Arrests in Border Regions
Most of the Iranians who ended up in Soviet prisons were arrested in the border areas, which had long been a zone of tension and contestation. The exact reasons for their arrests varied, but they often reflected the precarious nature of life in these borderlands. Some were accused of espionage, smuggling, or illegal border crossings. Others were victims of political purges within the Soviet Union, where paranoia about foreign influence and infiltration ran high.
For ordinary Iranians living in these regions, the border represented both an opportunity and a threat. It was a place where goods, ideas, and people could move between the two countries, but it was also heavily surveilled and controlled by both Iranian and Soviet authorities. Many of those arrested likely had little understanding of the broader geopolitical forces at play; they were simply caught in the crossfire of a tense and unpredictable relationship.