Iranian Russians orPersian Russians (Persian:ایرانیان روسیه;Russian:Иранцы в России) areIranians in theRussian Federation, and are Russian citizens or permanent residents of (partial) Iranian national background.

Iranians have a long history within what is modern-day Russia, stretching back millennia to theScythia and beyond. With their historical core in southernDagestan and the pivotal Iranian town ofDerbent, the territory remained, intermittently, in Iranian hands encompassed for many centuriesuntil 1813, resulting in a steady flow and settling of people from mainland Iran. There are two historically Iranian communities in Russia; theTats, who are amongst the native inhabitants of theNorth Caucasus, and theMountain Jews, who descend fromPersian Jews from Iran.

People from the former and contemporary boundaries ofIran have a long history in the territory of what is modern-dayRussia, stretching back thousands of years. Throughout history, theCaucasus region was usually incorporated into theIranian world,^[3] and large parts of it were ruled by empires based in modern-day Iran for a time span encompassing many centuries, or were under its direct influence. From the early 16th century up to including the early 19th century,Transcaucasia and a part of theNorth Caucasus (namelyDagestan), were ruled by the successiveSafavid,Afsharid, andQajar dynasties ofIran, and made up part of the latters concept for centuries.^[4] In the course of the 19th century, by theTreaty of Gulistan of 1813 and theTreaty of Turkmenchay of 1828, Iran ceded the region to Russia.^[5]

TheTats are amongst the native inhabitants of theNorthern Caucasus and descent from Iranian settlers from during theSasanian Empire.

A traditionally and historicallyIranian city,^[6] the first intensive settlement in theDerbent area dates from the 8th century BCE; the site was intermittently controlled by the Persian monarchs, starting from the 6th century BCE. The modern name is aPersian word (دربندDarband) meaning "gateway", which came into use in the end of the 5th or the beginning of the 6th century CE, when the city was re-established byKavadh I of theSassanid dynasty ofPersia,^[7] however, Derbent was probably already into the Sasanian sphere of influence as a result of the victory over the Parthians and the conquest of Caucasian Albania byShapur I, the first shah of theSassanid Persians.^[8] In the 5th century Derbent also functioned as a border fortress and the seat of a Sassanidmarzban.^[8]

As mentioned by theEncyclopedia Iranica, ancient Iranian language elements were absorbed into the everyday speech of the population of Dagestan and Derbent especially during the Sassanian era, and many remain current.^[9] In fact, a deliberate policy of “Persianizing” Derbent and the eastern Caucasus in general can be traced over many centuries, from Khosrow I to the Safavid shahsIsmail I, andʿAbbās the Great.^[9] According to the account in the later "Darband-nāma", after construction of the fortifications Khosrow I “moved much folk here from Persia”,^[10] relocating about 3,000 families from the interior ofPersia in the city of Derbent and neighboring villages.^[9] This account seems to be corroborated by theSpanish Arab Ḥamīd Moḥammad Ḡarnāṭī, who reported in 1130 that Derbent was populated by many ethnic groups, including a large Persian-speaking population.^[11]

Derbent remained a pivotal Iranian town until it was ceded in 1813 per the Gulistan treaty. The nativeTat Persian community of Derbent and surroundings, who descend from Iranian migrations from what is modern-day Iran, has severely dwindled since the late 19th century due to assimilation, absorption, and migrations back to Iran (as well as to neighboring Azerbaijan).

In the 1886 population counting of theDagestan Oblast, of the 15,265 inhabitants Derbent had, 8,994 (58,9%) were ofIranian descent (Russian:персы) thus comprising an absolute majority in the town.^[12]

In 1509, 500 Karamanli Turkic families fromTabriz settled inDerbent. An unknown number of Turkic-speakers from the Kurchi tribe were resettled her in 1540. Half a century later, 400 more families of the Turkic-speakingBayat clan were relocated to Derbent on the orders ofAbbas I. Finally, in 1741,Nadir Shah relocated Turkic-speakers from the Mikri clan to Derbent.

Such assimilation notably affected not only Turkic-speaking peoples of Dagestan. In the past, southern Dagestan had a largeTat (Persian) population which originally spoke anIranian language (a dialect of Persian) like other Tats, and are amongst the native inhabitants of theCaucasus who migrated from modern-day Iran. In 1866, they numbered 2,500 people^[13] and by 1929 lived in seven villages, including Zidyan, Bilgadi, Verkhny Chalgan, and Rukel.^[14] However, by the beginning of the 20th century most of them had become Azeri-speaking and assumed Azeri identity in the later decades.^[13]

