Speech of the President of the Republic of Azerbaijan Heydar Aliyev in the oppening ceremony of the memorial-museum of Huseyn Javid - October 24, 2002

Distinguished Scientists!

Ladies and gentlemen, friends!

I came here after a long time after my last visit to this building. In the past, in 1970-1980 when I was working in Azerbaijan, I used to come to this building many times, because then the Supreme Soviet was located in this building. I used to come and attend the meetings in this building, and each time in this hall I was presenting high state awards to distinguished people of Azerbaijan, to the people of culture and sience. Now many of them have left this world. Bur when I see their pictures in the museum, I remember it. Afterward we built new building for the Supreme Soviet of Azerbaijan. Now in that building is the Parliament of the sovereign Azerbaijan.

There were different views whom this building should be given to. A lot of clients were there, that is many people had claims in this building. And that was natural. Because this building is a historical building, preserved well and is one of the historical monuments of Azerbaijan. But I am of the opinion that this kind of buildings should serve science and culture. It is not appropriate to give these buildings to ministries or administrative organs.

We have precedents in the past. But even then I adhered to this opinion. Because such buildings are the national patrimony and wealth of Azerbaijan.

Any ministry or administrative organization may afford himself to buy an office for itself. But this buildings should be preserved and appropriate organizations should take shelter in them or they should be at their disposal. Therefore after many discussions I decidied to give this building to the Fund of Manuscripts.

You know, some of you may remember, unfortunately for many years, even for decades, our Fund of Manuscrpts, i.e. historic manuscripts, books reflecting the history of Azerbaijan and documents were kept on the ground floor of the building of the Academy of Science and many documents became deterioriated. That is why, we adopted this decision and I am very pleased this decision proved to be correct and has now justified itself.

Now the Fund of Manuscrips became a Research Insitute. As I mentiond, there are many precious and unique books here reflecting the history of Azerbaijan. And many of them are historic monuments of Azerbaijan. Now a whole body of researchers are working here and make scientific researches. And I think that people who are involved in sicience, or in literature and in arts, and people of other fields are using these manuiscrips and will derive benefit from them in future.

Afterwards, another problem was raised. And that was the fact that our great poet, dramatist, philosofpher Huseyn Javid lived in this building. Therefore the quiestion of creating the memorial museum was raised. This matter for a long time was kept on the agenda. But unfortunatelly couldnt be solved for many years. And we solved it now. Now the memorial-museum of Huseyn Javid has been created here. He lived in this building. I just now visited that museum. He used to live in this building along with his family since 1920 till he was arrested. We ensured the establishing of the museum here. Now the memorial-museum of Huseyn Javid is ready.

Today is the hundred and twentheth anniversary of Huseyn Javid. I have signed an order for the celebration of his jubilee. Therefore I came today to the oppening ceremony of this museum.

The museum is intersting, highly attractive. I think those who are intrested in the works of Huseyn Javid, in his life will find very interesting exhibits here. Beside that, researchers and people of science and arts can also get very useful information from the displays.

We revere the memories of the victims of repression. They were exposed to repression, lost their lives, their families endured hardships and faced deprivations. Yes, unfortunatelly instead of saying "thank you" to these people, they were subjected to repression. In Azerbaijan we tried to rehabilitate all the victims of repression and now continue doing so. Books are written about them, memorials are set up for them and this initiatives will be continued.

And Huseyn Javid also is one of the victims of repression and he himself and his family were subjected to many deprivations and hardships. It is regretting that not only separate individuals, but our whole nation was exposed to repression. The repression was not only limited with arrest of these people, they suppressed and banned their works, shot, killed or exiled them and those who were exiled were died there. As a matter of fact, the whole nation was subjected to repression. The repression of our people started in 1920 and it was stage by stage, continued till the end of the 950s.

At the same time, our history, culture were also subjected to repression, even our ethnicity was exposed to repression. Because in the time of Sovied Union they tried to do their best to adjust our history, our past and our traditions to the communist ideology and to the soviet socialist structure. Naturally, when this process takes place, our true history, national and moral values either should have been destroyed, or lost or relinguished. This is our history. We should never forget it. We have to derive lessons from what happened, to make our people never face such situations. Especially it is important when our nation has got freedom. We gained independence, and it is 11 years that we live in the independent country.

I have repeteadly said and declare again that our independence is eternal and it will be so. However, it again depends on ourselves. Depends on the present and future generations, on all of us. We do today our best and must do. We have to set an expample for the future generations and leave behind us a great heritage. When we were celebrating 1300th anniversary of Kitabi-Dede Korkut, we analysed this matter and talked about it. The articles and books written on how the Azerbaijani people was deprivated from this epos. During the processes taking place in the USSR, including the processes in Azerbaijan after the world war second, in 1950, they tried totally to fulsify, fabricate our historical monument and they succeded in it. But we could return "Kitabi-Dede Korgut" to our people. We celebrated its 1300th anniversary internationally and demonstrated to the world that our people has such an anscient history and such an anscient monument.

At that time of jubilee celebrations we wanted to obtain the copy of the Kitabi-Dede Korgut in Azerbaijani language which is saved in the Drezden lib. Now it is delivered to us. I would like to present it to you. I think this is one of the great achievements for the present time and for future of Azerbaijan that we rescued the Kitabi-Dede Korgut from repression and returned it to our people. At last we brought the copy of its manuscript from Drezden to Azerbaijan. I now present it to the Institute of Manuscripts.

I am very glad to see you. I wish to all of you good health and successes in your work.

Thank you.

 
"Azerbaijan" newspaper, 25 October 2002.