Memo Concerning the Azerbaijani Democratic Party and the Situation of Political Immigrants from Iran Living in the Azerbaijan SSR

Top Secret

CC CPSU

Memorandum

Concerning the Azerbaijani Democratic Party and the Situation

of Political Immigrants from Iran Living in the Azerbaijan SSR

I.

The Azerbaijani Democratic Party has existed as an independent political organization since 1945. It was founded in accordance with a Decree of the CC VKP(b) Politburo of 6 July 1945 “Measures to Organize a Separatist Movement in Southern Azerbaijan and Other Provinces of Northern Iran”.

On 3 September 1945 an initiative group in the city of Tabriz headed by S. D. Pishevari published an appeal laying out the goals and tasks of the Azerbaijani Democratic Party being created. The appeal contained a demand to give Southern Azerbaijan, occupying a territory of about 150,000 square kilometers and containing 5 million people, autonomy within the Iranian state in the area of self-government with formation of district and provincial enjumens, creation of conditions for development of a national culture, recognition of the Azerbaijani language as an official language for both state and cultural institutions of Azerbaijan, etc. (the text of the appeal is attached).

The initiative group to create the Azerbaijani Democratic Party from a number of influential people of Southern Azerbaijan, including representatives of all strata of society, put out the first issue of the party’s publication on 5 September 1945– the newspaper “Azerbaijan” - which later became the favorite newspaper of the popular masses.

On 7 September 1945 a conference of the Azerbaijani organization of the People’s Party of Iran discussed an appeal to create the Azerbaijani Democratic Party, with the goal of successfully developing a democratic movement and national liberation struggle in Southern Azerbaijan and resolved to leave the People’s Party of Iran and join with the Azerbaijani Democratic Party (an excerpt of the conference’s resolution is attached).

The creation of the Azerbaijani Democratic Party in 1945 was met with enthusiasm by all progressive strata of Iran and the peoples inhabiting that country. Many groups of workers, peasants, craftsmen, and intelligentsia from various cities of Iran (Tehran, Isfahan, Rasht, Chalus, and others), Kurds, Turkomans, [and] Armenians heartily greeted the birth of the Azerbaijani Democratic Party, expressing their agreement with its goals and program, seeing in them a guarantee of the liberation of all the workers of Iran from foreign and despotic oppression. The birth of the Azerbaijani Democratic Party was also met with enthusiasm by the thousands of People’s Party organizations in Iran.  But there have still been found in the leadership of the People’s Party of Iran people who had a hostile attitude toward the creation of the Azerbaijani Democratic Party. However, under pressure of the popular masses and ordinary members of the Party these hostile elements were forced to yield. The CC of the People’s Party of Iran in its appeal published in [issue] No 568 of 1945 in the newspaper “Novruzi Iran”, officially recognized the Azerbaijani Democratic Party [and] greeted its appearance. (An excerpt of the appeal of the CC of the People’s Party of Iran is attached).

The first constituent congress of the Azerbaijani Democratic Party was held on 2-3 October 1945 in Tabriz and approved a program and a Party charter, chose a CC of 41 members and an auditing commission composed of 12 members.

In a short period the Azerbaijani Democratic Party gathered under its banner broad strata of the workers of the city and village of Southern Azerbaijan, and also the progressive part of the national bourgeoisie and intellectuals of other strata of the population. By the end of 1945 it had been turned into a genuine people’s party, joining in its ranks about 70,000 people, including 6,000 workers; 53,000 peasants; 2,000 intellectuals; 3,000 craftsmen and artisans; and 2,600 people from other strata of the population.

The ruling circles of Iran, incited by the Anglo-American imperialists, greeted the birth of the Azerbaijani Democratic Party and its demands for democratic reforms with mass repressions. But this did not break the will of the democrats; on the contrary, it led to a further growth of the democratic movement. In November of 1945 180 large meetings and gatherings were held in all cities and regions of Southern Azerbaijan, in which as many as 1 million people took part. The participants of the meetings and gatherings spoke out for holding elections to national self-governing bodies, adding to this a petition of 150,000 signatures on large broadsheets [polotnishcha]. At these meetings 687 delegates to a “National Congress” of Iranian Azerbaijan were elected.

