Oil
Oil is nothing new to the region. Alexander the Great, as he waltzed his way through the region way back in those B.C. years, noticed methane gas, as well as Zoroastrian temples. Zoroastrians were fire worshippers from Persia, mostly. In the 10th century, Arab writers were referring to Baku as the place where oil comes from. Oil would be shipped from this area out to the rest of the known world, using the Silk Route across Asia. In the 17th century, Turks describe the area around Baku as having “burning ground”. One of my favorite images is from a Turkish writer who says the ground is so hot from the burning fuel beneath it, that you could put a cauldron of water down directly onto the ground, and it would start to boil within minutes.
In the 1860s, the first oil derricks go up. In 1873, the derricks strike oil big time. Azerbaijan quickly became a Kuwait or a Saudi Arabia of this earlier time. Baku grew into a cosmopolitan city, as opposed to a Turkic backwater, perched on the edge of the Caspian Sea, tipping off into Central Asia. People made massive fortunes in Azerbaijan. In the 1870s and 1880s Baku was one of the world’s richest and most populous cities.
In 1920, the city of Baku was overrun by Bolshevik soldiers and history pretty much stopped. They endured seven decades of collectivisation and poverty under Communist rule. Additionally, during this time, Azerbaijan has been completely destroyed by pollution from the careless oil drilling. Oil lies pooled up in the streets. The beach on the Caspian Sea apparently looks like a post-apocalyptic disaster zone.
In 1997, Azerbaijan had another oil boom. There was talk, as well, of building an oil pipeline below the Caspian Sea, in order to transport all the oil from all the “stans” (Kazakhstan, especially) to Baku, and then to be shipped out from Azerbaijan. If this plan was completed, Baku could potentially become one of the most important places on the planet. Azeris were exhilarated, thrilled. (And so begins the devastation of societies brought about by big oil.) Foreign businessmen started coming to their country. They had to install credit card machines in the run down Stalinist hotels in Baku. Nightclubs were built. Baku was trying to modernize itself and clean itself up in a year, where other cities go through such transformations over generations.
The oil boom went bust in 1998, with a drop in oil prices. The hopes for the massive oil fields in the Caspian Sea (the estimates of what people hoped to find were mind-boggling) were dashed. Russia collapsed financially, an event which had worldwide implications. And by 1999, Azerbaijan was back to a Caucausus backwater, with no hopes for the future. Oil would not “save” them from having to develop a working society. This is the insidiousness of oil societies, by the way. The populations make a deal with the Devil. Okay, okay, the regime can do whatever it wants, as long as that oil keeps flowing, and keeps the money coming in, and we don’t have to look at what needs to be fixed, what isn’t working.
Azerbaijan had hoped (of course, subconsciously) to skip the necessary stages of nation-building: forming a government, setting up a banking system, helping a middle class to flourish…all that stuff…by having oil spurting out of the Caspian and into their pockets. So far, this has not happened.
