How Iranian Azerbaijan narrowly avoided becoming the USSR's “new territory”: Excerpt from “Iran's Kremlin Agents” by Mikhail Krutikhin

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How Moscow sold out Iranian communists yet again

In August 1941, Stalin personally tasked Mir Jafar Abbas-ogly Bagirov with using the presence of Soviet troops in Iran to spread communist influence. Bagirov was not chosen by chance. Having long served as the head of the NKVD in Azerbaijan and as a trusted deputy to Lavrentiy Beria, Stalin's chief executioner, he had earned a reputation as a master of sadistic torture. By 1941, Bagirov had risen to become the First Secretary of the Communist Party of Azerbaijan.

To carry out this mission, Bagirov focused on Iranian Azerbaijan and Kurdistan, where Red Army units were stationed during World War II. In Tehran, where Azerbaijanis were a minority compared to Persians, he opted to act indirectly, using secret agents—Abdolsamad Kambakhsh and Noureddin Kianouri, leaders of the Tudeh party, a leftist group covertly controlled by Moscow.

In Azerbaijan, Bagirov had a key advantage: the national factor. Instead of deploying regular Red Army units to the region, he brought in a specially created 77th Azerbaijani national division.

Propaganda efforts were heavily emphasized, with both local communists and Soviet military political organs involved. Authorized representatives from the Central Committee of the Azerbaijani Bolshevik Party were stationed in Tabriz, and cultural and artistic figures frequently visited on tour. According to eyewitnesses, Bagirov openly told his close associates, including Iranians, that he saw no difference between the Iranian and Soviet parts of Azerbaijan and aimed to unite them under Moscow's communist flag.

Iranian Azerbaijan: The Failure of Soviet Plans

For several years, Soviet emissaries struggled to establish a strong foothold in Iranian Azerbaijan. The main obstacle was the lack of influential leaders in the region who genuinely supported communist ideals. In April 1942, the nationalist organization Tudeh Azerbaijan, which had been created with the tacit approval of the Soviet command, disbanded. Another group, Tashkilat Zahmatkeshan (“Association of Workers”), made up of repatriates who had returned from the USSR in the 1930s, also failed to gain significant influence.

Efforts to establish a regional branch of the Tudeh party in Azerbaijan faced similar challenges. The leadership quickly fractured into two factions: one led by Ali Asghar Sartip-zadeh, who had been expelled from the Communist Party of Iran in 1925 for congratulating the Shah on his coronation, and another by a man named Asadi, who had been ousted from the party in the 1920s for concealing a large estate. Soviet officials were unable to find more suitable candidates to lead the communist movement in Iranian Azerbaijan.

In December 1942, a special commission from the Tudeh party's Central Committee tried to address the situation by forming a coalition regional committee in Azerbaijan. However, this committee lasted only a month and a half before local Tudeh members were again forced to operate in small, scattered groups and cells.

After World War II ended, the Soviet Union was no longer concerned about offending Iran, which had served as a crucial route for receiving food and military supplies from Western countries. This allowed Bagirov to take more decisive action.

Creation of the Democratic Party of Azerbaijan and the “Autonomous” Republic

To carry out his plans, Bagirov recruited Jafar Javad-zadeh, a longtime member of the now-defunct Communist Party of Iran. Javad-zadeh adopted a new name—Mir Jafar Pishevari. On September 3, 1945, under Bagirov's direction, Pishevari issued the first public appeal from his newly formed Democratic Party of Azerbaijan in Tehran and Tabriz.

Interestingly, one of the main political slogans of the new party was: “Long live Mir Jafar Bagirov—the father of united Azerbaijan!” This slogan made it clear that the party's ultimate goal was to annex Iranian Azerbaijan, with its Azerbaijani population, to Soviet Azerbaijan under Bagirov's control.

Initially, the party's appeal centered on demanding national autonomy for Azerbaijan within Iran. A significant portion of the party's leadership consisted of people who had arrived in Iran with Soviet troops, and the regional branch of the Tudeh party fully merged with the Democratic Party of Azerbaijan.

