Azerbaijan’s Lev Tolstoy: Mammad Said Ordubadi

Abstract

The Azerbaijani people are a tolerant nation and cherish love for the entire world. The creative
works of Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy, the unparalleled figure of Russian literature, belong not only to the Russian people but to the entire world. This is because the thinker, while penning his works, considered not just
the Russian people but all of humanity, shaping his creations around universal ideas and depicting human
characters through the lens of the Russian populace. Thus, L.N.Tolstoy became an artist not solely of the
Russian people but of all humanity, securing his place among European and world literary classics-such as
Jack London, Hemingway, Dreiser, Shakespeare, Conan Doyle, Victor Hugo, Balzac, Alexander Dumas,
I.V. Goethe, and others.
Mammad Said Ordubadi also holds a significant place among historical novelists, and the influence of the
Tolstoy school in his works is distinctly evident. However, the difference between him and Tolstoy lies in the fact that Tolstoy wrote freely, unrestricted by any frameworks, expressing his progressive ideas and lofty
goals through the unrestrained flow of his imagination. In contrast, M.S. Ordubadi wrote under the constraints of socialist ideology, sometimes compelled to distort history against his will, or to strike out parts of
his work that he yearned to create. His pen often succumbed to the demands of a totalitarian regime. One
might speculate that if M.S. Ordubadi had been able to freely and independently express his thoughts and
feelings, he, like Tolstoy, could have become one of the world's most renowned writers. Nevertheless, despite these limitations, Ordubadi gained fame across many regions of the USSR, and his works were translated into Russian, Ukrainian, Georgian, Uzbek, and other languages, earning widespread acclaim.
Despite all of this, if we examine the author’s historical-ethnographic work Qanlı Sənələr (The Bloody
Years), we see that since it was written in 1908, it reflects many historical truths, vividly detailing the massacres carried out by Armenian Dashnaks against our people in 1905-1906.
Keywords: Tolstoy, Ordubadi, novel, creativity, history, people, homeland