Ruhulla Akhundov ( az, Руһулла Әли оғлу Ахундов, italic=no, Ruhulla Əli oğlu Axundov; 1 January 1897, in

Shuvalan Şüvəlan is a settlement and municipality in Baku, Azerbaijan. It has a population of 14,992. The population origin comes mostly from a settlement of Qala, Azerbaijan. History According to the old generation, an ancient times people i ...

Baku Governorate The Baku Governorate, known before 1859 as the Shemakha Governorate, was a province ('' guberniya'') of the Caucasus Viceroyalty of the Russian Empire, with its center in the booming metropolis and Caspian Sea port of Baku. Area (1897): 34,400 sq ...

Russian Empire The Russian Empire was an empire and the final period of the Russian monarchy from 1721 to 1917, ruling across large parts of Eurasia. It succeeded the Tsardom of Russia following the Treaty of Nystad, which ended the Great Northern War. ...

– 21 April 1938) was an Azerbaijani Soviet politician, publisher and journalist who was the Second Secretary of the Communist Party of Azerbaijan from 1925 to 1926, under the

Soviet The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, ...

leadership of

Joseph Stalin Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin (born Ioseb Besarionis dze Jughashvili; – 5 March 1953) was a Georgian revolutionary and Soviet political leader who led the Soviet Union from 1924 until his death in 1953. He held power as General Secreta ...

Life and career

Akhundov was born in to the family of a teacher. He spoke several eastern and western languages. Since 1916 Akhundov worked in a printing house. In 1917 he was a member of a group of Azerbaijani Left-Socialist-Revolutionaries called the Farmers' Party. In 1918 he was the editor of the newspaper Izvestia of the Baku Council, and in 1919, the Azerbaijani illegal Bolshevik newspaper "Kommunist ". In the same year he joined the

Communist Party A communist party is a political party that seeks to realize the socio-economic goals of communism. The term ''communist party'' was popularized by the title of ''The Manifesto of the Communist Party'' (1848) by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. A ...

. After the final establishment of Soviet power in Azerbaijan, he became the head of the department for work in the villages of the Central Committee of the Communist Party (Bolsheviks) of the Azerbaijan SSR, then secretary of the Baku party committee, editor of the newspaper "Communist" and other periodicals. In the period from 1924 to 1930 Akhundov secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party (Bolsheviks) of the Azerbaijan SSR, director of Azerneshra (state book publishing house) and served as People's Commissar of Education of the Azerbaijan SSR. He was criticized as a member of the “right-leftist bloc”. He made an admission of mistakes. In 1930 Rukhulla Akhundov was elected secretary of the Transcaucasian Regional Committee of the VKP (b). Delegate of the 10 to17th Party Congresses and the 2nd Congress of the

Communist International The Communist International (Comintern), also known as the Third International, was a Soviet-controlled international organization founded in 1919 that advocated world communism. The Comintern resolved at its Second Congress to "struggle by a ...

. The last years of his life he worked at the Institute of Party History under the Central Committee of the Communist Party (Bolsheviks) of Azerbaijan and was head of the department for arts affairs under the Council of People's Commissars of the Azerbaijan SSR. He participated in the organization and management of the Azerbaijan branch of the USSR Academy of Sciences. Akhundov was one of the first translators of the works of

Karl Marx Karl Heinrich Marx (; 5 May 1818 – 14 March 1883) was a German philosopher, economist, historian, sociologist, political theorist, journalist, critic of political economy, and socialist revolutionary. His best-known titles are the 1848 ...

Friedrich Engels Friedrich Engels ( ,"Engels"
'' Lenin Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov. ( 1870 – 21 January 1924), better known as Vladimir Lenin,. was a Russian revolutionary, politician, and political theorist. He served as the first and founding head of government of Soviet Russia from 1917 to 19 ...

into Azerbaijani. He was an author of several works on the history, art, literature, editor of the two-volume Russian-Azerbaijani Dictionary (1928 -29). In the 1930s, he was a member of the editorial board of the journal Revolution and Nationalities, which was the press organ of the People's Commissariat of Nationalities.

Arrest and execution

In December 1936, Akhundov was removed from all posts and expelled from the party. In 1938, he was arrested for "participation in terrorist activities" and sentenced to

execution by firing squad Execution by firing squad, in the past sometimes called fusillading (from the French ''fusil'', rifle), is a method of capital punishment, particularly common in the military and in times of war. Some reasons for its use are that firearms are us ...

by Military Tribunal. He was executed on April 21, 1938 at

Butovo firing range The Butovo Firing Range or Butovo Shooting Range (russian: Бутовский полигон) was an execution site of the Soviet secret police located near Drozhzhino in Leninsky District, Moscow Oblast from 1938 to 1953. Its use for mass exe ...

. In 1959, he was posthumously rehabilitated by

Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR The Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the Soviet Union (Russian: Военная коллегия Верховного суда СССР, ''Voennaya kollegiya Verkhovnogo suda SSSR'') was created in 1924 by the Supreme Court of the Sovie ...

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Akhundov, Ruhulla 1897 births 1938 deaths Politicians from Baku People from Baku Governorate Azerbaijani atheists Azerbaijani revolutionaries Bolsheviks Deaths by firearm in Azerbaijan Executed politicians Executed Soviet people from Azerbaijan Executed Azerbaijani people Azerbaijani people executed by the Soviet Union People of the Russian Civil War People of the Russian Revolution Azerbaijani educators Politburo of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union candidate members First secretaries of the Azerbaijan Communist Party 20th-century Azerbaijani educators Members of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union executed by the Soviet Union