Teheran Conference Research Articles

The Tehran discussions, formal and informal

A comparative study of memoirs and documentary sources pertaining to the Tehran Conference allows the author to challenge and correct some of the prevalent positions held within both historiography and popular literature on the subject. In contrast with the pervasive assumption regarding the stance of the “Big Three” on the matter of the Second Front (Stalin and Roosevelt were proponents of an expeditious invasion of Normandy, in contrast to Churchill’s ‘Mediterranean-Balkan’ strategy), he demonstrates that the US President, ostensibly under the influence of his military advisers, was initially amenable to supporting British plans. It was only through the persistent efforts of Soviet diplomacy that the American leader was persuaded to join Stalin in prioritising Operation Overlord. The real breakthrough on the Second Front issue occurred during and after an informal dinner hosted by Roosevelt after the first session of the conference on 28 November 1943, which was earlier than had previously been asserted. In the course of these informal discussions, which have been largely overlooked in previous historiography, the Soviets proposed several important projects for a post-war settlement in Europe. These proposals were largely agreed upon by Western representatives. A consensus was reached on the issue of changing the Soviet-Polish and Polish-German borders, which was subsequently updated and ratified at the Yalta and Potsdam conferences. Additionally, the article addresses other matters pertaining to the Tehran Conference, including discussions on German war criminals, the role of interpreters, and other pertinent topics.

Scandinavia and the 1968 International Year for Human Rights

ABSTRACT The article explores the Scandinavian countries’ contributions to the United Nations’ 1968 International Year for Human Rights (IYHR) based on archival research in Sweden, Denmark, and Norway. It traces how the three countries launched national campaigns to commemorate the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and participated in the International Human Rights Conference in Tehran. This engagement with the IYHR occurred at a time when the Scandinavian countries were elevating human rights concerns in their diplomacy as part of a new foreign policy activism. The article demonstrates that the commemoration campaigns spawned numerous activities to raise awareness of human rights issues and spurred reflection on the state of human rights at home and abroad. At the Tehran conference, the Scandinavian countries failed to strengthen international protection of human rights as the concerns of Global South countries dominated the agenda. The analysis confirms two general aspects of the Scandinavian approach to human rights: their emphasis on mutual coordination and their preference for robust civil society involvement. The article concludes that the comprehensive national commemoration campaigns facilitated broad civil society engagement with human rights, but that the IYHR did not transform Scandinavian human rights policies.

Third Tehran Conference of IARLL <i>Russian Language and Literature in the Modern World: Problems and Prospects</i>

Russian Language and Literature in the Modern World: Problems and Prospects, the 3d International Forum of the Iranian Association of Russian Language and Literature (IARLL) took place in Tehran on February, 25-26, 2023. It was timed to the 10th anniversary of the foundation of the Association, as well as to the Year of the Russian Language. Despite the difficult international situation, philologists from Iran, Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Tunisia, Georgia, Ukraine, China, Bulgaria took part in the conference. Representatives of Russian universities and research centers from Moscow, St. Petersburg, Minsk together with scientists from 10 Iranian universities formed the core of the conference. Russian scientists are attracted by the high scientific level of the forum, the interest of Iranian colleagues in Russian culture, the success of students in learning the Russian language, a cultural program that allows to get acquainted with the cultural treasures of ancient Persia and, most importantly, the tradition of Russian-Iranian cooperation. The expanding ties between Iran and Russia have made the Russian language significant in university teaching in Iran. It has been conducted for 90 years, since the foundation of the University of Tehran in 1934. Today, Russian language and literature departments have been established in 15 Iranian universities, where about 270 students begin their studies every year. The Russian Language and Literature Association was established in 2012 on the initiative of professors of the Tehran University Janolah Karimi-Motakhhar and Marzieh Yahyapur. Its activities enjoy great respect and full support among Russian scientists: 28 literary scholars and 72 linguists are represented in the collection of abstracts of scientific reports published by the Tehran University by the beginning of the conference. The reports delivered at the conference focused primarily on the topical problems of learning the Russian language in Iran and a selection of the reports will be published in The Research Journal of Russian Language and Literature published by IARLL, is an only scientific peer–reviewed journal in Russian in Iran.

