[8] With the dethronement of Reza Shah in September 1941, Soviet troops captured Tabriz and northwestern Iran for military and strategic reasons.

[8] Lavrenti Beria was nominally in charge of the operation, but delegated it to Mir Jafar Baghirov, the First Secretary of the Communist Party of Azerbaijan in Baku.

[8] The Democratic Party of Azerbaijan was also created by the direct order of Joseph Stalin[9] and capitalized on some local people's dissatisfaction with the centralization policies of Reza Shah.

[8] During this time, a revival of the Azerbaijani literary language, which had largely been supplanted by Persian, was promoted with the help of writers, journalists, and teachers from the Azerbaijan SSR.

In the quest of imposing national homogeneity on the country where half of the population consisted of ethnic minorities, Reza Shah had previously issued in quick succession bans on the use of Azerbaijani language on the premises of schools, in theatrical performances, religious ceremonies, and, finally, in the publication of books.

[11] The Firqah-i Dimukrat, or Azerbaijani Democratic Party (ADP), publicly announced its formation in Tabriz on 3 September 1945 by a group of veteran communists headed by Ja'far Pishevari.

The issue of Iranian Azerbaijan became one of the opening skirmishes of the Cold War, and, largely under the Western powers' pressure, Soviet forces withdrew in 1946.

The autonomous republic collapsed soon afterward, and the members of the Democratic Party took refuge in the Soviet Union, fleeing Iranian revenge.

In Tabriz, the crowds that had just recently applauded the autonomous republic were now greeting the returning Iranian troops, and Azerbaijani students publicly burned their native-language textbooks.

[18]Declassified documents from the Cold War implicates the USSR in forming the government of Pishevari by the direct orders of Stalin.

[22] By mid-December 1946, the Iranian army, backed by the United States and the British,[23] reentered Tabriz, thus putting an end to Azerbaijan People's Government after a full year of its existence.