The “National Congress” which met on 20-21 November 1945 declared itself a founding [uchreditel’nyy] congress and chose a National Committee of 39 members for operational leadership of the democratic movement in Azerbaijan.

The National Congress adopted a declaration to the Iranian Shah, Majlis, and government of Iran in which it laid out the main demand of the Azerbaijani people to give Southern Azerbaijan autonomy within the state of Iran and contained a request to sent authorized representatives to hold talks in order that there be a peaceful means to decide and satisfy and just demands of the peoples of Southern Azerbaijan.

Expressing the age-old hopes of the 5-million population of Southern Azerbaijan and with the objective of ensuring full autonomy, the National Congress recognized as necessary the creation of a legislative body for Southern Azerbaijan in the form of a national Majlis (parliament) and entrusted the National Committee with working out and approving a constitution, a position regarding the elections to the national Majlis, [and] holding these elections.

At the beginning of December 1945 the first genuinely democratic elections in the history of Southern Azerbaijan and Iran were held on the basis of general, direct, equal, suffrage with secret voting. There was not one village, not one population center in Southern Azerbaijan which did not participate in these elections.

The principles of internationalism and genuine democracy lay at the basis of the entire democratic movement in Southern Azerbaijan and the activity of the Azerbaijani Democratic Party, which was led and guided by the science of Marxism-Leninism. Besides Azerbaijanis, active members of the Azerbaijani Democratic Movement were a large number of Kurds, Persians (Iranians), Armenians, Turkomans, and others.  On 12 December 1945, 101 deputies were elected to the Azerbaijani national Majlis in Tabriz, among them 4 Kurds, 3 Armenians, 1 Assyrian, and others.

The Majlis of Southern Azerbaijan created a national government headed by the leader of the Azerbaijani Democratic Party, Pishevari.

The national government of Southern Azerbaijan published its program immediately and set about to fulfill it.

In a brief time a number of important political, social, and other reforms were carried out which were directed at improving the life and welfare of the workers and improving the national economy and culture. Laws were adopted and put into effect concerning land reform, a 8-hour workday, labor, and a reorganization and democratization of the systems of public education and health, etc. Political prisoners were freed from prisons, a popular militia established, and prostitution and consumption of opium banned. Peasants received about 260,000 hectares of land, education in all existing and re-established schools was switched to the native language, hundreds of courses were organized among the population to liquidate illiteracy; in Tabriz, the capital of Southern Azerbaijan, a state university was opened, a musical and dramatic theater was established, a new hospital was built, a textile factory was opened, etc.

The democratic government provided national minorities (Kurds, Armenians, etc.) living in Southern Azerbaijan with all rights for the free development of their national cultures.

The successes of the national movement in Southern Azerbaijan contributed to the great activity of the national liberation struggle in other provinces of Iran. A democratic party arose in Kurdistan, a struggle which was crowned with the establishment of Kurdish autonomy. In large provinces and cities of Iran (Gilyan, Mazandaran, Tehran, Isfahan, Ahvaz) mass meetings and demonstrations of workers became more frequent, with slogans about expelling imperialists from Iran, creating a genuinely democratic regime in the country, and improving the living conditions of workers. In these conditions the government of Qavam-os-Saltaneh came to power in the country, who in his public speeches partially recognized the justice of the popular demands and promised to satisfy them.

The reactionary circles of Iran, maneuvering and creating the appearance that they were going to meet the democratic demands of the people, agreed to take into Qavam’s cabinet representatives of the People’s Party of Iran (Keshaverz – Minister of Education, Iskenderi – Minister of Labor, and Yazdi – Minister of Health).

Under pressure of the ever-growing democratic movement of the popular masses Qavam’s government began talks with the Soviet government and democrats of Southern Azerbaijan.

