The weekly scientific meeting of history was held on Wednesday, August 28, 2024, with the speech of Mr. Dr. Mohammad Hassan Mahdian. The topic of his speech was Russia's position in the formation of world history. The main contents presented in the speech are as follows:

Dr. Mahdian: As mentioned earlier, the Shah of Iran made three visits to the Soviet Union. The first visit was in 1956, during Khrushchev's time. On this visit, the reception was appropriate, and the main reason for that was Khrushchev himself. But after that, due to the events in Iraq and Iran joining the Baghdad Pact, Iran-Soviet relations became strained. After this date, the Shah made a visit to the Soviet Union in 1965. At this time, Brezhnev was the leader of the Soviet Union, and this visit was the foundation for the construction of Steel factories, mines, and other industrial facilities. In 1972, the Shah made a visit to the Soviet Union, and this year, our group was a student in Moscow, and they all took us to the Vnukovo airport to welcome him. This visit was also during Brezhnev's time, and Iran-Soviet relations were at their peak years. This visit was welcomed at high levels, and all the Soviet officials except Brezhnev went to welcome the Shah of Iran. The Soviet Union had both political and economic motives in its relations with Iran. For this reason, many efforts were made to revive and continue these relations at this time. The situation of Soviet employees in Iran was also very good. Iranians were very interested in learning, and honestly, the Soviet experts provided them with a lot of information. Some of the Soviet experts had very high skills and expertise, and in these courses, they taught the Iranians things that were used by them for all these years. When we were in Tabas, a number of Iranian engineers did not consider it necessary to work with Soviet experts, but some Iranian technicians went into practical work with Soviet experts and became skilled in geoelectrical work and finding aquifers in Tabas. Learning this skill had caused these technicians to become capitalists in that region. Because after the departure of the Russian forces, it was these people who found the aquifers for the people of the region and provided them with them.

The issue of weapons purchases by Iran was always one of the issues that caused concern for the Soviet Union. To the extent that during the meeting between Brezhnev and the Shah, this issue was directly asked by Brezhnev from the Shah. Steel day, which was on March 19, and we were invited to a restaurant in Prague, the Soviet Minister of Industry publicly stated that Iran wanted to import Steel Factory into his country every year. But neither Germany nor America have helped Iran in this matter. They gave excuses for non-cooperation that were not true. For example, they said that Steel requires mineral mines and iron ore, and this material is not enough in Iran, so it will not be cost-effective to establish Steel factories in Iran. However, the Soviet Union helped Iran in this way and explored the resources needed for this industry.

After the years of Brezhnev's rule, we are entering the old age of Soviet leaders. During the second period of Brezhnev, the general conditions of the Soviet Union, i.e., political, economic, and cultural conditions, declined. The main reason for this was Reagan's inauguration in America, the arms race, Star Wars, and... The main goal of all these measures was to get the Soviet Union out of the circle of confrontation and confrontation with America, which eventually succeeded. America called the Soviet Empire all kinds of evil names. Although Brezhnev was not in good physical and mental condition, he maintained his relations with America.

At the end of the Brezhnev period, some delegations from national steel companies came to Iran, and we had meetings with them. These people said some things despite the intellectually closed atmosphere ruling their country. Among them, they told me that if you travel to Moscow now, you will not like this country as before because it is no longer as beautiful as before. In any case, Brezhnev died in November 1982 from an overdose of sleeping drugs. Unlike Khrushchev's family, Brezhnev's family did not have a good social aspect. Brezhnev's wife, unlike Khrushchev's wife, was not very social, and like her, she did not have scientific ability and did not accompany her husband on foreign visits. Her only foreign visit was when Brezhnev came to Iran during Khrushchev's time. This visit was very influential for her, and separate meetings and visits with other women were arranged for her. Brezhnev's wife lived with Brezhnev for 50 years, and they had two children. The facilities that were available to the Brezhnev family were taken from them after Brezhnev's death, especially during the Gorbachev era. They considered a pension of 300 rubles for Brezhnev's wife. She was suffering from severe diabetes and finally died alone. She was buried in the Novodevichy cemetery in Moscow. Many people, like Stalin's wife, Khrushchev, and his wife are buried in this cemetery.

