Alec Rasizade

The most outstanding work of Rasizade, which gained an international acclaim, was the eponymous algorithm of decline theory, described in his 2008 article at the peak of oil prices, when nothing foreshadowed their steep fall and the subsequent onset of global economic recession with irreversible consequences for oil-exporting nations. Prior to that, the effect of rising oil prices, rendered to strengthen the national currencies and affect the economies of rentier states as a result of oil boom, was described only by the "Dutch disease" theory, first introduced in 1977.

However, this theory could not foretell the further course of events after a drop in oil prices on the world market: what would have turned out for oil-dependent countries upon the end of their oil booms? And precisely that happened in 2008, when the price of oil collapsed from $147 per barrel in the middle of the year to $32 by its end, i.e. by 75 percent. Exactly at that moment came out of press the aforementioned article, in which Rasizade explained the chain reaction of an unavoidable sequence of events in the process of impoverishment, degradation and decline in living standards of nations whose welfare depends on the export of natural resources, when one change inevitably entails another. Appearance of the article was so timely that the described algorithm, which was unfolding in real time, had been picked up in scholarly literature as a typological model by the name of its author.

1) Having an insider knowledge of Caspian oil reserves, Rasizade precisely calculated and predicted in his writings the exact end of the second Baku oil boom of 2005–2014, notwithstanding the geopolitical euphoria of the 1990s in Western capitals based on exaggerated estimates by American academia, Azerbaijani government and Caspian oil consortium.

Upon the demise of the USSR in 1991, Rasizade emigrated to the United States as a visiting professor of history at the University of South Florida in Tampa. Furthermore, as a Fulbright professor, he taught Soviet history in the 1990s at Stanford, Berkeley, UCLA, Harvard, SAIS, Monmouth and other universities. After obtaining a PhD in history from Columbia University in 1995, he worked at its Harriman Institute. In 2000, Rasizade was invited to Washington to work at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, whereupon in 2004 he moved to the newly established Historical Research Center of the National Academy of Sciences, where wrote his most significant works until retiring upon its closure in 2013.

2) On Russia, he wrote that Putin's Bonapartism was a natural result of the 1990s turmoil, when the society as a whole and the nouveau riches in particular, longed for a strongman who could establish order, stability and legitimacy for the illegally acquired wealth even at the expense of civil rights restriction. Furthermore, Rasizade argues that demise of the USSR was only the first stage in the process of Russian Federation's own breakup or, as he put it bluntly, Russia is doomed to disintegrate as did all multinational empires in history.

Rasizade was born in Nakhichevan-on-Araxes (Azerbaijan SSR) in 1947 and graduated from the history department of Baku State University in 1969, then graduated and received a PhD in history from Moscow State University in 1974, and the doctor of history degree from the USSR Academy of Sciences in 1990. He subsequently worked as a professor of history at Azerbaijan State University from 1974 to 1980, and a senior research fellow at Azerbaijan National Academy of Sciences from 1981 to 1990.