The Azerbaijan Democratic Republic and its Parliament came to the scene in a very difficult and complicated historical period. The special governing committee for the Transcaucasia made of the elected members of the Transcaucasian State Duma was formed after the February 1917 revolution in Russia. The Transcaucasian Commissariat was established in November. Those Transcaucasian delegates who had been elected to the Russian Constituent Assembly but could not join its proceedings after the Bolshevik coup of October were gathered in Tiflis on 14 February 1918. There, they founded the Transcaucasian Sejm as the supreme power in the Transcaucasia.

Any individual representative of each of the three peoples of the region who served either on the Transcaucasian Sejm or the government put the interests of his people before the common Transcaucasian interests. There was no common platform of any kind. In a word, the disintegration that followed was to be expected. Lastly, the Transcaucasian Sejm held its last meeting on 25 May 1918. Georgia left the Transcaucasian Sejm and declared its independence on 26 May.

A day after the collapse of the Transcaucasian Sejm, namely, on 27 May, the 44 Muslim Sejm delegates are assembled in Tiflis to incept the first Azerbaijani government. Having come to the decision to assume the control of the country, they declare themselves the National Council of Azerbaijan and M. A. Rasulzade is elected its chairman.

The National Council of Azerbaijan passes the Declaration of Independence of Azerbaijan at a meeting chaired by Hasan bey Agayev on 28 May 1918.

The National Council and the Government moved from Tbilisi to Ganja on 16 June 1918.

The real power in Ganja was in the hands of the commander-in-chief of Turkey’s Caucasian Army Nuri Pasha at the time. Under the influence of certain powers disgruntled by ‘the extraneously democratic vector’ of the efforts of both the National Council and the Government of Azerbaijan, Nuri Pasha met them with suspicion.

An accord was only achieved after long negotiations and mutual compromises. It was then suggested that the National Council be disbanded, and all the power would go to the new government to be formed yet. The National Council held another (the seventh) meeting under the chairmanship of M. A. Rasulzade to discuss those matters on 17 June 1918.

The two crucial decisions that they made at that meeting were to disband the National Council of Azerbaijan and to transfer all the legislative and executive power to the Provisional Government of Azerbaijan presided over by F Kh Khoyski. Speaking there, F Kh Khoyski pointed out that the struggle for the freedom and independence of Azerbaijan would be the paramount task of the new government he had formed.

At the same time, the Government of Azerbaijan continues the work on organising the state administration body in Ganja. The Azerbaijani language is declared the state one. Another most important move was to pass the decision on 15 July 1918 to set up the Extraordinary Commission of Inquiry. Overall, the Government of Azerbaijan in Ganja had done a number of essential jobs in various national areas prior to the move to Baku. Purging Baku of the Central Caspian Dictatorship made up of the Mensheviks, Social Revolutionaries and Dashnaks who had captured the city after the demise of the Baku Commune in late July 1918 was one of the topmost missions that the Government of Azerbaijan had ahead of it.

The Caucasian Islamic Army liberated Baku after bitter fighting on 15 September 1918 and the F Kh Khoyski government moved in from Ganja as soon as on the 17th. Baku was declared the capital of the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic. The Azerbaijan National Council that stopped its work in Ganja on 17 June 1918 resumed it on 16 November that year. At the first meeting then, the National Council accepted the job of convening the Constituent Assembly upon the request of F Kh Khoyski.  It was said at the meeting of the National Council chaired by M. A. Rasulzade on 19 November that the National Council of Azerbaijan had to represent all the peoples living in the territory of the country.

On November 19, 1918, at the meeting of the National Council of Azerbaijan held under the chairmanship of M.A. Rasulzade, a very important resolution was adopted in the history of Azerbaijani parliamentarism - the Law on the establishment of the first parliament-supreme legislative body in Azerbaijan.

Thus, it is decided to form a Parliament of Azerbaijan that was to consist of 120 members going by 1 delegate per 24,000 people – 80 Muslims, 21 Armenians, 10 Russians, 1 German and 1 Jew. The law that the National Council passed in this connection stipulated that all the ethnic minority representatives would be included. As regards the Muslims, 44 members of the National Council elected by popular vote would join the new Parliament as its members while more people would be brought in to occupy the remaining 36 seats. The law also determined the number of additional delegates per town and district.

The proclamation ‘To the Whole of the Population of Azerbaijan!’ was issued on 29 November 1918 on behalf of the National Council of Azerbaijan and as signed by its Chairman M. A. Rasulzade.

The parliamentary session was set to start on 3 December 1918 but the Russian and Armenian national councils active around Baku and disposed against the Azerbaijani Parliament tried to use the recently-arrived Allied Force Commander General Thomson to obstruct the opening of the Parliament in every way. The first sitting of the Parliament was shifted to 7 December in view of the negotiations with General Thomson and given that not all the district delegates had been able to reach Baku.

The first sitting of the first parliament in the Muslim East was opened at the former H Z Taghiyev School for Girls in Nikolayev Street (Istiglaliyat nowadays) on 7 December 1918. The National Council Chairman M. A. Rasulzade who had opened the Parliament delivered a great congratulatory speech, too.

