The Bolsheviks and the Soviet Socialist Republic of Iran (1920–21): Moscow's Politics and the Ambitions of Regional and Local Political Actors

The Bolsheviks and the Soviet Socialist Republic of Iran (1920–21)Moscow's Politics and the Ambitions of Regional and Local Political Actors Iurii A. Demin (bio) The landing of Soviet troops in Anzali on 18 May 1920 and the subsequent creation and activity of the Soviet Socialist Republic of Iran (SSRI) reflected the combination of Bolshevik ideology and Soviet raisons d'état. Preoccupied with the events on its western borders, Moscow placed responsibility for aiding the newborn republic under the control of regional actors—the Caucasian Bureau (Kavkazskoe biuro, Kavburo) of the Central Committee of the Russian Communist Party (Bolshevik) (RCPb) and the leadership of Soviet Azerbaijan. The actions of these regional and local players, in the absence of Moscow's direct control, deepened the conflict among members of the revolutionary coalition in Gilan and led to its collapse. As a result, Moscow preferred to protect its southern borders by starting negotiations with Tehran and resorting to a combination of diplomatic and economic methods, as well as power politics. At the same time, the Bolsheviks were forced to reconsider their initial revolutionary attitudes in favor of a less radical tactic of creating a broad coalition of various social groups in Iran aimed at bourgeois-democratic reforms. There is a significant amount of research on the history of the SSRI that not only adheres to various theoretical and methodological approaches but also reflects extant political circumstances and ideological orientations. In Soviet historiography, the events in Gilan in 1920–21 were interpreted exclusively as the national liberation struggle of the Iranian people, End Page 273 minimizing the Bolsheviks' intervention.1 The memoirs of former Jangalis and postrevolutionary Iranian historians mostly took the opposite position, noting the fundamentally aggressive Bolshevik ideology that led to the invasion of Gilan and the instrumentalist nature of Soviet policy toward the Jangalis.2 Moscow's foreign policy toward the SSRI has often been studied by applying such concepts as the "export of revolution" and/or "diplomatic bargaining" with London.3 Some researchers have viewed the Soviet invasion of Gilan in the context of great-power rivalry and Moscow's strategic interests, primarily regarding the protection of the Baku oil fields.4 At the same time, many works were written without the use of documents from the (former) Soviet archives. Thus Stephen Blank took into account various factors that influenced the Soviet invasion of Gilan, but the lack of archival data did not allow him to fully reveal the positions of Soviet leaders regarding the prospects of the Iranian revolution.5 A number of studies that appeared after the collapse of the USSR highlighted in more detail the positions and actions of the Bolshevik leadership but conceptually largely reproduced the existing models of "export" and/or "bargaining."6 At the same time, researchers can come to mutually exclusive assessments of the Bolshevik leaders' positions. Oliver Bast, for example, considers that for the top Bolshevik leadership the aggressive stance toward Iran amounted to not much more than an elaborate bluff designed to scare the British.7 However, Kayhan A. Nejad points out that End Page 274 the formation of the SSRI marked the Bolsheviks' first serious attempt at exporting revolution beyond the southern borders of the former Russian Empire.8 This article, based mainly on documents from Russian archives, tries to demonstrate that these widely accepted concepts cannot fully explain the Bolsheviks' activities relating to the SSRI. The concept of "export" relies on the Bolsheviks' revolutionary strategy strengthening the role assigned to the East. However, in the spring and summer of 1920, Iran was a secondary theater for Moscow: the war with Poland was more important both in its impact on Soviet Russia's survival and in its effect on revolutionary prospects (the path to Germany). Moscow's actions can be seen as "export of revolution" in the context of supporting local antigovernment forces, but not as an attempt at a full-scale invasion of Iran. Similarly, it is impossible to consider the landing in Anzali exclusively within the framework of Soviet strategic interests, especially since the information received in Moscow reported favorable conditions for revolutionary activity in Iran. The termination of Moscow's support for the...