Baku, August 30, 2025 — When President Ilham Aliyev told Al Arabiya that the Red Army invaded and occupied Azerbaijan in 1920, Russian propaganda lost its mind. Z-bloggers screeched, state TV thundered, and “patriotic” commentators twisted themselves into knots to deny what every archive proves: the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic — the first secular democracy in the Muslim world — was crushed by Soviet bayonets after just 23 months of independence.
This is not revisionism. It is history. The Azerbaijan SSR that followed was not Moscow’s “gift” but a renamed ADR, with the same territory, institutions, and borders. To deny the word “occupation” is to deny reality itself.
The fury in Moscow reveals something deeper. Russian propaganda thrives on contradictions. Lenin is denounced for destroying the empire — yet embalmed in Red Square. The Soviet Union is hailed as a golden era — yet blamed for creating “foreign agents.” The tsar is canonized — yet overthrown by the very Bolsheviks who built the USSR.
And today, instead of investigating the AZAL plane tragedy or addressing discrimination against Azerbaijanis in Russia, propagandists spew bile, threaten Baku with a “special operation with Iran,” and spread absurd fakes about frozen assets. It is a familiar pattern: when Moscow cannot face truth, it lashes out at neighbors.
Azerbaijan will not play this game. It will not whitewash 1920. It will not apologize for sovereignty. And it will not accept intimidation — whether from Z-bloggers or from state TV.
History already shows where propaganda without accountability leads: the collapse of empires. Russia has lived through that twice. And if today’s hysteria is any sign, it may be marching toward the same fate again.
