In 1941, following the Nazi invasion to the Soviet Union, Stalin granted amnesty to about 850,000 Polish prisoners in Siberia. Those Poles were sent to the Gulags in 1939 for being “Class Enemies” in the Soviet occupied zone in eastern Poland. “Class Enemies” was a broad definition for bourgeoisie, artists, industrialists, and essentially everyone the Soviets did not want in their occupation zone. After two years in the gulags and great suffering they had been given a chance to rebuild their life; 400,000 of them in Iran and 450,000 in India. In Iran they settled mostly in Tehran and Esfahan. Their impact on the rapid changes in Iranian urban life and cultural tapestry was immense. Shortly after their arrival the Polish refugees started to establish institutions such as bars, cafes, and cabarets to cater to their communities who looked to restore the lifestyle they had prior to the forced exile. However, the potential market for such life style was much broader than the Polish community alone. Hundreds of thousands of soldiers of the Allied armies found comfort and entertainment in Cafe Polonia in downtown Tehran or the Polish cabarets, theatres, and bars. The emerging urban middle class in Iran also found this lifestyle fitting squarely with the cosmopolitan vision they had for their capital and their country. This development also invoked an interesting discourse of criticism on behalf of nationalist circles, as well as religious elites who criticized the immorality of those activities. This presentation will discuss the flourishing of this type of leisure culture in Iran in the war years and afterwards, until the revolution in 1979.