Fariba Amini Informed Comment
“Russia cannot be understood with mind alone”
– Fyodor Tyutchev
Fariba Amini writes:
Almost a century ago, many Iranians were attracted to the idea of a socialist state. Many moved to the Soviet Union only to come to grief under Stalin.
Today, as I write this interview, the Russia of President Vladimir Putin enjoys a close relationship with the Islamic Republic of Iran. On November 23rd, 2015, Putin visited Iran and presented an old manuscript copy of the Quran to the late Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
The Soviet Union and Iran did not just share a border; it goes beyond that. For decades, Moscow and Tehran have had a long and fraught relationship. The post-Soviet Russian Federation is now the main supplier of intelligence to the Islamic Republic. Here is my interview with Professor Touraj Atabaki, who has written a book with Lana Ravandi-Fadai about Iranians who were persecuted under Stalin. The book has also been translated into Persian under the title “Oftadegan Dar Gerdbad” published by Baran Publications, 2024.
Fariba Amini: What made you and Lana write this book? How did you gain access to the Soviet archives?
My motivation grew out of the Iranian Revolution of 1979 and the atrocities I witnessed in its early years: the extraordinary violence, the arrests of people who held different views, and the televised confessions of detainees. These experiences led me to ask whether what we were witnessing in Iran was unique, or whether parallels could be found in other revolutions.
The first example that came to mind was the Russian Revolution of 1917. I knew something about its history, but I wanted to understand it more deeply. I began examining the trials and persecution of those who disagreed with the Bolsheviks under Lenin, and how this repression reached its height under Stalin in the second half of the 1930s. Studying the Russian experience helped me understand revolutionary violence and, through it, the Iranian Revolution itself.
This became a research project involving many years of travel, archival work, and encounters with obstacles to access. During my visits to the Soviet Union in the three years before its collapse, I began speaking with Iranians who had experienced the purges or knew about them through others. Some had survived the forced labour camps and, after Stalin’s death, returned to the places where they had previously lived. I interviewed survivors and people who remembered their return, gathering firsthand accounts.
I began working in Soviet archives as they gradually opened under Gorbachev, and continued during and after the Soviet collapse, particularly in Central Asia and the Caucasus. I later invited Dr Lana Ravandi-Fadai to join me. Our sources then extended to include diverse Moscow archives and benefitted from the great Memorial Foundation’s collections.
Fariba Amini: On page 32, there is a photograph of the Iranian school in Baku with faces obscured. Why would these students have been considered “enemies of the state”?
Touraj Atabaki: When someone was declared an “enemy of the people,” their name was removed from official records and their face blackened or cut out of photographs. This was part of erasing them from public memory. It affected victims across nationalities, whether they were executed or sent to forced labour camps. The obscured faces reflect their persecution.
Fariba Amini: The purges did not begin with Iranians or other minorities. Why were Iranians targeted?
Touraj Atabaki: Iranians were caught up in a much broader campaign against foreign communities, including Poles, Greeks, and others. There was a substantial Iranian population in the Soviet Union. Many were arrested on fabricated charges of serving foreign powers or maintaining suspect connections with Iran. Others were labelled Trotskyists, Zinovievists, Mensheviks, or Socialist Revolutionaries. These were accusations used to justify persecution, not necessarily their actual political affiliations.
Fariba Amini: You discuss the targeting of Muslim leaders in Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. What was the purpose of this campaign?
I would first qualify the premise: the persecution was not confined to Muslims. Christian leaders and members of other faiths, including Bahá’ís, were also arrested, executed, or sent to forced labour camps. The targeting of Muslim leaders must be understood within this broader repression of religious communities and leadership.
Fariba Amini: Who was Sultanzadeh? How did his views on Iran compare with Lenin’s?
Touraj Atabaki: Sultanzadeh was a leading figure in the Communist Party of Iran and an important theorist who wrote on Iran and the world economy. He represented the party’s left wing and argued that Iran’s transformation should take a socialist direction.
Lenin placed greater emphasis on anti-colonial struggle in Eastern societies where capitalism remained underdeveloped, favouring movements that were not necessarily socialist but could align with Soviet Russia. This was a difference of emphasis rather than a fundamental gulf. During the purges, Sultanzadeh’s writings and political positions were used to classify him as belonging to the left opposition to the Leninist establishment.
Fariba Amini: You and Lana installed a plaque in memory of the Iranian victims. How many were executed?
Touraj Atabaki: We estimate that nearly five thousand Iranians were victims of the Stalinist purges, but this is not an execution total. It includes those who were shot, those who died in forced labour camps, and those who survived and returned after Stalin’s death.
Fariba Amini: Do you believe that these purges would not have happened had Lenin remained alive?
Touraj Atabaki: I do not believe we can assume that Lenin’s continued leadership would have prevented the purges. Of course, we cannot know how events would have unfolded had he lived longer. But the historical record gives us little reason to regard him as a tolerant alternative to Stalin.
Repression of Mensheviks, Socialist Revolutionaries, anarchists, and dissenting voices within the revolutionary movement had already begun during Lenin’s lifetime, as had show trials. Political disagreement was increasingly treated as a threat to the revolution, and suppressing opponents became an accepted means of defending Bolshevik rule.
This does not mean that Lenin’s repression and Stalin’s mass purges were identical in scale or character, or that the latter were inevitable. It does mean that the foundations of political violence were laid in the revolution’s early years. We therefore need to examine the continuity between Lenin and Stalin, rather than explain the terror solely through Stalin’s personality.
Fariba Amini: Who was Bahram Aqazadeh? What was his “crime,” and did he return to Iran after his release?
Touraj Atabaki: Bahram Aqazadeh was a worker originally from Iran. He joined the Bolsheviks before the revolution, participated in it, and continued working afterwards.
He was later accused of belonging to the left wing of the Communist Party of Iran and harbouring sympathies for Trotsky. Following his arrest, he was sent to a forced labour camp. While serving his sentence, he was brought back to Baku to face further charges, sentenced again, and sent away once more. After Stalin’s death, he returned to Baku, where he eventually died. He never returned to Iran.
Dr. Touraj Atabaki is professor emeritus of Social History of the Middle East and Central Asia at Leiden University. He has been the Senior Research Fellow in Amsterdam. He is the former president of the Association for Iranian Studies and the European Society for Central Asian Studies.
His books have won many prizes, among them: Toiling for Oil: A Social History of Petroleum in Iran (Cambridge University Press, 2025)
Iran in the 20th Century: Historiography and Political Culture (I. B. Tauris, 2009)
The State and the Subaltern: Modernization, Society and the State in Turkey and Iran (I. B. Tauris, 2007)
Iran and the First World War: Battleground of the Great Powers (edited, I. B. Tauris, 2006)
Men of Order: Authoritarian Modernization under Atatürk and Reza Shah (I. B. Tauris, 2004)
Dr. Lana Ravandi-Fadai is a historian and senior researcher at the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences. She is also the Head of the Eastern Cultural Center at the institute and serves as a professor teaching the history and politics of the contemporary East and Africa.
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