Mirza Bala Mammadzade

Mirza Bala Mammadzadeh was born on May 24, 1898 in the village of Zira in Absheron in a fisherman’s family. His father moved to Baku at the beginning of the century to support his family and settled in the part of the city called Chambarekand. He spent his childhood in Chambarekand, Baku. After graduating from the 7th “Russian-Tatar” school (1914), the 3rd higher elementary school, he continued his education at the Baku Technical Industrial School. He started his literary creativity during his education years, and in 1912, Isa Bey Ashurbeyov’s book “Nefi-elm or the end of science” was published in the “Kaspi” printing house (1912). His close acquaintance with advanced intellectuals in the “Mohammadiya” association has a serious impact on the formation of his worldview. During this period, “Azerbaijan”, “Voice of Youth” etc. appears occasionally in newspapers. In 1915, Mirzabala Mammadzade, who occasionally wrote articles for the newspaper “Achyq soz” published by Muhammad Amin Rasulzadeh, later took an active part in the work of that newspaper. At the same time, he was the editor-in-chief of the weekly “Basirat” magazine.
After the April occupation, M.B. Mammadzade became the chairman of the Central Committee of the Secret Musavat in Baku, and until 1923, his organ published the newspaper “Istiqlal”. At that time, M.B. Mammadzade, who worked as a translator at the Higher National Economic Council of Azerbaijan and a teacher in a high school, also kept in touch with the press. He published a series of articles on the history of Azerbaijan in the magazine “Yeni Yıldız”, and in 1922, the book “Azerbaijani Turkish Press” was published in Baku. In July 1923, when the members of the secret Musavat organization were arrested after the location of the printing house of “Istiqlal” newspaper was discovered by the government authorities, M.B. Mammadzade was able to escape from prison, and distributed leaflets against the statement made by a group of those arrested that they defended the Soviet power. M. B. Mammadzade, who worked secretly until the end of the summer of 1924, went to the Iranian city of Anzali in May and headed the activities of the emigrants there. M.B. Mammadzadeh, who lived in Tabriz for a while and then worked as an engineer-technician in the construction of a highway around Sulduz city, sent articles to “Yeni Kafgasya” magazine published in Istanbul under the leadership of Mohammad Amin Rasulzadeh. The exposure of Bolshevism, the Soviet ideology and regime, and the Bolshevik press as a component of the Party-Soviet apparatus was one of the main topics of M.B. Mammadzadeh’s publicism of this period.