Bagirov was pushing events forward quickly. By November, under the control of Soviet troops, rigged “elections” were held in Iranian Azerbaijan for the People's Assembly. The communists claimed that more than a million people participated in the voting. However, in his memoirs, Tudeh party veteran Artashes Avanesyan notes that the 687 deputies were not elected through a formal process but were chosen at 180 rallies attended by no more than 150,000 people.

When the People's Assembly demanded autonomy for Azerbaijan from the Shah and Iran's Prime Minister, created a 39-member National Committee, and issued a call for a “sacred uprising,” the Iranian government grew alarmed. They sent a note to the Soviet embassy demanding permission to send government troops into Iranian Azerbaijan to quell the separatists. The Soviets, who had actually instigated the separatist movement, refused.

On November 26, elections for the National Majlis of Azerbaijan were held. By December 12, at its very first session, this body instructed Pishevari to form a government. In his 12-member cabinet, 10 were activists from the Democratic Party.

“Democratic” reforms

The new government's first act was to issue a decree ordering the disarmament of Iranian military units, police, and gendarmerie in Iranian Azerbaijan. With the backing of the Red Army, this operation was carried out with almost no resistance. Only the garrison in the city of Rezaie put up a fight against the separatists. On February 5, 1946, the National Army of Azerbaijan was formed, quietly integrating several units from the Red Army's 77th division.

The government quickly initiated “democratic” reforms, closely resembling those carried out in Gilan in 1920 when communists, under Soviet control and the direction of Mikoyan and Mdivani, were in power. Pishevari, who had gained experience in Gilan—where he served as Minister of Internal Affairs in the Soviet Republic of Gilan—moved swiftly. He had little choice. According to one eyewitness, Bagirov physically assaulted Pishevari in his office when the latter hinted that the pace of socialist transformations might be too rapid. The Bolsheviks were in a rush to seize full control of Iranian Azerbaijan.

The Azerbaijani language was declared the official language in this region. The new government took control of banks, issued its temporary currency, and established a state-controlled trading system. The entire administrative apparatus was replaced with Democratic Party activists. Iranian Azerbaijan effectively became a republic, largely independent of Tehran.

Meanwhile, similar developments were unfolding in Iranian Kurdistan. Soviet representatives, working alongside Red Army units, organized a congress of the newly formed Democratic Party of Kurdistan in Mahabad from October 25-28, 1945. The party was mainly composed of activists from the nationalist organization Komala (“Committee”), who had come from Iraq. Qazi Muhammad Said was appointed as the party leader and also became the head of the Kurdistan government, which was established after the congress. The first act of this new government was to declare autonomy.

Iranian oil in exchange for Azerbaijan: The Shah's gambit

Despite the end of the war, Soviet troops remained in Iran, ignoring the Shah's demands, complaints from the Iranian government to the UN, and protests from Western countries. Likely recalling the 1921 experience when the Soviet government “sold” the Soviet Republic of Gilan in exchange for two international treaties, the Shah's advisors decided to use a tried-and-true method to end the occupation and retain control over Azerbaijan and Kurdistan.

They began by appointing Ahmad Qavam, who was familiar with the events of the early 1920s, as head of the Iranian government. Known as Qavam es-Saltaneh when he served as Prime Minister during that time, Qavam quickly sought to win the Soviet Union's trust by announcing a series of democratic reforms, arresting several of the most reactionary figures, and even temporarily inviting three Tudeh party members into the government.

Yet the main leverage was the “northern oil concession.” Despite the Majlis's ban on negotiating concessions, Qavam traveled to Moscow in February 1946. After talks, he signed the long-awaited agreement in Tehran on April 4. The deal granted the Soviet Union rights to explore for oil in northern Iran, with the price being the withdrawal of Soviet troops. Moscow accepted the terms, and by May 1946, Soviet troops left Iran. Following Stalin's orders, they also removed the National Army of Iranian Azerbaijan, which could have resisted the central government's forces.

According to an account given to RIA Novosti by Valentin Falin, a former Central Committee member and aide to Soviet diplomat Andrei Gromyko and First Secretary Nikita Khrushchev, US President Harry Truman threatened to drop an atomic bomb on Moscow in March 1946 if the Soviet Union did not withdraw its troops from Iran within 24 hours. The threat, it is said, proved effective.