At the beginning of 1946 talks begun between the governments of the USSR and Iran were crowned with the conclusion of a treaty about the creation of a joint Soviet-Iranian Company to explore and exploit oil deposits in northern Iran. The Iranian government then decided to recognize the rights of the Azerbaijani people to autonomy within the limits of the Iranian state (the decision of the Iranian government published on 22 April 1946 in the form of a “communique of the Prime Minister” is attached).

Immediately afterwards talks were begun in Tehran and continued in Tabriz between the government of Iran and the democratic government of Southern Azerbaijan. The talks concluded with the agreement of 13 June 1946 signed by the Prime Minister of Southern Azerbaijan, Pishevari, and the Deputy Prime Minister of the Iranian government, Mozaffar Firuz.

According to this agreement the Iranian government promised to guarantee [obespechit’] many of the demands of the Azerbaijani democrats such as creation of enjumens [councils], a partial recognition of the land reform that had already been carried out, use of the Azerbaijani language together with Persian in state institutions, instruction in Azerbaijan’s elementary and 7-year schools in their native language, financing of measures to develop education, health, etc., (the text of the agreement is attached).

Succeeding events showed that the reactionary circles of Iran and Qavam-os-Saltaneh, incited by the imperialists, maneuvered before the democratic forces in the country, trying to buy time for an attack. At the same time the government of Qavam deliberately dragged out the ratification of the Soviet-Iranian oil treaty by the Majlis.

Using the departure of Soviet troops from Iran and the existing agreement with the democrats of Southern Azerbaijan, the Iranian government covered the cities and villages of Southern Azerbaijan with armed groups of reactionary elements.  Finally, in December of 1946 under the pretext of “ensuring freedom of elections” to the 15^th Majlis the Iranian government moved its troops into Southern Azerbaijan and savagely suppressed the democratic movement. Outrageous mass reprisals were committed against the participants of the democratic movement and the leaders of the Azerbaijan Democratic Party.  According to information of the Iranian press during several months of 1946-1947 760 people were shot and hung in Southern Azerbaijan by sentence of military field tribunals, thousands of people were killed by the gendarmerie and reactionaries as a result of arbitrary reprisals, [and] tens of thousands of participants of the movement were arrested and deported.

Not [being able to] endure the unbridled terror and bloody reprisals many participants of the democratic movement in Southern Azerbaijan and members of their families (more than 6,000 people) emigrated to the Soviet Union. In succeeding years 3,000 more people crossed the USSR state border singly and in groups in search of political asylum.

After the suppression of the democratic movement in Southern Azerbaijan an offensive of Iranian reactionaries was unleashed on the democratic organizations and institutions throughout the entire country.

In these conditions the Iranian Majlis rejected the agreement with the Soviet Union about oil in northern Iran.

II.

At the present time more than 10,000 political emigrants and family members  live in just the territory of the Azerbaijan SSR, including 5,600 people over age 16; 2,925 of them [were] members of the Azerbaijan Democratic Party.

At the end of 1947, with the permission of the CC CPSU a special committee, was created in Baku to conduct political and organizational work among the emigrants; [the committee] included12 prominent members of the democratic movement, among them 5 members of the CC and 1 member of the auditing commission of the Azerbaijani Democratic Party, chosen during the first congress of the party.  The committee was permitted to have its own press organ – the newspaper “Azerbaijan”, which began publication on 2 December 1947 in the Azerbaijani and Kurdish languages. Moreover, the committee made radio broadcasts to Iran, with interruptions, until 1 August 1953.

In October of 1954 a conference of representatives of all organizations of the Azerbaijani Democratic Party in the Azerbaijan SSR was held, comprising 18 regional and 128 primary organizations.  A CC of 17 members and a Central Auditing Commission of 7 members was chosen at this conference.

The CC and local organizations of the Azerbaijani Democratic Party are doing much work among the political immigrants and refugees for their political education [and] training qualified personnel from among them as specialists for various sectors of the economy and culture via both educational institutions and industry.

