USSR closed canal and made Iran's Armenians return to homeland: CIA

PanARMENIAN.Net - Following the termination of WWII, the USSR launched a vast propaganda scheme to attract Armenians residing outside the USSR to return to their homeland, a new declassified document released by the U.S. Central Intelligence agency recently revealed.

Consequently, a large number of Armenians did return to the USSR, including 20.000 Iranian-Armenians from Arak, Julfa, Faridan and elswhere. However, as reports of the unfavorable treatment by the Soviets reached other Armenians in Iran, they hesitated to go to the USSR. These reports left thousands of Iranian-Armenians who had already liquidated their means of livelihood stranded, hopeless and in desperate condition in Iran.

One person, Mirza Naqi Khan Soradi, owner of a large tract of land in the vicinity of Pahlavi Avenue gave these Armenians, who now numbered 9.000, free of charge 100.000 square meters of land.

“Today, after four years (the document is dated July 18, 1952 - editor’s note), a small Armenian town which closely resembles a Stone-Age settlement, has risen in the northern part of Tehran and is far worse than the slums which are located in the southern part of Tehran,” the document said.

This Armenian settlement was situated 6 meters lower than the surrounding terrain. The streets were narrow, winding and confusing. Small lodgings had less than 50 square meters of floor space and consisted of two or three rooms, with each room being occupied by five to eight persons. Food and other necessities being sold in little shops and hovels, the main problem of this settlement was water.

The low elevation made it impossible to conduct water from the city canals, because it would flood the area. Thus, the Armenians were obliged to carry their water from a distance of up to three kilometers.

“Until a couple of years ago, their water was supplied from the subterranean canal, which originated near the USSR Embassy. However, today, this canal has been closed by the USSR Embassy,” the CIA said.

“These Armenians are exposed 24 hours a day to Communist propaganda and Tadeh Party members who incite them to revolts and riots.”

The CIA this week released more than 12 million pages of declassified files about its activities between the 1940s and the 1990s. The huge electronic archive, now open to the public for the first time, gives insights into several decades of Washington’s foreign policy, including some of the most important events in U.S., history, like the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Cold War and U.S. conflicts with Vietnam and Korea.