Abbas Mirza Sharifzadeh - Arrest and Execution

Arrest and Execution

On 4 December 1937, at the peak of the Great Purge, Sharifzadeh was arrested in his own apartment on the counts of espionage. The evidence used against him were his frequent visits to the Iranian consulate in Ganja in 1932. The real reason for those visits, according to Sharifzadeh's colleagues, were friendly relations between a group of stage actors, of which Sharifzadeh was part, and the Iranian consul who admired Azerbaijani theatre and would often invite them for gettogethers. Sharifzadeh's émigré brother's active role in the formation of the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic in 1918–1920 among all contributed to the government's will to get rid of the actor. Sharifzadeh was also accused of promoting via theatre the works of the earlier arrested poets Mikayil Mushfig and Huseyn Javid (one of them would later be executed and another one would be exiled to the Russian Far East). On October 19, 1938 he was found guilty of all accusations and was executed by firing squad less than a month later. He was exonerated posthumously after Joseph Stalin's death.

Sharifzadeh was married to actress Marziyya Davudova and they were great-grandparents of Eurovision 2011 winner Eldar Gasimov.