nr. 13/2002 - SSI Erasmus – ISHA Bucharest

ERASMUS № 13 / 2002
The second state which benefited from the same treatment was
Iran7 .Moscow’s main objective aimed to encourage this strategic southern neighbour
to resist the British imperialism and to use Iran as a base for spreading the
communist revolution in the Middle East. In 1918 the Russian troops were withdrawn
from the north of Iran where they were stationated since the beginning of
The Great War. The Iranian Communist Party was created in 1920 under the
name A’Delyat Party , the Party of Justice, made up of a few Iranian workers
which rapidly launched into a radical revolutionary action. Its program of radical
reforms was criticized by Moscow. This program could destroy the national
burgeoisie and the landlords, considered by Moscow as advanced elements of
the national struggle against the British presence. The Soviets gave priority to the
diplomatic process for consolidating its relationship with Teheran and to help Iranians
in order to resist the British. The Soviets’ relationship with Teheran answered
to an imperative of security at the Soviet-Iranian border. Moscow adopted
the same attitude as in Turkey: encouraging the development of the national
burgeoisie in order to oppose the western powers. From 1921 to 1927 the relationship
between these two countries unfurled into a peacefully climate, marked
by the signing of the Soviet-Iranian Treaty in February 1921, in which Moscow
renounced all its grants and ownership in Iran. Reza-Khan’s coup d’etat from
1925 did not affect the Soviet reliance on the Iranian leaders capacities to achieve
their economic reforms. In 1927, suddenly, Moscow completly rennounced to
their expectations of seing any reforms in Iran. This country was introduced as
being among the reactionary states series. At this stage, the only Soviet objective
was to encourage Iran to opose the British attempts to gain any influence in this
country. In the first decades of its existance, the Soviet Union carried a foreign
policy which, in a general manner, was limited to its main purpose: to break their
isolation and to anihilate all the threats for Soviet security coming from the west.
In the Middle East the same attitude prevailed, confirmed by the Soviets attempts
to establish a good relationship with Turkey and Iran. At this stage we assist at a
renunciation of all the forms of exactigness ideological character. The Middle
East was a rough field for the growth of local communists. The Soviet policy was
a dual policy in this area, as in the rest of the world, through normal diplomacy
and through its support to the “progressit movements” from the inside of these
countries. In 1928 Moscow realized that the regime set up in 1917 was consolidated
and the main threats vanished. At the sixth Congress of the Comintern in
1928 Moscow changed the way of action and its leaders’ outlook. The Congress
adopted a resolution which aimed to strengthen the communists movement and
its solidarity with the Soviet Union objectives. Now the national bourgeoisie was
regarded as a reactionary element, ally of the imperialists and a bitter enemy of
the revolutionary movement. Till 1934, that was the Soviet foreign policy. This
year, 1934, could be considered the year of change under the pressure of the
economic failure in agriculture and foreign threats, German and Japanese. This
was the year when the Soviet Union entered into the League of Nations and
made a real approach to France and Great Britain. In the Middle East, the Soviet
Union militance marked small steps in front of the local resistance at the commu-
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