Russian press: Heydar Aliyev - legend of Azerbaijan

National Leader Heydar Aliyev, who accepted Azerbaijan as an agrarian-industrial country in 1969, developed many areas of industry and turned it into an industrial-agrarian country, political scientist Fuad Akhundov said, Report informs, citing Moskovskij Komsomolets.

“He started leading the country even in the Soviet era. Heydar Aliyev did a lot for Soviet Azerbaijan: he ensured investment in the republic, brought Western technologies to Azerbaijan, which were rare at that time. The famous air conditioning plant in Baku, many chemical industry enterprises related to oil refining are the result of his work. The republic was developing and reverberating throughout the Soviet Union. When he returned to the leadership of the country at the request of the people in 1993, he began to conduct politics under new conditions. Heydar Aliyev stopped the civil war, as well as the war with Armenia, which had territorial claims against Azerbaijan,” he said.

Fuad Akhundov said that according to many senior officials in Moscow, if Heydar Aliyev, not Gorbachev, had been elected as the President of the USSR, the Soviet Union would not have collapsed.