There is an opinion that people born under the USSR have special talents and intuition, because from childhood they absorbed the diversity of cultures of the peoples inhabiting the Soviet state. If we take as an example the life of the scientist and businessman Igor Raufovich Ashurbeyli, then these words can be trusted.
Perhaps the matter is not in the Soviet Union, but in genes or tribal memory? Or both? Probably, this is not important, but the fact that a man of a huge scale of thinking grew out of a simple Baku guy.
Biography
Igor Ashurbeyli was born in Baku in 1963. His great-grandfathers on the part of his father were large owners of land and oil refineries, and on the part of his mother, all were peasants.
After the 1917 revolution, everyone became equal: the rich lost their lands, factories and capital, while the poor got the opportunity to get out of poverty. Igor’s mother is from the Nizhny Novgorod province, her ancestors arrived in Baku a very long time ago. Her great-grandfather was a supporter of the revolution, an active party member and a fighter for communism. He was an authority in party circles. The war of 1941 did not spare either one or the other: one grandfather was shot as an enemy of the people, the other died in battle.
Elizaveta Rezanova, Igor’s mother, was familiar with Rauf Ashurbeyli since childhood - they grew up in the neighborhood. When the boy and the girl became quite grown-ups, they realized that they had feelings for each other more than just friendly sympathy. They got married, and a year later Igor was born - surprisingly calm and silent, as he was later told.
At school, he was also not a bully, he studied not just well, but with pleasure. Modern children would call him a "nerd", however, along with excellent academic success, he showed interest in classmates, was friends with many. The children called him a “professor" because he read a lot on a variety of topics.
From pleasant memories, besides friendship, chess and books, Igor still has a memory of Evgeny Rezanova’s grandmother, with whom they were very close. She adored her grandson, took care of him and often spoiled her. Once she took Igor to Pyatigorsk and christened it in an Orthodox church. When Ashurbeyli grew up, he remembered this moment and realized that he had really grown up as an Orthodox person thanks to his grandmother.
Igor graduated from school with a gold medal and entered the university, specializing in systems engineer. Studying was just as easy for him as at school. He was an activist in all matters, with pleasure went to construction teams. Even traveled to Czechoslovakia with an international student team.
Educated as an engineer in 1985, Ashurbeyli distributed to a gas industry enterprise. And literally three years later, when entrepreneurship became possible in the country, he decided to organize a cooperative. At the same time, he made a career as a scientist: he entered graduate school, defended his thesis.
In the late 80s, the Socium cooperative created by Igor Raufovich began its activities and worked quite successfully. However, the creators of this was not enough, and soon the Association of Scientific and Industrial-Technical Enterprises and the Commodity and Raw Materials Exchange appeared in Azerbaijan. This is also the merit of Ashurbeyli and his associates.
However, the format of a small state did not quite suit him, and in 1990 he moved to Moscow to create an even larger organization there. And soon in Russia appears the "International Exchange of Information and Telecommunications", which was designed to create a single communication space through the Internet. The young businessman understood that the future lies with the global network.
A sharp turn in a career
In 1994, Ashurbeyli made an unexpected proposal: "to revive from the ashes" NPO Almaz, which is part of the country's defense complex. He accepted the offer, and the hard work began to restore and modernize the association. Igor planned to cope in six months, but then he was so fascinated by the idea of reviving the defense that he was delayed for sixteen years.
Thanks to him, Almaz began to emerge from the peak, state orders appeared, and the salaries of workers and employees increased many times. And thanks to his organizational skills, the famous S-400 anti-aircraft missile system was created, the S-500 was put into operation, and much more was done to revive the country's defense capabilities.
However, Ashurbeyli was fired from Almaz unexpectedly, ugly, and then he was persecuted for a long time by inspections of his economic activity in the association, which was very unpleasant for the person who gave so much to his native enterprise.
New life, new state
Only after leaving the defense did Igor Raufovich realize how much he had become a free man, independent of anyone. He took up his co-op Socium, which by that time had turned into a multi-level holding.
And what does the new state mean? In the truest sense, Ashurbeyli created a virtual space state and called it "Asgardia". The state has a president (according to other sources - the king), a general judge, members of parliament and other dignitaries. They gather at their meetings and solve state issues. There are already quite a few people in the state who receive documents on Asgardian citizenship. The purpose of the Asgardians is the peaceful exploration of outer space.
