Literature and criticism in “Communist newspaper” during the years of repression (1936-1937)
Gabil Aliyev

The article analyzes the literary samples and critical materials published in the newspaper "Communist" in 1936-1937s . At the beginning of the twentieth century, after the transfer of power from the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic to the Bolsheviks, red terror and repression began in the country. Initially the Soviet government targeted patriotic national intellectuals, young people, but over the years it targeted the entire intelligentsia, the pen owners who lived and worked before April 1920 in order to consolidate their power. People who were considered "suspicious" in terms of creativity and ideas were persecuted, arrested and shot for baseless slanders, and deported from the country at best. From the first years of Soviet rule, Azerbaijani literature lived and developed in spite of the most severe pressures and the difficulties of creating a new work in an environment where every word and sentence they wrote were checked. Ahmad Javad's "Goy Gol", Huseyn Javid's "Prophet", Mikail Mushfig's "Reading Tar" and other works of our poets and writers were created during such a difficult period. They were later imprisoned on the charges of "pan-Turkist", "pan-Islamist", and "Trotskyist" with the help of "critics" who inspected their writings. Although our writers and poets tried to write artistic examples that meet the requirements put in front of the literary forces by the party and the state in the complex socio-political situation, they were still presented to the people in the image of the enemy. They had no hope of coming out the next day, and every day several pen pals, well-known actors, and intellectuals were arrested, their committed "crimes" were proven through torture, and they were severely punished. From the works of the repressed Hussein Javid, Ahmad Javad, Mikail Mushfig and other poets and writers, it is clear that they were exiled to Siberia under the label of "enemies of the people" without sin and were shot. When we examine all the works of art published in the newspaper "Communist" during that period, we can conclude that the works created by our writers and poets at that time consisted only politically motivated works required of them. Among these examples, we occasionally come across poems dedicated to the nature of Azerbaijan, love of country and homeland. The repression of our prominent writers was a political order of the communist regime.

Keywords: “Communist” newspaper, repression, literature, criticism, Azerbaijan