Coll 28/112A ‘Persia. Tabriz – Monthly despatches of internal situation in Azerbaijan & misc. reports.’ [‎126r] (252/1237)

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Mr. Wall to Sir R. Bullard {Tehran).—{Received in Foreign Office, \§th April.)
(Ko 4.)
Sir, Tabriz, IfSth March, 1945.
IN accordance with your circular despatch No. 38 of the 10th June, 1944,
I have the honour to submit an appreciation of conditions in this consular district
during the six months ended on the 28th February, 1945.
2. Relatioiis between Soviet and Persian Authorities. —Relations between
the local representatives of the Soviet and Persian Governments emerged from
the crisis of the oil question fundamentally unchanged; on the side of the
Russians a jealous control of administrative authority, so close as not only to
prevent any repression of the Left-wing elements to whom the Russians look
to provide them with the appearance of popular support, but also frequently
to prevent action by the Persian authorities against trouble makers of no particu
lar political allegiance whose activities are as damaging to Russian interests
as to Persian; and on the Persian side, general acquiescence, combined in some
cases with a suppressed indignation and a patient keeping of scores to be settled
at the end of the war, not with the Russians, but with the local people who*
have grown great in their shadow. Russian intervention in* the administration
of the province has been both direct and indirect: the former, usually practised
by the Soviet military authorities, operates through their control of all movements
of military and gendarmeries, their virtual control of the police and the applica
tion of security measures which can put a prompt end to any action the Soviet
authorities disapprove of by simply expelling the official who takes it. There
are almost daily instances of such intervention, which was seen at its directest
in the expulsion of the Commandant of the Third Division, Sartip Khosrovani,
last November, and which appears from time to time in an almost absent-mindedly
open way as in the orders for the cleaning of Tabriz streets published by the
Russian town-commandant last December. Indirect intervention through
“popular pressure,’' whether it originates there or not, is closely watched
and guided by the Soviet consulate-general, mainly through the intermediary
of the two Caucasian vice-consuls, MM. Guliev and Cassanov. All Left-
wing pressure is believed by Persian officials to be an expression of the
will of the Soviet authorities; they resent it the more as being an affront not
only to their national pride but to their personal dignity, as a man resents the
yapping of a cur which he dare hot kick for fear of its master. The Soviet
authorities, finally, by withholding their approval of the appointment of any
Persian official of independence and courage have succeeded in obtaining
an administration completely subservient to their wishes: the only senior
official of any energy and moral fibre in the whole of Azerbaijan is Sarhang
Durakhshani, who, though he has lost his post of Governor-General of Western
Azerbaijan, continues to command the Third (Tabriz) Division of Persian troops.
That he has done so, so far, without loss of credit, is a tribute to his diplomacy.
But the result of this supervision of appointments is a spineless administration
which, while it does nothing against Russian interests, does nothing at all in
the interests of the country.
3. Objects of Soviet Policy in Azerbaijan. —Nothing has occurred in the
last six months to modify the view expressed in the last appreciation (dated
22nd August, 1944) that Soviet practice aims at-maintaining a fluid situation
in Azerbaijan which can be turned to advantage at the end of the war in whatever
way then seems best to the Soviet Government. It is certainly difficult to escape
the conclusion that the weakness of the Persian administration here is largely
due to Soviet policy, for with a very little encouragement from the Russians
it could be made much stronger. On the other hand, there is little evidence to
support the wide-spread belief that the Soviet Government aim at detaching
Azerbaijan from Persia and sponsoring its union with the Azerbaijan Soviet
[64—98] b
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23JUN1945
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