Brezhnev's eldest daughter, Galina, was uncontrollable. She did not study and soon became addicted to alcohol. She frequently held drinking parties under various pretexts and married several times. Her last husband was a police officer, but he was considered a gypsy. Although he was a gypsy, he was very handsome, and his marriage to Galina allowed him to be promoted to the position of deputy minister of the interior because the minister of the interior (sholokhov) was one of Brezhnev's friends. Galina had a very bad life overall. She was in contact with various mafias, including the diamond mafia. When I was in Moscow, the Soviet TV broadcast a film of Galina, in which she cried profusely and expressed regret for her life. She had a daughter from her first marriage, but she left this daughter, and Brezhnev's wife raised this daughter. Galina's daughter stated somewhere that she has no good memories of her mother. Galina finally died alone. Brezhnev also had a son named Yuri. Yuri was an Aramaic boy and served in the Ministry of Foreign Trade outside the Soviet Union. In studying the lives of famous people and country leaders, we see that when one of these people goes astray, they ruin the fate of the rest of the family. This was quite evident in the Brezhnev family. Unlike Brezhnev's family, Khrushchev's family was very normal. When Khrushchev retired from power, he went home in anger and said this. Even though Khrushchev's wife was very upset, she did not show this discomfort and managed the situation. This management causes non-party people to gather around Khrushchev again after a while. This has caused the Soviet people to have good memories of the Khrushchev family, unlike the Brezhnev family (especially his daughter).

After Brezhnev's death at the age of 76, Andropov took over. Yuri Andropov ruled the Soviet Union for nearly two years, from 1982 to 1984, and was very ill. His focus was on internal reforms, fighting corruption, creating special forces against terrorists and hostage-taking, and economic reforms. Andropov was not able to dominate the various forces due to the great confusion in the Soviet Union. His family had not appeared in public at all. His wife suffered severe nervous attacks and stress due to the riots in Hungary in 1956 when Andropov was ambassador there, and people wanted to forcefully enter the embassy. The Hungarian revolt was unique among the revolts of other socialist countries. In this riot, they destroyed all the statues of Stalin and other communist figures from the streets. There was a high slaughter by both the Soviet forces and the striking people. About 3 thousand people were killed. Andropov failed to make major changes in Soviet foreign policy, and relations with China remained tense. Arresting some intellectuals of the Soviet Union at that time was the only thing he did. Sakharov and his wife were among those arrested in 1982 and exiled to the Gorky city. During his time, Soviet embassies and people were eavesdropped using modern security and intelligence systems. It was Andropov who sent Leonid Shabarshin to Iran and warned him about the characteristics of the Iranian people.

One of the important events of Andropov's time was the shooting of a South Korean passenger plane in 1983. This plane had deviated about 500 kilometers to the Soviet territory. This deviation took place in very sensitive areas of the Soviet Union, which included Soviet nuclear submarine bases, and the Americans have always sought to take pictures of these areas. Of course, it is said that the pilot of the plane did not pay attention to the warnings of the Soviet military bases and was finally destroyed by air-to-air missiles. Various analyses were made for this event in various Soviet magazines. One of the analyses was that although there were some passengers on this flight, recording and eavesdropping devices were installed in it. The Americans were silent at first, but after some time, they started spreading negative advertising about this incident. While in the KGB, Andropov had very tense relations with the Minister of the Interior. The Minister of the Interior at that time was Shulokov. He was a trained and war-experienced soldier who did not have good relations with Andropov. For this reason, he has ordered city police officers to fine KGB officers who commit violations during the mission. Brezhnev placed this person in this position with the aim of creating a balance between the head of the police and the head of the KGB. In this position, Shulokov had done many things for the police and its forces. The salaries of the employees were increased, and 10% of the houses built in the Soviet Union were allocated to the police and traffic forces. The people of this ministry were very satisfied with their minister, while the KGB was not like this and their income was not much different, and the employees of this security organization were more hopeful of foreign missions. When Andropov came to power, he dismissed Shulokov shortly after, on December 17, 1982. The reason for this dismissal was that during Brezhnev's time, one of the KGB officers was killed by one of the police officers, but this matter was not followed up and investigated. This dismissal caused Shulokov's wife to commit suicide in February 1983, and this suicide was the second shock for Shulokov. After this, Andropov ordered to take away all his awards and certificates, and finally, in December 1984, he committed suicide. Shulokov had explained in a letter before his suicide that he always acted in the interests of the party, did not accumulate wealth for himself, and adhered to the law. In the continuation of the letter, he requests that false accusations are not made against his children and that they be left alone. The system of accusations and conspiracies existed among Soviet leaders since then, and Stalin and other leaders were influenced by it. This system was only destroyed during Khrushchev's time, and the reason was that Khrushchev took action himself and did not trust people to make accusations.

Andropov died two years later due to repeated dialysis and kidney complications. After him, another old and frivolous person named Konstantin Chernenko came to power. At that time, we were working in Tabas, and we asked the delegations that came to Iran about him. In response, they said that he was one of Brezhnev's friends and was supposed to take power after him, but it did not happen. Unlike other Soviet leaders, Chernenko did not have a charismatic personality and was not well known. In his youth, he worked in the border guard, and after that, he met Brezhnev during party activities. His leadership period was 11 months, and he continued the initiatives of Yuri Andropov. He tried to completely restore Stalin's dignity, but he did not succeed due to the lack of acceptance by society. Like Andropov, he fought with intellectuals, disaffected authors, and protesters. In general, Chernenko was not successful in any of the plans that Andropov started. All Chernenko did was return Molotov's party membership card. Molotov had been expelled from the party since Khrushchev and rejoined the party two years before his death at the age of 94. This caused him to be buried in Novodevichy cemetery next to Stalin's wife.

In 1985, Mikhail Gorbachev became the leader of the Soviet Union. One of his first measures was to fight against alcohol. He admitted that alcohol plays a very destructive role in society, not only among workers but also among party members and officials. He was from Krasna in the north of the Black Sea and there were many vineyards in this area. He orders to destroy all the vineyards. This action was completely wrong because the people who were suffering from alcohol produced alcohol from other materials, such as wheat, apples, and other fruits. Many people who did not have access to these items used industrial alcohol and died. Deaths from alcohol increased after Gorbachev's prohibition. Many people produced their own alcohol at home. This prohibition brought with it the strong dissatisfaction of the people. At the same time, because of the freedom of speech given by Gorbachev, people read the banned works of domestic and foreign authors. Political parties were freed and found freedom of action. These parties were allowed to hold demonstrations and gatherings during this period. More freedoms were given to enter and leave the Soviet Union. They also gave freedom to the people of the society to choose their religion.

One of the most unfortunate events during the Gorbachev era was the explosion of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in 1986. This power plant is 80 kilometers from the city of Kyiv, Ukraine. Large parts of Ukraine and Belarus were exposed to the radiation of this explosion. In Russian magazines, including Sputnik, it was written about this explosion that the United States is exaggerating this incident, and this is despite the fact that when the Three Mile Island power plant of the United States exploded, we did not see a reflection of it in the world news. But the reality was that the Chernobyl accident had very high damages and implications, and its effects remained in Ukraine and Belarus for years.

Another major event of the Gorbachev era was the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Afghanistan in 1989. Some of the injured and disabled people of the Afghanistan war had joined mafia groups in the Soviet Union and used to enter the city on wheels and beg.

The next event was the unification of Germany and the destruction of the Berlin Wall in 1989. Following this union and the meeting between the two German leaders, some East German leaders fled to the Soviet Union. During this period, new contracts were signed with different republics and because these republics were looking for more independence, these contracts were mostly welcomed. Because of these actions, some Soviet soldiers, led by the head of the KGB, tried to stage a coup against Gorbachev, but this coup was thwarted. Over time, Gorbachev lost his popularity.

