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The Soviet Union and Mosaddeq: A Research Note

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Artemy M. Kalinovsky
Artemy M. Kalinovsky*
Affiliation:
University of Amsterdam
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Abstract

Although it is generally accepted that the Soviet Union did not play a significant role in the events leading to the overthrow of Mohammed Mosaddeq in 1953, little has been written about how the Soviets perceived the Iranian leader and the movement he inspired. This article argues that Soviet leaders generally saw Mosaddeq as weak and ill-disposed towards the Soviet Union. The Soviet failure to secure an oil concession in Iran in 1946 and general conservatism about anti-colonial movements during the late Stalin period conditioned their assessment of Mosaddeq's premiership. After Soviet policy towards the Third World changed in the mid-1950s, Mosaddeq's movement was reinterpreted as a genuine “struggle of national liberation.”

Type
Research Article
Information
Iranian Studies , Volume 47 , Issue 3: Iran and the Cold War , May 2014 , pp. 401 - 418
Copyright
Copyright © The International Society for Iranian Studies 2014

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Footnotes

Earlier versions of this paper were presented at the meeting of the International Society for Iranian Studies in Istanbul in August 2012 and at a conference entitled, “The 19 August 1953 Sixty Years on: The Fall of Mossadegh Revisited,” held at the University of Manchester in September 2013. Artemy Kalinovsky would like to thank Jim Goode, participants at both presentations, as well as the anonymous reviewers, for their comments, and Roham Alvandi for encouraging him to develop this material and for his suggestions on earlier drafts.

References

1 See, for example, Byrne, Malcom “Factors Influencing U.S. Policy Toward Iran, 1945–1953,” and Gasiorowski, Mark, “The 1953 Coup d'État against Mossadeq,” in Mohammad Mossadeq and the 1953 Coup in Iran, ed.Gasiorowski, Mark J. and Byrne, Malcome (Syracuse, NY, 2004), 201–26, 227–60Google Scholar; Gasiorowski, Mark J., “The CIA's TPBEDAMN Operation and the 1953 Coup in Iran,” Journal of Cold War Studies 15, no. 4 (2013), 4–24CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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3 See Yegorova, Natalia, The “Iran Crisis” of 1945–46: A View from the Russian Archives, Cold War International History Project Working Paper 15 (Washington, DC, 1996)Google Scholar; Hasanli, Jamil, Iran at the Dawn of the Cold War: The Soviet–American Crisis over Iranian Azerbaijan, 1941–1946 (Lanham, MD, 2006)Google Scholar; and Fawcett, Louise L., Iran and the Cold War: The Azerbaijan Crisis in 1946 (Cambridge, 1992)Google Scholar. See also Pickett, James, “Soviet Civilization through a Persian Lens: Iranian Intellectuals, Cultural Diplomacy and Socialist Modernity 1941–1955,” Iranian Studies (forthcoming, 2014)Google Scholar.

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5 Although the original plan was to make use of materials from the Archive of Foreign Policy of the Russian Federation (AVPRF), I was only allowed access to the archive a day before my departure from Moscow. Some documents which were available to scholars in the 1990s, including the Committee of Information (see footnote 45 below), were also off-limits to me. However, as some of the most interesting material on Iran at that archive would come from the Molotov “diary,” one can expect at least some overlap with the materials at RGASPI. Documents available from the Cominform collection (at the Russian State Archive of Contemporary History (RGANI) and at the Lamont Library at Harvard University) and the International Department (at the Russian State Archive of Contemporary History) reflect only mundane issues or are translations of party statements.

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10 See Yegorova, The “Iran Crisis” of 1945–46; Hasanli, Iran at the Dawn of the Cold War; Fawcett, Iran and the Cold War.

11 Yegorova, The “Iran Crisis” of 1945–46, 2.

12 Joseph Stalin to Ja'afar Peshevari, May 8, 1946, translated by Vladislav Zubok, in Yegorova, The “Iran Crisis” of 1945–46, 23–4.

13 Soviet Foreign Ministry note, Molotov Papers, Russian State Archives of Social and Political History (RGASPI) F. 82, op. 2, d. 1218. See also Pravda, June 22, 1950.

