Iran’s Azerbaijani Question in Evolution
17
In the late 19
th
and early 20
th
centuries, Azerbaijan, which found itself at a strategic
crossroads near the Ottoman and Russian borders became the place from which
the winds of progressive change were blowing in from Europe, often through the
empire of the Romanovs. It was through this northwestern region of Iran that the
ideologies of socialism and nationalism found their way to Iran. Thus, the
vanguard of many modern movements was made up of intellectuals from
Azerbaijan, often directly from Tabriz, whose language skills enabled them to
complete their studies in Istanbul and later in Europe, or laborers from Iranian
Azerbaijan, who brought socialist ideas back to their native Iran from seasonal
work in the oil industry of Baku.
Of course, this phenomenon was by no means limited to the borders of Iranian
Azerbaijan. The shaping of Azerbaijani identity both in northern and southern
Azerbaijan
18
at first played out as a struggle between two ideological currents, the
first of which upheld the primacy of culture and religion (
société persane), while the
second emphasized that identity was originally derived from language. The
forming of a unified Azerbaijani identity was in effect hindered not only by
traditional clan-territorial differentiation, but also by sectarian differences. While a
preponderance of Azerbaijanis professed Shiite Islam, a strong Sunni minority
inhabiting mainly the west and north of Azerbaijani territory tended to identify
itself more with fellow believers from Turkey and Dagestan.
19
In the early 20
th
century, the winners of this ideological dispute became divided on
the opposite banks of the Araxes River. The primacy of language finally won out
in northern Azerbaijan, and by the early 20
th
century, Azerbaijan’s pro-Turkic
identity had already clearly taken shape, and the role of religion in nascent
Azerbaijani secular, pro-Western, and modernist nationalism was kept to a
minimum. At approximately the same time, the Iranian orientation of the elites of
18
At that time, after all, there was no impenetrable border between the two Azerbaijans. The
newspapers published in Tabriz or Baku were available on both sides of the Arax River, and there
were also lively contacts among business people, intellectuals etc.
19
Referring to contemporary Russian sources, Tadeusz Swietochowski states that at the moment of the
Russian occupation of the Azerbaijani khanates, the number of adherents to Sunni Islam was roughly
equal to the number of Shiites. The number of more militant and more politically active Sunnis
gradually declined, because they emigrated to the Ottoman Empire. Tadeusz Swietochowski, Russian
Azerbaijan, 1905–1920. The Shaping of National Identity in a Muslim Community (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2004), 88.
Souleimanov & Kraus
18
southern Azerbaijan established itself, as the leading representatives there were
among the most vocal proponents of Iranian nationalism – and of the Iranian
origins of the Azerbaijani nation.
The first exception may have been an autonomist movement that was established
in Iranian Azerbaijan soon after the Second World War, when those areas of Iran
were occupied by Soviet troops.
20
In 1945-46, the so-called Azerbaijan People’s
Government based in Tabriz was established by Moscow, after the Red Army had
taken control over the northern part of Iran during the war. The Iranian Azerbaijani
Communist puppet regime led by Ja'far Pishevari was, of course, dependent on
Soviet armaments. Although he never declared the intention of splitting off from
Iran, and would speak of the need for the federalization of that multiethnic country
instead of discussing independence, his actions indicated that he was actually
moving towards independence, and given a different constellation of international
politics, this might have come about. Newly established Azerbaijani home defense
forces disarmed units of the Iranian army; a new judicial system based on Soviet
law was created; land reform unfavorable to wealthy landowners was enacted; and
for the first time in the history of the region, Azerbaijani Turkish was elevated to
the status of official language. But increasing pressure from the United States
forced the Russians to withdraw from northern Iran, and that led to reoccupation
by the Iranian army and the beginning of repression aimed at actual or supposed
collaborators from among the local Azerbaijanis. Iranian Azerbaijanis, many of
whom were distrustful of Pishevari’s regime because of its ties to Russians and
Communists, often welcomed the Iranians back with open arms.
21
Still, the event seems not to have been forgotten in Tehran. Separatism on the
northwestern periphery represented a nightmare for Iranian monarchs of the
Pahlavi Dynasty.
22
The strategic location of Azerbaijan, the ethnolinguistic ties of
20
For excellent analyses of the internal dynamics and external context of the discussed movement, see
Jamil Hasanov, At the Dawn of the Cold War: The Soviet-American Crisis over Iranian Azerbaijan,
1941-1946 (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2006); Louise Fawcett, Iran and the Cold War: The
Azerbaijan Crisis of 1946 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 35-55; and Touraj Atabaki,
Azerbaijan: Ethnicity and the Struggle for Power in Iran (London: I. B. Tauris, 2000), 129–92.
21
Touraj Atabaki, Azerbaijan: Ethnicity and the Struggle for Power in Iran, 129–92.
22
It is true that nearly every time the power of the country’s central government was weakened,
separatist uprisings occurred in the peripheral areas. The goal of the tribal rulers who generally led