During their stay in Soviet Azerbaijan 168 of the democrats have received higher education, of whom 19 have defended their dissertation for the candidate of sciences degree; 296 have graduated a technical school, 300 the Republic Party School, [and] 101 agriculture mechanization schools. At the present time 127 are studying in higher educational and graduate schools, 128 in technical schools, 58 in agriculture mechanization schools, 46 in the Republic Party School, and 5 at the CC CPSU’s VPSh [Higher Party School]. More than a thousand children of the democrats are studying in primary and secondary schools of the republic.

At the present time, of the total number of immigrants and refugees from Iran living on the territory of the Azerbaijan SSR, more than 1500 are working on collective farms, MTS [machine and tractor stations], and state farms, more than 2000 in industrial enterprises and construction organizations, and about 1000 in cultural and educational, state institutions, and trade organizations. The overwhelming majority of those working on collective farms, machine and tractor stations, and state farms, and also those in industrial enterprises are working honestly and conscientiously. Many of them are lead production workers, are fulfilling and over-fulfilling production plans, are learning new professions, [and] raising their professional qualifications. Dozens of democrats have won the right to participate at the All-Union Agricultural Exhibition [and] 66 of the democrats who especially distinguished themselves in industry have won government awards; three have been awarded the title of Hero of Socialist Labor.

At the same time, the CC CP of Azerbaijan considers it necessary to report to the CC CPSU about a number of shortcomings associated with the living conditions and way of life of the political immigrants and refugees from Southern Azerbaijan who are living on the territory of the Azerbaijan SSR.

The housing conditions of the political immigrants are not favorable. Many of them, especially those working in the cities of Baku and Kirovabad, live in private [chastnyye] apartments at a high rent; dozens have been quartered in dormitories of educational institutions which they have long since graduated.

There are many sick people and elderly among the immigrants who are not capable of working. Moreover, some immigrants request that they be given material aid to organize shipments to their families who remained in Iran, but several are requesting that family members be brought out of Iran, where they are literally begging.

A considerable number of children arrived with the political immigrants whose parents had been either executed or are in torture chambers of the Iranian authorities; the latter require special concern.

Difficulties in a material sense are felt by those studying in higher and secondary educational institutions. Stipends awarded on a common basis do not cover the minimum expenses of the student democrats, especially those who have no parents or are themselves family breadwinners.

In 1953 when illegal crossings of the frontier by Iranian subjects in search of better living conditions reached a mass scale, the CC CP of the Azerbaijan SSR and the USSR MVD [Ministry of Internal Affairs] in a joint letter to the CC CPSU raised the question of returning all the violators of the border from Iran, motivated chiefly by “during the mass crossing of the border the possibility is not excluded that agents of foreign intelligence services and anti-Soviet nationalist organizations are crossing into Soviet territory”. In this connection on 5 September 1953 the USSR MVD issued an order, No 00751 “The Procedure for Deporting Border Violators Crossing from Iran to the USSR”, on the basis of which people who had illegally crossed the border in search of better living conditions were sent to Iranian border guards.

This measure led, on the one hand, to a further sharp worsening of the conditions of those families and relatives who remained in Iran and an intensification of repressions against them on the part of Iranian authorities.  On the other hand, the fact that border violators had been handed over to Iranian authorities, which the political immigrants learned from their relatives’ letters, had a negative influence on the mood of the political immigrants.

III.

In 1954 a group of members of  the CC of the People’s Party of Iran who were in Moscow raised the question of merging the Azerbaijan Democratic Party and the Kurdish Democratic Party with the People’s Party of Iran. The proposal of the members of  the CC of the People’s Party of Iran was sent on 30 November 1954 by the Department of the CC CPSU to the CC of the CP of Azerbaijan for the information of the leadership of the Azerbaijan Democratic Party. [Translator’s Note: the word “Department” is capitalized in the Russian as if it were part a named department, but there is no preceding descriptive word in the text].

