Telegram from Baku to Moscow, 'Information about Iranian Azerbaijan'

TELEGRAM

FROM BAKU 22 November 1945

to MOSCOW, to Cdes. STALIN, MOLOTOV, BERIA, and MALENKOV

We report information about Iranian Azerbaijan as of 2200 21 November.

The partisans have begun the practice of sending suggestions to gendarme posts to lay down [their] weapons and go home. On 20 November in one of the population centers two gendarmes voluntarily appeared and handed their weapons to the partisans. In the city of Maragheh the partisans suggested that reactionary bureaucrats, including the governor, a supporter of Seyyed Ziaeddin, leave the city. The latter, cheered by Tehran radio reports about the dispatch of military formations to suppress the democratic movement and under the influence of Fars Muin Asad, a colonel of the Iranian troops, rejected the partisans' suggestion.

The Meyaneh partisans closed the Iranian troops' route from Tabriz to Meyaneh in connection with the permission to General Darakhshani to send detachments of Iranian soldiers from Tabriz to the cities of Maragheh and Meyaneh. In the city of Meyaneh the partisans liquidated Ali Olovii, the organizer and leader of the Seyyed Ziaeddin party, Kheyriya. The partisans seized a small number of uniforms at the railroad station there and outfitted their poorly-clad fighters. In the city of Meyaneh all the government institutions are operating normally except the gendarmerie headquarters. The city is being guarded by the police. An incident occurred when one citizen committed a robbery. The partisans took away the articles, returned [them] to the owner, took away the robber, and punished [him] harshly. The governor of the city opened an additional bakery and began issuing the city population and peasants the expected [polagaemaya] ration of sugar.

On the partisans' receipt of information about advance of Iranian troops from Tehran they took steps to guard the narrow passes and bridges 25 km from the city of Meyaneh in the direction of Zanjan. According to information of our border guards in connection with the operations of partisan detachments the governor general of the city of Ardabil left the city and headed in the direction of Tehran. A panic is occurring among the officers of the Azerbaijani garrison. In response to rumors which have been spread that one Iranian officer in the city of Tabriz was prohibited from flying to Tehran to report to the government General Darakhshani of the Iranian troops in Tabriz declared that there was no such incident and that this was the latest lie invented in Tehran.

BAGIROV

MASLENNIKOV

Received via VCh

22 Nov 1945