Nariman Narimanov §

Born in Tiflis in 1870 into a Tatar (Azerbaijani) merchant family; trained as a teacher and physician, opened the first free Russian-Azerbaijani reading-room in Baku (1894), and translated Gogol and Tolstoy into Azerbaijani-Turkic. Joined the Hummet group in 1904–05 and the Bolshevik faction soon after; arrested 1909 and exiled to Astrakhan. As chair of the Azerbaijani Revolutionary Committee from May 1920 he formally accepted Sovietisation and from May 1922 chaired the Council of People's Commissars of the Azerbaijan SSR. Wrote a 4 July 1921 letter to the Caucasian Bureau threatening Azerbaijani-Bolshevik unrest and economic non-cooperation if Karabakh were assigned to Armenia, material that Saparov (2014) treats as decisive in the 5 July 1921 reversal. Promoted to chair of the Soviet Union's Central Executive Committee for the Transcaucasian SFSR in 1922; died suddenly in Moscow on 19 March 1925, officially of a heart attack but in circumstances long suspected by Azerbaijani émigrés to involve foul play.