Who was the first to be honoured with a bust in Baku?

Baku in the early 20th century was a city in transformation. Fuelled by oil wealth, it became a centre not only of trade and industry, but also of emerging cultural and political thought. Its streets began to reflect more than just economic prosperity. They became stages for ideas, identities and symbols of a changing era. Among the most visible of these symbols were the busts small, yet deeply symbolic sculptures that mirrored the spirit and ideology of the time.

Traditionally, the first bust erected in Baku is said to have belonged to Nizami Ganjavi, the celebrated medieval poet. Installed in 1926 in the park that now bears his name, Nizami’s bust marked the first monumental representation of Azerbaijani literature and culture in the city’s landscape.

Yet, historical records reveal an intriguing twist: before Nizami’s bust, a bust of Karl Marx had already been placed in Baku in the early 1920s. In other words, the city’s very first bust carried ideological rather than national meaning.

This subtle contradiction that a cultural icon like Nizami followed an ideological figure like Marx, tells a larger story about Baku’s sculptural history. It shows that monuments in the city were never merely artistic expressions. They were also reflections of social and political transitions.

The first busts on Baku’s streets symbolised a society opening itself to new worldviews, where art became a visible form of thought. Each bust (whether of Nizami, Marx, or those that came later) stands as more than stone or metal. They are silent narrators of an era, capturing its ambitions, anxieties, and its struggle to define identity between ideology and culture.

The erection of Karl Marx’s bust in Baku

In the early 1920s, as Soviet power consolidated its rule in Azerbaijan, the streets of Baku reflected more than the prosperity brought by oil, they echoed the ideological transformations reshaping society. Among the most visible symbols of this new era were the busts that began to appear across the city. These were not merely works of art; they were monuments designed to embody and broadcast political messages.

The first of these ideological sculptures in Baku was created by Yakov Keykhilis, a Soviet sculptor of Jewish descent. His bust of Karl Marx, placed in the early 1920s in the city’s central Nizami Garden, became one of the earliest manifestations of Soviet ideological art in Azerbaijan. The purpose was clear: to present and normalize the symbols of the new regime within public life.

The erection of Marx’s bust was more than a cultural gesture. It was a political act aimed at strengthening Soviet influence and spreading its ideology through the urban landscape. During this period, such monuments served as visible tools of ideological communication, integrating political narratives into the visual and spatial identity of the city.

Marx, the symbol of the proletariat and the intellectual architect of revolutionary thought, was a deliberate choice. His image in the heart of Baku was not a mere decorative portrait; it was a message cast in stone and metal, a declaration of class equality, a public representation of a new social order. Through this bust, citizens encountered Soviet ideology daily, embodied in a tangible, authoritative form.

Keykhilis’s work was also psychological in intent. It aimed to reshape public consciousness, to acquaint Baku’s residents with the ideals of the “new world”, equality, unity, and class justice. The monument thus became not only an artistic expression, but also a medium of political persuasion and cultural reprogramming.

Interestingly, while the later bust of Nizami Ganjavi symbolised national culture, Marx’s bust carried a sustained social and political message. It functioned as a tool of ideological continuity. A constant reminder of the new power structure and its values.

In this sense, the bust of Karl Marx in Baku was far more than a sculpture. It was a cornerstone in the shaping of collective consciousness, marking the first concrete manifestation of Soviet ideology within the city’s cultural and urban landscape.

The contrast between Nizami Ganjavi’s bust and ideological monuments

Though both among the first busts to grace Baku’s streets, the monuments to Karl Marx and Nizami Ganjavi conveyed entirely different messages and belonged to contrasting worlds of meaning.

The bust of Karl Marx was erected as a tool of Soviet ideological propaganda. Representing the proletariat, it symbolised social equality and class justice. The core tenets of the new political order. Every passerby who stood before it was not simply observing a sculpture, but absorbing a message of social transformation.

In contrast, the bust of Nizami Ganjavi embodied the ideals of national culture and literary heritage. Its purpose was not ideological indoctrination, but the affirmation of cultural identity and pride. While Marx’s bust spoke to the collective through the lens of ideology, Nizami’s appealed to the spirit of art, poetry, and nationhood.

Yakov Keykhilis’s bust of Marx reflected the aesthetics of Soviet realism direct, simplified, and clear in its ideological intent. The Nizami bust, however, was imbued with poetic and symbolic elements drawn from national ornamentation, revealing a deeper artistic and aesthetic sensibility.

Over time, Marx’s bust, bound to the shifting tides of political ideology, lost much of its original relevance. Nizami’s monument, on the other hand, endured as a lasting representation of cultural continuity, a symbol of heritage rather than of power.

Thus, the two busts stand as visible contrasts within Baku’s sculptural and social history: one representing the ideology of its time, the other expressing the timeless essence of national identity. Together, they enriched the city’s cultural landscape, showing how art in public space can become both a mirror of political power and a vessel of cultural memory.

In the end, these early monuments were far more than stone and metal. They were expressions of history, ideology, culture, and aesthetic vision, leaving enduring marks on Baku’s urban identity and offering today’s observer a glimpse into the city’s layered past.

Nigar Shahverdiyeva
Sociologist, Research Writer