The population of maritimeCaspian regions has historically had strong economic ties with the city ofAstrakhan on the northern Caspian shore. In particular, Azeris, known to the local population asPersians orShamakhy Tatars, were represented in the city already in 1879, when there was about a thousand of them.^[15] The community grew in the Soviet times and in 2010 consisted of 5,737 people, making Azeris the fourth largest ethnicity in the oblast and 1,31% of its total population.^[16]

As theEncyclopædia Iranica states, the number of Persians in the Russian empire or its territories increased steadily in the second half of the 19th century following the forced ceding of theCaucasus ofQajar Iran to Russia several decades earlier by theTreaty of Gulistan of 1813 and theTreaty of Turkmenchay of 1828.^[5] These migrants consisted primarily from Persia’s northern provinces (chieflyIranian Azerbaijan), who traveled to the Caucasus and, to some extent, to Central Asia in search of employment.^[17] Although the bulk of migrants were involved in some form of short-term or circular migration, many stayed in Russia for longer periods or even settled there.^[17]

The first traces of migration were recorded as early as 1855. The British consul inTabrīz, K. E. Abbott, reported more than 3,000 passes issued by the Russian consulate in two months alone.^[18] However, the process gathered pace after the 1880s, and by the turn of the century it had achieved a scale and consistency that was sufficient to win the attention of many scholars, travelers, and commentators of the time.^[19]

According to the returns from thefirst national census of Russia of 1897, and cited by theEncyclopædia Iranica, some 74,000Persian subjects were enumerated in the various parts of the empire as of 28 January 1897. Of these roughly 28 percent (21,000) were females.^[17] The largest single grouping was in the Caucasus region, which accounted for 82 percent of the total.^[17] As the census states, within the region the four major towns ofBaku,Elisavetpol (Ganja),Erivan, andTbilisi accounted for as many as 53,000 or about 72 percent of all Persians in the whole empire.^[17] Next to Caucasus in numbers of Persian residents was Central Asia, where numbers surpassed 10,000. According to the same [1897 census] source, Persian-speakers (as distinct from Persian subjects) numbered only about 32,000, suggesting the predominance ofAzeri-speaking Azerbaijanis among the migrants.^[17]

Gender Composition and Geographic distribution of Persian-Speaking and Persian Subjects in the Caucasus (1897)^[20]

There are many travelers’ accounts and political memoirs that attest to the importance of the numbers involved, but they are often considered to be contradictory or incomparable. Ethner notes that further useful information is, however, available from data on passports and visas issued at the Russian consulates in Tabriz, Mashhad,Rasht, andAstarabad.^[21] These data reinforce a picture of consistently rising numbers of Persian travelers to Russia, averaging about 13,000 per year for the period 1876-1890 and rising to over 67,000 at the turn of the century. By 1913 over a quarter of a million Persians (274,555) were reported to have entered Russia.^[22] However, this excludes illegal migration, which by many accounts was also substantial.^[23] Equally large numbers of Persians were reported to have left Russia each year (e.g., 213,373 in 1913). As Hakimian further states, it has been estimated that net immigration to Russian territories amounted to about 25,000 each year on average between 1900-13. The total number of Persians in Russia beforeWorld War I is thus likely to have been about half a million (Hakimian, 1990, pp. 49–50).

According to other accounts too, the politicization of Persian workers in Russia was extensive during a period beset by revolutionary turmoil in both countries. In the 1906 strike in the copper mines and plants ofAlaverdi in Armenia about 2,500Persian Azerbaijanis were believed to constitute the core of strikers.^[24] This politicization was also reflected in the forcible extraditions of 1905 referred to above, as note d by Belova.^[25]

Persians also took part in political activities betweenWorld War I and theOctober Revolution. In 1914, as Chaqueri states, workers residing inBaku took part in street demonstrations against the outbreak of war.^[26] Soon after the October Revolution, a group of Persian workers in Baku founded the partyʿEdālat, which was to become theCommunist Party of Persia in 1920.

During theSoviet era, Iranians in Russia comprised a small but politically active community, concentrated primarily inMoscow andLeningrad. In the 1920s and 1930s, Iranian communists and members of theTudeh Party found refuge in theSoviet Union after crackdowns inTehran; many received political training at theCommunist University of the Toilers of the East and worked with Soviet authorities to broadcastpropaganda into Iran. Simultaneously, a limited number of Iranian merchants and craftsmen settled inCentral Asian republics such asTurkmenistan andUzbekistan, maintaining ties with cross-border trade networks along theCaspian Sea.

During World War II, the Soviet occupation ofnorthern Iran (1941–1946) led to the relocation of several thousand Iranian laborers andPOWs into theAzerbaijan andArmenian SSRs, where they contributed to industrial projects under harsh conditions. Following the war,repatriation agreements returned most to Iran, though a core group—fearful of political reprisals—remained and assimilated into local communities.

