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Azerbaijan Aliyev and the Presidential Election of October 1993
Aliyev and two minor party candidates ran in presidential
elections held in October 1993. Voter turnout was about 90
percent, of which almost 99 percent voted for Aliyev. Many
international observers declared the elections biased because no
major opposition candidates ran, and reporting by the mass media
favored Aliyev and failed to report views of the other candidates
or of the APF. Aliyev was sworn in as Azerbaijan's president on
October 10.
Aliyev was born in 1923 in Nakhichevan of blue-collar
Azerbaijani parents. He crowned a career in Soviet intelligence
and counterintelligence services by reaching the post of chairman
of the Azerbaijani branch of the KGB in 1967. Appointed first
secretary of the ACP Central Committee beginning in 1969, Aliyev
purged Azerbaijani nationalists and directed Russification and
state economic development activities with notable success
through the 1970s. His support of Soviet intervention in
Afghanistan in 1979 brought recognition in Moscow and the Order
of Lenin from First Secretary Leonid Brezhnev, and in 1982 Aliyev
became a full member of the Politburo of the Communist Party of
the Soviet Union. From 1982 to 1987, he was also first deputy
chairman of the Soviet Council of Ministers.
In 1987 Gorbachev ousted Aliyev from the Politburo and
relieved him as party leader in Azerbaijan. Soon after returning
to Nakhichevan in 1990, Aliyev was elected overwhelmingly to the
Supreme Soviet of the Nakhichevan Autonomous Republic on a
nationalist platform. The next year, he resigned his communist
party membership. After the failed August 1991 coup in Moscow, he
called for total independence for Azerbaijan and denounced
Mutalibov, who was then aspiring to the presidency, for
supporting the coup. In late 1991, Aliyev built a power base as
chairman of the Nakhichevan Supreme Soviet, from which he
asserted Nachichevan's near-total independence from Baku.
Data as of March 1994
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