It is known that the ideological and political bans that existed in the Soviet era did not allow to explore the rich literary and scientific heritage of Azerbaijan's political emigration, not only the mass reader, but also the absolute majority of experts dealing with the historical problems of Azerbaijani literature could not get acquainted with this heritage.
From April 1 to 6, 1991, the Institute of Literature named after EA Nizami of Azerbaijan (now the Institute of Literature named after Nizami Ganjavi of ANAS), the Writers' Union of Azerbaijan, the "Vatan" Society, the National Creative Agency of Azerbaijan and the Azerbaijan Cultural Association in Ankara jointly organized in Baku. "Emigration literature of Azerbaijan" international scientific symposium gave a certain impetus to research in this direction. At the symposium, reports were read and discussions were held on the works of a number of outstanding representatives of Azerbaijani emigrant literature and literary-scientific thought. Those reports, which were mainly introductory, were very important for their time in terms of directing the attention of the literary-scientific community to this topic, justifying the relevance and necessity of research in the mentioned direction.
A few months after the symposium, the restoration of state independence of the Republic of Azerbaijan opened up new development prospects for humanities and social sciences, and created fertile conditions for the objective investigation of a number of topics prohibited by ideological and political considerations during the Soviet era. As a result, a number of remarkable works have been carried out in the direction of collecting, publishing and researching Azerbaijani emigrant literature. Since we have discussed the vast majority of these works in detail in our various articles and monographs, we will not dwell on them here. However, there is enough work to be done in the direction of collecting, publishing, researching and promoting Azerbaijani emigrant literature. It was this necessity that determined the establishment of the department of Azerbaijani emigrant literature at the Nizami Institute of Literature. The department started functioning as a temporary structural unit on July 16, 2013, and became a permanent structural unit by the decision of the ANAS Presidium dated November 17, 2013. The main task of the department is to continue the systematic collection of our emigrant literature and to publish and research this rich literary and scientific heritage and bring it to the people of Azerbaijan.
Ten years is a moment in history. Maybe one tenth of a moment, maybe one hundredth. During this period, the department overcame the objective difficulties of the organizational stage and achieved a number of remarkable successes in the direction of collecting, publishing, researching and promoting our emigrant literature with a small staff potential and limited financial resources.
During the ten-year period of activity, 5 books of the department employees (Nikpur Jabbarli's "Elchin and the problems of Azerbaijani emigration studies" (Baku: Education, 2014), "Azerbaijani emigration poetry" (Baku: Elm va tahsil, 2014), "Emigration and issues of 20th century Azerbaijani literature" (Baku: Science and Education, 2015), Abid Tahirli's "Life and Creativity of Jeyhun Hajibeyli" (Baku: Science and Education, 2019), "Life and Creativity of Muhammad Altunbay" (Baku: Khazar University Publishing House, 2023), more than 250 scientific and scientific-publicistic articles (including 8 articles in foreign scientific journals) have been published.
According to the appropriate decrees of the President of the Republic of Azerbaijan, a number of scientific and scientific-organizational events were carried out in connection with the 130th anniversary of Muhammad Amin Rasulzadeh, 150th anniversary of Ali Bey Huseynzadeh, 125th anniversary of Jeyhun Hajibeyli and 150th anniversary of Ahmed Agaoglu.
The II International scientific conference on "Azerbaijani emigration literature: realities, problems, tasks" organized by the department on October 10-11, 2016 is one of the remarkable successes of our national emigration studies in recent years. This event, which took place 25 years after the first symposium held in Baku in 1991, was conceived as a part of the series of events dedicated to the 25th anniversary of the restoration of state independence of the Republic of Azerbaijan. At the conference held at the level of international standards, reports dedicated to current problems related to the collection, publication, research, promotion and teaching of Azerbaijani emigrant literature were listened to and effective discussions took place. On the second day of the conference, the presentation ceremony of the "Mohammad Amin Rasulzade" volume of the "Library of Azerbaijan emigrant literature" book series was held.
Undoubtedly, the mentioned conference was important from the point of view of the research perspectives of Azerbaijani emigration literature. Thus, at the conference, the work done in this direction during the years of independence was analyzed, the successes and problems of the field were identified, and the tasks ahead were clarified.
Developing the direction of literary historiography of emigration studies, preparing portrait-monographies that fully reflect the life and creative path of individual outstanding representatives of Azerbaijani emigration literature are among the main tasks before us. Monographs on the life and work of Jeyhun Hajibeyli and Muhammad Altunbay have already been published. By the end of the year, the monograph of Shahbaz Shamioglu (Musayev) "Life and creative path of Ahmed Agaoglu" is expected to be completed. In the coming years, it is planned to publish monographs of this type on Muhammad Amin Rasulzadeh, Mirza Bala Mahammadzadeh and Abay Dagli.
