family members? Wasn't it genocide of the intellectuals in Stalin regime in the example of the bitter fate of M. Mushfig, his family and relatives? To answer the above-mentioned research questions, the explanatory case study will be employed. The qualitative research tools for this research will enclose content analysis of the official documents, in-depth analysis of literature, numerous articles about M. Mushfig, opinion polls that are logically related to the main task of the study, as well as conversations with the older generation.

The purpose of the article is to have an objective look at the tragic life of Mikayil Mushfig, a 29-year- old young poet and his family members, who were repressed during Stalin repressions in Azerbaijan in 1938 and also to shed light on the basis of the rumors that his body had been thrown into the Caspian Sea after his execution.

Presenting main material

The genocide of the Ismayilzadeh family members Although the news spread that Mushfig was executed and thrown into the Caspian Sea on January 6, 1938, no one dared to find out whether the information was true or false. As it was a frightening time, nobody could show any attempt even to open the window curtain a little and look at who was taken by an arrest car in that time. On the other hand, Mushfig's family members and all his relatives were persecuted. After Mushfig's arrest, “his elder sister Boyukkhanum told the People's Committee of Internal Affairs officers who came to arrest her that she wanted to change her clothes, went into the kitchen, poured oil on her, set her on fire and died”. His younger sister, “Balajakha- num was fired and arrested in 1937 as the sister of an exposed enemy of the people, then exiled to Arkhangelsk. She lived there in a camp for six years, but she was released after being mentally ill”. After “Mikail Mushfig was acquitted in May, 1956”, Balajakhanum was able to return back to Azerbaijan. As the “last surviving family member, the government offered blood money” to Balajakhanum, but she refused to take it and died at her home alone in Baku, in 1970. Two sisters' spouses were also arrested and shot as Mushfig's relatives. Mushfig's elder brother, Mirza, an accountant disappeared with his family and children without a trace after his brother's shooting in 1938. Mushfig's wife, Dilbar Akhundzadeh was arrested on November 1, 1937 and tortured for two months. After a lot of severe and merciless tortures she became psychologically ill and was sent to a psychiatric hospital in 1938. Dilbar Akhundzade was released from prison due to her mental illness in 1939. She died in 1990 in Baku, (Hasanov, 2018). Not only family members and relatives, but also Gulhuseyn Huseynoglu (1923-2013), one of the indefatigable researchers of M. Mushfig's literary heritage, was arrested during the years of personality worship, in 1945. He fought to acquit the people who were repressed in 1937, especially Mikayil Mushfig. Therefore, he was sentenced to be shot in 1943. However, the death penalty was abolished and replaced by 25 years in prison. Fortunately, he was released after Stalin's death in 1955 (Abdul- layev, 2019). Apparently, after Mikayil Mushfig's execution, there was not any family member left to inquire about the location of his grave. However, the poet's body was supposed to be thrown into the Caspian Sea until 1994.

In spite of the presumptions, a former supervisor named Ali Alistan, who claimed to have the poet, refuted these claims. Researchers Hasanov and Novruzoglu tried to identify the man who confessed to burying him. It turned out that “an Azerbaijani sergeant named Ali Mardan Alistan, who knew both Russian and Azerbaijani languages, had been really chosen to monitor M. Mushfig's cell” and translate the investigation materials into Russian on November 26, 1937. Ali Alistan claimed that after the death sentence on the night of 5 to 6 January, he had carried “the body of the convicted № 1109 to the Bayil cemetery” and buried him in one of the unmarked graves, wrote his own name “Ali” on the gravestone with “the intention that the grave would be identified in future”. The Inspector Sinman, who was interrogating the poet, also had mentioned the name of the person “in a reference given to the investigation group of the General Intelligence Agency”. The reference shows that “the appointment of sergeant Ali Mardan Alistan to the cell of prisoner N.1109 had changed significantly” (Hasanov, Novruzoglu, 2017). After more than eight decades, if we believe Ali Mardan Alistan's confession in 1994, Mikayil Mushfig was buried in a secret cemetery of the PCIA of the USSR in Puta settlement of Garadagh district in Baku, Azerbaijan, where other victims of the repressions are also believed to be buried. The government officials with the members of the media attended the cemetery, and “the remains alleged to belong to the poet were exhumed from the secret cemetery of the PCIA”. Whether the grave belongs to our great poet will only “be determined after DNA testing”. However, since no relatives of Mushfig's mother's side are alive, it will probably be necessary to open his younger sister Balajakhanum's grave, “to prove that the specimens really belong to Mikayil Mushfig” (Expertise of the remains, 2018).

The Picture of Repression in Azerbaijan and its Influence on Mikayil Mushfig

It is important to draw attention to what was happening in Azerbaijan when M. Mushfig shone as a poet. “Document No. 57788 on the operational work in the Turkish-Tatar nationalist organizations of the Soviet Union” states that the PCIA carried out “mass repressions in the territory of the Soviet Union, including the Azerbaijan SSR in 1937 and 1938 years. “With the appointment of Nikolai Yezhov as the General Commissioner of this organization” (from September 26, 1936 to November 25, 1938), this work was more accelerated (Directive of the PCIA, 1937). There was almost no family in Azerbaijan that had not been penetrated and suffered from this person. Nikolai Yezhov was considered to be a tyrant who had “no compassion in his heart for people. He also demanded his subordinates to show special cruelty and mercilessness to the intelligentsia, and ordered the use of unimaginable torture on those under investigation”. N. Yezhov, General Commissioner signed another order No. 00447 on the operation to repress former strikers, criminals and other anti-Soviet elements” on July 30, 1937. After this directive, “the traces of anti-sovietism began to be sought in all organizations, departments, secondary schools, and scientific institutions that hindered communism, exposing the enemies of the people” (The operation on repression, 1937).

