ABSTRACT

The history of Firqi-yi Ijtima ‘iyun-i Amiyun-i Iraniyan (the Iranian Social Democrat Party) has conventionally been read in line with the development of Caucasian social democracy. The standard historiography on this subject maintains that the Russian Social Democrats, more precisely their Bolshevik element, set up the Himmat Organization in Baku with the intention of recruiting Muslim oil labourers to their ranks. Himmat leaders, in turn, founded the Ijtimaiyun-i Amiyun Party in order to politicize and organize migrant Iranians who constituted the bulk of unskilled workers in the Baku oilfields and worked as underdogs throughout Transcaucasia. Thus, it is assumed that the Ijtimaiyun-i Amiyun Party was indirectly connected to the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP) and remained subject to its organizational/ideological imperatives.