Chairman of the National Council, professor Jamil Hasanli
A very interesting book about our recent past has been published. Doctor of History Shalala Mammadova’s monograph “History in our memory: Azerbaijan after Stalin” is an excellent study. I am the scientific editor of this book and I read this monograph with great interest.
Ms. Shalala received a higher education in history at Baku State and Moscow State Universities. He worked at the University of Texas (University of Texas at Austin) and the Kennan Institute in Washington. In 2014, he did a very interesting doctoral defense entitled “Administrative-emirate system in the Azerbaijan SSR (1920-1930s)” and his monograph with the same name was published.
The book “History in our memory: Azerbaijan after Stalin” is Shalala’s post-doctoral research and was finally published this year. Indeed, as much as Soviet society is uninteresting in the visible side of history, its invisible sides are just as interesting. What Mrs. Shalala presents to the reader are the unseen aspects of the 50s and 60s of the last century.
Ms. Shalala was able to create an interesting picture of the republic’s leadership, political elite and nationalism, social life (education, religion, healthcare) at that time. The book covers aspects of the processes taking place in the Soviet village and social housing of the city, which have not been reflected in the historical literature so far. There are interesting aspects of social justice (or fairness) in the work. The author’s information about the way of life of the isolated segment of the society and the dark affairs of the law enforcement agencies is amazing. One chapter of the book is called “Capitalist economy in Soviet Azerbaijan”. This issue is a completely new issue for our historiography, and Mrs. Shalala khanim started this work.
In the book “History in our memory: Azerbaijan after Stalin” many new archival materials were involved in the research. Part of it is Azerbaijani, the other Russian archival material. But apart from the archives, Shalala Khanum used “samizdads” and memory (oral history) materials that were left out of research for a long time. As a result, the 512-page monograph was very successful. It is very important for those interested in history, especially young people, to read it. There is a lot of new information, a new approach, a neorealist assessment in this book, and most importantly, you will enter a world of history that has not been known until now.