Persia

By Dr. Ali Doostzadeh

//www.azargoshnasp.net/Pasokhbehanirani/NezamiUSSRpoliticization.htm

//www.azargoshnasp.net/Pasokhbehanirani/NizamiPoliticizationUSSR.pdf

Allow me to also introduce this web page of Azargoshnasp as well – this is a compilation of responses to all racialist ideologues who seek to revise the history of Iran for political and ideological objectives:

//www.azargoshnasp.net/Pasokhbehanirani/main.htm

Dr. Doostzadeh’s retort is much more than an article: it is a textbook laden with facts and evidence – it is indeed a Herculean scholarly undertaking. A number of facts reported are of great interest here, such as Joseph Stalin’s statement with respect to Nizami Ganjavi “…must not be surrendered to Iranian literature, despite having written most of his poems in Persian.” (Kolarz, 1952). The statement was meant to convey the impression that (a) Nizami was Turkic in origin and (b) wrote his ‘other’ poems in Turkish. Russian historians however acknowledged that Nizami was “one of the famous Persian poets…” and “…wrote exclusively in Persian” (From the Brockhaus and Efrona Encyclopedia (as cited by HOEB article of Moscow, Russia). Historical documents were deliberately falsified by the Soviets (see Tiwali, 1984) to portray Nizami as being of “Caucasian nationality” and that his original poetry was composed in Turkish and followed later by “Farsi [Persian] translation”.

Few are aware that long before Soviet Russia, Czarist Russia promoted pan-Turkism to destroy the Persian literary, cultural and historical legacy in the Caucasus. As you may know, Iran was forced to cede her possessions in the Caucasus (everything above the Araxes River just above Azarbaijan) to Russia. As noted in my previous humble postings, Hostler noted that the Russians, despite their victory in the Caucasus, were very concerned with the power, depth and hold of the Persian language and culture of Iran over Arran (present-day Republic of Azerbaijan):

This cultural link between the newly conquered country [modern-day Republic of Azerbaijan, historically known as Arran until May 1918] and its still strong Persian neighbor annoyed Russia who tried to destroy it by supporting local Turkish cultural developments”(Hostler, 1957, p.22).

Indeed, the local authorities in the khanates were either Persian-speaking or of aristocracies who spoke Persian. The Shiite clergy who held considerable influence over the local courts and schools, helped maintain the influence of Iranian culture in the Caucasus. Professor Swietochowski notes that The hold of Persian as the chief literary language in [the current Republic of ] Azerbaijan was broken, followed by the rejection of classical Azerbaijani, an artificial, heavily Iranized idiom that had long been in use along with Persian, though in a secondary position. This process of cultural change was initially supported by the Tsarist authorities, who were anxious to neutralize the still-widespread Azerbaijani identification with Persia.” (Swietochowski, 1995, p.29). This policy was consistent with Czarist policies with respect to other recently conquered non-Russian nationalities of the empire (1995, p.29).

It is important to realize that de-Iranianization by Russia goes further back prior to the Soviet era. As noted previously, the greatest fraud was in re-naming the former Iranian province of Arran in the Transcaucasus as “Azerbaijan” when in fact no such appellation existed prior to 1918. The “name-change” occurred only when the pan-Turkist Musavat regime named it as much in late May of that year. Many of the members of Musavat government were former pan-Turk Ottoman officers who had supported the Musavat takeover of Baku in 1918: