Revolutionaries and Reactionaries: Russian Communities in Iran before and after the 1917 Revolutions

• In Event: Between Integration and Isolation: Eastern European Expatriates East and West (1830-1939)

Abstract

In 1908-09, hundreds of Russian subjects affiliated with socialist and national liberationist parties rallied to rescue the Iranian Constitutional Revolution (1905-11) from a monarchist coup. Although their successes were ultimately undone by the Russian state’s invasion in December 1911, the Revolutions of 1917 prevented Russian officials from consolidating their own control over Iran. Instead, the Russian officials who remained in Iran found themselves under threat from Iranian, Ottoman, German, and especially Bolshevik agents. This paper examines the dual nature of Russian migration to Iran: Initially a refuge for radical socialists, it later became a sanctuary for the very state officials who had sought to suppress them. By exploring these parallel developments, the paper asks to which Iran had lost its sovereignty, as its territory became not only a haven for foreign actors but also a battleground for their domestic political conflicts.

Author

• Kayhan Aryan Nejad, U of Oklahoma