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CULTUROLOGY
UDC:7.032
Nurlana Karimli Azerbaijan National Academy of Sciences Institute of Arhitecture and Art DOI: 10.24412/2520-6990-2022-35158-7-10 WOMEN'S ISSUE IN AZERBAIJANI SOCIETY AT THE BEGINNING OF THE 20th CENTURY
Нурлана Керимли
Институт Архитектуры и искусства Национальной Академии Наук Азербайджана
ЖЕНСКИЙ ВОПРОС В АЗЕРБАЙДЖАНСКОМ ОБЩЕСТВЕ В НАЧАЛЕ ХХ ВЕКА
Abstract
In this article the author talks about the first manifestations of feminism among Azerbaijani women. The women's issue in Azerbaijani society at the beginning of the 20th century became relevant for several reasons. The women's issue during this period came to the fore in many countries of the world. Women-educators, women-philanthropists - the era of outstanding women: Khanifa Aliyeva, Hamid Khanum Javanshir, Sisters Agayev and many others. Growing status of the social women's initiative. Participation in socio-political movements. The increase in the status of women in politics and economic life. Azerbaijan Democratic Republic and the social and legal status ofwomen. During the study period, studying the primary sources, we come to the conclusion that there was no such industry where women would not take an active part in the public life of the republic, moreover, they were promoted to leadership positions.
Аннотация
В данной статье автора говориться о первых проявлениях феминизма среди азербайджанских женщин. Женский вопрос в азербайджанском обществе в начале ХХ века стал актуальным по нескольким причинам. Женский вопрос в этот период вышел на первый план во многих странах мира. Женщины-педагоги, женщины-меценаты - эпоха выдающихся женщин: Ханифы Алиевой, Гамида ханум Джаваншир, сестер Агаевых и многих других. Растущий статус социальной женской инициативы, участие в общественно-политических движениях, повышение статуса женщин в политике и экономической жизни повлияло на правовой статус женщины в период Азербайджанской Демократической Республик. За исследуемый период, изучая первоисточники, приходим к выводу, что не было такой отрасли, где женщины не принимали бы активное участие в общественной жизни республики, более того, их выдвигали на руководящие должности.
Key words: Azerbaijani woman, gender, female educators, women-philanthropists, artistic culture, women artisans, cultural heritage
Ключевые слова: Азербайджанская женщина, гендер, женщины просветительницы, женщины-меценаты, женщины-ремесленницы, художественная культура, культурные наследия.
The people of Azerbaijan are proudly celebrating the 105th anniversary of the first parliamentary republic in the Muslim East - the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic. After the proclamation of the Republic, democratic reforms were carried out in the country within the shortest possible time. One of the main was introduced universal suffrage. In one of the chapters of the law it was noted: "Citizens of the Republic of both sex who are 20 years old by the election day are entitled to participate in elections to the Constituent Assembly". Thus, Azerbaijan became the first Muslim country in which women were granted such a right; The Azerbaijani women even outstripped in this regard the majority of their European and American counterparts. Women's activity in Azerbaijan, starting its way from the spread of ideas of enlightenment and charity, of course, had its own specific features, formed by cultural, religious, national traditions. Research work related to the social activity of women was partially known already in the Soviet era, but they were interpreted ambiguously, subject
to "party censorship" and at the same time, influenced by the prevailing tradition - to portray women of that time as unhappy and "enslaved".
Researchers of the history of the women's movement, gender specialists, sociologists and political scientists have not yet come to a consensus on how to treat the women's movement, especially at its early stages among the Turkic peoples of the Caucasus and, first of all, in Azerbaijan. Was it, at least to a small extent, connected with the feminism of the first wave, literally, shaking the social foundations of Western society? If the women's movement by definition can not develop in the context of patriarchal traditions, what is the primary cause of his birth in Azerbaijani society? Whether it was the result of a clash of ideas and theories or its history is, rather, a complete drama of the history of human destinies, strong and whole personalities? The women's movement that is being formed in the country is studying the foundations and traditions of women's activity in Azerbaijan, understanding its origins more
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deeply. The historical palette appears rich enough: the proud queen of the Massagets Tomris, who managed to defeat the legendary Cyrus, the founder of the Persian state of Achaemenides, the heroic rulers of Nushaba, Heiran Nisa Beyim, who defeated the Crimean Khan who attacked Shirvan and the Ottoman troops, Fatali Khan's wife, Tuti Bike, courageously leading into battle detachments of men. Sarah Khatun, Daspine Khatun and Mehinbana Sultan Aliyeva showed themselves in the diplomatic field. On a cultural background, a galaxy of famous poets is shining: Mehseti Ganjavi, who managed to praise the woman's right to freedom in the choice of the beloved in the era of the Middle Ages, who created the first literary salon in Shusha Khurshud-banu Natavan, Heiran khanum, Fatma khanum Kemine, Shahnigar khanum, Ashug Peri. But the women of the ruler, warriors, diplomats, poetesses and artists are rare individuals who broke into the "male" story. And how many of them are talented and clever, brilliant and bold, whose names have sunk into oblivion. So now we want to explain the principle of this selection, and the motives.
