Rashbil Zakharyayev

In the early 1960s Rashbil Khagayevich completed journalistic preparation at Moscow State University and finished his professional education in Baku, at the Faculty of Journalism of Azerbaijan State University. So in Krasnaya Sloboda there appeared, for the first time, a man with a journalist's diploma born under its roofs.

For several years he worked as head of department at the Quba district executive committee, but his destiny was settled the day he sat down at the editorial desk of the district paper «Şəfəq» — "Dawn." From 1966 to 1978 he remained its own correspondent — twelve years that contain almost everything we now call his legacy.

His writings reached far beyond the district: «Sovet kəndi», «Bakinsky Rabochy», «Selskaya Zhizn», the specialised «Sadovodstvo». Essays and reports, dispatches and satirical pieces, sketches of working people — he could see the human being behind the plan figure.

And in parallel — another, quieter labour. He wrote poems and stories. In his lifetime he scarcely published them. "There are nine books at home, not yet opened to the world," he would tell his family.

On 16 May 1978 Rashbil Zakharyayev died — he had not yet turned thirty-nine. He left behind a wife, nine children, and a newsroom that, for a long time, could not get used to his empty chair.