Yusif Vazir Chamanzaminli - Life and Career

Life and Career

Chamanzaminli was born the second son of seven children to Mirbaba Mirabdulla oghlu (died 1906) Vazirov and Seyid Aziza Seyid Husein gizi (died 1910) in the town of Shusha, which was then part of the Russian Empire. His father was a mugham teacher and a connoisseur of literature, who spoke Persian and Turkish and had travelled considerably throughout the region.

After graduating from the primary school of Blindman Khalifa in 1895, Chamanzaminli pursued his studies at the Realschule of Shusha. But then, the Armenian-Azerbaijani civil war broke out (1905–1906) and his family fled Shusha. As his father had just died, his mother, younger brother and sisters settled in Ashgabad, Turkmenistan, to be closer to relatives. Vazirov managed to get a meagre stipend with a few other students from Shusha to finish his education (1906–1909) at Realni High School in Baku. He published his first work in the local Azeri-language periodicals Sada and Molla Nasraddin. It was in the summer of 1907 when Yusif Vazirov went to visit his mother in Ashgabad that he met Berta Maiseyeva, a Third Year Student at Ashgabad Gymnasium. She seems to be the prototype for the character of "Nino" in the novel "Ali and Nino," eventually published in 1937 in Vienna. In fact, many of the historical references in the novel can be traced back to the period of time when Vazirov was a high school student in Baku, as revealed in his diaries.

In 1909, Chamanzaminli left for St. Petersburg to enroll in St. Petersburg State University of Architecture and Construction Institute for Civil Engineers but having realized that he would not pass the placement test in mathematics, since he was weak in math and hated it, Chamanzaminli withdrew his application. While in St. Petersburg, he wrote Jannatin gabzi ("A Pass to Heaven").

In 1910 Chamanzaminli was admitted to the St. Vladimir University in Kiev to study law. When World War I broke out, the students and staff of the university were transferred to Saratov (Volga region of Russia), where Chamanzaminli graduated in 1915. For a while he worked at the judiciary chamber of Saratov and later travelled to Galicia (Eastern Europe). There, reflecting on the February Revolution in Russia, he began Studentlar ("Students") and "In the Year 1917".

In late 1917, he returned to Kiev to establish an Azerbaijani cultural association. In 1918 he was appointed to represent the newly-established Azerbaijan Democratic Republic in the Ukrainian People's Republic but there was so much political unrest and turmoil in the region, he was not able to establish an office there. He then moved to Simferopol, Crimea where he worked for a while as a judiciary advisor.

There he published his research work Lithuanian Tatars dedicated to the history and culture of Lipka Tatars. At the same time, he popularized Azeri culture by publishing related articles, especially about literature, in the local newspapers. Then in 1919, he was appointed to open the Azerbaijan Embassy in Constantinople, Turkey. He managed only to set it up only briefly for a few months before the Bolsheviks took control of Baku, leaving him without job, salary, guidance as to what to do—essentially, without a country.

Vazirov wrote at least two books that were published while he was in Turkey: (1) "A Survey of Azerbaijani Literature" (1921), and (2) "The History, Geography and Economy of Azerbaijan" (1921). Vazirov then left for France to join his younger brother Mir Abdulla, who was studying at the Institut d'Études Politiques de Paris and from which he graduated in 1925.

In Paris where thousands of émigrés had fled in desperation after the collapse of the Russian Empire, Vazirov was unable to find a job in his field. He tried to get a job driving a taxicab but twice failed the exam. He eventually managed to get a job working in an automobile locomotive factory in the Paris suburb of Clichy, Hauts-de-Seine. He also wrote for a local publication, entitled Les lettres orientales ("Eastern Letters").