Svalbard in the Strategy of the Great Powers During the Second World War (1939– 1945)

The article deals with the place of Svalbard in the strategy of opposing coalitions during the Second World War in the various stages of the war. Since 1939 until the Tehran Conference, the main strategy of the Anti-Hitler Coalition had been the British strategy of “tightening the ring”. Therefore, the Arctic in the frame of this strategy was considered to be an important segment of the “ring”, and Svalbard — as the ice shore of the “channel” through which the route of the northern convoys ran, and the main battles of the war at sea took place. With the adoption of the new coalition strategy of “direct action” in 1943, the role of Svalbard changed accordingly. In the global warfare strategy, this role became auxiliary. At the same time, as the war was nearing its end, the archipelago obtained a special significance in the national defense doctrines of the circumpolar states as well as in the post-war world order, in particular, in the Soviet doctrine of “creating a belt of friendly states” and in the Norwegian strategy of “building bridges”. In accordance with the changes in the main coalition strategy and national doctrines of the Arctic states, the article examines military operations in the archipelago as well as the policy of these states towards Svalbard at the end of war. In this regard, it is noted that during those military operations not only the liberation of the Norwegian territory was accomplished but also a direct military cooperation between Norway and the USSR. On the basis of the recently declassified documents, the author examines the role of Svalbard in the constructing of the post-war Europe, in particular, in solving the so called “Polish question”, in abandoning operation “Unthinkable”, and in establishing a zone of “limited forms and purposes for military activity” in Northern Norway bordering the USSR.

Allied rivalry over oil concession during World War II occupation of Iran: the Soviet perspective based on Soviet documents

ABSTRACT The Soviet view of Allied rivalry over Iranian oil concessions lies at the centre of the discussion in this article. This rivalry, framed as ‘rivalry within partnership’, had earlier precedents, and was resumed with vigour in 1943, with the added dimension of propaganda used against each other. It took place at a crucial time for Iran, namely during the Allied occupation during World War II, coinciding with the Tehran Conference and the preparation of Iranian political parties for the fourteenth Majlis elections (along with the role that Muhammad Riza Shah Pahlavi played in the success of the newly established Tudeh Party of Iran in those elections) all of which as viewed from a Soviet point of view based on Soviet documents.

LEADERS DISCUSSION OF THE USSR, USA AND GREAT BRITAIN ABOUT THE PLACE AND TIME OF THE TRILATERAL MEETING IN 1943

The article is devoted to the study of the process of preparation of the Tehran conference of leaders of the USSR, USA and Great Britain, held in the Iranian capital from November 28 to December 1, 1943. Based on the analysis of the trilateral correspondence of I.V. Stalin, F.D. Roosevelt and W. Churchill, the authors determine the objectives of the meeting and indicate the positions of the parties regarding the time and place of its holding. It is proved that each of the leaders wanted to organize a conference on the territory under their control, but the desire to resolve controversial issues prevailed over political ambitions, which was a decisive factor in rallying the allies of World War II to fight the aggressors. The novelty of the study is due to the lack of study in the domestic historiography of the organizational aspect of the Tehran conference, which in turn is extremely important for an objective understanding of how the conditions favorable for the adoption of crucial military and political decisions of the time and the development of initial projects of the post-war world order were achieved.

The Problem of Turkey’s Neutrality During the Second World War in the Context of International Conferences

One of the topical problems in the history of the Second World War was the relations between the USSR and Turkey. The warring sides examined possible methods for Turkey to come over to their side. The Turkish issue was a main theme in the correspondence among the heads of the anti-Hitler coalition. Based on information from Soviet and Turkish periodicals and materials from the Russian Federation Foreign Policy Archive, we examine the features of Turkey’s foreign policy during the war and Turkey’s relations with the USSR. We examine the Teheran, Cairo, and Potsdam Conferences, where the leaders of the anti-Hitler coalition discussed the Turkish issue and Churchill’s proposal to open a second front on the territory of Turkey.

Complementarity between the ICRC and the United Nations and international humanitarian law and international human rights law, 1948–1968

AbstractThis article shows that between the drafting of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948 and the Tehran conference in 1968, international human rights law and international humanitarian law and their respective guardian institutions, the United Nations (UN) and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), were not so conceptually far apart as is sometimes suggested. Its purpose is to give further legitimacy to the role of human rights law in armed conflict and show that cooperation between the UN and the ICRC has a long history.