The leadership of the Azerbaijan Democratic Party, having studied the proposal of the members of the CC of the Iranian People’s Party, spoke out against an organized merger of the parties, pointing out that in exile the Committee was unjustified in raising the question of merging the Party inasmuch as it actually represented only the emigrant part of the Party. The leadership of the Democrats at the same time submitted a proposal to create a single bloc of democratic parties of Iran headed by a coordinating committee organized of members of the Central Committees of the People’s Party of Iran, the Azerbaijani, and the Kurdish Democratic Parties.

The CC of the CP of Azerbaijan after studying and discussing the proposal of the members of the CC of the People’s Party of Iran  also spoken out against an organized merger of these parties [and] reported their ideas on this question to the CC CPSU in a Letter No 30-SS of 22 January 1955.

The CC of the CP of Azerbaijan at the present time considers it advisable to preserve the independence of the Azerbaijan Democratic Party for the following considerations:

Firstly, the Azerbaijan Democratic Party can rally together under its banner the progressive forces of Southern Azerbaijan and, once having won a political victory made a number of reforms in the spirit of the desires of the population of Southern Azerbaijan, has deep roots in the people of Southern Azerbaijan, and has won the enormous sympathy of the workers of all Iran.

In spite of the unprecedented outrages committed by Iranian authorities, as a result of which the democrats suffered and [continue to] bear great losses, the peoples of Southern Azerbaijan have firmly tied their fate to that of the Party and are ready in the future, when historical conditions come, to rise to the struggle under the leadership of this Party for their freedom and national independence.

Secondly, the policy of enforced Persianization [farsizatsiya] carried out by the ruling circles of Iran; their denial of the very existence of the Azerbaijani people, their language, culture, and ways; the preaching that “Azerbaijan is an inseparable part of Iran”; and also the commission by Iranian authorities for centuries and especially in the last 50 years of inhumane reprisals against the best representatives of the liberation movement of the peoples of Southern Azerbaijan and Kurdistan – whose victims, Sattar Khan, Bagirkhan, Khiyabani, Gazi Magomedov, and many others, fell as heroes – all this arouses among the peoples of Southern Azerbaijan and Kurdistan deep hatred toward the ruling circles of Iran, who have subordinated the interests of Iran to the domination of imperialists.

Together with this, the stubborn, dogmatic assertion of a number of leading figures of the People’s Party of Iran of the impossibility of the national liberation of the peoples of Southern Azerbaijan without resolution of the question of the democratization of Iran as a whole, deeply offends the national feelings and interests of the workers of Southern Azerbaijan, but the proposal about the liquidation of the independence of the Azerbaijan Democratic Party is seen by the democrats as a display of a lack of trust in their revolutionary ability and capability to independently guide their own fate [and] defend their national independence.

The CC of the CP of Azerbaijan considers it necessary to report to the CC CPSU that the members of the CC of the People’s Party of Iran in Moscow, after receiving a negative response of the leaders of the Azerbaijani Democratic Party to their proposals about merging the three parties, began in several ways to conduct demoralizing [razlozhencheskaya] operations against unstable members of the Azerbaijani Democratic Party. They spread rumors via several people about a CC CPSU Secretariat decision on the question of merging the democratic parties of Iran.

There took place instances when individual members of the Azerbaijani Democratic Party personally associated with leaders of the People’s Party of Iran, spoke out at Party meetings of a number of cells and at the Baku City Conference in the autumn of 1955 with slanderous and provocative statements against the Azerbaijani Democratic Party and its leading workers.

In their speeches they tried in every way to prove that the Azerbaijani Democratic Party is a so-called nationalist party, dividing the working class of Iran along nationality lines, that its creation was a historical mistake, and therefore it needs to be liquidated, etc.  The leading workers of the Azerbaijani Democratic Party who objected to the proposals of the members of the CC of the People’s Party of Iran to merge the parties were called bourgeois nationalists, anti-Marxists, etc. to their faces.

