The book of Doctor of Historical Sciences A. Balayev is devoted to the study of the processes of formation and development of the Azerbaijani nation at the turn of the XIX-XX centuries. This work is the first attempt to study the processes of formation of the Azerbaijani nation in the context of modernist theory, which rejects theses about the spontaneous and predetermined nature of the process of nation-building. Based on the main provisions of the modernist theory, the author tried to comprehend in a new way the main stages of the formation and development of the Azerbaijani nation.