Authors

Discussion

In 1918, the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic (ADR) became the first modern democratic republic in the Muslim East, but it lasted only two years before Soviet forces erased nearly all official traces of its existence. This project investigates how literature became the only enduring archive of identity in this tumultuous moment. I explore fiction (f.e. Ali and Nino by Gurban Said), journalism, and memoirs, especially the exile writings of ADR founders (f.e. Mahammad Amin Rasulzadeh, as sites where national sovereignty was imagined, performed, and preserved despite political defeat. Drawing on rare émigré publications, Soviet-era underground texts, and materials preserved in European and Middle Eastern libraries, I examine how writers saw the precarious space between East and West, Persia and Russia, Turkey and Europe. By uncovering these suppressed voices, my project not only restores a lost chapter of Azerbaijani history but also illuminates broader questions about how literature preserves memory, shapes identity, and resists authoritarian erasure.