Sharing cramped geographic quarters with Iran, Russia, Georgia, and Armenia is no easy task, yet Azeris in this Muslim-majority country enjoy one of the most pro-Western, liberalized societies in the region (consider that women gained the right to vote in pre-Soviet Azerbaijan in 1919, narrowly beating out the enactment of the Nineteenth Amendment).
The former Soviet republic of Azerbaijan is celebrating the first flow of oil from the Caspian Sea for decades.
President Bush is playing host today to the leader of the former Soviet Republic of Azerbaijan, in what some say is a litmus test of the president's so-called freedom agenda.
This policy approach is ominously reminiscent of the minimalist, sotto voce expressions of "concern" about state repression of those seeking individual freedoms and democracy in Soviet Georgia, Azerbaijan, the Baltics, China and Iraq.
He was born in Baku, in the Soviet Union (now Azerbaijan) on March 27, 1927.
He inherited the presidency from his late father, Heydar, a shrewd KGB general who had also run Azerbaijan in Soviet times.
The oil, competition with Russia for influence in the former Soviet Union, plus Azerbaijan's strategic location, might suggest that America and the European Union should be content with Mr Aliev and the stability he seems to offer.
In Azerbaijan, former Soviet Party boss Heydar Aliyev took power in a 1993 coup, cemented by an "election" in which he won almost 99% of the vote.
He was one of the first western oilmen to build up contacts in Azerbaijan as the Soviet Union was crumbling, and he persuaded the Azeris to let him represent them to the world oil industry.
After the collapse of the former Soviet Union in 1991, Azerbaijan and Armenia fought a brutal war in which both sides suffered enormously, with up to 30, 000 people killed and a million forced to flee their homes.
The conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan erupted as the Soviet Union collapsed and at least 30, 000 people were killed by the time the truce was declared in 1994.
BBC: Azeri-Armenian clashes 'may escalate' - Hillary Clinton
The region covers EU countries such as Bulgaria and Romania, as well as Turkey and ex-Soviet Union countries including Ukraine, Azerbaijan and Georgia, and was described by Romanian MEP Ioan Pascu as a "gate to and from Europe".
NATO's Partnerships for Peace under a special arrangement, scorned Russia's efforts to resurrect the rump of the old Soviet Union under a new name, teamed up instead with other ex-Soviet states such as Georgia, Azerbaijan and Moldova, and has sought, admittedly without much conviction, to join the European Union.
But it was enraged last year when Azerbaijan, an ex-Soviet republic, began talks on buying JF-17s, according to people familiar with the situation.
Those in the north lived under Russian, then Soviet rule - and are now in independent Azerbaijan.
The Bush Administration has repeatedly made clear its tolerance of Soviet repression in the Baltics, Georgia and Azerbaijan.
Among the club's members are the United States, Russia, Turkey, three ex-Soviet republics in the Caucasus (Georgia, Azerbaijan and Armenia) and all the other countries of Europe.
When Mr Aliev returned to power in 1993, after Azerbaijan's first two post-Soviet leaders had failed to entrench themselves, he dropped all proletarian pretension.
It includes big problematic cases such as Turkey and Ukraine and even in another optimistic couple of decades four other ex-Soviet republics, Georgia, Moldova, Armenia and Azerbaijan (the last, maybe, one day, on Turkey's coat-tails).
In a hint that the conflict could widen, Azerbaijan and Georgia, two pro-western ex-Soviet republics in the Caucasus, have been warned against offering a haven to a Chechen government-in-exile or to retreating Chechen forces.
Russia is bringing similar pressure to bear on Azerbaijan, Ukraine (1) and other parts of the former Soviet empire.
CENTERFORSECURITYPOLICY: Watch This Space: Russian Military's Chits Being Cashed In
The Center for Security Policy is concerned that the Soviet government's decision to deny Western press and diplomats access to the republic of Azerbaijan is greatly complicating the task of accurately monitoring the conflict.
Azerbaijan, their neighbour to the west, has had a different passage into the post-Soviet era.
At the center of the new Great Game is Moscow's effort to put the squeeze on Azerbaijan, a secular Muslim state whose President, Heydar Aliyev, once a member of the Soviet Politburo, welcomes Western investment.
Over the past few years Russia has tried to push Azerbaijan to allow Russian military bases and to join the Commonwealth of Independent States, the confederation of former Soviet republics.
In 1987 Mikhail Gorbachev, Brezhnev's successor as Soviet leader, decided that Mr Aliyev was not sympathetic enough to his reforms and sacked him as first secretary of Azerbaijan's Communist Party.
应用推荐