Soviet Republic of Gilan
길란 소비에트 공화국
The Soviet republic proclaimed in Rasht, in the northern Iranian province of Gilan, on 5 June 1920 by Mirza Kuchik Khan’s Jungle movement with the support of the Red Army. Never recognised internationally, it was renamed the Persian Socialist Soviet Republic in June 1921. After Soviet Russia concluded a treaty of friendship with the Iranian government and withdrew its troops, it came to an end in September 1921 amid fighting between the communists and Kuchik Khan’s followers.
In depth
The Jungle (Jangali) movement, launched in the forests of Gilan in 1914–1915, had fought the British and the Iranian government, demanding provincial autonomy, an end to foreign interference and land reform. On 18 May 1920 the Soviet Caspian flotilla under Fyodor Raskolnikov and Grigory Ordzhonikidze entered Enzeli to recover the ships taken there by Denikin’s Whites, and the British garrison fell back to Manjil without resistance. Kuchik Khan, hesitant because of his religious and Persian nationalist background, joined the Bolsheviks on condition that he would lead the republic and that the Soviets would not interfere directly in its internal affairs. The Jangalis took Rasht on 4 June and proclaimed the republic the next day. Kuchik Khan became its head and Seyyed Jafar Pishevari commissar for foreign affairs, and a Revolutionary Military Council and a Persian Red Army were formed. But the republic did not distribute land to poor peasants, and conflict soon broke out between Kuchik Khan and the Communist Party of Persia, which had grown out of the Baku-based Edalat party. According to the Russian-language source, the republic’s army advanced into neighbouring Zanjan province with an eye on Tehran in August 1920 but was driven back by Iranian troops.
Kuchik Khan left Rasht on 9 June to avoid a clash, and according to the article on the Jungle movement he was ousted in a coup on 31 July. Real power in the nominal government of Ehsanollah Khan lay with the Soviet commissar Abukov, and radical measures such as anti-religious propaganda and extortion from landlords, together with a flood of refugees, alienated the middle classes. In September 1920 the Russian government decided to wind up its military operation in Iran and negotiate with the Shah’s government, and under the Russo-Persian Treaty of Friendship of 26 February 1921 Soviet troops began leaving in April and were gone by 8 September. The Soviet envoy in Tehran, Fyodor Rothstein, told the Soviet officers in Ehsanollah Khan’s force heading for Qazvin not to obey his orders. Kuchik Khan, who had taken charge of the government again in May 1921, killed the communist leader Heydar Khan Amu-oghli on 29 September, and amid the civil war government troops took Rasht. Fleeing into the mountains, Kuchik Khan froze to death. On the causes of the collapse, Cosroe Chaqueri points to Moscow’s shift from world revolution to the security of the Soviet state, while Kayhan Nejad puts the infighting between communists and non-communists first.