Seeing in Vagif a loyal follower of his uncle, he had Vagif and his son executed. At the time of his death his house was plundered and many of his verses were lost. Vagif's remains were kept in Shusha, where a mausoleum in his name was built during the Soviet era in the 1970s. This mausoleum was destroyed in 1992 during the Nagorno-Karabakh War. The fate of Vagif's remains is unknown. Despite the circumstances of his death, Vagif's poetry has persevered. His verses were collected for the first time in 1856 and published by Mirza Yousif Nersesov. Soon afterwards, his verses were published by Adolf Berge in Leipzig in 1867 with the assistance of M.F. Akhundov, a prominent 19th century Azeri playwright, . Vagif's works herald a new era in Azeri poetry, treating more mundane feelings and desires rather than the abstract and religious themes prevalent in the Sufi-leaning poetry of the time. This was the main characteristic that distinguished Vagif from his predecessors and made him the founder of the realism genre in the Azeri poetry. The language of Vagif's poems was qualitatively innovative as well: vivid, simple, and closely approaching the Azeri vernacular. Vagif's poems have had a great influence on Azeri folklore and many of them are repeatedly used in the folk music of ashugs (wandering minstrels). An example: