Coll 28/112A ‘Persia. Tabriz – Monthly despatches of internal situation in Azerbaijan & misc. reports.’ [‎425r] (852/1237)

of the Russians, but I haTe no complaint. It is natural he should
hare more to do with the Russians than with me. IVhen I do have to
see him he is courteous and as helpful as one can expect. I have
no doubt that in the south our consuls see the local authorities
oftener than do Russian consuls.
I found in Wehabad confirmation of the rumours that the
Governor General has been making money out of the sugar for wheat
exchange. A prominent Kurd told me there that considerable
quantities of sugar have been handed out to the tribes for wheat,
but only to those who were able to bribe the Governor General's
representatives.
134. Local ?oilt lo;** A certSin amount of election excitement is
now developing in "fabrix, and in some districts of eastern
Azerbaijan Tudeh party speakers have been active} but elsewhere
there is still nothing doing.
Azerbaijan returns 21 deputies including one Kurd and one
Armenian representative. For the 19 ordinary seats it looks at
present as if there will be something like 200 candidates. There
is the usual broad division between the conservatives and the
progressives. Among the conservatives the industrialists are the
mist nervous. They fear that the relatively compact groups of
factory An East India Company trading post. workers may be organised to support a communist policy.
The landlords are less nervous being fairly confident that the
majority of the peasants will continue to follow their lead. In
these propertied classes there is no official oolitical organisation,
and too many want to get to the MajlAs to make a stand against the
"Menace of Communism", i.e. to protect and increase their private
fortunes.
There are four main groups of progressives:
The Tudeh-Iran
Iran-Bld&r
Liberals
Labour Union.
They are all rivals, but there is some attempt at organisation
within their renks, notably in Tudeh-Iran.
The propertied class generally profess to think that the
fcssians will try to cook the elections and pack the Majlis, but
their feers ere, in my opinion, exaggerated. These coming elections
will b© very interesting; we shall see tjust how far the Russians
may try to further their ends, how far communist doctrine will
appeal. My forecast is that they will interfere much less than is
aAOOcted,!provided always they don't get it into their heads that
*0 <vre rigging the eleotional and that ao?sraunistiG doctrine will
not appeal at all to the electors.
133. public Security . The calm continues. Uobody really pays
much attention to an occasional bit of sheep stealing on the Turkish
frontier. Driving in the neighbourhood of Kezaieh last week-end I
marvelled to aee viliages.battered end deserted when I last visited
them in May 1942, now teeming with people and animals, all busy with
the harvest. This lax Sovietica is no mean achievement. Cut in the
open country I encountered Kurds carrying their rifles, as one does
in the Kurdish districts of Iraq, but in Rezaieh itself it is new
forbidden to Kurds to swagger about armed as they were doing a year
ago.
Colonel Schwarzkopf, /oiericaa adviser to the gendarmerie,
has toured Azerbaijan. He said before setting out from Tabriz that
ho had found the Russians here helpful and that they had even
suggested additional places to be added to his itinerary. In
western Azerbaijan however when he set out south from Rez&ieh he was
turned back by the Russian post at Hyderabad beoapae he had omitted
to obtain a pass for that section of his tour. He got one of course
for the asking in Hezaieh and carried out hia tour as planned. The
stiff attitude of this post may be aue to the fact that a British
party came into the Russian zone from Iraq without passes a week
or two earlier; the Russian road posts hesitated to turn them back,
but I have little doubt they have now had orders hot to use
discretion in future.
136. Consular Coileaucues. The Soviet Consul General announced
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