Mechanics Fleeing Communism: Russian Refugees in Iran and their Emigration to Australia, 1920-1960

Abstract

My thesis is a study of the Russian refugees who fled to Iran after the Bolshevik Revolution and lived there for decades including through the Second World War, before being displaced again and emigrating to Australia among other countries in the 1950s. While the first wave of these refugee after the Revolution fitted the accepted Russian emigre profile of former military officers, professionals and businessmen, most Russian refugees in Iran in this period were distinctly different. They had fled the Soviet Union in the early 1930s due to the Soviet dekulakisation and collectivisation campaigns. They comprised a hitherto unstudied wave of Russian emigration between the first wave after the Revolution and the second wave of Displaced Persons after the Second World War. They were overwhelmingly better-off peasants and tradesmen, especially carpenters and mechanics, so quite distinct from most of those who emigrated to the cities in Europe and China. They were mostly Russian Orthodox, but including a significant minority of religious dissenters, and ethnically about 70 per cent Russian with the remainder Ukrainian. The Russian refugee community in Iran was small, numbering some 2-3,000 people at its peak at the end of the Second World War, but nevertheless still comprised the largest group of Russian refugees in the Middle East. They contributed to the Allied victory through their work on the Lend-Lease Persian Corridor supply line operated by the Soviet, American and British forces in Iran during the War. After the war they faced an increasingly unstable situation, with the Soviet attempt to carve off the province of Azerbaijan in 1946 and the battle with the British and eventually America too over the nationalisation of Iran's oil resources. Due to heightened Iranian nationalism and nascent Cold War tensions, these European refugees were told that they had to leave Iran unless they could obtain citizenship, face repatriation to the Soviet Union or exile to islands in the Persian Gulf. However, they were fortunate that at this time, Australia and some other countries had initiated mass immigration programs. With the help of Russian emigre monarchist, church, and military networks, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and refugee relief agencies such as the Tolstoy Foundation, a group of these refugees was able to settle in Australia. Their initial settlement experience in Australia is also considered.