Russians occupy Qazvin

The British chronology of the war records under 2 November 1915, or 20 October by the Julian calendar then in use in Russia, that Qazvin in western Persia had been occupied by Russian troops. The town lay about 150 kilometres north-west of Tehran, at the point where the road from the port of Enzeli on the Caspian Sea came down from the Elburz mountains and forked towards Tehran and Hamadan. Whoever held Qazvin closed off the capital from the north and west. The entry, however, needs explaining. A Russian detachment had been stationed in Qazvin since 1909, and in the spring of 1915 it had been reinforced. In the autumn, therefore, it was not a matter of capturing the town, but of the arrival of much larger forces: the expeditionary corps of General Nikolai Baratov, for which Qazvin was to be the main base.

Why the Russians came

In the autumn of 1915 neutral Persia seemed close to going over to the side of the Central Powers. The legations of Germany, Austria-Hungary and Turkey were active in Tehran, and German agents were recruiting armed volunteers in the provinces. The Persian gendarmerie, commanded by Swedish officers, could no longer be trusted to a large extent. Prime Minister Mostowfi ol-Mamalek, who had taken over the government in August, was accepting money from the Entente while at the same time negotiating with the Germans over the terms of entering the war. The British officer and historian Percy Sykes later wrote that the Germans wanted to repeat in Tehran what they had achieved in Constantinople and draw the Persian government into the war, frightening it with the threat that the Russians would take the capital and imprison the Shah.

Grand Duke Nicholas Nikolaevich, Viceroy of the Caucasus since September, decided to prevent this by force. The commander of the Caucasus Army, General Nikolai Yudenich, reluctantly gave up a large part of his cavalry for the expedition. According to Allen and Muratoff’s British history of the Caucasian wars, Baratov received the Caucasian Cavalry Division, the 1st Caucasian Cossack Division, two mixed regiments of Kuban Cossacks, two frontier guard regiments and two militia (opolchenie) druzhinas, in all about 6,000 infantry and 8,000 cavalry with several dozen guns. Russian works give a similar figure, about 14,000–15,000 men. The Grand Duke’s order read: advance on Qazvin and, without occupying Tehran, cut the capital off from German, Turkish and pro-German Persian detachments.

Conflicting dates

Moving so much cavalry across the Caspian Sea by steamer and barge was not easy, and from Enzeli to Qazvin, through Rasht and the passes of the Elburz, the road ran for more than 200 kilometres. Sources date the individual stages differently. Russian works state that the corps began landing at Enzeli on 30 October (17 October by the Julian calendar) and had assembled at Qazvin by 11 November (29 October). Allen and Muratoff write that Baratov himself, with his staff and a Cossack advanced guard, landed on 12 November, and that the whole 1st Caucasian Cossack Division stood at Qazvin only by 1 December, when the Caucasian Cavalry Division and the infantry were still on the way. The British date of 2 November therefore most probably corresponds to the arrival in the town of the first units of the new corps. The available works, however, do not confirm the exact day.

Near the capital

According to Sykes, as the situation grew more threatening, the troops from Qazvin pushed forward to the Karaj river, about 40 kilometres from Tehran. A rumour spread in the capital that the Russians would enter the city and seize Shah Ahmad. Pro-German deputies, journalists and gendarmes began leaving for Qom in the south. In mid-November the envoys of the Central Powers followed them, counting on the Shah to go with them.

The expedition’s first objective was achieved without a single shot: the presence of the Russians near Tehran wrecked the German plans to draw Persia into the war. In December Baratov’s troops moved on from Qazvin against the pro-German centres in Hamadan and Qom, and the real Persian campaign began. Qazvin remained the corps’ main base throughout the winter.