From the 1950s through the 1970s, Soviet universities admitted Iranian students on scholarship, fostering a cohort of engineers, physicians and educators who later shaped Iran’s post-revolutionary state. Despite periodic suspicions during theCold War, the Iraniandiaspora in the USSR maintained cultural associations, published Persian-language materials, and served as unofficial intermediaries in Tehran-Moscow relations until the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

This sectionneeds expansion. You can help byadding to it.(October 2015)

TheTats are amongst the native inhabitants ofDagestan. They are a Persian people and are descendants of settlers from modern-day Iran. They speak a dialect ofPersian.

Mountain Jews are descendants ofPersian Jews from Iran, who migrated to theNorth Caucasus and parts of Transcaucasia. In Russia, they inhabitChechnya,Kabardino-Balkaria, andKrasnodar Krai.

• Fazil Iskander, writer
• Ivan Lazarevich Lazarev, jeweler
• Amanullah Mirza Qajar, military commander
• Presnyakov brothers, writers, playwrights, screenwriters, directors, theatre producers, and actors^{[citation needed]}.
• Hayk Bzhishkyan, military commander
• Aleksander Reza Qoli Mirza Qajar, military leader, commander of Yekaterinburg (1918)
• Hasan Arfa, military general
• Feyzulla Mirza Qajar, military commander
• Firuz Kazemzadeh, professor emeritus of history atYale University
• Alexander Kasimovich Kazembek, orientalist, historian, and philologist
• Sardar Azmoun, footballer
• Habibullah Huseynov, military commander and Hero of the Soviet Union
• Fatma Mukhtarova, Soviet opera singer
• Ivan Galamian, violin teacher
• Freydun Atturaya, physician
• Mirza Abdul'Rahim Talibov Tabrizi, intellectual and social reformer
• Bogdan Saltanov, painter

• Derbent
• Iran-Russia relations
• Azerbaijanis in Russia
• Russians in Iran

• Fisher, William Bayne; Avery, P.; Hambly, G. R. G; Melville, C. (1991).The Cambridge History of Iran. Vol. 7. Cambridge:Cambridge University Press.ISBN 0521200954.
• N. K. Belova, “Ob Otkhodnichestve iz Severozapadnogo Irana, v Kontse XIX- nachale XX Veka,” Voprosy Istoriĭ 10, 1956, pp. 112–21.
• C. Chaqueri (Ḵ. Šākerī), ed., Asnād-e tārīḵī-e jonbeš-e kārgarī, sosīāl-demokrāsī wa komūnīstī-e Īrān I, Florence, 1969; IV. Āṯār-e Avetīs Solṭānzāda, rev. ed. Tehran and Florence, 1986. Mīrzā Reżā Khan Dāneš, Īrān-e dīrūz, Tehran, 1345 Š./1966.
• M. L. Entner, Russo-Persian Commercial Relations, 1828-1914, The University of Florida Monographs 28, Gainesville, 1965.
• E. Gordon, Persia Revisited, London, 1896.
• H. Hakimian, “Wage, Labor and Migration. Persian Workers in Southern Russia,” IJMES 17/4, 1985, pp. 443–62.
• V. Minorsky, “Dvizhenie persidskikh rabochikh na promysly v Zakavkaze,” Sbornik Konsulskikh Doneseniy (Consular Reports) 3, St. Petersburg, 1905.
• E. Orsolle, La Caucase et la Perse, Paris, 1885.
• A. Seyf, Some Aspects of Economic Development in Iran, 1800-1906, Ph.D. dissertation, Reading University, U.K., 1982.

• Atabaki, Touraj (2003)."Disgruntled Guests: Iranian Subaltern on the Margins of the Tsarist Empire".International Review of Social History.48 (3). Cambridge University Press:401–426.doi:10.1017/S0020859003001135.JSTOR 44582777.S2CID 143195687.
• "v. IN CAUCASUS AND CENTRAL ASIA IN THE LATE 19TH AND EARLY 20TH CENTURIES"
• Touraj Atabaki.The State and the Subaltern: Modernization, Society and the State in Turkey and Iran I.B.Tauris, 15 May 2007.ISBN 978-1845113391 pp 31–52.

• Iranian diaspora by country
• Iranian diaspora in Europe
• Ethnic groups in Russia
• Russian people of Iranian descent
• Muslim communities of Russia

• Wikipedia articles incorporating a citation from the 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica with Wikisource reference
• Wikipedia articles incorporating text from the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica
• Webarchive template wayback links
• Articles with short description
• Short description matches Wikidata
• Articles using infobox ethnic group with image parameters
• Articles containing Persian-language text
• Articles containing Russian-language text
• Articles to be expanded from October 2015
• All articles to be expanded
• All articles with unsourced statements
• Articles with unsourced statements from October 2018