14 Draft TASS statement on Iran–India agreement, Molotov Papers, RGASPI F. 82, op. 2, d. 1218.

15 Interview with Mir Sultan Ahmed Mirfendereski, March 30, 1984, Harvard Oral History Project.

16 Maksimov had served as ambassador in 1944–46, and previously led several consulates in Afghanistan.

17 This presumably refers to the 1944 bill to deny oil concessions to any foreign power. See Homa Katouzian, Mussadiq and the Struggle for Power in Iran (London, 1990), 56–8; Diba, Mohammed Mossadegh, 90–94; Abrahamian, Iran Between Two Revolutions, 212.

18 “Regarding the National Front in Iran,” October 28, 1949, RGASPI F. 82, op. 2, d. 1220.

19 Gromyko and Menshikov (Minister of Trade) to Stalin, July 12, 1951, RGASPI F. 82, op. 2. d. 1219.

20 Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) to Ambassador Sadchikov (draft), RGASPI F. 82, op. 2, d. 1219.

21 Pravda, July 21, 1951.

22 Pravda, October 15, 1951.

23 Pravda, October 22, 1951.

24 Vyshinskii to Stalin, May 13, 1952, RGASPI F. 82, op. 2, d. 1219.

25 Pravda, May 23, 1952.

26 Iranian reply to Soviet note, July 2, 1952, RGASPI F. 82, op. 2, d. 1219.

27 Gromyko to Stalin [undated, but between January 17 and 21, 1951], RGASPI F. 82, op. 2, d. 1219.

28 Katouzian, Mussadiq and the Struggle for Power in Iran, 133–6; Diba, Mohammed Mossadegh, 167–8.

29 Instructions to Soviet Ambassador in Tehran Sadchikov, January 21, 1951, RGASPI F. 82, op. 2, d. 1219.

30 On Kashani, see Akhavi, Shahrough, “The Role of the Clergy in Iranian Politics,” in Musaddiq, Iranian Nationalism, and Oil, ed. Bill, James A. and Louis, William Roger (London, 1988), 91–117Google Scholar; Abrahamian, The Coup, 54–7; Fakhreddin Azimi, “Unseating Mossadeq,” in Mohammed Mossadeq and the 1953 Coup in Iran (see note 1), 56–62.

31 Gromyko to Stalin, March 1952, RGASPI F. 82, op. 2, d. 1220.

32 Ibid. The conversation was quickly relayed to the ambassador, who passed it on to Moscow in a telegram of February 22, 1952.

33 Gromyko to Stalin, March 1952 RGASPI F. 82, op. 2, d. 1220.

34 Ibid.

35 Vyshinskii to Stalin, April 11, 1952, RGASPI F. 82, op. 2, d. 1219. The Foreign Ministry recommended[0] leaving this as a possibility, but insisting that it was tied to the resolution of outstanding questions about the USSR's debt, which the Soviet side had done everything in its power to solve.

36 Note to Stalin, March 24, 1950, RGASPI F. 82, op. 2, d. 1220.

37 Komissarov would join the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Soviet Academy of Sciences after his release and go on to have a long and distinguished career as a specialist on modern Iranian literature.

38 Abrahamian, The Coup, 138–47; Katouzian, Musaddiq and the Struggle for Power in Iran, 121–5.

39 Sadchikov to FM, October 15, 1952, RGASPI F. 82, op. 2, d. 1220.

40 Sadchikov to FM, October 15, 1952, RGASPI F. 82, op. 2, d. 1220.

41 On Molotov's demotion see Geoffrey Roberts, Molotov: Stalin's Cold Warrior (Washington, DC, 2012), 129; and Zubok, Failed Empire, 95.

42 Azimi, “Unseating Mossadegh,” 58.

43 Instructions to Sadchikov (Draft), October 1952, Russian State Archive of Contemporary History (RGANI) F. 82, op. 2, d. 1219.

44 Muhammad Turbati, Az Tehran to Stalinabad (Berkeley, CA, 2000).

45 Quoted in Maziar Behrooz, “The 1953 Coup in Iran and the Legacy of the Tudeh,” in Mohammed Mossadeq and the 1953 Coup in Iran (see note 1), 108.

46 Ibid., 109.

47 Ibid., 110.

48 http://www.rahetudeh.com/rahetude/mataleb/kiya/html/kiya_16.html.

