Coll 28/112A ‘Persia. Tabriz – Monthly despatches of internal situation in Azerbaijan & misc. reports.’ [‎591r] (1184/1237)

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and the pupils, who are getting out of hand. From most of the villages the
Government teachers have been driven out, or so they say, by the peasants,
particularly in the Armenian and Assyrian districts. They are idle in the town,
and Tehran, they state, takes no notice of their telegraphic appeals for advice
and assistance. The local director of education is known to have all packed
^H^ady for flight, which increases the general nervousness. Similarly, 1 heard of a
soviet agricultural expert who visits the villages without the knowledge or
assistance of the Persian agricultural officials, who have a Government farm-
school near Rezaieh. I met one of these local officials who had been trained in
America, and who said he would be very glad himself to co-operate with the
Russian agronome and do together with him the best for the peasants in the
f coming season. The impression I got, however, was that the Russian is interested
as much in gradual propaganda as in agriculture. It is difficult to see how to
check these political activities, the Soviet mentality being what it is, and the
, state of this part of Persia being so favourable a soil at the present moment for
their ideas. The peasants, whether Kurd, Armenian, Assyrian or ordinary
Moslem, have been for years so browbeaten by the Persian officials and
] gendarmerie, and so fleeced and ground down by the landowner and middle-class
! element that when they now see the Government incapable of keeping order or
administering the countryside, and find the landowner too frightened to stay
among them or even visit them, they are ready to take matters into their own
hands in an ignorant way and do without gendarmes, officials or landowners.
The Russian officers who visit them, of course, are not likely to insist on restoring
the social and economic status quo, and from all accounts are only too ready to
suggest that the peasants should own their land and the product of their toil,
and even form village committees to govern themselves for the time being. There
may be nothing politically subversive about this in their opinion; they are doing
what a religious missionary would presumably do if he found the forces and
; prestige of a heathen theocracy temporarily broken down, but it is doubtful
whether they are not playing a dangerous game for all concerned in this part of
the world, especially when their own Soviet Government repeatedly asserts its
intention of not infringing the rights and the integrity of Persia.
13. It was interesting to learn from one landowner at Rezaieh that the
minority of good and humane proprietors, who had not ill-used their peasants
but had lent them money in times of need and taken an interest in their lives and
welfare, were not being victimised now; on the contrary, the villagers, in some
cases, stuck by them as an island in a surrounding sea of troubles. I have heard
the same thing in the Tabriz district, and it seems to show that Bolshevik ideas
would not have so very much scope if the Persian administrative stables could be
properly cleansed and decent humane officials found instead of the corrupt and
mostly unfeeling bureaucrats who hitherto have infested this area.
14. As regards the position of the peasants this year in the Rezaieh
Province, I learnt from reliable sources that they have sown at least one-quarter
short during the autumn sowings, and need advice about spring crops now if
the next harvest is not to suffer. But their landowners have gone, there will be
no money forthcoming for loans as before, the Government agricultural officials
will not venture into the villages because the roads and conditions generally are
so unsafe, and amid the turmoil and uncertainty the peasants have little or no
confidence in the near future or even in the prospect of reaping the next crop. It
may not be forgotten that little over twenty years ago these people saw their farms
and crops ravaged year after year by warring Turks, Russians, Kurds and other
Azerbaijanis, and it is not too fanciful for them to picture the same state of
things over again. It will be a tragedy, however, if there is a crop-failure in
the famous plain of Rezaieh, which has been described as the most fertile spot
in all Asia, if this can be avoided by a little energetic action now.
15. The remedy for the present state of Rezaieh and its province is not easy
to suggest or provide, but it will not be made easier by Tehran’s leaving things
\ to second or third-rate representatives or letting them go by default. As far
as I could ascertain, there is no movement there for political autonomy, cultural
independence, democratic rights and so forth, as in the more sophisticated and
demagogic milieu of Tabriz; peace and order and tolerable government is all that
i the people I met asked for. The Soviet authorities must first be persuaded to
allow efficient competent gendarmerie to preserve order along the main roads
and in the non-Kurdish areas, and to allow the landowners and minor officials to