Day: July 20, 2026

Movses Ghazaryan, political scientist and international commentator, spoke to Alpha News about remarks made by Ilham Aliyev, President of Azerbaijan, claiming that “Azerbaijan was a colony within the USSR.”

“The statement by President Aliyev Jr. of Azerbaijan about the alleged colonization of Azerbaijan by the Soviet Union reflects a certain ambiguity in Russian-Azerbaijani relations. And President Aliyev himself, that is, official Baku, is, in fact, the source of these misunderstandings. And, of course, this also demonstrates Azerbaijan’s insincerity in viewing Russia as an ally, or simply as a partner. It shows that official Baku’s intention is to make maximum use, in any format and in any form, of its relations with Russia purely for its own interests, while taking Russian interests into account as little as possible, if we’re talking about the realities of regional politics. This, I think, is the first significant aspect. The second aspect, of course, demonstrates that we’re seeing an affliction typical of all post-Soviet states, which is a state inferiority complex. Most post-Soviet states are forced to assert themselves in political discourse at Russia’s expense, simply because they failed to build a properly nationally oriented agenda for their societies, and are thus compelled to speculate on and feed off such destructive approaches and positions,” the expert believes.

The political scientist believes that Aliyev’s remarks reflect ingratitude on the part of Azerbaijan’s leadership toward its past within the USSR, and inconsistency in assessing the Soviet Union’s contribution to the republic’s development.

“Of course, these approaches and positions don’t actually serve Azerbaijan’s own interests, because Azerbaijan’s political and cultural potential was realized precisely during the Soviet period. In fact, the city of Baku was a city of international culture, including Russian culture. Russian culture was the unifying element for the cultures of all the peoples of Azerbaijan during that period. And, of course, to put it mildly, this is also ambiguous with regard to the current political legacy of President Aliyev Jr. Because it turns out that, as his father’s successor, he is the successor of a collaborator, a Soviet collaborator. And none of this can be explained by ordinary logic, except by the logic of such a political inferiority complex, in which the leader of this state is forced, politically, to find his conceptual footing precisely in such, to put it mildly, ambiguous moments,” Ghazaryan concluded.

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