Objectives and principles of the criminal legislation of the Republic of Azerbaijan: genesis and evolution

Introduction. The author's intention is to study the genesis and evolution of the objectives and principles of criminal law in Azerbaijan. A historical and legal digression is given and official documents regulating the issues of objectives and principles of criminal law, as well as relevant narrative materials are explicated. Particular attention is paid to the phenomenological analysis of the content of the texts of legal acts and collections of sacred texts related to the issue under study, the opinions of officials revealing the ideological foundations of sentencing. Materials and Methods. The normative base of the study was made up of normative legal acts of the Russian Empire, the ADR, and the Republic of Azerbaijan. The documentary base of the study was expanded by sacred scriptures and official acts of imperial officials. The theoretical basis was the works of legal scholars. The methodological basis of the study was the general dialectical method of scientific knowledge, methods of empirical and theoretical nature (description, formalization, comparison, analysis, generalization, deduction and induction, hypothesis), as well as special legal methods (formal-legal, comparative-legal). The Results of the Study allowed us to propose the author's position that criminal-legal relations in Azerbaijan in certain periods of history were regulated by the norms of customary, religious and written law. After joining the Russian Empire, for the first time at the normative level in criminal law, its essential tasks were formalized, such as crime prevention, protection of man and public safety from criminal encroachments, and fundamental principles that differed from the previously prevailing ones - the principle of humanism and the principle of justice - were established. The degree of influence of the presence or absence of sovereignty, the dominant religion, political ideology, form of government, the dominant religion, the set of means and methods by which political power is exercised in the state on the priorities in the tasks and principles of criminal law was determined. The doctrine of tasks was determined by the priority of state interests. Findings and Сonclusions. Based on the analysis of the content of historical and current legal acts, it can be concluded that the tasks and principles of the criminal law were characterized by discreteness and were relevant to their time. Throughout history, state-political, territorial, religious and ideological changes, as well as the form of government, political regime and security issues have made changes to the tasks and principles of criminal legislation. Another determining factor was the level of understanding of the axiology of such categories as life, death, freedom, justice, humanism, as well as the legal consciousness of society, its attitude to law and legal phenomena.