Iranians in Russia

People from the former and contemporary boundaries of Iran have a long history in the territory of what is modern-day Russia, stretching back thousands of years.

Throughout history, the Caucasus region was usually incorporated into the Iranian 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.

[8] As mentioned by the Encyclopedia 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 shahs Ismail I, and ʿAbbās the Great.

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

[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.

[5] These migrants consisted primarily from Persia’s northern provinces (chiefly Iranian Azerbaijan), who traveled to the Caucasus and, to some extent, to Central Asia in search of employment.

[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 the first national census of Russia of 1897, and cited by the Encyclopædia Iranica, some 74,000 Persian subjects were enumerated in the various parts of the empire as of 28 January 1897.

[17] As the census states, within the region the four major towns of Baku, Elisavetpol (Ganja), Erivan, and Tbilisi accounted for as many as 53,000 or about 72 percent of all Persians in the whole empire.

[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, and Astarabad.