were many such reprintings of primary sources in Baku, where academician Z.M. Bunyadov was actively engaged". Soviet academic Igor Diakonov wrote that Bunyadov become infamous for a scientific edition of "a historical source from where all mentions on Armenians have been carefully eliminated". Historians Willem Floor and Hasan Javadi charged Bunyadov for making "an incomplete and defective Russian translation of Bakikhanov's text. Not only has he not translated any of the poems in the text, but he does not even mention that he has not done so, while he does not translate certain other prose parts of the text without indicating this and why. This is in particular disturbing because he suppresses, for example, the mention of territory inhabited by Armenians, thus not only falsifying history, but also not respecting Bakikhanov's dictum that a historian should write without prejudice, whether religious, ethnic, political or otherwise". Some of Bunyadov's research is discussed by Western journalist and author Yo'av Karny. As part of the Soviet Union's nation-building efforts, the Iranian Babak Khorramdin, who followed the teaching of the Iranian Zoroastrian priest Mazdak with its pseudo-Communist and socialist themes, was proclaimed a national hero in the Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic; Bunyadov, within this context, claimed that "Babak was a national hero of Azerbaijani people". The Russian ethnologist, historian and anthropologist Victor Schnirelmann dismisses Bunyadov's theory, criticizing Bunyadov for not mentioning that Babak spoke Persian, and ignoring the witness accounts of Babak's contemporaries who call him Persian. Honours and awards Hero of the Soviet Union Order of Lenin Order of the Red Banner Order of the Red Star Order of the Patriotic War 1st class Order of the October Revolution Selected publications З. Буниятов. «Азербайджан в VII-IX веках». 1973. Баку З. Буниятов. «Государство атабеков Азербайджана: 1136-1225». 1984. Баку Yo'av Karny. Highlanders: A Journey to the Caucasus in Quest of Memory, NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2001 Thomas De Waal. Black Garden: Armenia and Azerbaijan Through Peace and War, New York University Press, 2004 References External links Short biography in Azerbaijani In memoriam book by Buniyadov's wife More on Tahira Bunyadova's book Arif Yunusov, "Islam in Azerbaijan", 2004 Full biography in Russian Ziya Bunyadov about participation in World War II 1923 births 1997 deaths People from Astara District 20th-century Azerbaijani historians Azerbaijani orientalists Azerbaijani academics Heroes of the Soviet Union Deaths by firearm in Azerbaijan People murdered in Azerbaijan Burials at Alley of Honor Recipients