Fitadigān dar girdbād: sarguzasht va sarnivisht-i qurbāniān-i īranī-i sarkūb,hāy-i farāgir-i Stālīnī dar Shuravī: Persian 2024

The Story. The Fate of Iranian Victims of Stalinist Repression in the Soviet Union Translating this book was an extremely challenging task for several reasons, and it requires some explanations that readers and researchers should be aware of. I am deeply grateful to Dr. Touraj Atabaki, who, throughout the translation process, patiently and generously assisted me in resolving translation issues and read the Persian text several times, offering corrections. Translating the text of an author who not only writes in Persian but also has his own specific writing style, vocabulary, and structure, was a difficult task. However, he allowed me considerable freedom in translation with a completely professional attitude, refraining from imposing personal preferences on the Persian text. It should be noted that due to the changes and corrections made during the translation process, the Persian text may have significant differences from the original Russian text. However, all these changes were made with the authors' approval in the Persian text. It is also worth mentioning that some parts of the book had previously been published as independent articles in Persian, and in these cases, no actual translation was done; the Persian text was included in the book, sometimes with minor changes to ensure the consistency of the entire text. In translating many of the quotes and references from Persian sources, it was necessary to locate the original source so that the material, which had been translated from Persian to Russian, could be accurately cited. This time-consuming and labor-intensive task was carried out as much as possible. On the other hand, many documents, especially letters, reports, and notes sent from the Communist Party of Iran to the Soviet Union, were originally written in Persian and then translated into Russian in the Soviet Union. However, the original Persian texts of many of these documents have not been preserved, necessitating reverse and re-translation. If any readers have access to the original Persian documents that were translated from Russian in this book, I would appreciate it if they could provide the texts so that they can be used in future editions of the book. In converting dates, efforts were also made to find the correct solar or lunar calendar dates for events based on reliable sources, as mechanical conversion from the Gregorian calendar to the Hijri calendar could have resulted in errors from non-Persian sources being transferred to this text. In cases where date discrepancies were irresolvable, the final decision was left to the authors. I hope there are not too many errors in the dates, which are common in many of our historical books due to differences in calendrical methods. The referencing system of the book may seem somewhat unconventional to Iranian readers, but given that most of the sources are in Russian and reading the Russian script is impossible for most readers of this book, I preferred to provide the author’s surname and the title of the work in Persian in the references so that readers could at least have a general idea of the source. The complete source information in the original language is also provided in the "List of Sources" at the end of the book, which can be easily retrieved using the author's surname and the title of the work, listed alphabetically. There were numerous challenges in preparing the lists of Iranian victims (Appendices 3 and 4). Many Persian names were recorded in the documents in ways that make precise retrieval difficult due to the differences in the phonetic systems of the Russian and Persian (and sometimes Azerbaijani) languages. Therefore, the accuracy of the specific names in these two lists is relative. I must express my gratitude to Ms. Fereshteh Parizkar, Ms. Mahdis Cheraghali, Ms. Niloufar Dolou, and Ms. Mahnaz Motazedian, who assisted me in translating these two appendices and took on the main burden of their translation. Translator