Shamama Gasanova, twice named a
Hero of the Soviet Union, attained the highest political rank of any
woman in the
history of the USSR when she became the Secretary of the Soviet of the Union of the Supreme Soviet. The author of a monumental increase in Soviet cotton production, she was also a writer and poet. She toured the United States with
Alexei Kosygin and Leonid Brezhnev in 1974, and visited a large garlic
farm in Gilroy. Shamama was an Azeri, a poet and a writer. After she retired and the USSR discorporated, the unfortunate Ms. Gasanova was rudely dispossessed of her family home in the the Disputed Nagorno--Karabakh Enclave, forcing her to flee to Baku in both her nightgown and a state of profound ignominy.