The Azerbaijan People's Government (; ) was a short-lived unrecognized secessionist state in northern Iran from November 1945 to December 1946. Like the unrecognized Republic of Mahabad, it was a puppet state of the Soviet Union. Established in Iranian Azerbaijan, the Azerbaijan People's Government capital was the city of Tabriz. It was headed by an ethno-separatist and communist government led by the Azerbaijani Democratic Party, which, in addition, also followed a pan-Turkist discourse. Its establishment and demise were a part of the Iran crisis, which was a precursor to the Cold War. History To supply the Soviet forces with war material through Iran, British and Soviet troops jointly occupied the country in August 1941. Soviet forces entering Iranian territory from the Armenian SSR and the Azerbaijan SSR and British and Indian forces entering from Iraq soon took the control of the country. On 16 September, the British forced Reza Shah to abdicate in favor of his son Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi, who ruled until 1979. With the dethronement of Reza Shah in September 1941, Soviet troops captured Tabriz and northwestern Iran for military and strategic reasons. The Azerbaijan People's Government, set up by the Soviets, under leadership of Ja'far Pishevari was proclaimed in Tabriz in 1945. Lavrenti Beria was nominally in charge of the operation, but delegated it to Mir Jafar Baghirov, the First Secretary of the Communist Party of Azerbaijan in Baku. The Democratic Party of Azerbaijan was also created by the direct order of Joseph Stalin and capitalized on some local people's dissatisfaction with the centralization policies of Reza Shah. It was supplied with money and weapons by the USSR. Stalin wanted to make pressure on Iran to get an oil concession in Iranian Azerbaijan. During this time, a revival of the Azerbaijani literary language, which had largely been supplanted by Persian, was promoted with the help of writers, journalists, and teachers from the Azerbaijan SSR. In the quest of imposing national homogeneity on the country where half of the population consisted of ethnic minorities, Reza Shah had previously issued in quick succession bans on the use of Azerbaijani language on the premises of schools, in theatrical performances, religious ceremonies, and, finally, in the publication of books. The U.S. supported the Iranian complaint against Soviet actions lodged with the Security Council in Resolution 3 and Resolution 5; in mid December 1946, the U.S. supported the shah's government in