A Topchubashev was elected Chairman of the Parliament and Hasanbey Agayev his First Deputy.

Besides, they elected the 3-strong Secretariat of the Parliament with Mehdi bey Hajinsky elected as the Secretary General.

Then, the Provisional Government Chairman F Kh Khoyski tables a performance report and petitions to the Parliament for the resignation of the Government.

The Government accepts the resignation of the Khoyski Government – only to commission him to form a new one. F Kh Khoyski reports in the Parliament on the government programme and make-up on 26 December. The programme is approved, and the new Government is given a vote of confidence.

The Parliament of Azerbaijan was building its work along the organisational principles inherent in democratic republics from the very day of inception. The Parliament had 96 members representing 11 various party fractions and groups by as soon as the end of 1919.

All the party fractions and groups declared their activity programmes. All those declarations had as their shared goals the preservation of the independence and territorial integrity, and the national as well as political rights of the young Azerbaijan Republic, creation and reinforcement of friendly ties of the Azerbaijani people and government with other nations and states, in particular, with the neighbouring states and building up a legal democratic state order, implementing extensive social reforms and building a strong army capable of protecting the country.

Though only active for 17 months, the Parliament of the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic was able to prove its viability and a high working capacity. It demonstrated that, indeed, the people of Azerbaijan had graduated to the level of parliamentary governance. The Azerbaijan Republic was the sole parliamentary republic in the Muslim East at that time.

The Parliament of the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic held 145 sessions in that period; the first one was on 7 December 1918 and the last on 27 April 1920.

More than 270 draft laws were tabled in the Parliament of the Azerbaijan Republic and approximately 230 of them were passed whilst the Parliament remained active.

The Parliament’s work was regulated by ‘the admonishment (instruction) of the Parliament of Azerbaijan’, which played the immediate role as its Charter.

There were 11 functioning commissions in the Parliament. Those were the financial and budgetary commission, the commission for legislative initiatives and conducting elections to the Constituent Assembly, the mandate commission, the military commission, the commissions for agrarian affairs, for economic administration affairs, for the control over the use of national productive powers, for editorial affairs and for working matters.

The division of power into the legislative, executive and judicial branches to establish a law-bound state was premeditated in the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic, too.

As for the work done by the Parliament of the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic, it was generally concentrated on addressing the social, economic and financial problems of the country, maintaining its political and territorial integrity, protecting the citizens’ rights, reinforcing the democratic and legal foundations of the state, providing for the recognition of the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic by other states and establishing political, economic and trading ties with other countries and, particularly, with the immediate neighbours. At the same time, the Parliament deliberated upon and enacted in that period the documents on citizenship, compulsory universal military service, press, the establishment of the National Bank and of Baku State University, streamlining the customs and the post and telegraph services, on judicial legislation and so forth.

Recommended literature:

1. Mustafa, Nazim. Azərbaycan Xalq Cümhuriyyəti işığında: 1918-1920 : araşdırmalar, məqalələr / N. Mustafa. - Bakı : Ulu İKF, 2018. - 256 s.
2. Əmrahov, Ziyad Cümşüd oğlu. Azərbaycan Parlamentarizmi tarixi - 100 / Z. C. Əmrahov ; elmi red. A. İsgəndərli ; AMEA A.A. Bakıxanov adına Tarix İnstitutu. - Bakı : Elm və təhsil, 2018. - 268 s.
3. Qasımlı, Musa Cəfər oğlu. Azərbaycan parlamentarizmi tarixi : 2 cilddə: monoqrafiya / M. C. Qasımlı, B. Muradova, V. Qafarov ; elmi red. O. Əsədov. I cild. - Bakı : Mütərcim, 2018. - 688 s.
4. Paşayev, Ataxan Əvəz oğlu. Cümhuriyyət parlamentinə gedən yol / A. Ə. Paşayev.- Bakı: Adiloğlu, 2005.- 88 s.
5. Rəhimov, Emil Rahib oğlu. Azərbaycan: Müsəlman Şərqində ilk Demokratik Respublikanın yaranmasının 100 illiyi : 1918-2018 / E. R. Rəhimov. - Bakı : Şərq-Qərb, 2018. - 144 s.
6. Azərbaycan Xalq Cümhuriyyəti: 1918-1920 = Азербайджанская Демократическая Республика: 1918-1920 / Azərbaycan Respublikasının Milli Arxiv İdarəsi; məsul red. A. Ə. Paşayev ; red. Ə. A. Rəsulov. Təhsil siyasəti : sənədlər toplusu = Политика просвещения : сборник документов. - Bakı : Elm və təhsil, 2018. - 468 s.
7. Azərbaycan Xalq Cümhuriyyətinin qurucuları : portret-oçerklər və məqalələr / Azərbaycan Respublikasının Milli Arxiv İdarəsi ; red., ön sözün müəl. Ə. A. Rəsulov. - Bakı : Elm və təhsil, 2018. - 248 s.