Mechanics fleeing communism: Russian refugees in Iran and their resettlement in Australia, 1930-1955

This chapter provides an overview of the experience of the Russian refugee diaspora in Iran between 1930 and 1960. Unlike other waves of the post-Revolutionary Russian diaspora (i.e. those ending up in Europe and the Far East), this group of Russians has received very little attention. Most of these refugees arrived in Iran between 1928 and 1932 fleeing the upheavals of Collectivisation and Dekulakisation in the Soviet Union. These `stateless Russians' lived in Iran for some two decades, long enough to raise a generation of children speaking both Russian and Farsi and ironically, during the Second World War, to make a valuable contribution to the delivery of Lend-Lease aid to the Soviet Union through the Persian Corridor. After the War, in the face of rising Iranian nationalism, the oil nationalisation crisis, and incipient Cold War rivalry between Britain and the United States and the Soviet Union, these refugees along with other stateless Europeans were increasingly unwelcome. By 1955 with the help of the United Nations Commissioner for Refugees, and Western governments and refugee relief agencies including notably the Tolstoy Foundation, most of these Russians were able to leave Iran to resettle in Australia and the United States.