The status and the future of Baltic States and Romania in the strategy of Western Allies in the early years of the Second World War: a comparative view

The fate of Lithuania and Romania as well as future of the whole Central and Eastern European region was determined in the years of the Second World War. The common origin of their tragic and painful history was the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact – the secret deal between Soviet Union and Nazi Germany, which divided Central and Eastern Europe between two totalitarian regimes. In June 1940 the three Baltic States and a part of Romania were directly occupied and annexed by the Soviet Union. The main objective of this paper is to identify, analyze and compare the attitudes of the United States and Great Britain with respect to the annexation of the Baltic States and the Romania territory and discussed the post-war future reserved to them. During the early years of the Second Word War (1940-1942) few interesting international discussions about possible post-war arrangement plans existed. The analysis of the Western attitude would enable us to give answers to certain questions: What could have been done by the Western states for the benefit of Central and Eastern European region; what have they, in fact, done and what did they avoid doing? The year 1943 witnessed the consolidation of the Western attitude with regard to Soviet Union’s western borders, which resulted in the fundamental fact that Moscow did not intend to retract its interests in the Baltic States, Eastern Poland, North Bucovina and Bessarabia while the West did not intend to fight for these territories. Considering the fact that at the Teheran conference (1943) the Western states agreed upon turning the Baltic states into a Soviet interest sphere, the United States and Britain entered the Yalta conference (1945) with no illusions as to the fate of Central and Eastern Europe in general.

Surprises and Learnings from the Tehran Conference

When first approached by the planners of the conference on Media and Religion at the University of Tehran, I must admit to a number of reactions. First (and most embarrassing in retrospect), I thou...

A Human Rights Law of Internal Armed Conflict: The European Court of Human Rights in Chechnya

The cases on Chechnya recently decided by the European Court of Human Rights force us to re-evaluate the relationship between human rights law and humanitarian law. Since the International Court of Justice held that humanitarian law is lex specialis to human rights law in 1996 – if not since the Tehran Conference of 1968 – it has been widely accepted that ‘human rights in armed conflict’ refers to humanitarian law. The ECtHR has directly applied human rights law to the conduct of hostilities in internal armed conflicts. The rules it has applied may prove controversial, but humanitarian law’s limited substantive scope and poor record of achieving compliance in internal armed conflicts suggest the importance of this new approach.

A British Version of “Browderism”: British Communists and the Teheran Conference of 1943

In the wake of the Teheran Conference of 1943, the Communist Party USA (CPUSA) adopted the political line that later became known as “Browderism.” The Party dissolved itself in favor of a loose Communist Political Association, declared an effective end to the class struggle and argued that the war-time alliance of Britain, the Soviet Union and the United States could continue into the postwar era. The political content of “Browderism” scarcely changed until the eruption of the Cold War later in the 1940s. The British Communist Party, no less than that of the USA, had seen Teheran as an indication that in the postwar world there need be no return to the fierce class struggle characteristic of the prewar decades. It abandoned the insurrectionary model provided by the Bolsheviks, and set out to provide mettle for the wider labor movement rather than act as a vanguard party. Though some elements on the Party’s left sternly criticized the leadership’s post-Teheran policies, their comprehensive defeat at the Party’s 18th Congress showed that the vast majority of the membership had been seduced by the allied powers’ promises.

The Martens Clause, Principles of Humanity, and Dictates of Public Conscience

Together with the principle prohibiting weapons “of a nature to cause superfluous injury” or “calculated to cause unnecessary suffering,” the Martens clause, in the Preamble to the Hague Conventions on the Laws and Customs of War on Land, is an enduring legacy of those instruments. In the years since its formulation, the Martens clause has been relied upon in die Nurembergjurisprudence, addressed by the International Court of Justice and human rights bodies, and reiterated in many humanitarian law treaties that regulate the means and methods of warfare. It was restated in die 1949 Geneva Conventions for the Protection of Victims of War, the 1977 Additional Protocols to those Conventions, and the Preamble to the Convention on Prohibitions or Restrictions on the Use of Certain Conventional Weapons, albeit in slightly different versions. The Martens clause was paraphrased in Resolution XXIII of the Tehran Conference on Human Rights of 1968, and is cited or otherwise referred to in several national military manuals, including those of the United States, die United Kingdom, and Germany. Moreover, attempts have recently been made, including by parties before die International Court of Jusdce, to invoke the clause, in the absence of specific norms of customary and conventional law, to oudaw the use of nuclear weapons.

