Description: Examines how Iranian nationals fell victim to Stalin's Great Terror.
Brief description: 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).
Review Quotes: Iranian Exiles and Stalin's Great Terror is a groundbreaking work. In their well-written and carefully documented reconstruction, Touraj Atabaki and Lana Ravandi-Fadai show not only the hopeful beginnings of cooperation between Soviet and Iranian communists, but also the subsequent violent and disillusioning repression of the 1930s. This book is a milestone in the political historiography of Stalinism.--Marcel van der Linden, International Institute of Social History, Amsterdam