There is an opinion that people born in the USSR have special talents and flair, because from childhood they absorbed the diversity of cultures of the peoples inhabiting the Soviet state. If we take the life of the scientist and entrepreneur Igor Raufovich Ashurbeyli as an example, then these words can be trusted.
Perhaps the point is not in the Soviet Union, but in genes or ancestral memory? Or both? Probably, it is not this that is important, but the fact that a person of a huge scale of thinking has grown from a simple Baku guy.
Biography
Igor Ashurbeyli was born in Baku in 1963. His great-grandfathers from his father's side were large owners of land and oil factories, and from his mother's side they were all peasants.
After the 1917 revolution, everyone became equal: the rich lost their lands, factories and capital, and the poor got the opportunity to get out of poverty. Igor's mother is from the Nizhny Novgorod province, her ancestors came to Baku a long time ago. Her great-grandfather was a supporter of the revolution, an active party member and fighter for communism. He was an authority in party circles. The onset of the 1941 war 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, knew Rauf Ashurbeyli from childhood - they grew up in the neighborhood. When the young man and the girl became quite adults, they realized that they have feelings for each other that are greater 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 only well, but with pleasure. Modern children would call him a "nerd", but along with excellent academic success, he showed interest in his classmates, and made friends with many. The children called him "the professor" because he read a lot on a variety of topics.
Apart from friendship, chess and books, Igor has a pleasant memory of his grandmother Evgenia Rezanova, with whom he was very close. She adored her grandson, cared for him and often spoiled him. Once she took Igor to Pyatigorsk and baptized him in an Orthodox church. When Ashurbeyli grew up, he remembered this moment and realized that he really grew 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 given to him as easily as at school. He was an activist in all matters, he went to construction brigades with pleasure. I even visited Czechoslovakia with an international team of students.
Having received the education of an engineer in 1985, Ashurbeyli was assigned 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 was pursuing a career as a scientist: he entered graduate school, defended his dissertation.
In the late 1980s, the Socium cooperative created by Igor Raufovich began its activities and is working quite successfully. However, this was not enough for the creators, and soon the Association of Scientific, Industrial and Technical Enterprises and a 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 the International Exchange of Information and Telecommunications appeared in Russia, which was designed to create a single communication space through the Internet. The young businessman understood that the future belongs to the global network.
A sharp turn in the career
In 1994, Ashurbeyli made an unexpected proposal: to "revive from the ashes" the NGO "Almaz", which is part of the country's defense complex. He accepted the offer, and the difficult work of rebuilding and modernizing the association began. Igor planned to cope in six months, but then he was so carried away by the idea of reviving the defense industry that he was delayed for sixteen years.
Thanks to him, Almaz began to recover from its peak, state orders appeared, and the salaries of workers and employees increased many times over. 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 capability.
However, Ashurbeyli was dismissed from "Almaz" unexpectedly, ugly, and then for a long time they were persecuted by inspections of his economic activities in the association, which was very unpleasant for a person who gave so much to his native enterprise.
New life, new state
Only after leaving the defense industry, Igor Raufovich realized how much he became a free man, independent of anyone. He took up his cooperative Socium, which by that time had turned into a multi-level holding.
And what does a new state mean? In the most literal sense, Ashurbeyli created a virtual space state and named it "Asgardia". The state has a president (according to other sources - a king), a general judge, members of parliament and other dignitaries. They gather at their meetings and decide state issues. There are already quite a few people in the state who receive documents on Asgardian citizenship. The goal of the Asgardians is peaceful space exploration.
Personal life
As you can see, in life Igor Ashurbeyli is a rather energetic and decisive person. Therefore, he married a classmate Victoria during his student years. In 1984 their son Ruslan was born.
Now he is quite an adult, married man. He holds a large position in the "Socium" holding and supports his father in all his endeavors.
