The Caucasus and the World Ë 101
Fig. 4.7.The Caucasus after the Treaty of Kars, 1921.
any case, would discredit the Bolsheviks even if it succeeded. Eventually the scheme
was abandoned.¹²³
Just as the conquest of Ukraine in 1920 was not enough to satisfy Moscow, the con-
quest of the Caucasus was not enough for some Bolsheviks, who now eyed Persia on
its other side. In May 1920, shortly after the fall of Baku, Communists and their sym-
pathizers in northern Persia set up the Soviet Republic of Gilan with the help of Soviet
Bolsheviks and Soviet military forces.¹²⁴Yet the Persian Republic soon turned, accord-
ing to a retrospective Soviet assessment, into a “Soviet-imperialistenterprise.”¹²⁵Even
123 M.A. Persits,Zastenchivaia interventsiia: O sovetskom vtorzhenii v Iran i Bukharu v 1920–1921 gg.
(Moscow: Muravei-Gaid, 1999), 187–89.
124 See Cosroe Chaqueri,The Soviet Socialist Republic of Iran: Birth of the Trauma(Pittsburgh,
PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1995),Persidskii front mirovoi revoliutsii: dokumenty o sovetskom
vtorzhenii v Gilian (1920–1921)(Moscow: Kvadriga, 2009), and Vladimir Genis,Krasnaia Persiia:
bol’sheviki v Giliane 1920–1921(Moscow: MNPI, 2000).
125 Persits,Zastenchivaia interventsiia, 119 (assessment given in April 1921 by V.G. Tardov, Chief of
Soviet Information Bureau in Persia: emphasis added).