Books by Jamil Hasanli

Using recently declassified Soviet documents, Jamil Hasanli examines Soviet involvement in the anti-China rebellion in East Turkistan during the 1930's and 1940's.

On February 25, 1956, Soviet leader Nikita S. Khrushchev delivered the so-called ';secret speech' in the Twentieth Party Congress of the CPSU in which he denounced Stalin's transgressions and the cult of personality around the deceased dictator. Replete with sharp criticism of the Terror of the late 1930s, the unpreparedness of the USSR for the Nazi invasion, numerous wartime blunders, and the deportation of various nationalities, the speech reverberated throughout the subordinate Soviet republics. For republics such as Azerbaijan, the speech was an unmistakable signal to readjust the entire political orientation and figure out ways to redefine governance in post-Stalin era. Previously frozen under the mortal threat of Stalinist persecution, various forms of national self-expression began to experience rapid revival under the Khrushchev thaw. Encouraged by the winds of change at the Center, the Azeris cautiously began to reclaim possession of their administrative domain. Among other local initiatives, the declaration of the Azerbaijani language as the official language was one step that stood out in its audacity, for it was not pre-arranged with the Kremlin and defied the modus operandi of the Soviet leadership. Somewhat reformist in his intentions yet ignorant of the non-Slavic peripheries, Mr. Khrushchev had not foreseen the scenarios that would unfold as a result of its new tone and the developments that would come to be interpreted as the rise of nationalism in the republics. Jamil Hasanli's research on 1950s' Azerbaijan sheds light on this watershed period in Soviet history while also furnishing the reader with a greater understanding of the root causes of the dissolution of the USSR.

For half a century, the United States and the Soviet Union were in conflict. But how and where did the Cold War begin? This book attempts to answer this question.

This book presents the ups and downs of the Soviet-Turkish relations during World War II and immediately after it. Hasanli draws on declassified archive documents from the United States, Russia, Armenia, Georgia, Turkey, and Azerbaijan to recreate a true picture of the time when the 'Turkish crisis' of the Cold War broke out. It explains why and how the friendly relations between the USSR and Turkey escalated into enmity, led to the increased confrontation between these two countries, and ended up with Turkey's entry into NATO. Hasanli uses recently-released Soviet archive documents to shed light on some dark points of the Cold War era and the relations between the Soviets and the West. Apart from bringing in an original point of view regarding starting of the Cold War, the book reveals some secret sides of the Soviet domestic and foreign policies. The book convincingly demonstrates how Soviet political technologists led by Josef Stalin distorted the picture of a friendly and peaceful country_Turkey_into the image of an enemy in the minds of millions of Soviet citizens.