It is very important that the reader understand: the initial period of the women's movement in our state is extremely clearly divided into two stages - before and after the Sovietization of Azerbaijan. There is almost no natural historical continuity between them, which is explained by the antagonism of two worlds, two models of Azerbaijani society: pre-and post-revolutionary. Women from privileged classes, "secular lionesses", for whom the very notions of feminism or the struggle for equal suffrage, were the first to go to the forefront of the struggle for women's emancipation, were something remote, existing in another, even an alien dimension. Were the acquaintances of the same S. Tagieva-Arablina, L. Tuganova, I. Ashurbekova and many other women famous for their charity and educational activities, with the ideas of the traditional, classical, liberal, humanistic feminism that appeared in the West as a social movement shortly before the birth of our heroines? It is likely that they, as they would say now, had information on this issue. Indeed, the secular ladies of the Azerbaijani society were well educated, often visited abroad.
But on the other hand, there was no evidence: neither written nor oral, about the commitment of the wives and daughters of Azerbaijani oil owners to the ideas of Western feminism. Russian newspapers wrote about these women's movements, and the ladies of high society were known to be zealous readers, but the first Russian feminists emerged from an all-encompassing environment, while the supreme women's society of Azerbaijan established its social identity as an aristocratic commonwealth. And already quite confidently we can say that our heroines were far from the fact that the International Women's Day was approved in memory of the strike of textile workers in America. Although both the strike itself and the women's conference in Copenhagen, which established March 8 as a women's holiday, fell on the heyday of Azerbaijani charity -the first decade of the twentieth century. So what was the source of female philanthropy and enlightenment in Azerbaijan, their main components? It seems that three
such positions can be singled out: the specific historical period of the development of capitalism in the Russian Empire, and especially in Azerbaijan as an industrialized part of this state, the idea of Azerbaijan education, and, as it does not idealistically sound, the purity of the souls of these remarkable women, which the great Kant admired as well as the starry sky above his head.
From the standpoint of European feminists, especially radical ones, the contribution to the women's movement by the wives and daughters of "the powerful of this world" did not have political or social motivation and did not go beyond the forms of philanthropy that was usual for the beginning of the twentieth century. Not all representatives of their social class, dressed according to the latest Paris magazines, were distinguished by a passion for voluntary donations. However, we agree with the fact that the battle cry of Western feminists: "The world does not need charity. The world needs justice "was conceptually alien to the ladies from the Azerbaijani upper classes. In their minds, justice was almost synonymous with the philosophical or psychological state that the famous mother of Theresa, in her speech at the presentation of her Nobel Prize, described it as "an atonement with compassionate". Yes, these refined, intelligent, conscientious women who did not even have a terrible price to pay for their short life in luxury and wealth could not help but feel guilty for the ignorant people, for their peers, timidly covering themselves with a veil on dusty the streets of the old city, for the source of their untold wealth - the Baku fishery, called the shocked Gorky "a brilliant picture of a gloomy hell". Of course, ladies from wealthy families did not "go to the people" in the religious-sacrificial or revolutionary sense of this concept. But it is not by chance that the main point of application of their forces was education.