The Baku City Conference of the Azerbaijani Democratic Party sharply condemned the anti-Party speeches of these people and made a decision to hold them accountable to the Party. And when they were punished in a Party procedure, they right away turned for aid to the leaders of the CC of the People’s Party of Iran. The latter, in particular the Secretary of the CC of the People’s Party of Iran, Cde. Radmenesh, instead of soberly investigating their own activities and ceasing interference in the internal affairs of the Azerbaijani Democratic Party, turned to the CC CPSU with a completely unfounded statement discrediting the Azerbaijani Democratic Party.

Proceeding from the above, the CC of the CP of Azerbaijan introduced the following proposals for the consideration of the CC CPSU:

1. Convene a conference in October of 1956 in Baku of representatives of the People’s Party of Iran and the Azerbaijani and Kurdish Democratic Parties to work out proposals on the question of coordinating work to guide the movement in Iran.

2. Help the CC of the Azerbaijani Democratic Party in the matter of establishing ties with organizations of the Party operating in Southern Azerbaijan.

3. Permit an increase in the number of radio broadcasts for Iran in the Azerbaijani language to three broadcasts a day totalling 1.5 hours (at the present time there is one broadcast a day of 30 minutes), and organize from Baku two radio broadcasts a day [totalling] 1 hour in Kurdish.

4. Entrust Gosehkonomkomissiya [State Economic Commission] and the USSR Ministry of Finance with allocating the necessary resources and stocked construction materials to build in 1956-1957 two 30-unit apartment houses and one 200-bed dormitory in Baku and one 20-unit apartment house in Kirovabad for housing these democrats.

The construction of these facilities is entrusted to the USSR Ministry for Construction of Metallurgical and Chemical Industry Enterprises.

5. Entrust the USSR Ministry of Finance with:

a) allocating for the disposition of the Azerbaijan SSR Council of Ministers in 1956-1957 a limit of 3 million rubles to give political emigrants long-term loans for individual housing construction;

b) allocating 300,000 rubles annually for material aid and treatment of the political immigrants;

c) allocating resources for the organization and maintenance in the republic of a special boarding school for 200 children of the democrats.

6. Entrust the USSR Ministry of State Farms with organizing in the Azerbaijan SSR one diversified [mnogootraslevoy] state farm whose collective, including the supervisor personnel, should by selected from the political immigrants from Iran.

7. Permit without competition, beginning in the 1956-1957 school year, the acceptance of 100 persons annually from among the political immigrants from Southern Azerbaijan into the higher educational institutions of the Azerbaijan SSR; including into the Azerbaijan Agricultural Institute – 30 persons; the Azerbaijan Medical Institute – 30 persons [Translator’s note: the number “10” is handwritten above the “30”]; the Azerbaijan Polytechnic Institute – 20 people [the number “10” is written above the “20”]; the Azerbaijan Industrial Institute – 20 people [the number “10” is written above the “20”].  They are to be paid, as well as the student democrats also now studying in senior [starshiye] courses with an increased stipend of 800 [the number “500” is written above the “800”] rubles a month.

Entrust USSR Gosplan and Gosehkonomkomissiya with increasing by 100 annually the plan for accepting students into the higher educational institutions of the Azerbaijan SSR.

8. Permit members of the Azerbaijani Democratic Party having an academic degree in social sciences to be allowed to teach the subjects of history, philosophy, and political economy.

9. Entrust the USSR MVD with canceling their order of 5 September 1953 about deporting border violators crossing from Iran into the USSR.

10. Entrust the USSR Ministry of Foreign Affairs with examining the question of the possibility of transporting the families of individual members of the Azerbaijani Democratic Party from Iran to the USSR.

11. Extend the CC CPSU Decree of 11 December 1954 No P-98/17 about the procedure for accepting into the CPSU those who have come from fraternal and communist parties to the former members of the Azerbaijani Democratic Party who have now accepted Soviet citizenship.

Secretary of the CC of the

Azerbaijan SSR CP

(Mustafayev, M. D.)

3 July 1956