DELEGATES OF II CONGRESS OF RUSSIAN COMMUNITY OF AZERBAIJAN
Dear fellow countrymen!
I extent to you - the delegates of the II Congress of the Russian Community of Azerbaijan - my healtfelt greetings and best wishes. The Russians who have been living in Azerbaijan for 170 years are rightly consider our country their homeland as the historical tolerance and humanism of our people created very good conditions for the people of different languages and religious to establish civilized religious and ethnic relations, for all ethnic minorities to live in peace and calmness.
Over the past historical period, the Russian population has rapidly integrated into the Azerbaijan society but preserved its national originality, religious and ethnic customs and traditions, language and culture; it did not remained from the historical processes taken place in our country or its socio-political and scientific-cultural life.
After restoration of the state independence, the Azerbaijan Republic, remaining devoted to its historical traditions and in line with the international norms, is pursuing successful political course towards strengthening of democratic and legal principles in the country. Today, the Republic has all necessary political and legal conditions for free activities of democratic institutes and ensuring rights and freedoms for each citizen irrespective of his religious, language or ethnic belonging. The Russians like representatives of other nationalities living in Azerbaijan, enjoing the rights and freedoms reflected in the Constitution, are widely represented in official governmental structures, scientific, cultural and socio-economic spheres of life, and demonstrate active civil stance in realization of democratic and legal reforms.
I want to particularly emphasize that no negative developments have been observed towards Russians and Russian speaking population since the collapse of the USSR. Unlike a number of other post-Soviet states, no restrictions or prohibitions were place on the Russian language. Tens of Russian schools are functioning today in our country, the Baku Slavonic University; a number of Universities have departments where teaching is held in Russian, a plenty of Russian periodicals and books are published etc.
I am pleased to note that the Azerbaijan Russian Community is the largest one in the South Caucasus, our republic holds one of the fist places in the number of Russians among post-soviet countries. It is not accidental that thousands of Russians suffered from the reactionary Armenian chauvinism during the ethnic purge and deportation against Azerbaijanis, chose Azerbaijan as a place of their permanent residence.
The Government of Azerbaijan opposing all forms of ethnic and race discrimination, religious or ethnic intolerance, will continue its successive activity in this sphere as a priority course of its domestic and foreign policy.
Dear Congress participants!
The Russian Community of Azerbaijan, which is one of the largest mass public organizations in our Republic and has some 80 thousand members, since its founding 10 years ago, has been very actively involved in strenghening of our state independence and building of free civil society. Your organization has done a great job to sthrengthen social and cultural ties as well as people’s diplomacy between the Republic of Azerbaijan and the Russian Federation, it has also done much to bring the reality about occupation of the Azerbaijani lands by Armenia, and the Nagorno-Karabkh conflict to the international community.
I am sure that the Russian Community of Azerbaijan will continue to worthily represent Russian population of our county, and will mobilize its activity towards further development of friendly relations between nations, maintenance of civil solidarity and unity, and further strengthening of independent Azerbaijan statehood.
I wish all of you good health in this noble activity and success work of your congress.
Ilham Aliyev,
President of the Republic of Azerbaijan.
Baku, 13 October 2004.
Other news in this section