Apart from that, the preparation and publication of the collection of articles "Great writer and thinker" dedicated to Ali Bey Huseynzade, whose life and work was largely related to emigration, is one of the important projects carried out by the Department of Emigration Literature of Azerbaijan.
The President of the Republic of Azerbaijan "On the 100th anniversary of the Azerbaijan People's Republic" May 16, 2017, "On the declaration of 2018 as the "Year of the Azerbaijan People's Republic" in the Republic of Azerbaijan" January 10, 2018, "The genocide of Azerbaijanis in 1918 On the 100th anniversary" of January 18, 2018 and "On declaring 2022 as the "Year of Shusha" in the Republic of Azerbaijan" of January 5, 2022, a number of works in the department (printing of articles, participation in international scientific conferences) report, book presentation, etc.) have been performed.
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The complex scientific research project on "Azerbaijani emigration literature: organization, development stages and problems" submitted by the department employees to the main grant competition of the Fund for the Development of Science under the President of the Republic of Azerbaijan announced in 2015 was announced as the winner in October 2016 and its implementation lasted for 2 years. during (April 1, 2017 - April 1, 2019). Within the framework of the project, studies were conducted on various genres (poetry, prose, drama, literary studies) and theoretical problems of Azerbaijani emigrant literature. As a result of research on the project, 20 articles, 3 monographs were prepared, 18 articles were published, 1 monograph - (Shahbaz Shamioglu (Musayev). Azerbaijan emigration heritage: prose and literary studies. Baku: Elm va tahsil, 2023, 332 p.) is already out of print. , and the other 2 monographs will be published as soon as funding is available.
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One of the main reasons preventing the intensity of work in the field of research of Azerbaijani emigrant literature, perhaps the first one, is that the vast majority of the texts of this literature have become bibliographic rarities, and some of them, in the case of autographs and manuscripts, have been ignored in non-print status. It is not easy for the researchers to get those texts scattered on the pages of hundreds of books, newspapers and magazines preserved in different libraries and archives of the world (including private ones). In order to significantly solve this problem, the Institute of Literature named after Nizami Ganjavi of Azerbaijan National Academy of Sciences has started publishing a series of books from the "Azerbaijan emigrant literature library" series. This series was established at the request of the Institute by the decision of the Presidium of the Azerbaijan National Academy of Sciences No. 10/16 dated April 21, 2010, and the International Editorial Board of the publication was approved. However, a number of objective and subjective points did not allow taking practical steps towards the publication of the mentioned series for a long time. Only with the establishment of the department of Azerbaijani emigrant literature at the Institute, the work on the research and preparation for publication of this rich branch of our 20th century literature has gained momentum.
In accordance with the decision No. 24/7 of the Presidium of the Academy of Sciences of Azerbaijan dated December 11, 2013, in order to increase the reputation of the "Azerbaijan emigrant literature library" series, its representation in academic bases and to introduce it to the international scientific community, as well as in connection with the death of two members, the Editorial Board of the publication The team was approved in a new composition.
The series is initially planned to be published in 25 volumes. The volume is based on printed and non-printed works collected from different libraries and archives of Azerbaijan, Turkey, Germany, France and Poland, as well as private funds. The vast majority of readers of Azerbaijan will be familiar with most of these works for the first time. Already 6 books from that series - M.A. Rasulzadeh. "Selections from the literary-scientific heritage of the emigration period", "Selected works" by Jeyhun Hajibeyli, "Fuzuli" research by Salim Rafig Rafioglu, "Selected works" by Teymur Atashli, "Works" by Alazan Baycan and "Selected works" by Suleyman Tekinar were published. Experts in the field and those interested in the problem of emigration welcomed these volumes. In recent years, Mirza Bala Mahammadzadeh, Muhammad Ali Rasulzadeh (Rasuloglu), Abdulvahab Yurdsever, Abay Dagli, Muhammad Sadiq Aran and others from this series. the publication of the next volumes covering the literary-scientific heritage of emigrant writers is planned.
We believe that the books to be published in the mentioned series will gain the sympathy of the literary and scientific community, will increase the interest in the emigration heritage in our country, and will play an important role in the development of national emigration studies.
Usually, they say that literature is human science. Of course, this is true. Azerbaijani emigration literature establishes the most basic human right - the right to live, the right to live as a citizen of a free and independent state. The saying "Freedom to people, independence to nations" defines the ideological-political direction of this literature.
The flag that rises once, never comes down again!
Nikpur Jabbarli
Azerbaijan MEA Institute of Literature after Nizami Ganjavi
Head of the Department of Azerbaijani Emigration Literature,
Doctor of Philology, associate professor,
Winner of the State Prize of the Republic of Azerbaijan
nikpur16@gmail.com
