How I am from BA in International Law turned to MA in Cultural Heritage. |Chinara Majidova

Goodbye Sovetsky/ Chinara Majidova

This  journey continued almost after 9 years, 9 years of break in education and here I am MA in Cultural heritage. My research thesis topic " Historical neighborhood Sovetsky stays without heritage recognition"  is not just an accomplishment which I want to defense and forget. It was a long way before the study and hopefully will be after. But I  will tell you everything step by step.

Winter park in the construction process 

It is already a decade that Baku started the massive gentrification process. Oil money and a new image of a fast-growing city could not accept the one-floor slums with working-class inhabitants in the middle of the city center. İn 2010 started demolishing of one of the oldest parts in Baku Basino, which officially has name Fizuli street. This street has a lot of houses which were built at the end of the  19's beginning of the 20'th century, had historical value and some of them were in the list of architectural and historical monuments protection. Citizens who were leaving there got minimum compensation 1500 AZN which for that time was around 1700 USD per square meter. If consider that houses were small but fitted more than one family they were able to by house only outside of the city center.  This neighborhood was replaced by marble Winter Park which was opened in the May of 2013. The total territory of this park is  35 thousand square meters.

Two years later, to continue this process started the demolishing of the second central part of Baku, Sovietsky with the population more than 50000 people. By the city plan, it is the continuation of the Winter park which named Central Park. The first part of this park was opened in May 2019. The total territory of this park is 20 hectares.  Along with one floor "Mehelle" type buildings, there were more than 230 historical monuments which included bath, mosques, Shollar water towers. The same happened with this area and people, compensation was 1500 AZN which for that time was  1428 and with the second devaluation became 882 USD.

One of the main streets on Sovetsky .Chinara Majidova

With the demolishing process in 2015,  I  am unconscionably started to visit this area almost on a daily base to take pictures and to talk with the local community.  In the middle of 2015, I got a proposal for cooperation with my American friend and filmmaker to continue this together. By that time none of us had an idea about what to do with collected data and how to support the community. I also would like to mention that this area interested me for the reason of family connection to it. My mother was born and grew up there, and my grandmother continued to leave there. Demolishing of the family house was not only painful because of moving but also because it ruined memories which passed from generation to generation.