ABSTRACT
The collapse of the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic forced both Moscow and Baku to reflect on the future of Iranian Azerbaijan. A number of factors added impetus to these concerns: Iran's efforts to dismantle the Azeri national establishment which had begun to develop under Soviet tutelage in the cities of Iranian Azerbaijan, the arrival in Soviet Azerbaijan of a number of prominent 'progressive' political and cultural emigres, and a flood of literary works on the national liberation of Iranian Azerbaijan written by Soviet Azeris who had played an active role in establishing contacts with their Iranian counter-parts during the occupation of Tabriz and other cities of the South between 1941 to 1946. It was during these early postwar years that the ground rules for all subsequent public debates on Iranian Azerbaijan's future were laid.
