19 years have passed since the death of the National Leader of the Azerbaijani people Heydar Aliyev.
The memory of the national leader is revered in Azerbaijan, as well as abroad.
Heydar Alirza oglu Aliyev was born on May 10, 1923, in the city of Nakhchivan in the Republic of Azerbaijan.
In 1944 Heydar Aliyev was sent to work at the state security bodies. Heydar Aliyev, working since that time in the security bodies, from 1964 held the post of deputy chairman, and from 1967 chairman of the Committee of State Security under the Cabinet of Ministers of Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic, and he had conferred the rank of lieutenant general. These years, he received special higher education in Leningrad (present St. Petersburg), and in 1957 he graduated from the History faculty of the Azerbaijan State University.
At the plenum of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Azerbaijan held on July 14, 1969, Heydar Aliyev was elected First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Azerbaijan.
In December 1982, Heydar Aliyev was elected a member of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and appointed to the post of the First Deputy Chairman of the Cabinet of Ministers of the USSR, and became one of the leaders of the USSR.
In October 1987, Heydar Aliyev, as a sign of protest against the policy pursued by the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and personally Secretary-General Michael Gorbachev, resigned from his post.
Inbound with the tragedy committed on January 20, 1990, in Baku by the soviet troops appearing in the next day at the Azerbaijan Representation in Moscow with a statement, Heydar Aliyev demanded to punish the organizers and executors of the crime committed against the people of Azerbaijan. As a sign of protest against the hypocritical policy of the leadership of the USSR, in connection with the critical conflict accrued in Nagorno-Karabakh, in July 1991, he left the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.
By return in July 1990 to Azerbaijan, Heydar Aliyev lived in Baku, then in Nakhchivan, and in the same year was elected a deputy to the Supreme Soviet of Azerbaijan. In 1991-1993, he held the post of Chairman of the Supreme Assembly of the Autonomous Republic of Nakhchivan, Deputy Chairman of the Supreme Soviet of the Republic of Azerbaijan. In 1992, at the constituent congress of the New Azerbaijan Party in Nakhchivan, Heydar Aliyev was elected Chairman of the Party.
On June 15, 1993, Heydar Aliyev was elected Chairman of the Supreme Soviet of the Republic of Azerbaijan, and on June 24, he began to exercise the powers of the President of the Republic of Azerbaijan. On October 3, 1993, as a result of a nationwide vote, Heydar Aliyev was elected President of the Republic of Azerbaijan.
He was re-elected President of the Republic of Azerbaijan on October 11, 1998, gaining 76.1% of the votes in the highly popular elections.
Heydar Aliyev, who agreed to run in the October 15, 2003, presidential elections, withdrew his candidacy in favor of Ilham Aliyev due to health problems.
Heydar Aliyev, who was treated for a long time at the Cleveland Clinic of the United States, died on December 12, 2003.
He was buried in the Alley of Honors in Baku.