According to this order, it was necessary to destroy the political enemies immediately and neutralize those who wanted to change the political regime. N. Yezhov had planned in advance for each republic: For example, “1 500 people from the Azerbaijan Soviet Republic should be punished in the first category, 3 750 in the second category”, it would be 5 250 people totally. “Detainees in the first category would be shot, and those in the second category would be sentenced to 8-10 years in prison” (Sirajoglu, 2019). Therefore, “N. Yezhov and A. Vyshinsky, a prosecutor of the USSR, signed a verdict deciding the fate of 21,222 prisoners” in Azerbaijan with the support of the local informants in Stalinist repressions of 1937-1938. The local informants were considered “the minions of Stalin's regime” and they were busy with “writing slander and calumny about the suspected intellectuals”. In order to escape the repressions, those poets presented themselves as the fans of socialism, and in this way, “they annihilated their rival intellectuals by portraying them as enemies of socialism”. The informants sent “69,000 letters from Azerbaijan to the 6th Section of the General Intelligence Department in 1937, which was controlling the state's science, education, literature, art, and health systems. About 85% of the letters were sent back to Azerbaijan from Moscow for investigation and measure”. In Azerbaijan, however, Russian-speaking “employees of the State Security Department did not investigate these letters fairly and did not want to reveal the truth” (Hasanov, 2018).

R. Sirajoglu, a researcher investigating the activities of the PCIA in Azerbaijan, writes that “there were people in all organizations, departments, enterprises and workplaces who willingly provided the PCIA with information obviously”. They immediately wrote “exposing” information about the arrested intellectuals insulting them with the most absurd expressions. It is probably why “the Azerbaijani literature suffered most from the repressions in the Caucasus in 1937 and 1938 years” (Sirajoglu, 2018a). Taking advantage of the turmoil of the time, some betrayers also targeted Mikayil Mushfig. They were envious of his talent and did not want to see him as a pearl of Azerbaijani poetry in the future. That's why they did their best to put him into one of those two categories to be shot or arrested. Yezhov's policy of “cleansing the ground” provided an opportunity for the traitors to carry out their intentions. To achieve this purpose, “29 out of 60 members of the Writers' Union of soviet Azerbaijan, including Mammad Rahim, Abdullah Akbar, Mikayil Rzaguluzade, Seyfullah Shamilov, Asad Ayyubi, Mirmehdi Seyidzadeh, Mammadka- zim Alakbarli wrote the denunciations about Mikayil Mushfig. The group of denouncers knew perfectly well that the written denunciations against him would sooner or later put this talented poet to death” (Who calumniates, 2017).

The Writers' Disease of Envy and Their Attack to the 29 Years Old Poet

It is no coincidence that the subtitle is called “The Writers' Disease of Envy”. I have read Bonita Fred- man's article “Envy is a Disease of Writers” nowadays. Until now, I haven't known that the poets and writers are more jealous than other people. The author especially emphasizes that “for most writers, envy is a professional hazard. It wallows in his head, distracting from his own work, in the most dangerous form, even able to wake the patient from sleep so that he ponders another's triumph” (Friedman, 1989). Similarly, some of the Azerbaijan Soviet Writers' envious hostility against M. Mushfig increased so much in 1937, even they did not care deliberately that they had endangered the poet's life. Indeed, a lot of envious poets could not accept Mushfig's success. Those poets, who were thinking only of the material side of life and were in search of fame, were afraid that Mushfig would overtake them in the field of poetry. For this purpose, his poems were dressed differently, translated into Russian in a different context on purpose. He was presented as a fearsome revolutionary. For example, Mushfig wrote these lines in his poem “Winds” as “take me too, let me fly to the mountains, let me open whatever is in my heart to the mountains!”. However, this verse was intentionally interpreted like “Mushfig wants to run to the mountains and expresses his secret thoughts there. If he has no hidden evil intentions, why does he want to climb the mountains?”. Another example, it was claimed that M. Mushfig had a coded message in the phrase “My lover is in a green dress” in his poem “Like”. They tried to convey that “why Mushfig depicts his lover in a green dress? Isn't it known that this color is a symbol of Islam? Is there no other color?”. One else, they also found the counter-revolutionary call in Mushfig's lyrical poem “Clouds”, which skillfully describes nature. The traitors claimed that “the poet allegedly calls the people to an armed uprising” in this verse “I am in a better mood, and I'm ready to flash like lightning” (Sirajoglu, 2018b).

A lot of detestable articles were regularly published in the “Literature”, “Young Worker”, “New Way” newspapers, “Attack”, and “Revolution and Culture” magazines against the poet in the 1930s. A bespoke article entitled “The Remains of the Enemy in the Literature must be exposed to the End” was published in № 141 of the “Communist” newspaper on June 20, 1937. It was written by a poet, Abdullah Farooq, that Mikayil Mushfig “contradicted the socialist system and continued his suspicious deeds openly and secretly. He must be eliminated as a Musavatist and Trotskyist counter-revolutionary because he has a perverse hatred and enmity against our great socialist system” (Mikayil Mushfig., 2013). During the period of repression, people suspected of spreading anti-Stalin views in Azerbaijan were called “Trotskyists”. The author of the article also called the poet “Trosky's supporter” without any reason. In short, the author was able to draw the PCIA authorities' attention to Mikayil Mushfig. Another article against M. Mushfig was published in the newspaper “Literature”, the issue № 25 (110) on 9 June, 1937. The article named “Let's clean our rows” written by Jafar Khandan, calledMikayilMushfig as “an enemy of the people and socialism” (Gurbansoy, 2008c: 91).