Founder of first independent Russian-language newspaper in Azerbaijan dies in Baku

Rauf Talishinsky, the founder of Zerkalo (The Mirror), the first independent Russian-language newspaper in Azerbaijan, died in Baku on 8 May from heart problems.

He worked in journalism for about forty years. In 1990, in the last years of the Soviet Union during curfews and riots in Baku, he created Zerkalo which has persistently maintained an independent course. The newspaper dispensed in tens of thousands of copies – a very large circulation for Baku.

Very few people in Baku remember now that the famous journalistic magazine Monitor had also been published at first as part of Zerkalo. Monitor later broke away from Zerkalo and was then headed by Elmar Huseynov, a well-known Azerbaijani journalist who criticized the authorities in his articles and was killed in 2005 (the murderer was never identified).

Rauf Talishinsky left Zerkalo in 2001, then founded and headed the Echo newspaper.

Zerkalo had been a school for Azerbaijani journalists for a long time. The newspaper had brought forth many famous Azerbaijani Russian-speaking journalists.