The Socio-Political Situation in Nakhchivan at the Beginning of the 20th Century

The article extensively highlights the difficult situation of the working masses in Azerbaijan, as well as in Nakhchivan, as in the Russian Empire at the beginning of the 20th century. On the one hand, the peasants were subjected to the national-colonial oppression of local khans, beys, and clergy, and on the other hand, tsarism and its officials. On the one hand, heavy landlord exploitation and on the other hand, large amounts of taxes collected impoverished the peasants and turned them into beggars. As a result of this impoverishment, the peasants could not pay their treasury taxes. The tax arrears on them increased from year to year. Also, the article shows that the villages of Nakhchivan, Ordubad, and Sharur joined the struggle by speaking out against the remnants of serfdom and the ruthless exploitation of beys and khans, and the peasants resorted to various means to obtain land. Peasants' recourses to the form of refugeeism expanded significantly and took the form of a partisan movement. We note that despite the tsarist regime and the rampant landlordism in the socio-economic and political life of Nakhchivan at the beginning of the 20th century, the changes that occurred as a result of the unity and contradictions of social relations and mutual relations in the country's economic life, and the reasons and characteristics of the intensification of the class struggle in the country, were not as we know them, but the peasant protests in various forms and methods took on a sharp character