Petition of A. M. Abdullaev to the First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Azerbaijan H. A. Aliyev on the Establishment of the Azerbaijan Main Gas Pipelines Administration (1970): Historical Context and Significance

This publication presents an expanded scholarly edition of A. M. Abdullaev's 1970 petition to Heydar Aliyev, First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Azerbaijan, on the establishment of the Azerbaijan Main Gas Pipelines Administration. The new version adds a historical analysis by Aydin A. Alizade situating the document within the broader context of Soviet-era center-periphery administrative relations, the 1971 resignation and 1972 Moscow negotiations that followed the petition, and the document's significance for the history of the Trans-Iranian gas pipeline (IGAT-1) and the formation of Azerbaijan's national gas transport management system. The edition includes the full text of the original 1970 letter together with its English, Azerbaijani, and Russian versions. This publication documents and supplements the monograph Gasification and Operation of the Gas Economy of Azerbaijan (1955–1970): A Historical-Sociological Study (2023, Russian translation), presenting additional archival material that lies beyond the chronological and thematic scope of the monograph itself.