The Scalini restaurant was where the powerful in Baku dined. In its two narrow cozy rooms every guest could see everyone else and they all seemed to know each other. The owner stopped at our table to greet my host personally. “Heydar Aliyev deserves all credits,” my host said. He went on to give me the following outline of the recent history of Azerbaijan that sounded similar to what I had heard at the lecture by the American professor -not surprising since my host had studied in the U.S.