M.A. Rasulzadeh in Search for National Identity: Development of the National Ideology From Turkism to Azerbaijanism

Abstract: The article examines the struggle of leading public and political figures of Azerbaijan, especially M.A. Rasulzadeh, one of the founders of the first republic and the ideology of Azerbaijanism, in the field of national identity and understanding of the national characteristics of the country at the turn of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. These issues are interpreted on the basis of periodicals and archival materials. The article indicates that the basis for the formation of the idea of Azerbaijanism, created by M.A. Rasulzadeh, it was because after the split between Russia and Gajarid Iran at the beginning of the 19th century, when the Azerbaijanis felt themselves to be a single social organism, a society bearing the seeds of a particular culture, that is, a separate nation from the Russians. It is further noted that as social forces developed and wider sections of the population joined the social movement, the national movement in Azerbaijan became more European-oriented than in other places in the Muslim East.