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[THE INVASION MANUAL: AN EXCEPTIONALLY RARE 1941 RED ARMY DIRECTORY FOR THE OCCUPATION OF IRAN] Iranskiy kalendar’ i schisleniye sutok i chasov v Irane [i.e. Iranian Calendar and Counting of Days and Hours in Iran]

Item #2737

Tbilisi: Shtab ZAKVO, 1941. 32 pp: tables. 14x9,8 cm. In original publisher’s printed wrappers. Slightly worn, but otherwise near fine.
Scarce. First edition. 1 of 4,100 copies. Text in Russian. Production editor N. S. Kamensky.

An extremely rare pocket-sized directory for calculating Iranian calendar dates and local times published by the Transcaucasian Military District in Tbilisi in 1941. The edition was issued exclusively as an internal operational document for Red Army commanding officers and was meant for active deployment, making surviving copies extremely rare. Our copy likely belonged to an officer who carried it across the border during the six-day Anglo-Soviet invasion of Iran in August 1941.
The book was sent to print on August 23, 1941, shortly after the Axis invasion of the Soviet Union. As the headquarters of the Transcaucasian Military District (ZakVO), Tbilisi was the absolute nerve center for the impending Anglo-Soviet invasion of Iran. On the exact day this manual went to press, the District was officially reorganized into the operational Transcaucasian Front to spearhead the attack. Throughout August, the city’s military bureaucracy worked in overdrive while tens of thousands of Red Army troops (primarily the 44th and 47th Armies) secretly massed across the Transcaucasian republics of Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan. The printing of this Iranian calendar was part of a frantic, highly classified logistical effort orchestrated directly from the Tbilisi headquarters to prepare field commanders for the sudden August 25 border crossing.
The directory focuses on the Iranian solar year 1320, which spanned from March 21, 1941, to March 20, 1942. The core of the manual consists of comprehensive, easy-to-read tables mapping the Iranian solar months directly onto the Gregorian calendar. Alongside these date conversions, the booklet features detailed breakdowns of local Iranian days of the week and regional holidays.
Overall, a scarce example of wartime military ephemeral printing.

No copies found in Worldcat.

Price: $750.00