Post-Cold War Reflections on the Study of International Human Rights

The 1993 World Human Rights Conference, only the second UN-sponsored global conference on human rights ever held, provides an appropriate occasion to reflect on the state of the study of international human rights. The first global human rights conference, held in Tehran in 1968, came on the heels of the rise of the Third World to a position of international prominence. The Tehran Conference helped to initiate an era in which issues of economic, social, and cultural rights and development received steadily increasing attention in international human rights discussions. The 1993 Vienna Conference reflected the new international context characterized by the end of the Cold War and the global trend toward political liberalization and democratization. Substantively, the Vienna Conference was perhaps most notable for its emphasis on the university of international human rights—an emphasis, as I will argue below, that is reflected in the development of the academic human rights literature as well.

Political and economic factors influencing contraceptive uptake.

International, national and local level politics influence the uptake of contraception through consensuses, laws, financial and moral support or the creation of an enabling atmosphere. Opposition to contraception generally comes from some churches and groups opposed to particular technologies. Socio-economic factors, particularly education, the health care system and the perceived or actual cost of fertility regulation as compared to benefits expected from children also powerfully influence contraceptive use. For many poor women in developing countries their powerlessness in relation to their male partners is an important obstacle.

The Turning Point: The Moscow, Cairo and Teheran Conference, 1943, by Keith Sainsbury

<i>The Turning Point: The Moscow, Cairo and Teheran Conference, 1943</i>, by Keith Sainsbury

The Turning Point: Roosevelt, Stalin, Churchill, and Chiang-Kai-Shek, 1943: The Moscow, Cairo, and Teheran Conferences

Journal Article The Turning Point: Roosevelt, Stalin, Churchill and Chiang-Kai-Shek, 1943: The Moscow, Cairo, and Teheran Conferences. By Keith Sainsbury. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985. vii + 373 pp. Appendixes, notes, bibliography, and index. $24.95.) Get access Theodore A. Wilson Theodore A. Wilson University of Kansas Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of American History, Volume 72, Issue 4, March 1986, Pages 994–995, https://doi.org/10.2307/1908968 Published: 01 March 1986

Churchill &amp; Roosevelt: the complete correspondence, The turning point: Roosevelt, Stalin, Churchill, and Chiang-Kai-Shek, 1943: the Moscow, Cairo, and Teheran conferences and A subject bibliography of the Second World War: books in English 1975–1983

Churchill &amp; Roosevelt: the complete correspondence, The turning point: Roosevelt, Stalin, Churchill, and Chiang-Kai-Shek, 1943: the Moscow, Cairo, and Teheran conferences and A subject bibliography of the Second World War: books in English 1975–1983

Human Rights and Protocol II

Human rights, particularly civil and political, have influenced the latest developments in international humanitarian law, especially 1977 Protocol II relating to non-international armed conflicts. At the Teheran Conference in 1968 the United Nations began to reconcile these two branches of international law; it was at this Conference that international humanitarian law was first called “human rights in periods of armed conflict”. This rapprochement was helped further by the adoption in the 1977 Protocols of some basic rules identical to those in the Human Rights Conventions; it helps strengthen the protection of human beings in situations of armed conflict.

The Origins of the 'Teheran Formula' on Polish Frontiers

On the evening of 1 December 1943 at the Teheran Conference, Winston Churchill proposed to Franklin Roosevelt and Joseph Stalin that he be permitted to put to the Polish government-in-exile in London an agreed formula on Poland's post-war frontiers. This read that 'in principle . . . the home of the Polish state and nation should be between the so-called Curzon Line and the line of the Oder, including for Poland East Prussia and Oppeln'. Stalin agreed on condition that Russia obtained the 'Konigsberg area' of East Prussia. Roosevelt said nothing at this meeting, but he had told Stalin that morning that, although he could not pubicly commit himself, because of the 1944 presidential election, he would like to see the eastern border of Poland 'moved further to the west' and her western borders moved 'even to the River Oder'.1 The 'Teheran Formula' represented the acceptance by the Western allies of the 'Piast concept' of compensation, as advanced by Russia and her Polish supporters, over the 'Jagellon concept', adhered to by the Polish government and tacitly supported before Stalingrad by the Western powers. It was in the context of the allied victories at Stalingrad, El Alamein, and Tunis that the 'Big Three' were compelled to formulate and seek agreement upon conceptions of the post-war political order which would emerge upon the defeat of the Axis. The state frontiers and future government of Poland were related elements in that order. Acceptance of the 'Piast concept' of compensation and future frontiers was for Stalin a touchstone of 'friendliness to Russia' and a qualification for a ministerial portfolio in the future Poland.2 Adherence to the 'Jagellon concept' represented to Stalin the reverse.