Ayaz Mutallibov, the first president of Azerbaijan after the country declared its independence from the Soviet Union, died at the age of 83 on March 26.
Mutallibov was born in Baku in 1938.
After graduating from the Azerbaijan State Institute of Petroleum and Chemistry in 1962, Mutallibov in 1963 became a member of the Azerbaijani Communist Party.
From 1977 to 1990, he held various senior positions in the country's management structures.
He was appointed head of the Council of Ministers of the Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic in 1989.
Mutallibov won the election held on September 8, 1991, becoming the first president of independent Azerbaijan after the USSR collapse.
On February 25, 1992, the Azerbaijani opposition insists on convening an extraordinary session of the Supreme Council of the republic, at which it puts forward a demand for the resignation of the president, blaming him for the aggravation of the situation in Nagorno-Karabakh. For two days, the deputies were held hostage by the armed opposition. To avoid inevitable bloodshed, Ayaz Mutalibov was forced to resign. He left his post on March 6, 1992.
Mutallibov then moved to Russia, where he lived until 2012, and after that returned to his home country and announced that he would abstain from politics.
The former president had been hospitalized and was undergoing medical treatment.