Another event of Gorbachev's era was Imam's message about communist thinking. This message had a great impact in Iran, but unfortunately it did not find the necessary impact in the Soviet Union. Mr. Yazidi (our former ambassador to the Soviet Union) can explain in detail in this regard. When we talked to politicians and scientists in the Soviet Union, they were not very aware of the existence of this message. Some religious scholars and muftis in the Soviet Union were aware of this message. In my first book, titled Leaves of Memories, I mentioned that in the first years of the Iranian revolution, our relations with the Soviet Union did not have a wide economic spectrum, and Iran was only limited to political dialogues. But in the meantime, the ambassadors were involved in the chaotic conditions of the two countries. On the one hand, the situation in the Soviet Union had become chaotic since the time of Andropov onwards, and on the other hand, there had been a revolution in Iran, and the Iran-Iraq war had also begun. In Iran, some people prescribed and promoted tense relations with the Soviet Union. The thinking and idea of neither Eastern nor Western and issuing a revolution among the leaders in the years after the war was moderated because other countries stood in front of this idea and intended to destroy the country. It seemed that after the war, Iran's orientation toward the East increased. Politicians should explain why this tendency. But it seems that the late Hashemi Rafsanjani was influential in this matter. In those years, the late Rafsanjani traveled to the Soviet Union with a high-ranking delegation and signed many contracts in the field of weapons, submarines, etc. After the revolution and especially after the war, Iran expected purely economic cooperation with the Soviet Union during Gorbachev's time. In 1989, we had meetings with delegations from the National Steel Company, Isfahan Steel Company, and its subsidiary mines from the Soviet Union. In these meetings, we wanted to extend the contracts in this field, and the Soviet Union promised that it would modernize the National Steel Company, but they no longer agreed with more open contracts and demanded free currency and cash dollars. Iran was not ready to finance these contracts, and because of this, it leaned towards the West. Finally, they went to the Italians and signed a contract with Italian Pianti, which was given a brief description of these contracts in the previous meetings.

One of the memories that I have in my mind from the unsuccessful negotiations with the Soviet officials was that during those meetings, we had gone to a restaurant for dinner one day, and we saw an old woman and her son enter the restaurant and they had a series of coupons. These coupons were the Soviet government's allowance for receiving food, which was not accepted by the restaurant manager, and finally, I counted the money for their food. These scenes left a very unpleasant impact on our minds, bodies, and souls, and we were very happy that we were not captured by these failed thoughts of communism during our studies and we followed the same common path throughout our lives, and of course, God helped us a lot in this way.

Another important event of the Gorbachev period was the Bellagio Treaty. The initiator of this agreement was Boris Yeltsin, who wanted to get rid of the Soviet Union. Boris Yeltsin, Ukrainian President Leonid Kravchuk, and Belarusian Supreme Soviet Chairman, Shushkevich signed the dissolution of the Soviet Union in the Bellagio region of Belarus, which was surrounded by dense forests. This is where the next problems arose. In the parliament, Kravchuk asked Yeltsin what fate awaits the Crimean peninsula. In response, Yeltsin says to take this peninsula for yourself!! This belief in Ukraine to take possession of the peninsula originates from this incident, while at the same time, there were many objections among the high-ranking officials of Russia about this handover.

After the agreement, Yeltsin handed over many islands along the Amur and Ossory rivers to China. It is said that the number of these islands was 600. Yeltsin after this handover once again in 1997 during the presidency of Leonid Kuchma over Ukraine, this matter was acknowledged in the Soviet-Ukraine friendship treaty. However, Yeltsin was not far-sighted and did not foresee the problems created by NATO, Western countries, and Ukraine. After this final approval, NATO and Western countries wanted the Soviet Union to move its military fleet from the Black Sea. Finally, during Kuchma's time, it was agreed that rent would be paid by the Soviets for the deployment of the fleet in the Black Sea. But after Kuchma, Ukrainian presidents were very anti-Russian and created many problems for this agreement. On the one hand, they complained to the United Nations, and on the other hand, they raised the rent very high. Ukraine's complaint in the United Nations was about not accepting the rightful heir of the Russian Confederation. Ukraine claimed that it has a share in the diplomatic property of the Russian Confederation in all countries. I examined a letter under this title myself in those years. These complaints and follow-ups took place while they had given up these properties in the Bellagio Treaty. They placed anti-Russian statues in all parts of Ukraine and regularly promoted anti-Russian ideas. Finally, I must say that I closely witnessed the formation of hostile relations between Russia and Ukraine, and the blame for this process lay mostly on the Ukrainians and the leaders of this country.

Zeinab Chaldavi, an expert at the Institute for Political and International Studies