From the CIA Factbook

Azerbaijan - a nation of Turkic Muslims - has been an independent republic since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. Despite a cease-fire, in place since 1994, Azerbaijan has yet to resolve its conflict with Armenia over the Azerbaijani Nagorno-Karabakh enclave (largely Armenian populated). Azerbaijan has lost almost 20% of its territory and must support some 750,000 refugees and internally displaced persons (IDPs) as a result of the conflict. Corruption is ubiquitous and the promise of widespread wealth from Azerbaijan's undeveloped petroleum resources remains largely unfulfilled

The word for doll is kukla

I bid on these dolls November 2001. While my identification is not certain, the boy is dressed similarly to a man in the Fainges book. page 16. He has a similar kind of red hat, has red shoes. This appears from other dolls in the Fainges Encyclopedia of Regional Dolls to be part of a USSR set that represented different parts of the country with similar dolls. The seller mentioned that there was documentation about the dolls being from some ethnological project.