Now they would say that the starting conditions from which they started were the worst in the entire South Caucasus. Outstanding Azeri educator Hasanbek Zardabi painfully wrote at the time: "At the time when educational institutions were opened in Tiflis and in neighboring cities and in general the methods of correct culture were instilled, the eastern Caucasus was as it were forgotten ... And the population of the eastern Caucasus, mainly Muslims, was considered uncultured, not succumbing to civilization. It seems that both Tagiyev and Ashurbekova and other women of their circle were keenly aware of the tragic state of their society, so they concentrated their efforts specifically on educational activities, trying to give an opportunity to get education, first of all, Azerbaijani girls. In such a sensible and at the same time very rational approach, it seems, first of all, the most direct influence of the ideas of the Azerbaijani education, its brightest representatives: Akhundov, Zardabi, Sabir, Mamedkuli-zade, Mi-nasazov, and many other thinkers. Education in Azerbaijan had a "masculine" and it's hard not to agree with Z. Kulizade's exact idea: "The result of this close-knit struggle of men - representatives of various trends and trends of the Azerbaijani intelligentsia of the 19th -early 20th centuries were significant changes in the socio-cultural life of Azerbaijan, Gradually the public opinion of the nation changed and real conditions were
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created to provide certain opportunities for women and girls. The latter, above all, concerned their admission on a relatively broad scale to education, through the creation of women's multi-level educational institutions. The formation of the nation during this period appeared as one of the possibilities to free itself from colonial dependence" [1, c. 9-11].
The influence of male educators on advanced women in high society was enormous. Suffice it to say that almost all of them knew each other personally. The same Hasanbek Zardabi was one of the inspirers of the creation of the educational society "Nijat", stood at the origins of the national theater, which grew out of the bustle of amateur performances, the name of the great journalist Jalil Mamedkuli-zade is connected with the publication of the first female magazine "Ishig", and such examples can be bring a lot. Azerbaijan's education, unlike the European one, was both more romantic and more revolutionary, and its anti-clerical orientation was much more pronounced than that of seventeenth-century philosophers. A remark of E. Akhmedov, a well-known researcher of this period, is very correct in this connection: "One of the peculiarities of the philosophy of the Azerbaijani Enlightenment is that its formation coincided in time with the process of formation of national self-consciousness of the people" [2]. And it is quite natural that the problem of the emancipation of the Azerbaijani woman has become one of the central themes of their philosophical observations and pub-licistic speeches.
In this regard, the point of view of one of the prominent Azerbaijani educators, G. Minasazov, expressed by him in an open letter to the editor of the newspaper Irshad, Ahmed-bek Agayev, is very illustrative: "Until the women's question is resolved, while the Muslim woman will be in the position of a slave, while the word "arvad" will be the most insulting word for Muslims, while our mothers and wives remain in an atmosphere of impenetrable darkness, hopeless ignorance and mental squalor - all our loud phrases that Muslims communicate to the universal culture, that they are supporters of progress, civilization and all its attributes, such as personal freedom, words, beliefs, etc., all these phrases will be given with insincerity and rude bragging "(3). I would like especially to draw readers' attention to the history of women entering adult life in the very beginning of the twentieth century. All of them were not only integrated into Soviet society, although some of them fell under the flywheel of brutal Stalinist repressions, but also became the true heroines of modern Azerbaijan, its national treasure. This is the educator Hamid Javanshir-Mammadguluzade, the doctor and musician Nazira Shah-Mirza, the dramatic actresses, the mother and daughter of Aziz and Sona Mamedova, the oil engineer Firuza Kerimova, the trade unionist Mariamkhanum Bayramalibekova and many other women whose glorious life the reader learns from this book.
Perhaps the first years of the Soviet period should be seen as a breakthrough in the emancipation of a woman of the East, which enabled her to become a full member of society. For many years, such a position was
considered indisputable. But now, among modern researchers of gender problems, another point of view is triumphant. In their opinion, the Soviet period is characterized by the flourishing of the so-called "forced feminism", where the definition of "compulsory" is merely a euphemism of the term "violent". Still, many researchers ask today: if it were not for the April events of 1920, the political, cultural, social values laid down in the context of the socio-political system of the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic would be fertile soil for the flourishing of the national model of feminism, they would lead, in finally, to the triumph of educational ideas, the most important of which was gender equality? However, the very formulation of the question gives the ground for serious reasoning, although the statement that history does not have a subjunctive mood has already become a common phrase, and a free interpretation of not even real facts but hypothetical assumptions has not so much scientific value as it serves as an instrument for ideological substantiation of narrowly party , often opportunistic goals. And yet, let's try to analyze the system of evidence of supporters of the theory of women's emancipation in the West European model in the context of the development of public structures of ADRs. Naturally, what is meant is the evolutionary path, the unfolding of feminist ideas in the system of legislatively accepted norms of democracy and liberalism.
