Russia – Iran: the History of Relations

The collection includes diplomatic sources (letters, treatises, orders, journals of embassies, etc.), materials of the Russian Imperial Mission and consulates in Persia, the Ministry of Trade and Industry, the affairs of the Fund of the Caucasian Committee, the Fund of the Council of People's Commissars of the RSFSR and others, collections of documents, diaries and memoirs, research monographs, dissertations, cartographic, visual and video materials.

The collection of documents is devoted to the history of relations and co-operation between Russia and Iran, it includes sections revealing the peculiarities of state, economic and cultural interaction during the XVI-XX centuries. The materials of the 19th and 20th centuries are most fully represented. From the point of view of the development of official diplomacy between the Moscow kingdom and Persia, the three volumes of documents from the Moscow Main Archive of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, published by Professor N. I. Veselovsky in the 1890s, are of the greatest interest. They cover a considerable period starting from the reign of the sovereign Fyodor Ioannovich (1584-1598). The earliest cartographic source represented in this collection is the map of the Caspian Sea of 1761 with the adjacent possessions of the Russian Empire and Persia.

The archival files from the period of the First and Second World Wars, during which trade relations between the two countries increased, are available. Thus, in 1915-1916 the inflow of Persian labourers increased, in particular to metallurgical and coal mining enterprises in the south of the Russian Empire. During the difficult years of the Civil War, the Persian government sent rice in support of the "revolutionary Moscow proletariat". In connection with the signing of the Soviet-Iranian treaty on trade and navigation in March 1940, directives on Iranian transport issues (October 1941), protection of Soviet ships and cargoes "en route and at anchorages" (1942), transit transports of materials and equipment for the USSR (1943) and others were adopted.

Of particular interest are declarations, military decisions and photographs on the results of the first conference of the anti-Hitler coalition in Tehran during the Second World War. A small part of the documents relate to the present day.

The collection is based on digitised documents from the Russian State Historical Archive, the State Archive of the Russian Federation, the Russian State Military Archive, the Archive of Foreign Policy of the Russian Federation, the Russian State Archive of Social and Political History, the Manuscripts Department of the State Russian Museum, the Library of USA Congress, the Russian National Library, the Central Naval Library, the State Public Historical Library, and the libraries of the Patrice Lumumba Peoples' Friendship University of Russia and St. Petersburg State University.