AZERBAIJAN. - The largest (85,500 sq. km.), but not the most populous, of the three federated Soviet Republics of the Transcaucasian sector. Having entered the Transcaucasian Federation in 1922, it was admitted, in Dec. 1936, among the major units of the U.S.S.R.
The Azerbaijan S.S.R. embraces the south-eastern extremity of the Transcaucasian region pertaining to the U.S.S.R., up to the border with Persia, beyond which there extends, in that State, the province of the same name (Persian A.), which has had and continues to have close relations with the countries that passed long ago under Russian dominion. The territory of the Azerbaijan S.S.R. consists essentially of the basin of the middle and lower Kura, which is a largely flat region, and of the two mountain complexes that bound it to the N. and to the S.; of these the southern one, which continues into the neighbouring Iranian region, is slightly less elevated (G. Kapudjikh, m. 3918) and rugged than the high Caucasian barrier (G. Bazar Dyuza, m. 4489). The depressed sector corresponds to an arid territory (less than 200 mm. of rain annually, on average), to which artificial irrigation can nevertheless open up broad agricultural possibilities (cereals, cotton, tobacco, fruit); the two mountain rims correspond to a far more varied landscape and one moreover full of mineral resources (iron, coal, aluminium, silver, lead, etc.), among which the conspicuous oil deposits that accompany, on both sides, the Caucasian diaphragm, especially where this extends into the Caspian (Apsheron peninsula).
The economy of A., although still based on agriculture and pastoralism, is gradually making ever more room for industrial activity, in which, alongside the extraction of fuel and its processing, there now figure the installation of power plants, extensive textile establishments and a great variety of enterprises devoted to foodstuffs. Handicrafts too flourish there, continuing age-old traditions (carpets, silk fabrics, ceramics, work in copper and silver). Communications have received, in the last twenty years, a notable impulse; nevertheless A. gravitates rather towards the S. (Persia) than towards the neighbouring Soviet territories.
The population grew from 2.3 to 3.2 million inhabitants between 1926 and 1939; the urban population from 28 to 36% in the same period. It is made up for more than 3/5 of Turco-Tatar elements (Turkmen, Kirghiz, Negai, Kumik, Karachai, etc.), nomadic and sedentary, for about 1/10 of Armenians and for as much of Russians. The capital, Baku, which counted barely 13 thousand souls eighty years ago, is today, in population, with its 800 thousand inhabitants, the third city of the whole U.S.S.R. (after the destruction suffered by Kiev and Kharkov). The old Asiatic nucleus is by now submerged in a great complex of modern quarters, predominantly working-class in character; but the city has at the same time become an active intellectual centre, by far the most notable in the entire Caucasian region.
Administratively dependent on A. are the small territory (4160 sq. km. with 150 thousand inhabitants) of mountainous Karabakh (Nagorno K.), inhabited above all by Armenians (89% and less than 1% Russians) and typically agricultural (capital Stepanakert, with about 6 thousand inhabitants) and the autonomous Republic of Nakhicevan (5480 sq. km. with 117 thousand inhabitants, of whom 9/10 Turks and barely 2% Russians; the capital is Nakhicevan with about 12 thousand inhabitants), enclosed within the borders of the neighbouring Armenian federative Republic.
For ecclesiastical history v. GEORGIA.
Bibliography9 works
Giuseppe Caraci