Wage Labor and Migration: Persian Workers in Southern Russia, 1880–1914

It is common knowledge of Iranian history that at the turn of the present century iran was undergoing important social transformations. A notable feature of this period that witnessed the rising movement for constitutional reforms was a heightening of social tensions and contradictions in a traditional society that had now become subject to potent forces of change from within and without. The disintegration of the political power of the Qajar dynasty went hand in hand with an accelerating trend of economic decline, while the social fabric of the country at large was unraveled by a growing tendency for outbursts of massive social agitation and popular unrest.