Alakbar Rezaguliyev (31 January 1903 in

Baku Baku (, ; ) is the Capital city, capital and List of cities in Azerbaijan, largest city of Azerbaijan, as well as the largest city on the Caspian Sea and in the Caucasus region. Baku is below sea level, which makes it the List of capital ci ...

, Baku Governorate – 31 January 1974 in

) (alternative spelling: Alekper Rzaguliyev) (; ) was an

Azerbaijan Azerbaijan, officially the Republic of Azerbaijan, is a Boundaries between the continents, transcontinental and landlocked country at the boundary of West Asia and Eastern Europe. It is a part of the South Caucasus region and is bounded by ...

i artist. He was awarded the title Honored Artist of the Azerbaijan SSR (1964).

Early life

Alakbar was born in

, into the large family of a small businessman-shopkeeper. Although there were no artists in his family, Rezaguliyev showed artistic talent at an early age. He studied at Moscow Technical Art College from 1925 to 1928. After graduation, he returned to Baku.

Years in exile

Alakbar Rezaguliyev was among the first artists to be arrested in Azerbaijan in what would later be termed as Stalin's Repression, in which an estimated 70,000 Azerbaijanis were executed or exiled along with hundreds of thousands of other citizens throughout the

USSR The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...

. All in all, Alakbar was arrested and sent to

Gulag The Gulag was a system of Labor camp, forced labor camps in the Soviet Union. The word ''Gulag'' originally referred only to the division of the Chronology of Soviet secret police agencies, Soviet secret police that was in charge of runnin ...

labor camps three times and spent more than 23 years of his life in exile: (1)

Arkhangelsk Arkhangelsk (, ) is a types of inhabited localities in Russia, city and the administrative center of Arkhangelsk Oblast, Russia. It lies on both banks of the Northern Dvina near its mouth into the White Sea. The city spreads for over along the ...

at the

Solovetsky Monastery The Solovetsky Monastery (, ) is a fortified monastery located on the Solovetsky Islands in the White Sea in northern Russia. It was one of the largest Christian citadels in northern Russia before it was converted into a Soviet Union, Soviet pris ...

in 1928; (2)

Krasnoyarsk Krasnoyarsk is the largest types of inhabited localities in Russia, city and administrative center of Krasnoyarsk Krai, Russia. It is situated along the Yenisey, Yenisey River, and is the second-largest city in Siberia after Novosibirsk, with a p ...

in Siberia in 1937, (3) and Altai, Central Asia in 1949. The first time he was arrested because one of his friends was accused of "

Pan-Turkism Pan-Turkism () or Turkism () is a political movement that emerged during the 1880s among Turkic intellectuals who lived in the Russian region of Kazan (Tatarstan), Caucasus Viceroyalty (1801–1917), South Caucasus (modern-day Azerbaijan) and th ...

," and Alakbar was deemed guilty by mere association. But when he was sentenced, he didn't even know what he was being accused of or why. Street Scenes from Yesteryear, The Prints of Alakbar Rezaguliyev
AZER.com at ''Azerbaijan International'', Vol. 8:2 (Summer 2000), pp. 16-17. He was sentenced to six years. After being released, he returned to Baku and married Sona Huseinova in 1935; the couple had two daughters, Adila and Sevil. He and Sona later divorced. On November 3, 1937, Alakbar was arrested a second time. He later told fellow Azerbaijani artist Rasim Babayev how it had happened: "One day I was walking down Komsomolskaya Street when I ran into Ruhulla Akhundov (one of the

Bolshevik The Bolsheviks, led by Vladimir Lenin, were a radical Faction (political), faction of the Marxist Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP) which split with the Mensheviks at the 2nd Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party, ...

s who helped establish the

Soviet The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...

system in Azerbaijan). "Ruhulla looked annoyed at seeing me and remarked rudely: 'Hey, dumb guy, are you back here again?' And with those words, I was sent directly back to prison". It was in Altai that he met and married a German woman named Berta, who had been sent to Siberia from a German settlement in the

Saratov Saratov ( , ; , ) is the largest types of inhabited localities in Russia, city and administrative center of Saratov Oblast, Russia, and a major port on the Volga River. Saratov had a population of 901,361, making it the List of cities and tow ...

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. When

World War II World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

broke out,

Joseph Stalin Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin (born Dzhugashvili; 5 March 1953) was a Soviet politician and revolutionary who led the Soviet Union from 1924 until Death and state funeral of Joseph Stalin, his death in 1953. He held power as General Secret ...

exiled all Germans living in the

Soviet Union The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...

. Alakbar and Berta had two sons, Ogtay and Aydin, and a daughter, Sevda.

After Exile

After Stalin died in 1953, tens of thousands of prisoners were released from prison. Alakbar, too, was among those who eventually were able to return to Azerbaijan. The exile greatly affected his personality. He became very serious and morally broken. It even affected his creative activity. He very seldom used colors after returning home. The harsh experiences of imprisonment that he had suffered for more than two decades, after all, had been his fate merely through association and not based on any crime that he had ever committed himself.

References

External links

*To view works of Alakbar Rezaguliyev, visi
AZgallery.org
a website created by ''Azerbaijan International'' magazine featuring artists from Azerbaijan. {{DEFAULTSORT:Rezaguliyev, Alakbar Soviet painters 1974 deaths 1903 births Artists from Baku 20th-century Azerbaijani painters