Alimardan bey Topchubashov §

Alimardan bey Topchubashov was a lawyer, editor and statesman who became speaker of the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic parliament and head of its delegation to the Paris Peace Conference. He represented the ADR's effort to obtain international recognition as a modern parliamentary state rather than as a temporary wartime administration. In Paris he argued for Azerbaijani sovereignty over Baku, Karabakh and the surrounding disputed territories while Armenian delegates advanced overlapping claims for a larger Armenian state. The diplomatic collision was not just ethnic antagonism; it was a collision between two new republics whose maps could not both be satisfied. Topchubashov remained in exile after Sovietisation and died in Paris in 1934. His biography shows the European diplomatic dimension of the Armenian-Azerbaijani territorial problem before it was frozen into Soviet borders.