Soviets Red Kurdistan

Soviets Red Kurdistan

By Lea Celik Sommerseth Shaw

The story of the Kurds, Natives of Mesopotamia streches from Africa and across Russia. Red Kurdistan, a brief but significant moment in the 20th century when Kurdish identity was formally recognised within the Soviet. Established in 1923 within Soviet Azerbaijan, Red Kurdistan was recognised and not just territory.

Kurds and Russians share common origins. A Russian researcher argued that Kurds and Russians are “relatives,” even suggesting shared ancestry supported by interpretations of historical and genetic narratives. Kurds and Russians have been historically entangled—through empire, migration, war, and strategy.

Kurds became part of the Russian Empire through expansion into the Caucasus in the 19th century, with waves of migration reshaping communities across Armenia, Azerbaijan, and beyond. Russia, in turn, has long positioned itself in relation to the Kurdish question, sometimes as an ally, sometimes as strategist, always as a power navigating its own interests in the region.

Soviets Red Kurdistan was not just geography. It was a blueprint of what recognition could look like. A Kurdish administrative region. Kurdish language. Kurdish presence formalised.

This is not unique to the Soviet Union. It mirrors the broader Kurdish experience across Turkey, Iraq, Iran, and Syria, where the Native Kurds identity has been negotiated, denied, or fragmented by state interests and geopolitical strategy, always initiated as of the Jewish-Palestine conflict in the Middle East.

To say Kurds and Russians are “the same people” is not a neutral statement. It is political. It can be used to unify narratives—or to overwrite them. What history shows is not sameness, but intersection, Shared spaces in the Caucasus, overlapping political histories. The Kurdish story is not one of absorption into another identity.
It is one of resistance to being absorbed.

Red Kurdistan is not just a historical footnote. The Natives to Mesopotamia and spread across Russia and Africa, The Native Kurd identity has always existed beyond imposed borders. Evidence that recognition has been granted—and then withdrawn and that history itself is political.

The Kurdish story is not a modern invention. It is not a political construct of the 20th century. Kurds are Natives of the first civilization Mesopotamia, Zagros Mountains, into civilisations that existed long before the names we use today. The Kurds are widely understood to descend from ancient populations of Mesopotamia and the Zagros region—an area often called the cradle of civilisation.

This region predates modern ethnic categories. It was home to Hurrians, Mitanni, Medes, and other Indo-Iranian and pre-Indo-European groups. Many historians connect the Kurds most directly to the Medes, an ancient Iranian people who established a powerful empire in the 7th century BCE.

The Gutians came from the Zagros Mountains—the same geography that Kurds inhabit today. Gutians are early ancestors of Kurdish populations who are closely related to populations in the Caucasus and Anatolia. They are a continuous living culture where they originate from and predates modern states

Lea Celik Sommerseth Shaw

17 March 2026 Saint Germain Des Pres