It is known that as far back as 1907 the leader of the Muslim faction in the State Duma of Russia, H. Hasmamedov, proposed a bill on granting women suffrage, and the Muslim faction, although with reservations, supported this legislative initiative. The fact is indicative: in 1917 a woman, Shafiga Efendiyeva, was included in the delegation from Azerbaijan to the First Congress of Muslims of the Caucasus, which was held in Baku. A talented teacher, a brilliant and fearless orator, she herself took the floor to tell the audience about the difficult problems of Muslim women, but her clever and emotional performance remained a voice crying in the desert. The Congress not only showed complete indifference to her words, but also met the speaker most unkindly. And this is also an indicator of the attitude to the political participation of women at that time, not a separate fact, but a drop in which the entire sea is visible. Azerbaijan was the first in the East to support the granting of electoral rights to women, for years ahead of even some European countries in resolving the problem of gender contradictions. Yes, in preparation for the elections to the Constituent Assembly of ADR, women were given the right to elect and be elected, which is a huge achievement in the world history of the women's movement.
But did the Azerbaijani democrats succeed in breaking the thousand-year paradigm of women's lack of freedom, translating good intentions into practical terms, bringing the whole of society closer, rather than its elite part, to understanding the natural rights of man, which the Enlighteners of all times and peoples so loved talked about. Unfortunately no.
According to a number of researchers, the Soviet regime interrupted the natural development of the
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Azerbaijani society as a whole and the women's movement in particular, preventing the latter from integrating into the system of "victorious Western feminism". Now this statement, becoming part of a new historical paradigm, is perceived almost as a Cartesian "innate idea", which does not require proof and confirmation. According to Joseph Reddyard Kipling: "The West is the West, the East is the East, And together they do not converge ..."[3, c. 59-63]. No patriarchal, not necessarily Islamic, society has developed into a state of the solved problem of women's emancipation. And although some leaders of such countries have tried to introduce a kind of "directive feminism", society as a whole has not managed to rise above the patriarchal or confessional tradition.
But, really, at what sociocultural level was the Azerbaijani woman, when national democrats stood at the helm of power in the country? Recall that according to the census in 1897, only 4.6% of the indigenous population was considered literate, and it remains to be wondered which percentage of the percentage: tenths or hundredths, accounted for literate women. Let us turn to a reliable source, the testimony of the same enlight-eners who, as we know, have turned the problem of the traditional way of life and position of women into the main nerve of their military journalism and serious sociological research. So F. Kocharli, continuing the critical tradition of M.F. Akhundov and G. Zardabi, polemically explained the lack of initiative, the inertness of contemporary society, the fact that "without receiving any education and upbringing, a Muslim woman is not able to fulfill her duty to the family and society. This circumstance adversely affects the upbringing of children, the improvement of everyday life, the working capacity and spiritual development of men" [4]. By the way, it is precisely the factor of backwardness and spiritual isolation of Muslim women that is now used by respectable Western political scientists as an argument in the system of evidence of the "misanthropic essence", the so-called Islamic fundamentalism.
And yet, was there a place for protest among even the youngest Azerbaijani women from the very depths of the masses? How not surprising, but it was. Let us
leave behind typical Russian examples of voluntary withdrawal from the life of very young women, almost girls, who came into conflict with their husbands, their relatives or even their own parents. What is it, if not the extreme form of passive protest? Let's not focus on the almost legendary examples of active resistance, such as Nigar khanum, a loyal ally of the rebel Koroglu, Hajar khanum, the wife of the behemoth Nabi. Much more often the very form of women's protest took surprising, bizarre forms [5, c. 113-116].
Thus, in the thickness of the popular masses, a sufficiently conscious spirit of protest, introduced by various social forces, was ripe, and is doomed to explode with quite expected social actions, which, due to historical changes, should have taken a revolutionary character.
Today, many researchers of the women's movement in Azerbaijan advocate the study of this social phenomenon not only through historical documents, well-known scientific works, but also private testimonies, memoirs, articles of contemporaries, analysis of literary works whose authorship belongs to women. This method has long been successfully practiced in the West. Wholly sharing this position, I hope that this article will not go unnoticed by both experts and interested readers.
Literature
1. Aliyeva S. Female phenomenon in Azerbaijani culture. B. 2017. - c. 280
2. Bulanova O. Women Enlighteners in Azerbaijani History. http://ru.echo.az/?p=57351
3. Karimli N.I. The artistic image of a woman in Azerbaijani culture// Philosophical thought. - 2021. -№ 7. - c. 59-63
4. Kulu-zade. Z. Gender in Azerbaijan. E., 2003, - c.147
5. Karimli N.I. Stages of development of the artistic culture of Azerbaijan: the evolution of the female image. Artistic culture and literature of the Turkic peoples in the context of the West East. Materials of the international conference. Kazan "Otchestvo". 2017.-c.113-116