Qavam bided his time, negotiating with Pishevari and even granting Iranian Azerbaijan a degree of limited autonomy. The Azerbaijani Majlis was renamed the “national anjuman,” though the governor-general still required approval from the central government.

These moves helped Qavam temporarily ease Stalin and Pishevari's suspicions while he prepared for a counteroffensive. The opposition coalesced under the Democratic Party of Iran, which Qavam had established. On November 21, 1946, the Iranian government announced the deployment of troops to the provinces to ensure free elections for the 15th Majlis. By December 10, Shah’s forces had entered rebellious Iranian Azerbaijan and, soon after, Kurdistan. Reports indicate that the punitive forces executed up to 20,000 supporters of the independent national republics without trial.

Pishevari fled to Baku. Bagirov, who also faced a precarious situation, lost his position as ruler of Soviet Azerbaijan in the summer of 1953 after the execution of his patron, Beria, leading to his own repression.

The ruse involving the “northern concession” succeeded, and in October 1947, the shrewd Qavam publicly denounced his agreement with the Soviet Union in the Majlis. As a result, the parliamentarians declared the agreement invalid.

Split, repressions, going underground: Tudeh after the failure in Iranian Azerbaijan

The failure to establish “democratic” or, more accurately, pro-communist and pro-Soviet republics in Iranian Azerbaijan and Kurdistan further weakened the already fragile unity of the Tudeh party.

The party's ideologues claimed they had been working in close “combat and revolutionary cooperation” with Azerbaijani democrats from the start, but this is a significant exaggeration. In reality, the Tudeh leaders mostly engaged in propaganda to justify Soviet actions, particularly the refusal to allow Shah's troops to enter.

According to his PhD thesis, Tudeh member Alburzi argues that one reason for the suppression of movements in Azerbaijan and Kurdistan was the Tudeh leaders' failure to establish strong ties and coordination with these groups or to create a united front in their support. Alburzi suggests that some party leaders were simply afraid of the autonomy movements, viewing them as threats to the authority and influence of the central party apparatus.

Such criticism grew more common within the Tudeh party, which became a battleground of internal strife and disputes. Reformers frequently reminded the leadership of the mistakes made over the “northern oil concession.” After 16 months of wavering towards reform in the style of Yugoslav leader Josip Broz Tito, the Tudeh party returned to full compliance with Soviet directives.

When the Shah's regime cracked down on the Tudeh party in February 1949, only two members of its Central Committee, Mohammed Bahrami and Ghulam-Hossein Forutan, remained at large. They managed to recruit a few rank-and-file members and, by September, established an underground Temporary Bureau. The surviving party cells were reorganized into small groups of no more than five or six people each.

By this time, Moscow had issued a new directive: focus on the struggle for peace. The Tudeh party limited its activities to promoting peace. From July 4, 1950, its legal “front” was the Iranian Society of Peace Supporters, led by the renowned poet Mohammad Malek-osh-Shoara Bahar.

The underground Tudeh cadres grew stronger and pulled off a bold operation. On December 15, 1950, nine party leaders escaped from the Qasr military prison in Tehran. They were smuggled out in a truck disguised as an army vehicle, thanks to retired army captain Khosrow Ruzbeh, who was also the leader of the secret Organization of Freedom-Loving Officers of Tudeh. Some of the escapees went into hiding abroad, including in the Soviet Union, while others returned to party work, forming an underground executive committee of the Tudeh Central Committee.

At the same time, criticism of the party leadership from the “left” intensified. The youth demanded a shift from popular front ideas to more radical methods of fighting the regime. A group of former party members, writing in their magazine Tezadd (“Contradiction”), labeled Tudeh as “a scattered front that calls itself a party of the working class but is actually just a handful of intellectuals parroting Marxist-Leninist formulas.”

These views led to the formation of new radical communist groups from among former Tudeh members and supporters.

Mikhail Krutikhin. Playing Revolution: Iran's Kremlin Agents. Riga: Freedom Letters, 2024.