49 Ansari, Sadegh, Az zendegi-ye man: pā be pā-ye hezb-e Tudeh-e Irān (Los Angeles, 1996), 324–33Google Scholar.

50 Interview with Mir Sultan Ahmed Mirfendereski, March 30, 1984, Harvard Iranian Oral History Project.

51 Katouzian, Homa, ed., Musaddiq's Memoirs (London, 1988), 290Google Scholar.

52 Ibid., 277.

53 Ibid., 58–60; Ansari, Ali M., Modern Iran: The Pahlavis and After, 2nd ed. (London, 2007), 139–47Google Scholar; Abrahamian, The Coup, 167–9.

54 Katouzian, Musaddiq's Memoirs, 272; Diba, Mohammed Mossadegh, 167–8.

55 Mosaddeq to Soviet Embassy in Tehran, January 30, 1953, Archive of Foreign Policy of the Russian Federation (AVPRF), Iran referentura, op. 42, folder 129, d. 014, 98–9.

56 Katouzian, Musaddiq's Memoirs, 272.

57 Zubok, Vladislav, “Soviet Intelligence and the Cold War: The ‘Small’ Committee of Information, 1952–53,” Diplomatic History 19, no. 3 (1995): 453–72CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

58 Zubok, “Soviet Intelligence and the Cold War,” 466. A little over a month before the coup, Pravda published a TASS notice summarizing US Secretary of State John Foster Dulles's statements in the New York Times regarding the likelihood that Mosaddeq would fall, under the headline “The State Department Is Preparing A Military Coup in Iran.”

59 Ibid., 466–7.

60 Zubok, “Soviet Intelligence and the Cold War,” 466.

61 A Soviet negotiating team was sent to Iran in August 1953. Though apparently treated by some observers as evidence of growing closeness to the USSR, it was more likely part of the ongoing attempt to resolve outstanding economic questions dating back to the war on the most favorable terms possible for the USSR. Kristen Blake, The US–Soviet Confrontation in Iran, 1945–1962: A Case in the Annals of the Cold War (Lanham, MD, 2009), 84. Similarly, though Sadchikov was recalled in July and replaced by Anatoly Lavrentiev, this does not appear to have any particular significance. Mark Gasiorowski's suggestion that Lavrentiev replaced Sadchikov in preparation for a coup on the basis of Lavrentiev's experience in Czechoslovakia seems improbable, considering that Lavrentiev had served in Yugoslavia from 1946 to 1949 and was in Czechoslovakia in 1951–52, not 1948. See Gasiorowski and Byrne, Mohammed Mossadeq and the 1953 Coup in Iran, 330. For biographical information, see A.A. Gromyko et al., Diplomaticheskii Slovar' (Moscow, 1985–86), 2: 131.

62 Zubok, “Soviet Intelligence and the Cold War,” 467–8.

63 Zubok, A Failed Empire, 91–3. See Mark Kramer's trilogy, “The Early Post-Stalin Succession Struggle and Upheavals in East-Central Europe: Internal–External Linkages in Soviet Policy Making,” Journal of Cold War Studies 1, no. 1 (1999): 3–55; no. 2 (1999): 3–38; and no. 3 (1999): 3–66.

64 Kramer, “Early Post-Stalin Succession Struggle,” Part 2, 28–30.

65 Ibid., 7–8.

66 V.S. Semyonov's statement in A.N. Iakovlev et al., eds., Molotov, Malenkov, Kaganovich 1957: Stenogramma iiunskogo plenuma TsK KPSS i drugie dokumenty (Moscow, 1998), 676–7.

67 Zubok cites in “Soviet Intelligence and the Cold War” (48) a 1959 document entitled “On the Issue of the Anti-party Position of V.M. Molotov in the Period of Revolution of National Liberation in Iran in 1953.”

68 See Hopf, Reconstructing the Cold War, 235–42; Odd Arne Westad, The Global Cold War: Third World Interventions and the Making of Our Times (Cambridge, 2005), 66–72; Aleksandr Fursenko and Timothy Naftali, Khrushchev's Cold War: The Inside Story of an American Adversary (New York, 2007).

69 Semyonov's statement in Iakovlev et al., Molotov, Malenkov, Kaganovich 1957, 677.

70 Roberts, Geoffrey, “Moscow's Cold War on the Periphery: Soviet Policy in Greece, Iran, and Turkey, 1943–8,” Journal of Contemporary History 46, no. 1 (2011): 58–81CrossRefGoogle Scholar.