Iranian Exiles and Stalin’s Great Terror
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1930s
20th-century history
A01=Lana Ravandi-Fadai
A01=Touraj Atabaki
Author_Lana Ravandi-Fadai
Author_Touraj Atabaki
Category=NHG
Communist movement
eq_bestseller
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
forthcoming
Iranian history
Iranian-Soviet relations
Joseph Stalin
Migrant workers
Migration
Political repression
Soviet history
State violence
The Great Terror
Product details
- ISBN 9781399560566
- Dimensions: 156 x 234mm
- Publication Date: 30 Jun 2026
- Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Hardback
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While Stalin’s Great Terror has been extensively studied, this is the first book to uncover the fate of Iranian communists and migrant workers in the Soviet Union during the 1930s purges. It reveals how foreign nationals, particularly Iranians, were caught in the machinery of repression during one of the darkest chapters of Soviet history. Using newly accessible Soviet archives, it tells the human stories behind political repressions – stories that were buried for decades and have been entirely absent from both Iranian and Soviet historiography.
By reconstructing the lives and fates of those silenced, this book challenges established narratives and emphasises the human cost of political repression. The authors provide detailed individual case studies of Iranians who were arrested, deported or executed, most of whom have never appeared in the historical record before. Speaking to enduring themes of displacement, political persecution and the vulnerability of migrants under authoritarian regimes, it is a vital contribution to both historical scholarship and contemporary political reflection.
Touraj Atabaki is Senior Research Fellow at the International Institute of Social History and Professor Emeritus of Social History of the Middle East and Central Asia at Leiden University. Atabaki first studied theoretical physics before switching to history at the University of London and Utrecht University. Following positions at Utrecht University and the University of Amsterdam, he joined Leiden University where he held the Chair of Social History of the Middle East and Central Asia. Atabaki’s research spans historiography, labour and subaltern studies in twentieth-century Iran, the Ottoman Empire, Turkey, the Caucasus and Central Asia. His forthcoming publications is Toiling for Oil. A Social History of Petroleum in Iran (Cambridge University Press, 2025). Lana Ravandi-Fadai is Associate Professor of the Contemporary East and Africa at the Russian State University for the Humanities, Senior Researcher at the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences and Head of the Eastern Cultural Centre of the Institute of Oriental Studies. She is the author of numerous scholarly publications including Political Parties and Organizations of Iran, which was selected as one of the Best Scholarly Book of the Year (2010) at the Institute of Oriental Studies in Moscow.
Lana Ravandi-Fadai has taught and researched at number of universities and research institutes including the Virginia Military Institute in the United States and the International Institute of Social History in Amsterdam. Her works examine political and social developments in contemporary Iran - political parties and factions, government institutions, educational policy, and ethnic and women’s issues.
