How did Mikayil Mushfig die?

Mikayil Mushfig (Azerbaijani: Mikayıl Müşfiq, born Mikayil Ismayilzade) (5 June 1908, Baku – 6 January 1938, Baku)

Mikayil Mushfig was an Azerbaijani poet of the 1930s. Mikayil Mushfig is considered to be one of the founders of new Azerbaijani poetic style.

Most of his poetry is about romance, nature, feelings. Despite this, he soon became one of the slandered and criticized poets in the Union of Soviet Azerbaijani Writers, and soon afterwards, Mushfig was arrested and executed by Soviet authorities at the age of 30 during the Stalinist purges in the USSR 😔. In 1956, he was exonerated posthumously. Nikita Khrushchev era of de-stalinization has resulted in Mushfig's poetry being famous in Azerbaijani society.

Arrest and execution

Main article: Stalinist repressions in Azerbaijan § Mikayil Mushfig case In late 1930s, as confessed by writer Mehdi Huseyn in one of the Ilyas Afandiyev's memories, it was very common among poets and writers to slander each other and accuse each other of nationalism or spreading religious propaganda. The reasons of such slanders were generally connected with personal problems and bitter rivalries between certain poets and writers.[12] Mushfig himself came under the barrage of criticism in the Azerbaijani Writers' Union along with some other literary figures of the era such as Huseyn Javid, Ahmed Javad and Yusif Vazir Chamanzaminli. Literary figures who were serving the interests of Stalin's regime in the USSR branded Mushfig as a "chauvinist" and a "petit-bourgeois poet". He was arrested in 1937, charged with treason as "the enemy of the state", and executed in 1939 in the Bayil prison near Baku 😔. He was later officially exonerated. Even though Mushfig wrote poems about Joseph Stalin, during the de-Stalinization policy of the USSR he was portrayed as an "anti-Stalinist" poet.

On May 23, 1956, under the decision of the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of USSR, Mikayil Mushfig was acquitted after his death.

In October 2018, a working group consisting of the members of National Academy of Sciences, the ministries of Health and Culture, and other relevant authorities was set up under the instruction of the President Ilham Aliyev in order to investigate the most recent information about the unearthed remains of the poet.

R.I.P Mikayil Mushfig